Within the growing field of surveillance studies, national identity cards and related issues have become an important research topic. Most research in this field, however, does not consider the role of media in the development of surveillance. This research examines the history of mediated public debates about identity cards in the U.K. In the U.K, since the Identity Cards Bill 2004, National Identity cards have been widely debated across the British national newspapers once again after several heated historical debates in WWI, WWII, and the 1990s. It is this thesis s purpose to analyze the role of the British national newspapers in generating support and resistance in the development of British national identity cards in the past one hundred years, respectively in 1915, 1919, 1939, 1951, and from 1994 to 2008. This thesis also seeks to find out the continuities and changes in the way British national newspapers influence the repeated introduction and withdrawal of identity cards over time. Specifically, by employing the methods of content and frame analysis, the thesis examines the actors involved in the mediated debate of British national identity cards, their argumentation, the frames underlying the argumentation and the themes appeared in the debates, in order to find out to what extent the British print media supported or opposed the identity cards over time.

A content analysis was conducted to determine the amount and type of causal explanation included in coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Christian Science Monitor. The data were analyzed to determine whether causal explanations were primarily societal or individual/situational. The primary purpose was to examine whether the press has altered its reporting techniques since the Kerner Commission report criticized the narrow, descriptive-based reporting of the 1960s riots. Study results indicate riot coverage was predominantly descriptive and similar in content to that detailed by the Kerner Commission. The most frequently cited cause was the triggering event, the Rodney King acquittal verdict.