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Description
Organizations use news releases to promote coverage of its operations and enhance the image and issues pertinent to the organization. In most cases, the primary focus of press releases and news media coverage differs. This thesis analyzes the resonance between coverage by news organizations and the materials released by the organization. Analysis of coverage by the news media and the NBA illustrates the resonance and connections in coverage by all three organizations. It also shows how information regarding the NBA lockout released by the NBA and news outlets can be differentiated into unique issue arenas. These issue arenas can have influence on each other, while also allowing organizations to provide their own unique perspectives.
ContributorsEckert, Marshall (Author) / Gilpin, Dawn (Thesis director) / Matera, Fran (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
In the sixty-seven years following the end of World War II, West Germany and Japan underwent a remarkable series of economic and social changes that irrevocably altered their respective ways of life. Formerly xenophobic, militaristic and highly socially stratified societies, both emerged from the 20th Century as liberal, prosperous and free. Both made great strides well beyond the expectations of their occupiers, and rebounded from the overwhelming destruction of their national economies within a few short decades. While these changes have yielded dramatic results, the wartime period still looms large in their respective collective memories. Therefore, an ongoing and diverse dialectical process would engage the considerable popular, official, and intellectual energy of their post-war generations. In West Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung (VGB) emerged to describe a process of coming to terms with the past, while the Japanese chose kako no kokufuku to describe their similar historical sojourns. Although intellectuals of widely varying backgrounds in both nations made great strides toward making Japanese and German citizens cognizant of the roles that their militaries played in gruesome atrocities, popular cinematic productions served to reiterate older, discredited assertions of the fundamental honor and innocence of the average soldier, thereby nurturing a historically revisionist line of reasoning that continues to compete for public attention. All forms of media would play an important role in sustaining this “apologetic narrative,” and cinema, among the most popular and visible of these mediums, was not excluded from this. Indeed, films would play a unique recurring role, like rhetorical time capsules, in offering a sanitized historical image of Japanese and German soldiers that continues to endure in modern times. Nevertheless, even as West Germany and Japan regained their sovereignty and re-examined their pasts with ever greater resolution and insight, their respective film industries continued to “reset” the clock, and accentuated the visibility and relevancy of apologetic forces still in existence within both societies. However, it is important to note that, when speaking of “Germans” and “Japanese,” that they are not meant to be thought of as being uniformly of one mind or another. Rather, the use of these words is meant as convenient shorthand to refer to the dominant forces in Japanese and German civil society at any given time over the course of their respective post- war histories. Furthermore, references to “Germany” during the Cold War period are to be understood to mean the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than their socialist counterpart, the German Democratic Republic, a nation that undertook its own coming to terms with the past in an entirely distinct fashion.
ContributorsPiscopo, Michael (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Moore, Aaron (Committee member) / Machander, Sina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
National infrastructure form the bedrock for economic growth and social security, both of which lowers conflict risks. This encourages states and international organizations to invest heavily in post-conflict infrastructure reconstruction efforts, believing that infrastructure provision will reduce future political instability. This belief is based largely on the perceived successes of reconstruction efforts in prior eras, especially after World War II. Today, post-conflict reconstruction efforts are much less successful in this regard and, overall, are not reducing political instability---Iraq being the quintessential example of such policy failure. In the face of both ongoing conflict and persistent needs for infrastructure reconstruction after conflicts, therefore, there is a critical need to understand two questions: Why are current reconstruction efforts failing to reduce political instability or even, in some cases, increasing it? And, how can reconstruction efforts be organized to do better? To address these questions, this dissertation examines infrastructure reconstruction across a wide range of national contexts. In doing this, an updated viewpoint is provided on the role of infrastructure in conflict-prone areas to include a long-term perspective on infrastructure system's role in society, technological integration, and relationship between the state and conflicting groups. This dissertation finds that though provision of different types of infrastructure might increase conflict risks in the short term, such provision can reduce conflict in the long run depending on how and where infrastructure is provided vis-a-vis excluded populations. These results provide crucial input towards the redesign of reconstruction policies to limit future political instability risks through infrastructure.
ContributorsMolfino, Emily Suzanne (Author) / Miller, Clark (Thesis advisor) / Fisher, Erik (Committee member) / Wood, Reed (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014