Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

Using autoethnography, critical reflections and reflective and reflexive analyses, this thesis explores the personal and social effects of discrimination against Muslims in the popular news media in the aftermath of three major international terrorist attacks: the 9/11 attacks, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the Paris attacks in 2015. Moving through themes of loss, discrimination and exclusion, internalized oppression, resistance and hope, this thesis makes use of theories of oppression and social constructionism to gain a better understanding of how discrimination against Muslims in the news media has impacted and influenced my perceptions of self as a Muslim, and my Muslim identity. I believe that this thesis will provide a necessarily personal perspective on an issue that is highly complex, hidden and nuanced, in hopes of fostering a deeper and more empathetic understanding of the personal impacts of discrimination and oppression. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This study is exploratory research examining the relationship between the news media and environmental collaborations. It reports the results of a 2008 online survey of the 250 members of the EPA's National Roster of Environmental Conflict Resolution and Consensus Building Professionals. The study asked about the impact of the media on environmental collaborations, but the major finding actually concerned the significant impact that the process of collaboration has had on the press and its role in environmental problem-solving. Collaboration professionals in this study apparently no longer see the press as a major influence in environmental dispute resolution. The most common estimate of press impact was "slight". A large majority of respondents (71%) said the news media overall have a positive or neutral impact on environmental collaboration outcomes -- surprising numbers, considering the past negative history of the press and environmental issues. From the practitioner's perspective, the most important finding may concern Media Ground Rules (guidelines that govern how collaborations interact with the news media). With Media Ground Rules in place, 74% of collaborations reported the press had a positive impact. In contrast, a negative press impact was reported by 60% of collaborations without Media Ground Rules in place. Since 2008, we have seen growth in environmental collaboration, but at the same time, wholesale closures of American newspapers, along with a stunning decline in the number of environmental reporters and environmental coverage in local news. This study looks at the implications of these developments for accountability and environmental collaborations. / Ph. D.

Research has shown that media exposure to violence is positively correlated with anxiety and posttraumatic stress symptoms in children (Becker-Blease et al. 2008), and parents can influence children’s responses to media (Otto et al. 2007). Few studies have examined specific parenting behaviors related to their children’s response to violent news media exposure; which is further limited by the lack of available measures with adequate psychometric support (Comer & Kendall, 2007). The current study addresses this gap by developing a measure of specific ways that caregivers may influence their children’s exposure and reaction to violent news. Item content was generated based on a literature review and focus group interview with six parents. Using a sample of 702 participants recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the initial 74-item measure of Caregiver Responses to Youth Media Exposure (CRYME). With a total of 35 items, a three-factor solution emerged.

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On January 12, 2010, the Caribbean nation of Haiti suffered from one of the most devastating earthquake in recent history. The purpose of this study is to explore representations of Haiti in Western news media coverage of the disaster. The researcher utilized Jiwani’s (2006) theoretical framework of common sense stock knowledge to explore the relationship between the Western news media and Haiti, with an emphasis on media framing. Additionally, the method of journalistic discourse analysis was employed as a means of analyzing the 90 article sample. The researcher found that there were several frames that dominated coverage of the disaster which resulted in the marginalization of Haiti and Haitians.

No description available.

Research has demonstrated a positive relationship between consumption of traditional news media and engaging in mainstream political participation including voting, donating money to a political campaign and volunteering for a political campaign. Significantly less attention has been directed toward understanding how new media, including websites, social networking sites and blogs, may affect political participation. Data from the 2008 Pew Internet and American Life Project is used to analyze the relationship between traditional news media, radio and new news media and different forms of political participation, including traditional participation, unconventional or protest participation and those who engage in both, called heavy participators. Results suggest the importance of new media for political participation. Although traditional media had no significant relationship with any form of political participation, those who reported new media as a more important source of political information were more likely to engage in traditional participation relative to non-participation and heavy participation relative to non-participation, mainstream-only and unconventional-only participation.

Many scholars have noted the increasingly widespread combination of politically-relevant information and entertaining or sensational media formats and presentational styles over the past several decades, falling broadly under the umbrella term of ‘infotainment.’ However, in spite of this burgeoning infotainment literature very little research has been done on the nature and dynamics of infotainment within the Canadian context. This is especially true of research on infotainment within Canada’s traditional news media outlets. To being filling this gap, this study undertakes a mixed-methods content analysis of Canadian newspapers’ coverage of the 2019 federal election to evaluate the scope and nature of infotainment therein. Building off of a systematic review and mapping of the existing infotainment literature, this study develops a comprehensive conceptual and analytical framework for defining and evaluating infotainment characteristics within ‘hard news’ coverage. The quantitative and qualitative results are outlined in detail before being evaluated for their potential implications on citizens’ information processing and political knowledge, as well as some broader evaluations of potential implications for Canadian politics. These ethico-political considerations are developed by drawing on insights from a number of literatures, including political psychology and decision-making, strategic voting, and broader media and infotainment research.

This study is designed to gain an understanding of the reality creation process in digital news media. By looking into the case of the Trump-Ukraine scandal the way how the 2 major US online news platforms CNN and FoxNews discursively construct reality for their audiences is examined. Within this analysis a qualitative framework is used, by applying a multi-method approach, consisting of a multimodal-discourse analysis and a critical discourse analysis. In the increasingly polarized and fragmented US society, explanations are needed for why people are having fundamentally different understandings of the current political events. A quite reasonable amount of research has been conducted in this field. However, the media studies are currently lacking profound explanations in the field of digital news. This project offers relevant findings of how the analyzed publications construct the events around an important and controversial topic through their online news coverage.  Interestingly, this project shows that the news coverage about the Trump-Ukraine scandal in both channels differs decisively in terms of its journalistic style and contextual meaning. FoxNews uses direct quotations to hand over the narration to the political actors involved in the political process. In that way, FoxNews functions as the opinion creation machine for conservative worldviews and presents a Trump-favorable version of the events. On the other hand, CNN injects its news coverage with emotionalizing elements and creates through that a very Trump-critical and partly prejudiced news reporting, focusing more on the sensational value of the story rather than on sole information.  Important to mention is that this research offers limited explanations to the problematic nature of the issue since digital news embodies a decisive factor in the opinion creation process but is one factor out of many. Therefore, more research is needed to fully elaborate on the digital news environment and its impacts on society.