Over the past decades, people have had an increasing chance to receive eco- nomic information, especially news related to the stock market. This is because the fraction of the U.S. population owning stocks has increased rapidly. However, it does not mean that a majority of news sources have started to deal with financial news more. We do not know how traditional media, such as newspapers, have dealt with financial news during the same period, nor do we know the influence of this environmental change on political attitudes. In this report, I analyze the type of contexts in which the stock market has been described in The New York Times from 1981 to 2011 by Wordfish and the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model. I find that a plunge in the stock market and political events affect the amount of political topics in stock market news. In particular, after the financial crisis of 2008–2009, stock market news consisted of economic, political, and social topics. / text

There is growing concern amongst observers of the media that news coverage of politics has moved away from a focus on issues, and instead towards political strategy. This emphasises the tactics employed by politicians in pursuing policy goals, as well as their performance, styles of campaigning, and personal battles in the political arena, whether it be in office, opposition, or during elections (de Vreese & Elenbaas, 2008). Strategically framed news is problematic because it portrays politicians as manipulative, power hungry and Machiavellian, and therefore invites audiences to attribute cynical motives to their actions. As a result, this type of news has been found accountable for increasing levels of political cynicism in the US electorate, which erodes civic engagement and depresses electoral participation - a process described as a media-induced 'spiral of cynicism' (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997). This dissertation examines this type of news. Despite much concern that – driven by a number of changes to the working practices of journalists – political issues are increasingly being undermined by a narrative of strategy, there is little evidence of either the presence or effects of strategy news in the UK, especially outside of elections. This study fills some of this gap by conducting a content analysis of a non-election issue in the news media (press and TV news) over a 3 month period, whereby strategy news as a frame was examined. The issue chosen for case study was the ‘euro debate’ of May-June 2003. The second part of the study is a framing experiment, where a sample of young people were randomly exposed to either a ‘strategy’ or ‘issue’ framed account of the euro debate, and then asked about their political attitudes. Content analysis findings showed the euro debate to fulfil many typical characteristics of EU reporting in the British media, with coverage cyclical and driven by events. Although there was a roughly equal balance of issue and strategy framed stories in the press, the strategy frame was more prominent in the news agenda and was more consistently spread throughout the time period. When broadcast news did cover the euro, it was usually to cover a development in the manoeuvring of political elites. Although some qualifications emerged, much of the content analysis findings confirmed the worries of media critics. Experiment findings found evidence of a ‘spiral of cynicism’ but only for those who were less politically engaged, and their cynicism was confined to the motivations of politicians, not of the political system writ large. For the less engaged, the presentation of the euro debate through the strategy frame also suppressed their support for the euro compared to the issue version. Although some of the experiment findings should concern observers of news media performance, the evidence of this study does not support a full-blown ‘spiral of cynicism’ in the UK.

The increasingly salient role of new media in young people's lives has led to a debate about the potential of the internet as a means of political communication and youth participation. While a growing body of scholarship has engaged 'Nith the issue, there is lack of empirical research linking young people's civic motivations to their internet uses, and in particular to their evaluations, as users, of UK civic websites. This thesis brings together the study of youth civic engagement and the practice of user experience in order to explore the civic factors and website elements that motivate young people to participate via the internet. Employing a large survey and a qualitative study of a purposively sampled community of young citizens and internet users, the research explores youth civic needs and how these translate into specific uses of the web. Furthermore, a comprehensive content analysis of twenty civic websites is juxtaposed with a user experience study, in order to facilitate a dialogue between the online text and the users. The core argument of this study is that young people are willing to engage with public affairs via civic websites as long as a series of "terms and conditions" are met that would make this engagement meaningful to them. These include the existence of visible benefits or outcomes from the participation process and the relevance of the issue to the individual's lifeworld. It is argued that the preconditions set by these young people constitute a coherent paradigm of an essentially consumerist approach to civic engagement; a mode of online political communication that is based around convenience, personalisation and emotional engagement. However, a feeling of civic loneliness was also manifest in the participants' narratives and there were strong indications that any sense of alienation should not be attributed to apathy, but to a fundamental scepticism about the ability of the individual to make a difference at the social level. The evidence suggests that, while technology has a role in providing users with accessible and effective online tools, the root cause of the problem may be in the social structures of the civic culture, and particUlarly in the mechanisms of political socialisation that facilitate civic motivation. Hence, the study reaffirms the importance of the affective, symbolic and political dimensions of participation and argues that these need to be integrated along with traditional (technological and psychological) elements of user experience in order to achieve civic usability.

This thesis is an investigation of politics in the context of digital technologies. Its central claim is that technologies of what I call the digital ensemble express a politics that is very different from that of other technological ensembles. In order to come to an understanding of politics in the digital, this thesis explores three broader themes by way of discussions of three different technologies or assemblages of the digital. While I do not aim to establish an overarching conclusion as to a politics of the digital, I do identify both elements that are common among the three themes and where they diverge from one another. The first theme concerns the operation of power in the context of the database and examines how subjects are acted upon. I argue that databases represent both an amplification of the disciplinary mode of power and, as a product of that amplification, also express a new mode of power referred to by Deleuze as modulation. It is this concurrent operation of these two modes of power that produces the subject as 'dividual', both object and objectile at the same time, which has a number of consequences in terms of how subjects are controlled and governed. The second theme considers how the subject is constituted as actor and how this relates to the construction of the political in the context of the digital ensemble. This is achieved by way of looking at the concept of the interface. I argue that digital technologies constitute very different practices or forms of doing, both spatially and temporally. Using a broader phenomenological approach, I argue that these technologies constitute very different forms of being than that of the individual that is so central to much of modern political thought and its construction of the political. A key expression of the political in the digital ensemble, I argue, is the interface, enabling the production of a new human-machine assemblage constituting itself as flow/s. The third theme is an exploration of the conceptualisation of political action in the context of digital technologies. Here I make use of the technological assemblage of the network in exploring the actions of fluid beings. I argue that modern political thought has always conceptualised political action as the action of solid entities acting upon and in relation to other solid entities. In the context of digital technologies, however, I argue that such a conceptualisation of action is not very useful; if one conceptualises the actor as fluid, then so must its actions be conceptualised as fluid. It is in such a context that concepts of flow and turbulence gain great importance in coming to terms with politics in the digital. Indeed, to the extent that a digitisation of politics can be discerned, I argue it makes much sense to think of it as a politics of fluidity.

abstract: Do response advertisements influence individuals’ evaluations of political candidates and vote preferences? This dissertation explores the impact of response advertisements on citizens’ expressed vote preferences and favorability towards political candidates. This project utilized an original focus group to determine citizens feelings regarding American political campaigns more generally and attitudes towards negative campaigning more specifically, including how candidates should respond when attacked. Additionally, an experiment was conducted to determine which type of response advertisements influences citizen attitudes most. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Political Science 2020

Media and politics as well as media and elections are very closely related with each other, that is why is the topic of this thesis presidential election in 2018 in the Czech Republic in the Czech newspaper. Quantitative content analysis was used to analyse framing of the presidential election in Hospodářské noviny, Lidové noviny and Mladá Fronta DNES. The main theoretical frame used is Entman's (1993) definition of framing. It is also analysed how balanced and neutral the news, including the analysis of incumbency bonus. Research of the neutrality and balance of the news is based on the Westerstahl's definition of objectivity. The thesis also compares results of the framing and unbias analysis with the framing and unbias analysis of the presidential election in 2013 by the author Tamara Kejlová (2014). The main goal of the comparison is to show the trends that are present in the media content related to presidential election in the Czech Republic. In the thesis I also provide context of the presidential election in the Czech Republic.

<p>Purpose/Aim: The comprehensive purpose is to study how the political journalism is framed, and how the party leaders, with focus on the authority, are constructed in the press.</p><p>Material/Method: Firstly 84 articles articles printed in the swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet have been analysed. Secondly, a textual analysis by means of a critical discourse analysis.</p><p>Main results: Media are inclined to frame politics as a game or a strategic race. The partyleaders are ascribed authority in different ways. This ascribed authority can also be deconstructed.</p><p>Key words: Media and politics, party leader, discourse, democracy, framing theory</p>

Purpose/Aim: The comprehensive purpose is to study how the political journalism is framed, and how the party leaders, with focus on the authority, are constructed in the press. Material/Method: Firstly 84 articles articles printed in the swedish newspapers Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet have been analysed. Secondly, a textual analysis by means of a critical discourse analysis. Main results: Media are inclined to frame politics as a game or a strategic race. The partyleaders are ascribed authority in different ways. This ascribed authority can also be deconstructed. Key words: Media and politics, party leader, discourse, democracy, framing theory

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Journalists&rsquo / commitment to an objective, impartial, balanced way of reporting and their respect for ethical norms are considered a vital prerequisite for democracy to be carried out. The general purpose of this thesis is to reveal whether established journalistic practices in Turkey are shaped through commonly acknowledged professional principles in a way that is compatible with democratic expectancies. In order to achieve this goal, a group of journalists were interviewed in the summer of 2003 who worked as parliament journalists at some time in their careers. They were asked several questions mainly concerning the factors that might have influence on the processes of news making with a special emphasis on the negative consequences of the complex structure of media-politics relationships. The analysis of the interviews reveals Turkish journalists&rsquo / views that journalism in Turkey is faced with serious problems and even may be characterized by a high degree of &ldquo / degeneration&rdquo / .