Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Online News Portrayal During The Covid-19 Health Crisis And Journalism's Role In Misinformation In The U.S., Michou Ducilon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a wealth of new information regarding the virus's origin and treatment. Regrettably, the vast amount of online information has resulted in the proliferation of misinformation, as the World Health Organization reported. To investigate whether journalists may have contributed to this problem, a qualitative analysis was conducted on 15 news articles from top-tier media outlets. Using NVivo software, the articles were analyzed to identify linguistic words and visuals that fell into coding categories based on Behrendt's (2008) contextual analysis for evaluating text. Each article was then coded again to identify common themes. During this process, new …

The "Othering" Of America: How The Strategic Use Of Crisis And Ressentiment Succeeded In The Trump Era, Laura J. Franklin

Dissertations

The establishment of a crisis theme through public rhetoric often triggers widespread attention, resulting in public concern and media coverage of an issue that could potentially be overblown or deceptive. In right-wing political discourse, this crisis warning is typically delivered by a White male leader with ready access to the powerful news media. An “us versus them” theme often occurs. Within this mode of a hegemonic exclusion, a culture of immigrants or an American minority are often depicted, perhaps aggressively, as a threat: A threat used to motivate, enrage and create the frustrations inherent in ressentiment. This dissertation explores the …

“Where Are We Now?” The Image Construction Of Arabs And Muslims In Bodyguard, Safa K. Khairy

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past decade Arab and Muslim representations in the media have been either negative or overly simplified as a way to avoid criticism from watchdog groups. Arab and Muslim culture is viewed by the mainstream Western perspective as different, and inferior. According to Edward Said this divide and hierarchy between Eastern and Western comes through the process of Othering and is at the heart of Orientalism. This thesis investigates how Arabs and Muslims are Othered through a case study of the successful BBC television series Bodyguard.

Bodyguard presents the British government and police force attempting to stop various terrorist …

A Focus On The Us Narrative: Does The New York Times Portrayal Of Women Living With Hiv And Aids In Southern Africa Perpetuate Hiv/Aids Stigma?, Boitshepo Monte Balozwi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of the study was to determine the dominant and recurring frames influencing the narrative and media portrayal of women living with HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa, a region characterized by a low socio-economic status and the highest HIV and AIDS infection rates globally. The study analyzed 238 stories published in The New York Times from 1985 to 2017. Findings of the study show that news reports frequently associate sex workers and pregnant women to coverage on HIV and AIDS therefore stigmatizing them as vectors of the disease. The newspaper stories provided adequate socioeconomic context resulting in African …

Modernizing A Podcast Media Organization Via Social And New Media Rebranding Methods, Randi A. Hair

Journalism

The following study and subsequent public relations campaign is intended to explore the difficulties, opportunities, caveats and all facets of transitioning a traditional travel media organization to new media. It unearths the pitfalls/barriers that naturally occur and aggregate over time when an organization or journalist (specifically “Journeys of Discovery with Tom Wilmer” in this scenario) has not adapted nor altered their practices for changing common practices in the media industries. In this campaign, journalist Thomas Wilmer is seeking to increase his podcast audience and digital presence.

The research conducted for this study is two-fold. Firstly, the research demonstrates best practices …

The Reflection And Reification Of Racialized Language In Popular Media, Kelly E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This work highlights specific lexical items that have become racialized in specific contextual applications and tests how these words are cognitively processed. This work presents the results of a visual world (Huettig et al 2011) eye-tracking study designed to determine the perception and application of racialized (Coates 2011) adjectives. To objectively select the racialized adjectives used, I developed a corpus comprised of popular media sources, designed specifically to suit my research question. I collected publications from digital media sources such as Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Fortune by scraping articles featuring specific search terms from their websites. This experiment seeks …

When Ink Turned Into Bullets: The Effect Of The Press In Buffalo, New York And The Nation Along With Its Role In Igniting A Civil War, Nicole C. Kondziela

History Theses

The American Civil War was a multi-faceted conflict: North versus South, states’ rights versus federal law, slavery versus abolition. Due to increasing and constant advancements in technology, this was the first war in American history that developed in full view of the public through newspapers. The Industrial Revolution and capitalism allowed the press to evolve into rich and powerful soap boxes for political bosses and editors alike to voice their opinions far beyond the village square. Unbeknownst to much of the public at the time, the Union had been at the mercy of newspaper editors and politicians in a grand …

A Content Analysis Of Gender-Specific Media Coverage Of Sport: Ncaa Athletic Department Home Webpages, Margo R. Malik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Studies have found that media coverage of women’s sports is inadequate when compared with coverage of men’s sports. The results of these studies have revealed inadequacies in terms of amount of coverage as well as type of coverage. Findings demonstrate that there is a certain way media frame female athletes when they are covered. Female athletes are often portrayed in overly sexualized images, as feminine role models, as passive rather than active, and in sports that are considered gender-appropriate. These types of portrayals can perpetuate gender bias and stereotypes, undermine the true athletic ability of female athletes, and give the …

Conversations On Controversy: An Examination Of Internet Discussions On High-Profile Incidents Of Recorded Police Brutality, Brittany Nicole Jefferson

Wayne State University Theses

The purpose of this study is to examine the conversations that Internet user have when discussing publicized, recorded incidents of police brutality. This study examined the deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Walter Scott and the subsequent discussions about the incidents on YouTube.com, MSNBC.com and NYTimes.com. This was accomplished by using an exploratory content analysis to establish what are the general topics of these discussions. This analysis found that there are 2 major themes that are discussed by Internet users when they comment; the content of the video and the social context of the incident itself. However, the popularity …

Media Representation Of Islam And Muslims In Southern Appalachia, Saundra K. Reynolds

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Appalachian attitudes about the religion of Islam and Muslim adherents are influenced largely by mass media's representations. With more than 80% of Appalachia’s population following Protestant Christianity, exposure to Islam in daily life is limited. Media outlets offer the greatest exposure to information about the religion and its adherents. This thesis examined the region's media representation of Islam and Muslims to determine what images are most often portrayed. Research following a twoyear span of reporting in Southern Appalachia studied substance, word frequency, imagery, and editing used in articles that focused on Islam and Muslims. Through the use of content …

Depictions Of Beauty On Cosmopolitan Magazine: Content Analysis Of Covers (1959-2014), Azalee Maslow

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The media, especially advertisers, have long used beautiful women as an ideal image for attracting viewers and selling products. American women have been portrayed as, ideally, thin Caucasians with blonde hair and blue eyes. Research has found that women compare themselves to the beautiful women in advertising and in turn have negative feelings towards their own appearance. This thesis’ goal is to find whether the ideal American woman has changed through a content analysis of the women on the covers of Cosmopolitan magazine over the past 55 years, 1959 through 2014. This content analysis will focus on how the covers …

Framing 10/12 And 3/11 In American And European News, Andrea Lypka

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This media analysis of the incidents in Bali in 2002 (10/12) and Madrid in 2004 (3/11) reveals the black and white portrayal of these attacks in western news through the localization of international terrorism occurrences, pro-government perspective, and internalization of U.S. policies. The Old Europe and New Europe debate further fractures the European press. Such rhetoric perpetuates the "us versus them" schism by contrasting the goals of the alleged perpetrators with the western values of democracy and freedom. Governmental sources remain central news sources during these crises. In addition, 9/11, war on terrorism, and fear from further attacks dominate news …