Using secondary data from Pew's Early January 2004 Political Communications Study this thesis explains political identification, the range of media sources that a person uses, perceptions of political party bias and political participation using information about media use and perceptions of the media. The survey, which was conducted during the winter of 2003/2004, includes responses from 1506 individuals. Analytic techniques include means breakdowns, crosstabulations, correlations and multiple regression. Many associations are identified; however, in general, the media related variables were weakly related to dependent variables. The thesis speculates that the weak relationships can be attributed to a homogeneous range of available media content. Connections between the recent growth in the number of media sources and diversity in media content are discussed. The analysis finds that listening to talk radio, religious radio and watching the Fox News Channel were weakly associated with conservatism while use of non-profit media, including use of National Public Radio (NPR), the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) were weakly associated with liberalism. The thesis questions if the use of "sound bites" used on talk radio programs and some 24-hour television news channels is related to the conservatism of these audiences. A positive relationship between the amount of bias that a person sees in the news media and the range of news sources that a person uses was found. Sources include Internet, television and print media. The implications of these findings in the context of the agenda-setting framework and a homogenous media are discussed. Use of the Fox News Channel and talk radio were associated with perceptions of a Democratic Party bias in the news media. Ideas from Bourdieu and Passeron are used to understand how communication styles are related to the perception of talk radio as an alternative to the "liberal media". The implications of the prevalence of the perception of a "liberal media" are discussed and related to theoretical work from Gramsci and Abercrombie. Media that attempt to add diversity through new operational models are described. Associations between political participation and several types of media use were found. The finding that use of comedy television is related to some indicators of political participation is seen as demonstrating the difficulty in distinguishing information from entertainment-oriented programming. The analysis questions assumptions about the relationships between media use, electoral cynicism and political participation. The thesis argues that better tools from examining media use in general and in the Canadian context are needed.

Using secondary data from Pew's Early January 2004 Political Communications Study this thesis explains political identification, the range of media sources that a person uses, perceptions of political party bias and political participation using information about media use and perceptions of the media. The survey, which was conducted during the winter of 2003/2004, includes responses from 1506 individuals. Analytic techniques include means breakdowns, crosstabulations, correlations and multiple regression. Many associations are identified; however, in general, the media related variables were weakly related to dependent variables. The thesis speculates that the weak relationships can be attributed to a homogeneous range of available media content. Connections between the recent growth in the number of media sources and diversity in media content are discussed. The analysis finds that listening to talk radio, religious radio and watching the Fox News Channel were weakly associated with conservatism while use of non-profit media, including use of National Public Radio (NPR), the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) were weakly associated with liberalism. The thesis questions if the use of "sound bites" used on talk radio programs and some 24-hour television news channels is related to the conservatism of these audiences. A positive relationship between the amount of bias that a person sees in the news media and the range of news sources that a person uses was found. Sources include Internet, television and print media. The implications of these findings in the context of the agenda-setting framework and a homogenous media are discussed. Use of the Fox News Channel and talk radio were associated with perceptions of a Democratic Party bias in the news media. Ideas from Bourdieu and Passeron are used to understand how communication styles are related to the perception of talk radio as an alternative to the "liberal media". The implications of the prevalence of the perception of a "liberal media" are discussed and related to theoretical work from Gramsci and Abercrombie. Media that attempt to add diversity through new operational models are described. Associations between political participation and several types of media use were found. The finding that use of comedy television is related to some indicators of political participation is seen as demonstrating the difficulty in distinguishing information from entertainment-oriented programming. The analysis questions assumptions about the relationships between media use, electoral cynicism and political participation. The thesis argues that better tools from examining media use in general and in the Canadian context are needed.

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In order to fully explicate the role of news media in individuals’ political participation, this dissertation aims at establishing an integrative structural model that specifies relationships among news media use, its antecedents and mediators of its influence on political participation. The proposed model is comprised of key factors of political participation that previous research has identified. The relational structure is based on models and theories relevant to prediction of political behaviors. Specifically, the model integrates (a) communication mediation model, which posits that communication behaviors (i.e., news media use and interpersonal discussion) mediate the effects of socio-demographic variables (i.e., income, education, age, gender, and race) and political dispositions (i.e., political interest, partisanship and ideology) on political outcomes; (b) agenda-setting theory, which posits that frequent exposure to news media increases the salience of news objects in audiences’ minds; (c) cognitive mediation model, which posits that elaborative and collective thinking is a prerequisite to produce political outcomes of news exposure; (d) theory of planned behavior, which posits that human behavior can be best predicted by three proximal variables (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control); (e) O-S-R-O-R (orientations-stimulus-reasoning-orientations-response) model of communication effects, which provides a parsimonious framework of effect process. Using the structural equation modeling (SEM) method, this dissertation analyzes the 2008 American National Election Studies data set to test the validity of the proposed structural model. Results indicate that frequent exposure to news media stimulates attentive news use as well as intra- and interpersonal reasoning, which produce a wide range of political outcomes. Two reasoning behaviors (i.e., self-reflection and interpersonal political discussion) are critical mechanisms that linked news media use to various political outcomes including political participation. Personal-psychological mediators, such as strength in affects, personal traits, opinions about political issues, campaign interest, political knowledge, attitude strength, perceived ability of political parties and political efficacy all significantly mediate the influence of news media use on political participation. News media use mediates significant portion of effects that a set of preexisting variables have on political participation as well as various types of political orientations. / text

Culturally sensitive care is thought to take into account a person's specific cultural values and preferences when providing mental health care services. Latinos currently comprise 17% of the total U.S. population at 50.5 million and persons of Mexican heritage constitute over 66% of all Latinos in the United States. Persons of Mexican heritage experience higher rates of mental health issues and illness with 30% lifetime incidence versus 20% incidence for Anglos. Few studies have focused on the mental health treatment preferences for persons of Mexican heritage. Treatment preferences could reflect personal characteristics, acculturation perspective about mental health issues and illness, and experience with treatment. Mass media may also influence treatment preferences and mental health information-seeking.The purpose of this study was to describe preferences for mental health treatment services for persons of Mexican heritage living in the Southwest along the United States-Mexico border. Twenty-one participants were interviewed individually and their responses analyzed using Atlas-ti qualitative analysis software. The participants reported twenty-five mental health treatment preferences. The top six preferences- medication, going to the doctor, social and family support, counseling and herbal medicines, were consistent throughout demographic categories of age, gender, income, generational status, insurance status, education, and acculturation. Self-management interventions and integrative medicine were also reported as treatment preferences. Participants reported media use of television, internet, books and magazines, in-person interaction, and radio as primary mental health information sources. Media influences on mental health included education/information, hope, normalization, and a catalyst for conversation. Ascribed meanings for anxiety, depression, substance abuse, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder included cognitive, behavioral, and interactional reports. Mental health services for persons of Mexican heritage should include varying holistic mental health treatment practices, recognizing the need for understanding of potential meanings for mental health issues and illness. Persons of Mexican heritage report the desire for the same types of allopathic care including medications and counseling as Anglos in the US. Additionally, self-management interventions and integrative medicine therapies, as well as innovative media outreach methods were reported as integral to the holistic treatment process of obtaining help for mental health issues and illness.

In the Chinese authoritarian and conservative political system, Chinese political efficacy and political participation are popular directions of research in recent years. Based on uses and gratifications theory and self-efficacy theory, this thesis explored the relationships among social media use, political efficacy, and political participation. The most important part of this study was examining the mediating role of political efficacy between social media use and political participation in mainland China. Internal political efficacy and external political efficacy are two dimensions of political efficacy that were separately examined in this study. The results revealed that internal political efficacy can mediate between social media use and political participation. However, external political efficacy cannot mediate social media use and political participation. The additional findings are related to gender, age, and educational level. Chinese males scored higher on average in social media use, internal political efficacy, and political participation than females. Chinese females measured a higher on external political efficacy score than males. In addition, Chinese young adults have more social media use related to politics than older adults. On the other hand, Chinese older adults have higher internal political efficacy and external political efficacy than younger adults. Furthermore, higher educational level is a strong predictor of political participation.

Increased impact of technology leads numerous studies to conduct research on the effect of social media on performance. Very limited of such studies have tried to observe and record the use of social media for collaborative learning as a way to improve collaborative authoring. This paper tries to the validation of the technology acceptance model (TAM) on social media use for collaborative learning to enhance collaborative authoring among research students. To achieve the study objective, this paper employed a questionnaire as the main data collection method and distributed it to 1118 responses of various researchers from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) all of whom use social media. The findings were obtained via a quantitative research method, structural equation modeling (SEM-AMOS). The findings from our empirical study indicate that all the hypotheses were supported; we demonstrate that the use of social media positively and significantly related to collaborative authoring through collaborative learning between researchers in higher education. Therefore, the proposed model will help academic and decision-makers formulate the strategies that can encourage students and researchers to use social media to improving collaborative authoring through collaborative learning.

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