Foreign News and Public Opinion: Attribute Agenda-Setting Theory Revisited

Abstract

Most certainly, this thesis would not have been possible without the love, encouragement and support of my family. I would like to thank my mom for listening to me, in good times and in bad times, providing me with love, nurturing me, and caring about my well-being. I would like to thank my sister, my closest friend from the day I was born. You were amazing coding and coding and never complaining. I would like to thank my dad, my "rock" when times were turbulent. Most importantly, I would like to greatly thank Chance Cooley, my companion, my inspiration, and my love. This journey through the school would not be the same without you. You made it exciting and stimulating by challenging me in every class, by holding our long discussions, by giving me advice, by reading my papers, and by being my Junto buddy. I am giving you a credit for defending your thesis first, but I am not giving you superiority in iceskating and ping-pong. Remember, I will always love and challenge you in our journey together.

Trending Twitter topics in English: An international comparison

“…More generally, foreign news in the United States has been dominated by stories about economically advanced nations (Chang, ), although countries in which the United States is involved in conflicts, such as Iraq and Afghanistan (and Vietnam in the past; Larson, ), are presumably exceptions. For example, “despite presence of wide‐scale famine, civil conflict, disputed elections and an AIDS epidemic, the African continent received limited coverage” during 2002–2004 in the United States, with trade ties and Gross Domestic Product being the two key predictors of coverage for African nations (Golan, , p. 41; see also Besova & Cooley, ).…”

Anti-Semitism and opposition to Israeli government policies: the roles of prejudice and information

“…Yet another possible explanation exists: that the disproportionate critical focus on the Israeli government, to the exclusion of other governments guilty of worse crimes against weaker, "Third World countries or groups", arises from simple ignorance. 1 After all, the media's agenda powerfully influences perceptions of foreign countries (Wanta, Golan, and Lee 2004;Zhang and Meadows 2012), and media outlets in the US and several other countries provide relatively extensive coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Segev 2015) largely ignoring objectively worse conflicts, particularly in Africa (Harvey 2012)although this disproportionate coverage has led to relatively "warm" sentiments toward Israel in the US (Besova and Cooley 2009;cf. Anholt Nation Brands Index 2006).…”

The Framing of Russian Military Involvement in the Syrian Civil War on Sputnik Media

“…Only a few people have the ability, time, and interest necessary to observe and report on the causes and consequences of a conflict. Thus, people use the media to find information and understand conflicts [6], and the media influences the way the public thinks about an issue [7]. Framing is a very important way of informing people located far from conflict zones [6].…”