This study focuses on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th Congressional District, and how news media portray her based on her gender, age, and ethnicity, which still play essential roles in the political system in the United States. The analysis of previous academic research, newspaper articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post (June 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019) and framing and feminist theories are used to evaluate coverage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The newspaper stories are examined based on the framing of traits including being the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, being Latina, and being one the most progressive politicians in the Congress. The main objective of this study is to shed light on a topic that at this moment in time is more relevant than ever because the 116th Congress has the highest number of women and women of color in U.S. history. I examine media coverage that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez receives for stereotypical frames, so that, overall, all women running or holding public office may receive unbiased and more balanced media coverage. This study also intends to hold media outlets accountable for the way they portray different candidates because it has …

Previous research on framing has proved its strong effects on the social perception and political preferences of individuals. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore how Saudi women's issues have been framed in a sample of United States and Saudi newspapers. Saudi Vision 2030 is the post-oil plan for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that was announced on April 25, 2016. The sample of this thesis was 300 news stories from eight newspapers. The U.S. newspapers were the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. The Saudi newspapers were Al Riyadh, Okaz, Al Jazirah, and Al Watan. This thesis explores how these issues have been covered before and after Saudi Vision 2030 by answering five basic questions. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the news stories. For the quantitative analysis, five pre-defined generic frames from Semetko and Valkenburg were adopted: conflict frame, human interest frame, morality frame, economic consequences frame, and responsibility frame. An inductive approach to find the new frames was used for the qualitative analysis. Moreover, this thesis looked at how U.S. and Saudi newspapers have visually framed Saudi women through an analysis of the types …

In both Mexico and the U.S., abortion rights protests have been taking place in recent years, but while Mexico is moving forward with the legalization of abortion, the U.S. is going in the opposite direction with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Through framing, journalists select salient information, shaping audiences' understandings of social movements. The protest paradigm suggests that due to journalistic norms and routines, journalists tend to focus on disruptive acts, which can stigmatize the protest. Additionally, scholars have stated that men and women photojournalists have different approaches to covering certain topics. This cross-national research combined a content analysis of photographs in U.S. and Mexican media with in-depth interviews with photojournalists to determine if photojournalists in each country are reproducing the protest paradigm and if there are gendered differences in how they photograph abortion rights protests. The results revealed that women and men photograph differently, with women capturing more intimate photos; however, photojournalists' gendered experiences are also influenced by how protesters perceive them. Furthermore, the study suggests that photojournalists from both countries are questioning objectivity and are attempting to move away from the protest paradigm. This research provides valuable insights into visual framing theory, protest news coverage, and gendered …

Climate change is one of the preeminent problems facing humanity today. It has the potential to cause incalculable damages, loss of life and property, and can create an almost unlivable habitat for humans on this planet. Governments need to act in order to stop future climate harms, but the electorate must be literate in the subject in order to do so. One of the jobs of the media is to inform the public, and so it is imperative that the media find a way to accurately inform the U.S. electorate about the changing climate in order to stimulate pro-environmental behavior and voting. It was hypothesized in this thesis that journalists should utilize narrative instead of simply relaying statistics and fact-based information to better engage the electorate and that it would prove a better way to educate them about science topics such as the climate. However, the politicization of such topics could not be ignored and so needed to be accounted for. A 2x2 factorial analysis was done using narrative versus fact-based stories with either conservative or liberal news outlet headers. These were then tested against three covariates: political ideology, narrative transportation, and locus of control. This research found that political …

As with women journalists in other male-dominated fields, female music writers have long endured gendered harassment. In the newsroom, this sexist treatment is foisted upon female music journalists by their male editors and colleagues; in the outside world, it often occurs at the hands of male sources, readers, and online trolls. Unfortunately, the victims of such abuse are frequently left to cope with it alone, and many report that their mental health suffers in the process. Some may even ultimately decide to quit pursuing music journalism entirely. These women report wanting to feel more supported within their work environment, as well as through informal means, such as via a network of fellow female writers. Feminist media theory, utilitarianism, and ethics of care will serve as the study's theoretical bases. This research, based on in-depth interviews with women music journalists, suggests that the vast majority of participants had faced sexism and/or gendered harassment during their time as a female music journalist, experiences that left many of them feeling frustrated and devalued. Based on the research, I offer recommendations on how to make the industry more inclusive for women writers.

Purity culture was a movement created by evangelical Christian organizations in the United States and backed by marketing campaigns, media, churches, and sex education beginning in the 1990s. This movement was founded on the idea that young men and women should remain abstinent before marriage, thereby remaining in a state of "purity" for their future spouse. In purity culture messaging, women were positioned as sexual gatekeepers while men were framed as having little or no control over their sexual impulses, causing most of the purity expectation to fall on women. While the concept of remaining "pure" is not new, purity culture taught a new generation of women to feel ashamed and fearful of their sexuality and existed alongside an increasingly sexualized media landscape. This study analyzes purity culture and anti-purity culture themes that exist within television shows as well as how women perceive purity culture messaging and the effects this messaging had on their lives.

Unfavorable opinions and images of the public relations industry have persisted for decades, and the industry still struggles to deal with them. Additionally, it is a demanding profession that is expected to grow faster than average but struggles to retain talent. Public relations research has also predominantly focused on how nonpractitioners perceive public relations. The present study psychoanalytically analyzed two movies with cinematic representations of public relations practitioners and 20 interviews with public relations practitioners to examine how practitioners' self-perceptions of public relations unconsciously influence their practice and expectations, as well as their stress and burnout. More specifically, stress and burnout dynamics were explored among younger and older practitioners and gender.

Online fandom communities exist as a hub of subcultural construction for people across the globe. For queer people, fandom represents a space to safely converge over mutual interests. Previous research has focused on queer fans and popular music fans independently, often taking a pathological approach. This study qualitatively examines queer participants in the Katy Perry fandom through surveys and one-on-one interviews. The theoretical backbone of the study is built around uses and gratifications theory, seeking to understand motivations for fandom participation. The concepts of the heteronormative matrix and queer resistance are additionally incorporated to analyze how LGBTQ+ fans combat societal norms. This research found seven motivations for queer fans to participate in online fandom, providing insight into an understudied community.

The overpopulation of domestic animals has become an ongoing problem across the United States. Approximately 1.5 million animals are being euthanized in the United States every year. In fact, shelters euthanize about 23 % of the animals they take in. However, the euthanasia rate would be much greater without animal rescues, which are different than animal shelters. Animal rescues are unique from shelters because they are not government-funded, and they do not usually have a physical location. Because of these factors, animal rescues rely on volunteers to care for the animals they save and donors to fund their operations. Animal rescues heavily depend on social media to fulfill many of their needs, including fundraising and volunteer recruitment, which makes the nonprofits particularly vulnerable to failure without a social media following. This research combined a content analysis of animal rescues' Facebook posts with a survey of the rescues to determine which Facebook affordances and message frames animal rescues used online were positively related to online and offline success metrics. The content analysis focused on analyzing posts for message frames, and the survey provided information about annual success. The combination of a content analysis and a survey uncovered relationships between Facebook characteristics, …

The transgender community in India, commonly known as hijras, consists of people who were born as males but address themselves as females. They have been considered as the third gender in India for millennia and have had specific religious and sociocultural values and roles, but are forced to live in shadows in this day and age. Isolation of this community is also reflected in the way transgender characters are represented in Indian entertainment media. The study analyses two transgender themed films semiotically and the audience reception of those representations by 20 members of the transgender community. Semiotics is a helpful tool to understand the ways signs communicate ideas to viewers. This study applies syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses to understand how images are used to represent and relay information to the audience. Reception theory along with double colonization has been incorporated in this study to analyse the ways in which the transgender community interprets the representations in entertainment media.