Thesis (M.S.)--Iowa State University, 2006. / Adviser: Suman Lee. Includes bibliographical references.

Previous scholarship on labor rhetoric has concentrated on the impact of declining union membership and contemporary activist strategies on the part of unions. The press release is a common form of communication that organized labor employs in order to reach its publics. This study explores the press releases of the Texas State AFL-CIO to determine to what extent this level of labor discourse meets the criteria of a rhetorical genre. This study employs the methodology for generic criticism laid out by Foss for identifying genres. The study concludes that a genre of labor rhetoric exists and that the genre was used extensively to promote the Texas State AFL-CIO as a socially-conscious and politically motivated organization.

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<p><p>The purpose of this thesis was to study the origin of the local news in local newspapers. Do the news originate mostly from the police, the municipality, from press releases or from the reporters own ideas? We also wanted to find out what kind of content predominated in texts with its origin in press releases respectively the reporters own ideas. Of course we also wanted to find out if there were any similarities or differences between the two studied newspapers.</p><p>We used a type of constructed week, but with non random selection instead of random. We chose one of each weekday the newspapers were published and studied the news covered in the papers that specific day. We talked over the phone with the news editors and the reporters and simply asked them about the origin of each news text separately.</p><p>The results showed that every fourth text originates from the police, and that police news often ends up as news items rather than articles. We also came to the conclusion that local newspapers use fewer press releases than earlier research has shown. Only one sixth of the news studied originates from press releases, which is less than we thought it would be. News with its origin in advertisements was less often found.</p><p>News with its origin in the reporters own ideas deal with various subjects. A text that is written on the basis of a press release on the other hand is often about some kind of event and has almost always a very positive tone. We could not notice any remarkable difference between the two studied newspapers.</p></p>

The purpose of this thesis was to study the origin of the local news in local newspapers. Do the news originate mostly from the police, the municipality, from press releases or from the reporters own ideas? We also wanted to find out what kind of content predominated in texts with its origin in press releases respectively the reporters own ideas. Of course we also wanted to find out if there were any similarities or differences between the two studied newspapers. We used a type of constructed week, but with non random selection instead of random. We chose one of each weekday the newspapers were published and studied the news covered in the papers that specific day. We talked over the phone with the news editors and the reporters and simply asked them about the origin of each news text separately. The results showed that every fourth text originates from the police, and that police news often ends up as news items rather than articles. We also came to the conclusion that local newspapers use fewer press releases than earlier research has shown. Only one sixth of the news studied originates from press releases, which is less than we thought it would be. News with its origin in advertisements was less often found. News with its origin in the reporters own ideas deal with various subjects. A text that is written on the basis of a press release on the other hand is often about some kind of event and has almost always a very positive tone. We could not notice any remarkable difference between the two studied newspapers.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communications. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Communications. / Electronic thesis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-72). Also available in print ed.

This Master Thesis studies the power relationship between NGOs, politics and the society by performing a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on NGO press releases concerning the case of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline in the USA. Interactions between mass media and NGOs are rising, hence the organizations are contributing to shape the ‘reality’ and the public’s perception. As CDA has a special interest in social representation and power relations, this thesis examines furthermore the representation of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the light of the theory of victimization. The Indigenous communities refused the construction near tribal reservations because the Pipeline threatens the public health, the Tribe’s water supply, existing Treaties and cultural resources. Especially with the Presidential election in late 2016 and President Trump’s signing of an executive order to advance the Pipeline construction aggravated the situation. To meet the requirements of a CDA, I transfer the concepts of a micro- and macro-level Analysis in the way of Teun A. Van Dijk and connect it in the end with the socio-cultural context. I draw on the concepts of power/knowledge as well as on the concepts of media logic to explain the power relations but also the social representations in the 28 press releases of Amnesty International USA and Greenpeace USA. I conclude with the findings that the Indigenous people are represented as the powerless victims, the NGOs use their press releases to raise awareness but also to serve their self-interests and that the NGO press releases complied the media logics.

This research looks at how corporates manage crisis communication using press releases and social media channels. It aims to find out how the case corporations Nordea and  Samsung executed their crisis communication during the years 2016 and 2017.The dissertation draws upon literature on organizational crisis and reputation. It also reviews how companies could possibly react to a crisis, how press releases are usually formatted, and finishes with utilization of social media during the crises.In 2016, Samsung became the center of a crisis by the exploding “Note7” phones and Nordea was being mentioned in the “Panama Papers” for tax evasion. The data of the crisis cases has been collected using online ethnography and analyzed with the support of interviews with four crisis specialists. The interviewees were asked semi-structure questions in order to analyze the data  from a professional perspective. The dissertation did not only cover the content used, but also studied which channels where used and the timing of the statements.The findings revealed that Samsung took the “Note7” case seriously and had a bigger quantity of crisis messaging than Nordea on the “Panama Papers” case. Based on the messages, Samsung’s crisis communication length was five months and Nordea’s four. Samsung’s crisis communication showed major gaps in their timeframe and Nordea’s was more coherent. Nordea used long press releases with complex language compared to Samsung’s advertisement and international style. Samsung used a lot of infographics in social media compared to Nordea’s factual messages.The dissertation is relevant in regard to previous studies on this subject, which have shown utilization of press releases and social media during a corporation crisis. Therefore, the  dissertation contributes with new empirical understanding.

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