Communication Technology and New Media Commons^™

Embedded Versus Behind-The-Lines Reporting On The 2003 Iraq War, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

A 2003 study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that “Most Americans (53%) believe that news organizations are politically biased, while just 29% say they are careful to remove bias from their reports ... More than half—51%—say that the bias is ‘liberal,’ while 26% discerned a ‘conservative’ leaning. Fourteen percent felt neither phrase applied” (Harper, 2003). Now add to this that even some academicians are finally accepting the idea that journalists, as a group, are more liberal than the population as a whole. However, whether political or other biases (Hahn, 1998) affect news coverage …

An Assessment Of The Fundamental Differences Between Mainstream And Independent Media : A Content Analysis Of The Print Media, Chadford D. Roush

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The mainstream media in the United States is an institutional arrangement of structural power within the political economy of capitalist society. The concentration and centralization of the media corporations creates the structural constraint for ideological social control. A few multinational corporations control a vast amount of media access that creates a filtering process for information. The mainstream media is extremely powerful in American society. The media helps to mold opinions on an array of news topics. Major media sources in the US are conforming their news coverage to be “industry friendly”. In simply terms the American people are only getting …

The Bias Of The National News Media: How Broadcast Journalism Influences Public Opinion, Stephanie Christel Hanner

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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The Role Of The Internet In Chinese Foreign And Domestic Affairs, Jean Bowman Leedy

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Problem: Rapid dissemination of Internet technology and the free access to information it affords poses a threat to non-democratic states that rely on control of information to maintain power and stability. This is of substantial concern to the Communist regime in The People's Republic of China due to the fact that its repressed population constitutes the fastest growing body of Internet users in the world.

Methods: This paper examines the potential impact of the Internet on Chinese foreign and domestic policy through interpretation of existing literature as it applies to the Internet, interviews with experts studying the emergence of China's …

Trends. Politics And Cyberpsychology, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The IBPP editor discusses political changes that might come about given the continual expansion of the Internet.

Trends. Terra Incognita: Video Diplomacy, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article discusses the potential political psychological consequences of video diplomacy between United States president, Bill Clinton (with whom the diplomatic video originated) and a group of political, military, and paramilitary leaders in Burundi.

An Effect Of The Medium In News Stories: “The Pictures In Our Heads”, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

This study used an experimental design to test for a channel effect in news stories. Four television news stories were recorded off-air, then the narrations were transcribed to form a print news story containing the same words; the broadcast video and the print story were the two treatment levels. Subjects received the stories in one of the treatment levels, and were asked to judge the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of the actors named in the story. Logistic regressions could predict with substantial accuracy the medium in which subjects had received the story from these judgments, indicating a channel effect on their …

Nuestro Espacio Cyber: The Internet As Expressive Space For Latina/Os In The United States, Richard Pineda

Selected Works Temporary Series

The Latina/o community is in the midst of a major demographic shift upwards- Along with this population growth, there has been an explosion of Latina,/os across the spectrum of popular culture. However, lack of access to mass-media outlets and social constructions in mainstream society pose obstacles to Latina/o freedom of expression. Meanwhile, the Internet is evolving into a powerful platform for communication and freedom of speech- By developing a stronger Latina/o presence online, it may be possible to channel the power of the Internet as a vehicle for empowerment, expression and freedom of speech.

Military Control Over War News: The Implications Of The Persian Gulf, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

News coverage of warfare poses a difficult problem for political systems with a free press, such as ours in the United States. In an era of high-tech weaponry and nearly instantaneous global communications, conflicts are inevitable between the obligation of the press to inform the general public, and the obligation of the military to successfully conduct war. The military’s controls over news-gathering during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War set off a controversy still smoldering during the Haiti occupation of 1994. This paper examines the legal, historical, and technological aspects of this issue.

Privacy And The News Media, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

The right of the public to know and the right of the individual to be let alone are inherently in conflict. The origins of these rights are quite different: the former derived from the First Amendment's protection of a free press, the latter in a law journal article published in the late nineteenth century. So, too, has the development of these ideas followed different paths: the former as Constitutional law, the latter as tort law. This article examines the relationship between privacy law and the press. A century ago two lawyers called for legal relief from aggressive newspaper reporters. At …

News Media Objectivity: How Do We Ask The Questions?, Stephen D. Cooper

Communications Faculty Research

There is a lively and often public debate in progress concerning the objectivity of the news media, or the lack of it Scholars have approached this topic from three distinct angles: content analysis, values, and the economics of the news industry. Their conclusions have varied markedly, apparently guided by their particular frames of reference.

This article suggests that while we seem to have lost our fix on objectivity as a measurable attribute of news products, the news work routine of objectivity encourages fairness in our public discourse, and deserves attention in scholarly research.