Den politiska rapporteringen i Kinas näst största nyhetstidning People’s Daily består enligt resultaten i vår studie nästan uteslutande av det styrande kommunistpartiets helt okritiskt vidarebefordrade propaganda. Journalisterna som skriver för Dagens Nyheter har däremot ett mycket lågt förtroende för den kinesiska regimen som de inte drar sig för att kritisera hårt. Vi fann det intressant att jämföra nyhetsdiskurser i svenska och kinesiska tidningar eftersom mediesystem till synes inte har något alls gemensamt. Vi ville ta reda på vilka eventuella skillnader som fanns i rapporteringen om den kinesiska regimen och vilka de bakomliggande orsakerna i så fall kunde tänkas vara. Artiklar som handlade om de senaste politiska ledarskiftena som publicerats i Dagens Nyheter och People’s Daily valdes därför som material till en kvalitativ analys. Den tidigare forskningen och det teoretiska ramverket som vi använde som stöd till våra reflektioner handlade både om hur ländernas mediesystem fungerar i allmänhet och om hur nyhetsvärderingen ser ut så att vi även skulle kunna analysera artiklarna på detaljnivå. Dagens Nyheter förmedlar alltså en negativ bild av den kinesiska regimen, medan dessa istället glorifieras i People’s Dailys redaktionella material. Det beror antagligen till stor del på att skillnaderna mellan de dominanta politiska ideologierna i länderna i allmänhet och i synnerhet gällande nyhetsmediernas funktioner är markanta. Pressfrihet kännetecknar de svenska medierna, medan de kinesiska motsvarigheterna istället fungerar som kommunistpartiets språkrör. Tidningarna anses från båda perspektiven stå i medborgarnas tjänst eftersom de på sina helt olika vis ska verka för att förbättra samhället.

George Orwell wrote Animal Farm to warn of the dangers of a totalitarian regime in the practical application of communist ideology. His novella reflects his experience of, and response to, momentous events occurring in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. It is a acknowledgement of the extent to which totalitarian leaders rely on the manipulation of thoughts and actions in order to maintain power across the class boundaries. In this essay, Orwell’s political and personal standpoints are examined and the book is analysed from a Marxist and socialist perspective. Whereas Animal Farm was written to reflect the terrible experience of Orwell and many of his contemporaries, its message is in many ways limited by his efforts to adhere to a parody of the events in Soviet Russia. Attention is given to the role of propaganda and Squealer, the chief propagandist in Animal Farm. Although Squealer does not wield power overtly in the way that Napoleon does, he is pivotal in the maintenance of a cowed population. Further, and more importantly from the point of view of the Marxist criticism of Orwell's novella, the Author is found wanting in his depiction of the working classes and his ability to champion those upon whom he in actual fact looked down.

Despite a wealth of scholarship on the Tudors’ printed and visual propaganda, little has been written on how the population received this material. Doubts over how far either media penetrated a largely illiterate society with questionable access to the visual arts have likely been partly responsible, but as studies increasingly disprove these assumptions the need to address this gap becomes more pressing. After establishing that the governments from Henry VIII to Elizabeth were interested, to varying extents, in propagating particular messages to their subjects, this thesis employs a diverse range of sources to analyse popular responses to official pamphlets, portraits and other visual iconography. Primarily using inventories, the ownership of these different types is examined, in particular exploring the mixed motives that underlay the display of monarchical portraits and royal devices. Broadly positive reactions to propaganda are then discussed, similarly uncovering the different, potentially subversive reasons that drove people to accept government materials. The evidence of marginalia in surviving copies of polemical works is then used to show both the different approaches taken to reading official books, and how people engaged with several specific pamphlets, illuminating the success of particular arguments and propagandistic techniques. Finally, negative reactions to government images and books are investigated, highlighting not only opposition but, conversely, more evidence of propaganda’s positive impact. Analysing reception in these ways not only permits judgements about the extent and nature of propaganda’s success; it also provides valuable insights into important historiographical debates, like the progress of the English Reformation and the potential emergence of a public sphere, besides more generally revealing widely-held attitudes that underpinned sixteenth-century society and conditioned the relationship between rulers and ruled.

The aim of this thesis is to deepen the scientific processing of Czech fascism, especially its press and propaganda activities. The author focused on the prints of Czech fascists from the period of the Great Depression 1929-1935, mainly on the application of linguistic discourse and fascist ideology into the Czechoslovak environment. The work uncovers the personal and financial secure of fascist press. The author compared presentation of economic crisis in the press of Czech fascist and Sudeten German national socialism. Both movements used the crisis to anti-democratic rhetoric and also used comparable propaganda techniques, but their interpretaion of the crisis was diametrically different. The final part is devoted to covert propaganda in literary genres that fascist press presented as a fun and relaxing literature. Roles of these texts were represent fascist program, provide patterns of behaviour and promote ideology of Czech fascism.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism & Mass Communications / Sam Mwangi / This study examines what function presidential candidate e-mail messages serve. Are messages being sent out most frequently as an acclaim, a defense, or an attack? Are these messages attempting to reach the undecided voter or mobilize the already-committed? Furthermore, are these messages getting into policy discussion? Taking into consideration the commonalities between presidential rhetoric and propaganda theory, a content analysis was conducted on 280 official campaign emails from the 2012 Romney and Obama Campaigns covering the span of September 16, 2012 to November 6, 2012. Specifically, this study investigates the prevalence of “acclaim” messages versus “attack” messages, compares messages dealing with character to those dealing with policy, codes messages as being either informational content, involvement and engagement, or mobilization, and analyzes the differences of messages sent by presidential candidates in 2012. In all, 82.6% of candidate e-mails were coded as an “acclaim” message, and the majority of candidate messages (59.1%) fell under “involvement and engagement”, meaning they requested an initial commitment be made by the recipient. Fifteen percent of messages were coded as being related to character, while policy messages made up 20% of all messages. Romney held an edge in overall number of “attack” messages sent out at 25%, compared to just 6.4% sent out by Obama. Results seem to suggest that persuasion of the undecided voter was not the purpose of presidential e-mail messages in the 2012 election.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / This dissertation analyzes American World War II propaganda generated by the Office of War Information (OWI), the nation's primary propaganda agency from 1942 to 1945. The visual rhetoric of printed OWI propaganda, including posters, brochures, newspaper graphics, and magazine illustrations, demonstrated affinities with advertising and modern art and exhibited an increasingly conservative tone as the war progressed. While politically progressive bureaucrats initially molded the OWI's graphic agenda, research reveals how politicians suppressed graphics that displayed the war's violence, racial integration, and progressive gender roles in favor of images resembling commercial advertisements. To articulate the manner in which issues of American self-representation evolved during the war, this study examines the graphic work of artists and designers such as Charles Alston, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles Coiner, Ben Shahn, and Norman Rockwell. The investigation unfolds across four chapters. The first chapter examines the institutional origins of American World War II propaganda by exploring the shifting content of New Deal promotional efforts during the 1930s and early 1940s. This analysis is critical, as government agencies used propaganda not only to support economic recovery during the Great Depression, but also to prepare Americans for war before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The second chapter analyzes the ways OWI increasingly suppressed depictions of violence as the war progressed. While the agency distributed traumatic images of Axis hostility early in the war, such work was later deemed "too aggressive" by former advertising executives turned federal bureaucrats who preferred more friendly, appealing graphics. The third chapter focuses on propaganda intended for African Americans, whose support for the war was divided due to racist Jim Crow legislation. This section analyzes OWI efforts to address the nation's largest racial minority through posters, brochures, and newspaper graphics. The fourth chapter examines the OWI's efforts to influence middle-class white women, a demographic of consumers whose influence grew as the war progressed. This includes an examination of the OWI's role in modifying the "Rosie the Riveter" mythology in contemporary advertising to encourage women to pursue jobs outside of factory work.

Student Number : 0315885J - PhD thesis - School of Journalism and Media Studies - Faculty of Humanties / This study responds to the generalization by traditional agenda setting or media effects studies, especially media agenda-setting hypothesis that people accept as important whatever the media considers to be so; and being so, have the capability to structure issues for its audience. Also, the thesis is uncomfortable with the media’s blanket use of the term ‘mass’ to refer to its audience particularly when considered against the background of Africa’s rurality. This study therefore is an attempt to stake out a new conceptual approach to the media’s agenda-setting capabilities with an emphasis on the ‘other neglected agents of power’, that is, this study’s proposition as ‘the established structures of community’ in Africa, especially rural Africa, in setting be it the media or ‘territorial’ agenda. Using the multifaceted and predominantly qualitative methodology of histories and the triangular orientation of personal interviews, survey questionnaires and content scanning of relevant media, the thesis amongst other issues of conceptual relevance re-awakens the theoretical issue of ‘whose agenda is the media agenda?” and whether the media and its agenda setting capabilities are not an urban phenomenon? The universality and applicability of the theory especially in Africa’s rural setting where language, illiteracy, poverty and the lack of access to modern media constitute obvious barriers is also a major concern of this study. With the above as a background, the three part (I – conceptual framing of the problem and relevant issues, ii – a proposition and iii – data presentation and research findings) study then agues, proposes and concludes that: [a] Media agenda is ‘source’ oriented as its sources quite often are identifiable and that, the media serves better (as against the overwhelming claim of agenda-setting) as a conduit or arena for contending issues, views, opinions, even sentiments; there is therefore no significant category of intellectual analysis called media agenda, at least, in Nigeria. [b] Media is urban based and centred, urban driven and even urban cultured …it is simply an urban phenomenon. [c] Indeed there are significant indicators that the ‘established structures of community’ functions and play major roles both in setting the media-agenda (where there is one) and in political power dynamics. [d] Media agenda is plausible but an ‘uncertain’ agenda; in Africa, especially rural Africa.

Thesis advisor: John Michalczyk / The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) possesses an historical identity distinct from other national conflicts because of its chronological position between World War I and World War II. International ideological interests came to the forefront of the Spanish conflict and foreign powers became involved in the Republican and Nationalist political factions with the hopes of furthering their respective agendas. The Spanish Civil War extended the aftermath of World War I, as well as provided a staging ground for World War II. Therefore, the Spanish Civil War transformed into a ‘proxy war’ in which foreign powers utilized the national conflict to further their ideological interests. In order to unite these diverse international socio-political campaigns, governments and rebel groups turned to modern visual propaganda to rally the public masses and move them to actively support one side over the other. Propaganda film and poster art supplied those involved in the Spanish Civil War with an invaluable political tool to issue a call to action and unite various political factions around one ideological movement. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

Thesis advisor: John J. Michalczyk / This thesis explores public relations tactics employed by the United States government during the second Iraq war. It discusses the similarity between public relations and propaganda, giving an in-depth exploration of the strategies used by the government before, during, and after the war to garner support for the effort. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Fine Arts. / Discipline: College Honors Program.