The objective of this master's thesis is to examine the concept of opinion leadership-to define it, to describe where it originated from, how it has developed over time, and finally, to apply this phenomenon to the Czech journalist community and its current members. Based on relevant international literature, the author of this paper assumes that opinion leaders exist in every social group or community around the globe, possessing an extraordinary personal influence on the decision-making and opinion-forming process of the people within their social network. Simply put, opinion leaders are the individuals to whom others look for guidance, credible and accurate information and context when they are in doubt or experiencing indecisiveness. For journalists, the possibility to have someone to whom they can turn for all the above-mentioned is crucial, the author believes, for it is a daily part of the profession to handle information cautiously, to evaluate news critically and objectively, and to get acquainted with a confusing topic in a relatively short period of time. Firstly, the paper offers a thorough theoretical framework for understanding the concept of opinion leadership, which is followed by a practical part consisting of a two-phase research examining opinion leaders in the ranks of Czech...

Mexico is currently one the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism, with one of the highest death rates in the world. Violence against Mexican journalists has received significant attention from researchers, most recently when it comes to digital threats. Research suggests that online harassment against journalists is not only related to the profession or topic covered, but also individual characteristics like gender, race and sexuality. Digital threats affect everyone, but the threats women are faced with are disproportionate. While digital technologies are useful in developing reporting practices, it has also been shown as detrimental. Through a semi-structured WhatsApp interview with a Mexican women journalists and coordinator in an International Journalist Network, this study attempts to identify the perceptions of online threats against women journalists and the use of Networks as a coping strategy. Through the use of digital testimonies, this study attempts to further amplify Mexican women journalists’ voices and experiences when it comes to using Networks as a coping strategy to confront online violence.  The importance here is to understand the Mexican context and the dimensions to digital violence, the possibilities of resilience and the coping strategies practiced by Mexican women journalists. Through analysing perceptions of the threat and their experiences with Networks, this study attemps to identify the strengths and possibilities of Networks as a coping strategy, when it comes to digital threats, but also its barriers and limitations. This study is important to the field of Communication of Development and Social Change as it underscores the importance of listening, understanding local contexts, perceptions and resilience. This is crucial when undertaking intitaves on a larger scale for social change.

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This thesis investigates whether institutional journalism should receive special treatment at the hands of the law. Special treatment encompasses the affording of benefits to and the imposition of liabilities on journalistic institutions and the individuals who work for them. The arguments against special treatment are pragmatic and theoretical: pragmatic arguments emphasise, inter alia, the difficulty of providing a definition of journalism, and theoretical arguments emphasise the difficulty in explaining why special treatment can be coherent. The former can be addressed by describing how special treatment is already afforded to institutional journalism, both liabilities and benefits, to individuals and institutions, and showing that some of the problems foreseen by the pragmatic arguments have not proved as difficult as they appear. The arguments that special treatment is incoherent can be addressed by arguing that the credibility and assessability of institutional journalism still provide a prima facie rationale for special treatment irrespective of the rise of public speech on the Internet, when combined with the integral nature of journalism to democracy. Two basic arguments are advanced why this is so. The first, the free speech values argument, is a consequentialist account that holds that special treatment is appropriate when (or because) institutional journalism contributes to free speech values. It is attractive, but presents difficulties, both when considered in the abstract and when applied to the free speech value of democracy. The second, a rights-based argument, based on the notion that freedoms of speech and of the Press are distinguishable, can be based on either on Dworkin’s theory of rights as trumps or Raz’s theory of rights as interests. Raz’s account is preferable, as it complements the free speech values thesis in explaining the coherence of special treatment.

近幾年，台灣雖然有線頻道的開放，新聞媒體如雨後春筍冒出，但並無走向自由主義所奉行的「獨佔產生一致、競爭造成多元」的局面，反而造就新聞內容高度同質化、貧乏化與劣質化，基層新聞從業人員聲譽也每況愈下，飽受雙重壓力，外有各界針貶責難、內臨組織管理階層的不公平待遇。 許多研究將上述現象，歸咎於媒體結構（前端）的畸形，或從產製結果（後端）-內容面，剖析新聞場域的種種亂象。而本研究立旨於解構一窩蜂新聞產製現象中的來龍去脈、運作過程與利弊得失，故採不同於以往的分析取徑，以「電視新聞產製過程」（中端）中的行動者為主角，透過田野觀察、深度訪談取得研究資料，瞭解電視新聞從業人員與同業、電視新聞組織主管的互動關係，最後將田野資料進行紮根演繹，具體化研究目標與研究主題，瞭解電視新聞生產結構，並建立「一窩蜂新聞產製流程模式」。 本研究以「一窩蜂新聞學」（Pack Journalism）為根基，並以以「記者一窩蜂動作」為經，「與同業（同事）、決策者的互動關係」為緯，並援引Bourdieu新聞場域理論與Giddens的結構行動論，解析造成一窩蜂新聞產製與新聞同質化的內（記者個人心理）、外（新聞結構）在因素。 研究發現將一窩蜂新聞產製的成因分為五點，包括傳播者個人層次、常規層次、跨新聞組織層次、媒體外層次與社會文化層次。而本研究也發現新聞場域形成一迴路機制，藉由互相鏡射下，產生出速度政權與收視率的禁錮，在在都成為記者一窩蜂產製新聞的生存心態，導致新聞內容趨向高度同質化。不過，為了在場域的鬥爭中取得優勢地位，記者會藉由「秀異展示」，凸顯自己，轉化為具體目標，就是追求「獨家新聞」與建立「領導品牌」，在不知不覺中增強「象徵暴力」的施展能量，使記者本身陷入更深的束縛。 那新聞從業人員有抵抗的可能性嗎？本研究也發現新聞結構必須經過整頓，才有抵抗的空間，但在空間來臨之前，記者可以先行累積迂迴抵抗的資源，等待結構重整後才能一舉衝破牢網。 / In recent years, although Taiwan’s Government has allowed cable television stations to open and news media have expanded quickly, the development of television media deviates from the Liberalists’ ideal: monopoly leads to consistence, competition forms diversity. On the contrary, not only does Taiwan’s news content tend toward homogeneity and mediocrity, but also the status of journalists has gone from bad to worse. Journalists face two sets of pressures: there have been acute criticisms from Taiwanese society, and working conditions have deteriorated badly. Many research papers have dissected the above phenomenon in the news field, from the abnormality of media structure to the content of news production. This study aims to analyze the development, the operation, the merits and demerits of pack journalism, and therefore adopts a different approach from past analysis. In order to study pack journalism, this study adopts Bourdieu’s journalistic field theory and Giddens’ structure / activities theory to analyze news production processes. It focuses on journalists themselves and attempts to understand the interactive relationship of TV news workers, colleagues and managers though field study and in-depth interviews. Finally, I use grounded theory to analyze field information, concretizing the research subject and goals, with discussions of the model of news production in pack journalism. This study claims that there are five aspects of news production processes when studying pack journalism: individual level, media routines level, cross-news organization level, extra-media level and social-cultural level. The news field gives rise to a system marked by operational closure, which contributes to speed-driven news production and response to television ratings. These become the primary motives for journalists’ news generation, and result in homogeneity of news content. However, in order to advance in their field, journalists will try to distinguish themselves by pursuing scoops and branding themselves as leaders. Unconsciously, they reinforce the power of symbolic violence and get themselves into more complicated positions. Can news workers resist these scrapes? Can news workers resist these scrapes? Journalist need to accumulate resources to resist in the first place. With the efforts, the media structure is going to reorganized and then the journalists will have more space to stand firm the pressures of being homogeneity. After these changes take place, journalists may just be able to break through the shackles of pack journalism.

The topic of this thesis is the online TV channel Stream. In the theoretical part, we described how online TV works in general. The following paragraph depicted the milestones of Stream TV. The practical part was dedicated to the semiotic analysis of Luděk Staněk's TV show of the online TV channel Stream. This chapter also includes the interview with the program presenter Luděk Staněk. In the interview, we dealt with Staněk's role in the show. The intention of this thesis was to describe how the online TV channel Stream works and analyze the Luděk Staněk's show.

This thesis discovers the spiritual and aesthetic vision of poet-journalist Robert Grendon (c. 1867–1949), a man of Irish-Herero parentage. It situates him in the wider Swedenborgian discourse regarding African ‘regeneration’. While preserving the overall diachronic continuity of a literary biography, it treats his principal thematic preoccupations synchronically. The objective has been to show the imaginative ways in which he employs his rich and diverse religio-philosophical background to account for South Africa’s social problems, to pass judgement upon the principal players, and to point out an alternative path to a brighter future. Chapter 1 looks at Emanuel Swedenborg’s mystical revelations on the heightened spiritual proclivity of the ‘celestial’ African, and the consequences of New Jerusalem’s descent over the heart of Africa, which Swedenborg believed to be taking place, undetected by Europeans, around 1770. It also examines how those pronouncements were received in Europe, America, and—most particularly—in Africa. Chapter 2 examines the circumstances surrounding Grendon’s birth and childhood in what is today Namibia. It takes note of a family tradition that Joseph Grendon married a daughter of Maharero, a prominent Herero chief, and it looks at Robert Grendon’s views on ‘miscegenation’. Chapter 3 deals with Grendon’s schooling at Zonnebloem College, Cape Town. Chapter 4 describes his cultural, sporting, and political activities in Kimberley and Uitenhage in the 1890s, bringing to light his editorship of Coloured South African in 1899. It also considers his conception of ‘progress’. Chapter 5 looks at some early poems, including the domestic verse-drama, ‘Melia and Pietro’ (1897–98). It also contextualizes a single, surviving editorial from Coloured South African. Chapter 6 treats Grendon’s tour de force, the epic poem, Paul Kruger’s Dream (1902), as well as his personal involvement in the South African War, and his spiritualized account of the ‘Struggle for Supremacy’ in South Africa. Chapter 7 relates to Grendon’s fruitful Natal period, 1900–05: his headmastership of the Edendale Training Institute and of Ohlange College, and his editorship of Ilanga’s English columns during the foreign absence of the editor-in-chief, John L. Dube, from February 1904 to May 1905. Chapter 8 analyzes some of the shorter and medium-length poems written in Natal, 1901–04. Chapter 9 is a close examination of the poem, ‘Pro Aliis Damnati’, showing its Swedenborgian basis, and how it dramatizes Swedenborg’s concept of ‘scortatory’ love. Chapter 10 describes Grendon’s early years in Swaziland from 1905. Chapter 11 deals with his period as editor of Abantu-Batho in Johannesburg, 1915–16. Chapter 12 describes his last years in Swaziland, and his relationship with the Swazi royal family. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

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Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Media, being a strongly cultural specific phenomenon is always closesly connected to society. The role of a journalist is influenced by the same process. This thesis is focused on the evolution of the journalism profession in a young and unfamiliar Australian environment and it's differences to a European journalstic environment where the profession has been evolving for a much longer period. Journalism was "imported" to the Australian Continent during British colonisation. This diverse evolution of the journalism profession post colonisation has influenced contemporary journalism education at Australian Universities. Analysis of the study curiculums of Six Universities (Three Czech Universities, which represent the academic model for European academic traditons, and three Australian Universities) will show that differences in journalistic education have strongly influenced the preparation of students into the journalism profession. The thesis will aim to show that Australian Universities are strongly oriented toward practicing skills. This will be shown to be in comparrison to the Czech Universities which focus on principles of general academic knowledge and understanding in the wider context of the journalism profession.