Law Commons^™

Controlling The Narrative: The Effects Of Media Coverage On Fear Of Crime And Socio-Political Ideology, Andrew Koppelman

Theses

Several decades of study have established an understanding that media have a unique power to influence the perspectives and worldviews of audiences. This phenomenon has been explored through the lenses of Social Learning and Cultivation theory, wherein media appeal to base human tendencies of self-preservation and teaches audiences how to maximize rewards for their actions by acting as a sort of instructor or friendly warning from members of the community. While prior studies have suggested the presence of this effect, little research has been devoted to understanding the ways that this may influence behaviors in viewers. My research seeks to …

Political Theory, Activism, And Visual Media: The Ideology Of Protest Symbols, Jilly E. Crane-Mauzy Mx.

Whittier Scholars Program

Art changes culture while policy codifies it. Radical revolutionary movements are often accompanied by equally radical shifts in art and design. I cataloged, compared, and contrasted the semiotic power of three specific symbols and their most significant historical moments in the United States. Through the examination of; Stonewall, The Equality March March Against Death, The Day The World Said No To War, The 1968 Summer Olympics, and The 2020 Black Lives Matter, the shifting of each ideologies symbol from inflammation in the media to recognition showcases the clarifying function along with creating unity and pride in community that is integral …

Law Library Blog (April 2023): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

Effects And Reflections Of The Media In Crisis Management Administrative Crises In Institutions As A Model, Raad Fadhil Jameel Al-Shakhli

Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences

It is no secret to everyone that the media constitutes a creative message that adheres to transparency, thought and truth and overlaps with the philosophy and message of the public and engages with it in its pioneering and brilliant form. Today, a decisive factor for managing and confronting all crises, including administrative crises that harm the body of the institutions of the administrative apparatus of states internally and externally, in terms of the strength of institutional performance, or facing cases of corruption in both the administrative and financial aspects, organizational structures, the level of delivery of the services provided, or …

Tomorrow’S Wars And The Media, Alexander G. Lovelace

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Distilling lessons from the author’s book, The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II, this article provides applicable suggestions for the US military today. As in World War II, the press is both a weapon and a possible vulnerability in modern warfare. Consequently, this article offers practical suggestions for how the press can be used by public affairs officers, commanders, and policymakers to achieve victory in coming conflicts.

À La Carte Cable: A Regulatory Solution To The Misinformation Subsidy, Christopher R. Terry, Eliezer J. Silberberg, Stephen Schmitz, John Stack, Eve Sando

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Although “fake news” is as old as mass media itself, concerns over disinformation have reached a fever pitch in our current media environment. Online media outlets’ heavy reliance on user-generated content has altered the traditional gatekeeping functions and professional standards associated with traditional news organizations. The idea of objectivity-focused informational content has primarily been substituted for a realist acceptance of the power and popularity of opinion-driven “news.” This shift is starkly visible now: mainstream news media outlets knowingly spread hoaxes, conspiracy theories, and the like.

This current state of affairs is not some freak accident. The Supreme Court’s First Amendment …

News Treatment Of The Supreme Court: Language Selection, Ideological Directions, And Public Support, Alexander Denison

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

In an increasingly diverse media landscape, how much of the ideological trends seen in current news reporting affect coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court? This work examines two different aspects of the Court's activities, their decisions and the confirmation hearings of Court nominees, analyzing what factors, if any, lead to differences in coverage language. Finally, through the use of a survey experiment, I analyze whether these differences in language, in combination with positive symbolic imagery, affect attitudes toward the institution. This work provides a novel consideration of whether the Court is subject to the same ideological slant found in coverage …

A Free Press Without Democracy, Erin C. Carroll

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For several decades, the American press has been fighting for its economic survival. But while it has been consumed with this effort, the political threat to a free press has grown perhaps greater than the economic one. Democracy is eroding globally, including in the United States. Given the importance of a free press to democracy, the press needs to more urgently consider how it maintains its freedom as erosion persists.

This Article sets out a framework for American press priorities in this pivotal moment. It suggests that to resist and weather a turn to autocracy, the press must endeavor to …

Law Library Blog (August 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (June 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Hbo’S "The Wire" And Its Portrayal Of Baltimore Politics, Schools, And The Judicial System In Season 4: Was It Accurate Then And Does It Stand The Test Of Time?, Josephine Klingeman

Honors Theses

This thesis is a content analysis of HBO’s fourth season of The Wire. After conducting an in-depth analysis of the content in the thirteen episodes of season four, I then assessed the level of accuracy in the show’s portrayal of two major topics discussed throughout the season: Witness protection and police informant harassment. I did so by conducting several interviews with professionals who have several decades of experience working in the criminal justice system. I compared their personal experience with witness protection programs, witness harassment, and police informant harassment with the content presented in The Wire on these topics. …

Analyzing Wrongful Convictions Beyond The Traditional Canonical List Of Errors, For Enduring Structural And Sociological Attributes, (Juveniles, Racism, Adversary System, Policing Policies), Leona D. Jochnowitz, Tonya Kendall

Touro Law Review

Researchers identify possible structural causes for wrongful convictions: racism, justice system culture, adversary system, plea bargaining, media, juvenile and mentally impaired accused, and wars on drugs and crime. They indicate that unless the root causes of conviction error are identified, the routine explanations of error (e.g., eyewitness identifications; false confessions) will continue to re-occur. Identifying structural problems may help to prevent future wrongful convictions. The research involves the coding of archival data from the Innocence Project for seventeen cases, including the one for the Central Park Five exonerees. The data were coded by Hartwick College and Northern Vermont University students …

Law Library Blog (December 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (September 2020): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Applying International Law To The Regulation Of Media Incited Genocide: Rwanda And Myanmar, Savannah Whittemore

Honors Theses

The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate the connection between word and action in relation to the media incited genocide. By employing the operational definitions of intent, incitement, genocide, and hate speech from legal texts such as the Genocide Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, this thesis shows that there is suitable jurisprudence on the crime of direct and public incitement to genocide with the legal bodies statute mirrors the language of the Genocide Convention. This in conjunction with the language gradient on the changing role of messages before and during genocide shows that regulation …

How We Talk About The Press, Erin C. Carroll

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 2017, the term “fake news” was so popular that it received the “Word of the Year” honor from the American Dialect Society. Since then, its popularity may have abated some, but its use persists. Most obviously, anti-press speakers weaponize the term fake news to undermine journalists and the press as an institution. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, the term is also in regular rotation among many who would seem to support a free and independent press, including scholars, teachers, and journalists themselves.

The continued and often-uncritical use of fake news should worry us. As thinkers across disciplines have recognized for …

Law Library Blog (August 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Syrian Crisis Representation In The Media: The Cnn Effect, Framing, And Tone, Savannah S. Day

Venture: The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal

Over the past seven years of the Syrian Civil War, Syrian refugees have been painted in a negative light by news media outlets around the world. History of media coverage regarding global humanitarian crises shows that with various tools and processes, media can shape public opinion and policy in whichever direction it desires, and oftentimes policymakers and the public are quick, as well as emotional, to react. In this paper, my objectives are to analyze specific examples of this CNN Effect phenomena within news coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as generally explain the negatively correlating relationship between …

Influence Of Trial By Media On The Criminal Justice System In India, V.V.L.N. Sastry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Media exercises incredible influence on the public; in India media appears to interfere with court proceedings. The purpose of this mixed-methods quasi-experimental study was to explore the effect of media trials on the Indian criminal justice system and to examine the relationship between court verdicts and media trials in India. The narrative policy framework was used to guide the study. Qualitative data were gathered from a variety of sources, including the court cases and the related verdicts reported by the media as media trials from 2005 to 2015. Subsequently, interviews were also conducted to collect qualitative data. Quantitative data were …

The Effect Media Has On Juror Bias, Tia Fasano

Honors College Theses

The purpose of the study was to illustrate the problems associated with juror bias and how the media contributes to it. The way the media portrays individuals, the language they use, and the pictures seen as affecting potential jurors when they determine verdicts of the people they hear about on the news. The study further investigates whether or not these jurors are influenced enough by the media to cause a bias detrimental to the defendant. The design of the study used multiple peer-reviewed sources, documentaries, and semi-structured interviews. Through these, information was gathered and analyzed. I found through the interviews …

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Recognizing The Free Press In The Crosshairs Across The Globe 12-12-2018, David A. Logan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Reading Between The Crimes: Online Media’S Representation Of Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander People’S Interaction With The Criminal Justice System In Post-Apology Australia, Jonathan Cannon

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Australian research confirms that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience high levels of social inequality, racism and injustice. Evidence of discrimination and inequality is most obvious within the criminal justice system where they are seriously over-represented. The Australian news media plays a large part in reinforcing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander inequality, stereotypes and racist ideology within specific situations such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response and the Redfern riots. This study widens the scope from how the media reports a single criminal justice event to how the media reports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s interaction with the …

Law Library Blog (July 2017): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Trump Presidency And The Press, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "It is not difficult to understand why presidents frequently voice frustration with the press. Imagine being subjected to critical analysis 24/7 by reporters, bloggers and pundits who often lack complete and accurate information but face competitive pressure to publish quickly."

Surveying The Landscape As Technology Revolutionizes Media Coverage Of Appellate Courts, Howard J. Bashman

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

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 …

"Can We Clean Their Guns For Em'?" Frame Analysis Of Media Coverage Surrounding The Killing Of African Americans By Police, A Comparison Of Four U.S. And International News Sources, Jeffrey Longhurst

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Instances of unarmed African Americans being killed when encountering police officers have come to the forefront of the discussion about race and race relations in the U.S. This study investigates media framing to determine if there are elements of racism in media frames surrounding these events. This study seeks to determine the extent that the tenets of Critical Race Theory apply in news when comparing stories Fox News and CNN online articles with articles by Al Jazeera and BBC. The two cases chosen were the killings of Micheal Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland. Using critical …

A Case For Empathy: Immigration In Spanish Contemporary Media, Music, Film, And Novels, Constantin C. Icleanu

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the representations of immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in Spain. As engaged scholarship, it seeks to better the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media through the study of literature, film, and music about immigration spanning from the year 2000 to 2016. Because misconceptions continue to propagate in the media, this dissertation works to counteract anti-immigrant, xenophobic representations as well as balance out overly positive and orientalized portrayal of immigrants with a call to recognize immigrants as human beings who deserve the same respect, dignity, and rights as any other citizen.

Chapter 1 …

The Black Women Anti-Defamation Coalition: A Proposal For The Remediation Of The Negative, Controlling Images Of Black Women, Shemar Antonio Taylor

Senior Projects Spring 2017

This research sets out to highlight the life-altering degree to which negative, domineering depictions of Black women has had and continues to have on their livelihood and also to argue that due to their systemic inability to control and craft their own reputation, this should be categorized as a human rights violation and enforced on the grounds of defamation law. Although I am not a Black woman myself, as a Black man who was raised by three Black women, I have seen first hand the importance of proving this point. Many Black women scholars, many of whom I will be …