Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Mass communication and mass media'

Currently, 27 states have medicalized marijuana, and eight states plus the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational use. The media have played a central role in these campaigns by having a robust effect on perceptions of marijuana policy. The media have also been used throughout history to influence individual behavior, particularly surrounding marijuana and other drug use.

To analyze the media’s effects on voting on marijuana initiatives and shifts in perceptions of marijuana policy, risk, harm, and use, this study anonymously surveyed 664 undergraduates. The students were selected using multistage cluster sampling of all departments and courses at a diverse, large university. Findings indicate that the media do not have a significant impact on beliefs and behaviors when peers and social bonds are control variables. Implications include utilizing the media to target peers and parents, an interdisciplinary approach, and utilizing social media for drug reform and prevention efforts.

Cultivation theory suggests that using second-order judgments, viewers may become immersed into a narrative program via narrative transportation. Highly transported viewers make very frequent trait judgments, forming impressions and attitudes about characters, anticipating outcomes, and making constant reevaluations when surprises occur. Narrative transportation can often lead to persuasion by bringing viewers to a highly involved mental state. Due to narrative transportation’s persuasive quality, research has reviewed the relationship of narrative transportation within advertisements

This research will build on the literature by examining the extent to which narrative transportation intervenes with the viewer’s attitude towards the Dr. Pepper brand via product placement, incorporating individual difference variables of materialism, cognitive attention, and need for fantasy. The two-group posttest only with a control group experiment manipulates the variables through two different viewing programs. The first program induces narrative transportation, while the second program is interrupted so that there is no narrative flow.

Volunteer participants will be selected from CMCN 100 classes. A simple linear regression will be used to determine the effects of immersion.

This dissertation makes the connection between the human drive, as described by psychoanalysis, to construct God and the construction of the technological entity, Google. Google constitutes the extension of the early Christian period God to the twenty-first century. From the examination of significant religious and theological texts by significant theologians (Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin, etc.) that explain the nature of God, the analogous relationship of God to Google will open a psychoanalytic discourse that answers questions on the current state of human mediation with the world. Freud and, more significantly, Lacan’s work connects the human creation of God, ex nihilio, to Google’s godly qualities and behaviors (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence). This illustrates the powerful motivation behind the creation of an allencompassing physical / earthly entity that includes the immaterial properties of God.

Essentially, Google operates as the extension or replacement of the long reigning God in Western culture. Furthermore, the advent of science and technology through rationalism (as outlined by Nietzsche) results in the death of the metaphysical God and the ascension of the technological God. Google offers an appropriate example for study. Moreover, the work of Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan will further comment on Google as the technological manifestation of God, particularly in its media formulations. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a review that highlights future research with an exploration that foresees the death of Google from the same rational method of inquiry by which the death of God occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.

Social media have recently emerged as one of the primary information sources in the U.S. Journalists and news organizations have been keen on establishing a presence within digital social networks in order to utilize this new channel to build and maintain an audience. However, little is known about the practical implications of social media engagement by journalists for audience perceptions of news.

The present dissertation attempts to investigate 1) the influences of journalists' social media activities, self-disclosure and interaction with other users, on audience perceptions of the journalists; 2) if the perceptions serve as an important mediator between the social media activities and audience perceptions of the journalists'; news products; and, 3) if and how the direct and indirect effects of journalists'; social media activities are moderated by audiences'; individual differences in journalism orientation (IJO), which refers to which journalism norm audience members lean toward: engagement (public journalism norm) or detachment (objective journalism norm). Given that journalism is in a state of flux between traditional detached approaches and newer attached perspectives, these are important questions to be addressed relative to journalism in new media environments.

An experiment with multiple message stimuli was conducted in the context of a journalist's Facebook profile, and college students' perceptions of the journalist and his news product were measured via an online questionnaire. All perceptions were examined on both personal (e.g., attractiveness) and professional (e.g., objectivity and competence) dimensions.

The results provided empirical evidence that, 1) when it comes to journalists, engaging in such common social media activities as self-disclosure and interaction can significantly harm journalists in terms of their perceived competence although the same behaviors can improve perceptions of their personality. Results on the perceived objectivity dimension were mixed such that objectivity was positively influenced by interactive behaviors whereas it was negatively influenced by self-disclosure via social media; 2) Audience perceptions of journalists, formed based on their social media activities, tended to transfer to their impressions of the journalists' news products, demonstrating that the indirect effects of journalists' self-disclosures and interactions via social media on audience perceptions of their news products were mediated through audience perceptions of the journalists in terms of personality and competence although this mediation relationship was not evident in the case of journalists' self-disclosing activities and the professional-dimension perceptions; 3) These influences of journalists' social media activities were moderated by audiences'; individual journalism orientation such that the impacts of journalists'; self-disclosure on the journalists' personal and professional images (in both objectivity and competence) were in general stronger for the audiences oriented to an objective journalism norm, indicating that those with an objective orientation tend to react more sensitively to journalists' unconventional behaviors.

This set of results revealed that journalists' conforming to social media norms and acting like ordinary social media users could make not only the journalists but also their news products look personally attractive and friendly, but professionally less competent. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to formulate a preliminary conceptual perception about how Kuwaiti college students in the United States use and perceive electronic media. This qualitative study has sought to recognize the utilization habits and perception of Kuwaiti college students in the USA toward electronic media. The study examines the reasons for the high degree of dependency on electronic media by Kuwaiti students in the USA and the most significant features and properties that are available by electronic media, which attract youth attention. This research conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with a sample of 15 Kuwaiti college students in the United States. It was concluded that Kuwaiti college students are the major users of recent technology and pioneers of electronic and social media. It also seeks for future investigations to understand whether the demographic characteristics of Kuwaiti college students are affecting their media utilization habits.

The current study investigated the indirect effect of media multitasking on cognitive performance during subsequent single tasking, mediated through mood. A post-test between-subjects experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of two types of media multitasking, with nonsocial media tasks and with social media tasks, on mood (i.e., valence and arousal), attention filtering (i.e., ability to selectively pay attention to some information), and behavioral inhibition (i.e., ability to control behavior) as compared to single tasking. The results demonstrate that media multitasking with both nonsocial and social tasks decrease pleasant mood valence but increase arousal. Additionally, there is evidence that nonsocial media multitasking may improve behavioral inhibition (i.e., decrease impulsivity) by increasing arousal. The results highlight the potential variation in media multitasking’s task demand depending on the combinations of tasks involved. Further research is necessary to explore the possible benefits of varying task demands for mood and cognitive performance.

In the past five years, there have been numerous newspaper reports on police-involved deaths (PID) in the U.S, many of which have involved African American males as victims (Shane, Lawson, & Swenson, 2017). Police-involved deaths (PID) is defined as a death of an individual that results from police action (i.e., by firearm, by electroshock weapon [commonly known as a Taser©], or by vehicle). Given the amount of coverage of police-involved deaths, it is important to investigate which PID victims receive the most coverage in U.S. newspapers. This study merges three databases (Fatal Encounters , the Washington Post, and the Guardian ) which collect information about PID cases that occurred in the U.S. Once a list of PID victims was compiled, Nexis Uni (formerly Nexis Lexis) was used to obtain U.S. newspapers that covered PID incidents. In this study, I examine the race, age, region, and manner of death to distinguish which of these independent variables are the strongest predictors of the number of words and articles used in describing PID incidents. Using a linear regression model, the findings indicate that PID incidents involving African American males had significantly more articles and words written about them than PID incidents involving non-African American males and this effect remained after controlling for other correlates of PID incidents. Additionally, PID incidents involving firearm deaths received significantly more media attention as well. Given the amount of newspaper coverage on PID victims, the ways in which the media portray the victims in those contexts can influence the criminal process for officers involved in the killing. In addition, media portrayals of these incidents can impact policies that revamp the ways in which officers communicate with people of color, specifically African American men (i.e., cultural sensitivity training).

After the bloody Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, the legitimacy of the Communist Party of China (CCP) suffered a devastating blow among the overseas Chinese (OC). The CCP responded to the challenge by implementing transnational outreach policy in the OC community, which includes substantial efforts to increase the Party’s influence in the overseas Chinese-language media (OCLM). By conducting a qualitative analysis of the evolution of the CCP's OC policy, this thesis finds that the Party has made tremendous progress in achieving the policy’s strategic goals: modernization and transnational legitimacy. The CCP’s increased influence in the OCLM has made crucial contributions to the Party's success in restoring transnational legitimacy in the OC community. This thesis finds that the China News Service (CNS), China's second-largest news agency operating under the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, plays a major role in the CCP's attempt to influence the OCLM and centralize the production of Chinese-language news.

While some have speculated there has been an increase in the public scrutiny of police over the last few years, little is actually known about the magnitude and scope of changes. This thesis investigates changes in the frequency of front-page articles, and the frequency of all articles, in The New York Times since 2010. Guided by Beck and Tolnay's (1995) Racial Violence Model, seven events were identified as potential threshold events for changes in media reports about the police. Findings indicate policing stories became more common after the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, while the remaining threshold events had no significant impact. This research provides a context for future quantitative and qualitative studies regarding media attention on police following specific events