UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item MEDIA PRIMARIES: THE ROLE OF NEWSWORTHINESS VALUES IN SHAPING ISSUE COVERAGE IN PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES(2020) Scott, Zachary A.; Karol, David; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Presidential primary candidates vie for the attention of voters by emphasizing specific issue stances or prioritizations. Yet not all candidates get their messages across. Why does the media follow the candidate’s agenda in some cases but not others? I answer this question by noting the role professional values play in journalists’ evaluations of “newsworthiness” and the important political ramifications those professional values have. Journalists prefer news stories that feature conflict, human-interest components, are timely, and are simple. I argue that there may be ways candidates can cue these values via their rhetoric and that the structure of primaries may affect how journalists apply these values when crafting coverage. I further argue that media outlets should differ in how strongly they prioritize these values. Finally, I argue that the media ignoring a candidate’s message should affect how voters evaluate candidates and how well voters are able to “correctly” vote. I show that the amount of anger language and candidate-based appeal rhetoric are positively correlated with the level of similarity between a candidate’s and the media’s agendas. I also show that expanding primary fields, where the contextual simplicity of the race is shrinking, are correlated with reductions in agenda similarity between candidates and the media. I also show that these effects are not homogenous across media outlets. Newspapers react more strongly to anger in candidate messages than TV news while news outlets with tighter space constraints are more responsive to declines in contextual simplicity. To assess the ramifications of these findings on political behavior I designed a laboratory experiment to test the effects of candidate-media agenda similarity on candidate evaluations and “correct” voting behavior. Subjects exposed to the low convergence treatment displayed higher rates of incorrect voting behavior. Collectively, these findings improve our understanding of the political repercussions of journalism’s professional values and provide insights into an oft-overlooked level of election. They also illustrate the normatively undesirable effects of low convergence. I close with a discussion of how to create a more efficient, media-centric primary process.Item Should Advertising Remain a Tax-Deductible Business Expense?(2009) Wengrover, Sally Ruth; Daly, Herman E.; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Advertising expenses have been deductible ever since the income tax was enacted in 1913. Over the years, however, a number of analysts have questioned advertising's tax status. According to some, advertising creates intangible capital and should, therefore, be capitalized and amortized like other capital assets. According to other analysts, advertising does more to reduce welfare than to augment it; therefore, the deduction should be completely denied. Advertisers and their supporters, on the other hand, maintain that the deduction is entirely reasonable. This dissertation addresses some of the legal controversies involving the deduction and examines some of advertising's economic psychological, sociological and ecological effects. In Part I, Chapter 1 introduces the research question and debates the welfare implications of ad-induced economic growth. Chapter 2 considers whether advertising is, in fact, an "ordinary and necessary business expense" that is entitled to a tax deduction. Although advocates for the deduction claim that it is both ordinary and necessary, some critics argue that the deduction is, in fact, a subsidy that shifts more of the tax burden to individual taxpayers. Part II is devoted to the economic effects of advertising. Chapter 3 discusses advertising's impact on demand for the output of an individual firm, a particular industry, and all industries combined. Chapter 4 examines the effect of advertising on the competitive model; Chapter 5 evaluates advertising's influence on innovation, employment, and savings; and Chapter 6 considers the economic impact of advertising on the media. The focus in Part III is on advertising's influence on well-being. Chapter 7 examines ways that advertising affects the well-being of individuals and society. Chapter 8 surveys the impact of ad-induced materialistic values on the environment. Chapter 9 looks at a number of costs and benefits that are associated with advertising, discusses potential obstacles to changing advertising's tax status, and offers recommendations for policymakers.Item Television News and the State in Lebanon(2008-04-23) Melki, Jad; Moeller, Susan D; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies the relationship between television news and the state in Lebanon. It utilizes and reworks New Institutionalism theory by adding aspects of Mitchell's state effect and other concepts devised from Carey and Foucault. The study starts with a macro-level analysis outlining the major cultural, economic and political factors that influenced the evolution of television news in that country. It then moves to a mezzo-level analysis of the institutional arrangements, routines and practices that dominated the news production process. Finally, it zooms in to a micro-level analysis of the final product of Lebanese broadcast news, focusing on the newscast, its rundown and scripts and the smaller elements that make up the television news story. The study concludes that the highly fragmented Lebanese society generated a similarly fragmented and deeply divided political/economic elite, which used its resources and access to the news media to solidify its status and, by doing so, recreated and confirmed the politicosectarian divide in this country. In this vicious cycle, the institutionalized and instrumentalized television news played the role of mediator between the elites and their fragmented constituents, and simultaneously bolstered the political and economic power of the former while keeping the latter tightly held in their grip. The hard work and values of the individual journalist were systematically channeled through this powerful institutional mechanism and redirected to serve the top of the hierarchy. The journalist's background and beliefs were irrelevant to this process. Finally, the study advanced a theory on television news grounded in the empirical evidence and focusing on modern news media as the redistribution and reorganization of communication.Item Building the Stained Glass Prism: The Development of the Polish Catholic Church's Electronic Media Properties 1989-2003(2004-11-24) Burns, David Paul; Hiebert, Ray E.; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the Polish political, economic, and social transition from 1989 to 2003 from communism to capitalism, specifically its impact on a powerful Polish institution the Roman Catholic Church - and by extension, the Church's electronic media properties. As Poland changed from an eastern-looking collectivist society to a more western individualist society, its conservative Catholic Church likewise moved from a more autocratic, cohesive force towards a more liberal, Post-Vatican II approach to worship supported by the first Polish pontiff, John Paul II. Various Catholic religious orders with political viewpoints ranging from liberal to ultra-conservative managed the Church's radio, television and Internet properties and shaped the Church's mediated messages along their own religious ideology. This divisiveness was similarly reflected in fragmentation within the Church hierarchy, with individual Polish bishops supporting the media properties that most closely espoused their viewpoint.