A Comparative Analysis of Press Coverage of the 1974 Cyprus Crisis by the Turkish Newspaper, "Cumhuriyet," and the Greek Newspaper, "To Vima"

This study is concerned with determining whether the Turkish newspaper, Cumhuriyet, and the Greek newspaper, To Vima, differed in their coverage of the 1974 Cyprus crisis, Issues of the newspapers covering the period, July 16-August 31, 1974, were examined, News items related to the crisis were categorized as hard news, soft news, editorials, and illustrations. Totals for each category were measured in column inches and converted to percentages of total available space in each newspaper, Categories were added to obtain total coverage of the crisis by each newspaper. This study concludes that Cumhuriyet devoted proportionately more coverage to the crisis than To Vima, in both total coverage and all news categories

A longitudinal analysis of the New York Times' coverage of the National Organization for Women, 1981-2010

A longitudinal content analysis was performed to examine The New York Times' coverage of the National Organization for Women during 1980 through 2010. Agenda setting and framing were studied as media effects of the coverage; prominence, tone, and issues pertaining to NOW were coded in this study to track change over time. It was found that prominence did change over the three decades in the study. Coverage of NOW decreased by nearly 80% from 1980 to 2010. The tone toward the organization remained positive, and NOW was seen as an advocate for women. However, in the 2000s, the tone grew increasingly neutral. Of the issues coded, women in politics showed a decline, while LGBT issues rose in frequency. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Product appearances in NBC's the Office compared to multiple character variables

This study examined the relationship between product appearances and character variables through content analysis. The Elaboration Likelihood Model was used as a foundation for this study. The ELM indicates that character credibility, liking and consensus are the three primary heuristics for reaching a subject through the peripheral route and product appearances were considered peripheral forms of advertising by nature. Product variables were compared to multiple character variables. Character variables included gender, role (major or minor), credibility, likeability, and consensus. Character credibility and likeability were determined by a survey of bloggers who assigned the characters a static credibility/likeability score. The data collected by this content analysis indicated that characters with high likeability scores were linked to more product appearances than characters with low likeability scores and characters that were typical consumers were also linked to more products than non-typical consumers. However, there was no relationship found between character credibility and the quantity or cost of product appearances. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Buy or boycott?: an examination of mediated consumer animosity effects on purchase intentions

The purpose of this research was to investigate how consumer animosity directly and indirectly affects buying intentions of foreign brands in the context of the 2008 Beijing Olympic torch relay crisis. Theories of social identity and realistic group conflicts served as a theoretical framework to model the impact of consumer animosity on purchase intentions. The results suggest that the stable and situational animosities led to slightly lower product quality assessment while consumer ethnocentrism did not, indicating that the latter is a less significant predictor of product judgment than both animosities. Furthermore, perceived social pressure from significant others has triple capabilities to significantly influence product quality assessment, boycott motivations, and buying intentions. In addition, the impact of animosity on purchase intentions was completely mediated by boycott motivations whereas the impact of consumer ethnocentrism and subjective norm was partially mediated through boycott motivations. By contrast, product judgment was a weaker mediator and only partially mediated the relationship between subjective norm and the intention of purchase. The present study provides theoretical and empirical insights into direct and indirect effects of consumer animosity on purchase intentions, which may be beneficial for both manufacturers and retailers who suffer from the boycott of foreign merchandise. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Toward a stakeholder model of corporate governance: evidence from U.S. media companies

It has been widely recognized that corporate governance can play a key role in improving corporate performance. When implementing various governance mechanisms, however, corporations must address a fundamental question: should corporate governance focus on protecting the interests of only shareholders or should corporate governance expand its focus and consider the interests of other groups? While agency theory asserts that the exclusive focus of corporate governance is to ensure the interests of shareholders, stakeholder theory proposes that corporations should serve all groups or individuals who have a stake in the corporation. Like that of other industries, corporate governance of media industries has generally followed the agency model of maximizing shareholder wealth. But the weakness and failure of such a model in recent years suggest that it may be meaningful to approach the issue from an alternative, stakeholder perspective. Focusing on 75 publicly traded media companies continuously filed with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission between 2004 and 2007, this dissertation examined the effects of ownership structure, board structure, compensation structure, and takeover control on corporate performance. It found that stakeholder-oriented governance mechanisms, including reduced institutional ownership, increased insider ownership, enlarged board representativeness, increased board interlocks, fixed compensation for CEO and directors, and certain takeover controls like dual class shares and poison pills, were positively associated with media firms' performance. This dissertation thus suggested that corporate governance of media companies go beyond the pure shareholder-maximization goal and consider the interests of such stakeholders as employees, audience, and local communities because the stakeholder approach was not only socially desirable but also economically efficient. This dissertation theoretically contributed: (1) to the media management literatures through offering a systematic examination on the governance mechanisms of media companies; (2) to the stakeholder perspective through opening up a new and empirical line of inquiry; and (3) to the corporate governance research through challenging its traditional shareholder-maximizing paradigm. Moreover, this dissertation had important implications for media practitioners and regulators since it proposed and verified a number of better governance mechanisms that can be put into practice. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

I want it now: do new media affect ability to delay gratification?

This dissertation explored the effects of the mediated culture of instant gratification on users' ability to delay gratification throughout adolescent development. Focusing on the variables of self-control, impulsiveness, time orientation, and ability to delay gratification, 271 participants in grades 6, 9, 12, and college juniors completed an online survey testing their media usage. Two groups were formed: participants with high access to instant gratification media, and participants with low access. These groups were tested for differences in the previously mentioned variables, and models were formed to depict the relationships between each variable in each group. Group differences were found for academic delay of gratification (p = .02). The participants in the high access group were more likely to put their grade in danger for a good time whereas the low access group would not. However, this disappeared when controlling for grade level. Three models determined that demographic variables led to self-control, impulsiveness, and time orientation. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

National television news and newspapers as media salience, Twitter as public salience: an agenda-setting effects analysis

The new social medium Twitter provides a unique opportunity for agenda setting scholars as a new source of public opinion. This thesis argued that this new measurement could be used as an indirect measurement of public salience. Twitter stores information posted by users of its service in a searchable and quantifiable mode. Freeing information that was private on other social networking sites, such as Facebook, issues can be tracked on Twitter much like that of a news archive, such as Google News or The Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Three popular public issues were tracked for a total of 92 days. The issues chosen were Immigration, BP Oil and the Mortgage and Housing Crisis. First and second-level agenda-setting variables were coded for national television newscasts and newspapers. These variables were interpreted as measurements of media salience and assigned as independent variables. In addition, Tweets were tracked and labeled as public salience. They were inversely named as dependent variables. Correlations were assessed, and a time series analysis was conducted to determine whether the independent variables were sufficient predictors of the dependent variables. Alternative explanations and conjecture not withstanding, this thesis found a mild relationship between media salience and public salience as it defined it. For the issues of BP Oil and the Mortgage and Housing Crisis, two independent variables were predictors of the dependent variables. For the issue of Immigration, only one independent variable was a predictor. The lack of predictors for the Immigration issue was attributed to an error between dependent and independent variables. Media salience was determined to consist of national news stories while public salience was determined to contain global stories. For all cases, the agenda-setting effect occurred on the same day. Ultimately, this thesis was an extension of agenda setting into a new digital medium. The mild support found echoes the agenda-setting research of the past that states traditional mass media outlets affect and set the agenda of the publics that listen to them. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

The effects of narrative exemplars and fear appeals on promoting preventive skin cancer behaviors

This dissertation investigated the effects of narrative exemplars and fear appeals on individuals' health-risk perception toward skin cancer, attitude toward the preventive behavior, and coping responses, with need for cognition, self-efficacy and response efficacy as moderators. This dissertation employed a 2 (message type: narrative exemplar vs. base-rate information) × 2 (threat: high vs. low) factorial between-subject design. A total of 251 college students participated in the experiment. A high-threat message describing the severe consequences of not protecting one's skin and the high susceptibility to skin cancer both directly and indirectly impacted individuals' perceptions of skin cancer risk and their intention to perform a coping response. Fear mediated the effects of threat information on individuals' health risk perception and intention for the coping responses. In addition, when they read a high-threat message, high efficacy individuals believed that the recommendation outlined in the messages produced the desired outcome and the threat could be averted, therefore, they were more likely to accept the recommended behavior in the messages than their lower counterparts. Moreover, need for cognition did not have an effect on the reported transportation when processing narrative exemplars, although participants who read the narrative exemplars reported higher transportation than those who read the base-rate information messages. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Is Facebook an effective crisis communication tool for companies?: an analysis of BP's Facebook usage after the oil spill in 2010

This dissertation was designed to explore the effects of Facebook in corporate crisis communication and the factors that contribute or hinder the effects with a focus on the British Petroleum's (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil spill crisis in 2010. Within the theoretical frameworks of the situational crisis communication theory, the attribution theory, and the social identity theory, this dissertation analyzed BP America's crisis communication messages and Facebook users' comments on BP America's Facebook page with a quantitative content analysis, and examined influence of congruence between Facebook users' comments and BP's messages on publics' perceived image of BP with an experiment. The content analysis results revealed that rebuilding strategies dominated BP's crisis response, and Facebook users were more likely to comment favorably when BP used accommodative strategies. The results also suggest that bolstering strategies and third party endorsement may not work as expected. The experimental results suggest that Facebook may have the potential to be an effective crisis communication tool in affecting publics' perceived image of an organization-in-crisis, and the effects of Facebook are limited to the strategies used by the organization, congruence between Facebook users' comments and the organization's messages, publics' precrisis attitudes toward the organization, and publics' perceived social connection to Facebook users. Theoretical and practical implications of this study were discussed. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries