Messages of Foreign Policies and Coverage of Election in Unstable Democracy

Media of governments are vehicles of governmental messages. A medium of a government carries the government’s foreign policy messages to other countries. A government’s message on foreign policy passes through one of the government’s media to reach a target in another country. A government’s medium mediates between the government’s message on foreign policy and the message’s target in another country. Therefore, I used the term, mediated policy, to refer to those governmental media messages on foreign policy sent to Iraq during the election in 2010. I hypothesized that US Mediated Policy, Iranian Mediated Policy, and Saudi Mediated Policy are three latent constructs interacting in a structural model where they affect a fourth latent variable, Iraqi Independent Media. I ran a content analysis of international and domestic media coverage of the Iraqi election of 2010. I measured the saliences of two frames, former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The analysis shows: (1) US foreign policy simultaneously deals with two opposing regional policies, Saudi and Iranian. (2) English represents a barrier to Iraqi independent media. (3) There are significant foreign policy messages carried by media of foreign governments to Iraq, which evidently affect Iraqi independent media

Mediated Policy Effects of Foreign Governments on Iraqi Independent Media During Elections

Faculty Research Day 2018: Faculty Competitive Poster WinnerI use the term, mediated policy, to refer to messages about Iraq sent by international news media outlets of foreign governments during the Iraqi parliamentary elections of 2010, and I hypothesize that US Mediated Policy, Iranian Mediated Policy, and Saudi Mediated Policy are three latent constructs interacting in a structural model where they influence a fourth latent variable, Iraqi Independent Media. To feed the model with data, I run a content analysis of relevant international and domestic media coverage. I measure saliences (i.e., quantities) of two news media frames, Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. The analysis shows that in 2010: (1) English represented a barrier to Iraqi independent media. (2) US foreign policy simultaneously dealt with two opposing regional policies, Iranian and Saudi. (3) There were significant policy messages about Iraq carried by international news media of foreign governments, which evidently influenced Iraqi independent media

Public Diplomacy and Image Building: A Case of China

This paper examines the relationship between China’s public diplomacy and image building in the United States, and the subsequent impact on China’s foreign policy in the U.S. and in some other parts of the world. As the second largest economy in the world today, China is playing an increasingly important role in the global arena. China’s weight is felt not only in economics and business, but also in politics and international relations. With the growing influence China exerts on global issues, China also feels the necessity to create a better image for itself on the world stage. While specific figures are hard to obtain, by any estimate, China has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in the past few years on promoting China and projecting a positive image of itself to the world. The aggressive public diplomacy campaigns are launched on multiple fronts and in different countries around the world. Examples include promotional visual campaigns in Times Square in New York City, the launch of the China Xinhua News Network Corporation in the United States, and the establishment of the Confucius Institutes around the globe. We explore all these examples in our analysis

Bias Toward Chiropractic: Effects of Frame Salience in Globalized Media on Google PageRank

Mohammed Al-Azdee and Stephen Perle's poster discussing the the global media framing of the Chiropractic profession through the use of Google PageRank

The Jasmine Revolution Tunisian Media Freedom Road in Five Years

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the Tunisian media freedom road since the 2010 revolution and contrasting it with the past situation. Five years have so far passed since the Jasmine Revolution that sparked the tsunami called the Arab Spring. Tunisian media have been playing a key role in the country's transition to democracy and in shaping Tunisia's image on the national stage and international arena. We hypothesize that in these five years, the Tunisian media scene has witnessed an unprecedented mutation, from 'Not Free' to 'Free,' media in Tunisia are trying to find their path to freedom. The analysis considers secondary qualitative data collected from international organizations and research centers reports

Persuasive Media Information and Voting Behavior Demographics as Moderators of Online Effects

This study aims at determining if online information may affect, in a meaningful way, the voting decisions of media audience. Three regression models were built to establish the level to which online channels of communication can create a significant impact on the behavioral decisions of the audience responding to electoral campaigns. All three models are with moderated effect. The goal of this research is to examine how such demographics as age, income, and level of education are more likely to moderate the ways online persuasive media information is being consumed by target voters. By analyzing these moderated relationships the applicability of a communication theory, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), which focuses on the way persuasive communication is consumed, is actually being tested in the context of electoral campaigns

Biased Online Media Coverage: Chiropractic and Stroke in Google News

Background: Chiropractic has professional tensions with other medical disciplines. This sets up a biased online media coverage of controversial issues, such as the unverified causal relation between chiropractic treatment and stroke. The objective of this study is to find and analyze recent online media texts relevant to the alleged causal relation between chiropractic treatment and stroke, using Google News search, including such characteristics of texts as tone and position on Google News Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Methods: We built a research design of quantitative content analysis of online media coverage of the unverified causal relation between chiropractic treatment and stroke throughout the year 2015, from January 1 to December 31, using Google News. We operationalized appropriate frames as keywords inclusive to this relation, to carry out a comprehensive search for relevant online texts. The collected media texts were extensively analyzed for frequencies of keywords and locations of keywords, and for tones as positive, neutral, negative connotation, or negative, measuring 12 variables on categorical scales. Results: Our search identified a total of 146 relevant online media texts, corresponding to the frames, which were all analyzed. The vast majority of identified texts had a negative tone or connotation, but most were not located on the first search page. Conclusions: The chiropractic profession is concerned about the biased media coverage of the unverified causal relation between chiropractic treatment and stroke. However, our data show that there are very few relevant media texts online within the timeframe of this study, and the majority of them appear after the first page of Google News SERP. But, most texts present a negative tone or connotation, and a lot of links to online and social media embedded in these texts extend their traffic and reach.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12998-018-0189-

Modi’s Social Media Effects on Media: Analysis of Big Data from Indian Elections in 2014

Srishti Puri's and Mohammed Al-Azdee's poster analyzing the effects of social media on the media in India's 2014 elections through the use of big data analytics

Winter Olympic Games in South Korea: Media Coverage of NoKo and Public Opinion in the PRC and USA in 2018

Mohammed Al-Azdee, Yanmin Yu, Zeyuan Du, and Srishti Puri's poster on the media coverage of North Korea and public opinion of in both the People's Republic of Korea and the United States of America in the context of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea

The Journal of Global Development and Peace Spring 2012

The Journal of Global Development and Peace for the spring of 2012. This issue contains articles by Dr. Al-Azdee on Picture with Paul Bremer: Example of Anti-Semitic Discourse in Post-Saddam Iraq, Seray Teleke on Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) towards Political and Economic Integration, Dr. Zhang on a Perspective on the American Strategic Shift in the Asia-Pacific Region, Yuan Cura Zhang on CHINLAMERICA: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future of Sino-Latin-American Relations, Katie Kilroy on Rule of Law in Senegal and the West African Economic and Monetary Union: Information Technology Initiatives, Stella Kim on Enhancing Regional Integration to Advance Stability in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Daulat Jha on Rewarding Good Behavior with Cash: The Basis, Experiences and Features of Conditional Cash Transfers, Kristine LeBlanc on Water Rights and the Potential for Conflict in the Nile River Basin, and Rebecca Witherington on HIV/AIDS and Disability: Why South Africa needs to realize the Millennium Development Goals