A topic of this thesis addresses the media image of three football clubs as this was reflected in the Czech press within 2010/2011 season. The attention is paid to the press coverage of Sparta Praha, Manchester United and Dukla Praha. The specifics of their image are followed in three differently profiled Czech titles. Deník Sport represents the sport - focused newspaper, Mladá fronta Dnes stands for the most widely read Czech newspaper with a special regional sport section and Hospodářské noviny has been chosen because of their specifically economic profile where the sport section represents just a minor part of each issue. The term "media image" is linked to the signs of evaluation and expression of support for a particular team as it is mediated through the articles. This support is analysed through the structure of topics and through the use of subjective language. The aim is to point on how these teams were presented during the season and how their presence kept changing in the press within the time. The possible differences and overlapping are explained more into details. The term "media bias" is related to subjective reporting that stresses negativity or stardom on the contrary. The term is used to point out potential devotion from objective reporting. It is used to address possibly...

Abstract Essay in Political Science, D-level, spring 2010. “Do the American mass media serve foreign policy interests? – A scrutiny of two American newspapers’ coverage of the coup d’état in Honduras in the summer of 2009”, Author: David Scott. Tutor: Anders Broman   The bias of the American mass media has been widely discussed among scholars. Not only has this phenomenon caught the attention of political scientists, but also academics from other scientific fields. Two of the most known researchers of the American media are the linguist Noam Chomsky and the professor of Finance Edward Herman. They apply, on the American media, a so called “propaganda model” which claims that the media will serve the interests of the domestic power elites. One of the interests that the media try to satisfy is the foreign policy goals of the American state, which is to vilify enemy states and idealize client states. This thesis is applied on the American media coverage of the coup d’état that resulted in the ousting of leftist President Manuel Zelaya from the presidency in Honduras in 2009. In this case the model predicts that Zelaya will be vilified as an enemy and that the cause of the coup will be portrayed as legitimate. The essay studies, in the newspapers New York Times and Wall Street Journal, the portraiture of three aspects of the coup: the cause of the coup, the role of the military and the victims of violence and, finally, Zelaya as a president and the support to versus the resistance against his presidency. Through a textual analysis of the material, the essay concludes that there is a bias and that this means that the propaganda model can be verified. The bias consists of that the papers tend to legitimize the clients (the perpetrators of the coup) by portraying Zelaya as violator of the Honduran constitution and as a radical leftist aligned with Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez. The legitimization goes further through the toning down of the military’s role in the use of violence against demonstrators. Although this is the bias, it must be stressed that it is subtle and has been detected through an extensive interpretation of the material.

Cette thèse par articles étudie les origines de la sophistication politique. Les chapitres un, deux et trois étudient l'impact d'une série de variables sur les connaissances politiques tandis que le chapitre quatre examine l'impact des connaissances politiques sur la façon dont les individus mettent à jour leurs opinions. Le premier article explore les effets de l'éducation collégiale, l'intérêt politique et les capacités cognitives sur le développement des connaissances politiques. Nous montrons que l'enseignement collégial général a un impact relativement petit sur le développement des connaissances politiques, mais l'enseignement collégial en sciences sociales et humaines a un impact positif sur la connaissance politique, mettant en évidence un effet substantiel de l'éducation. De plus, nous démontrons que les habiletés cognitives déterminent le niveau de connaissances générales, tandis que l'intérêt politique et l'éducation affectent également la variation des connaissances politiques au fil du temps. Le deuxième article étudie l'impact des aptitudes verbales à l'âge de cinq ans sur trois indicateurs importants de la sophistication politique: les connaissances politiques à 16 ans, ainsi que l'intérêt politique et la participation à 30 ans. Il est démontré que les aptitudes verbales à l'âge de 5 ans ont un impact fort et non linéaire sur les connaissances politiques à 16 ans, et l'intérêt politique à 30 ans, tandis que leur impact sur la participation future est fort et linéaire. Enfin, l'impact des variables parentales sur les connaissances politiques est considérablement réduit lorsque les compétences verbales précoces sont prises en compte. Le troisième article examine l'impact de l'ouverture aux expériences sur la sophistication politique. Il est soutenu que c'est l'intellectualisme qui explique la relation trouvée entre l'ouverture et l'information politique dans les recherches passées et que les nouvelles recherches utilisant le Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) ne devraient pas reproduire ce résultat. L'article soutient que c'est parce que l'échelle TIPI évalue l'aspect esthétique de l'ouverture et est mal adapté pour capturer sa composante intellectuelle. Il est également démontré que l'impact de l'intellectualisme en tant que trait de personnalité tient aussi lorsque les habiletés cognitives sont prises en compte. Le dernier article a deux objectifs. Le premier est de considérer l'impact des connaissances politiques sur les perceptions du biais médiatique. Le second est d'étendre la recherche sur les perceptions des biais médiatiques à un électorat non américain. Nous constatons que, comme c'est le cas aux États-Unis, les conservateurs sont plus enclins à croire en l'existence de biais médiatiques. Il est également démontré que les citoyens les plus informés sont plus susceptibles de penser que les médias sont biaisés, mais ils ne sont pas plus susceptibles de percevoir ces biais lorsqu'ils ne sont pas d'accord avec un journaliste. Par conséquent, il appert que les citoyens plus informés ne sont pas plus susceptibles de faire montre de raisonnement motivé. / This thesis by articles investigates the origins of political sophistication. Chapters one, two, and three investigate the impact of a series of variables on political knowledge, while Chapter four looks at the impact of political knowledge on how individuals update their opinions. The first paper explores the effects of college education, political interest, and cognitive abilities on the development of political knowledge. It is shown that general college education has a minimal impact on political knowledge development, but college education in social sciences and humanities has a positive impact on political knowledge, highlighting a substantive effect of education. Moreover, it is shown that cognitive skills determine one's general knowledge level, while political interest and education also affect political knowledge variation over time. The second paper looks at the impact of early verbal skills on political sophistication. This paper investigates the impact of verbal skills at five years of age on three important indicators of political sophistication: political knowledge at 16, as well as political interest and turnout at 30. It is shown that verbal skills at 5 years of age have a strong and non-linear impact on political knowledge at 16, and political interest at 30, while their impact on future turnout is strong and linear. Finally, the impact of parental variables on political knowledge is significantly reduced when early verbal skills are accounted for. The third article looks at the impact of openness to experience on political sophistication. This paper seeks to investigate this relation by distinguishing two different aspects of openness to experience that are sometimes overlooked: the aesthetic and the intellectual components of openness. It is argued that the latter explains the relation found between openness and political knowledge in past research, and that new research using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) should not be expected to replicate this finding. The paper argues that this is because the TIPI scale assesses the aesthetic aspect of openness and is ill suited to capture its intellectual component. It is also shown that the impact of intellectualism as a personality trait also holds when cognitive skills are taken into account. The last paper has two goals. The first is to consider the impact of political knowledge on perceptions of media bias. The second is to extend research on media bias perceptions to a non-American electorate. It is shown that, as found in the US, Conservatives are more prone to believe in the existence of media bias. It is also shown that the most knowledgeable citizens are more likely to think that the media are biased, but they are not more likely to perceive bias when they disagree with a journalist. These results hold true even when a variety of potential confounding factors such as personality traits are taken into account.

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This thesis focuses on the question of preferential treatment by U.S. national newsmagazines of presidential candidates in the 2004 election as evidenced by their visual coverage. Using content analysis, all the visual depictions of candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry were analyzed for 10 visual attributes to determine whether one had received better pictorial treatment. This study asked if the newsmagazines had printed greater amounts of visuals overall for one candidate and if one candidate's visuals were more or less positive than the other. The author concludes that more coverage was given to Bush over Kerry in a 60/40 ratio in all three magazines, and overall, the pictures published for each candidate were positive and neither candidate was given preferential treatment by any of the magazines. The newsmagazines were not deemed biased for publishing more visuals of Bush because, though more visuals were of the president during September, the newsmagazines published nearly equal numbers of visuals in October and November, often pairing them in layouts. The magazines were also not biased in their selection of visuals. All three tended to publish more positive or neutral visuals and rarely did any significantly differing patterns emerge to show that the editors favored one candidate over the other. Those attributes that did reach significance had weak associations. This study is a replication and a continuation of visual media content analyses of the 1984, 1988, and 1996 campaign coverage by Moriarty and Garramone (1986), Moriarty and Poppovich (1989), and Waldman and Devitt (1998) respectively. This research adds to the body of media bias and agenda-setting among newspapers and magazines and visual media.