Browsing by Subject "Content analysis"
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Item Analyst statements, stockholder reactions, and banking relationships : do analysts' words matter?(2009-05) Mendonca, John; Daly, John A. (John Augustine), 1952-This dissertation investigates the immediate effects of securities analysts' statements on shareholders. Two of the most important questions posed in research on capital markets are when and how analysts matter. A time at which analysts might matter is when they make pronouncements regarding a firm or industry; ways in which they might matter is through their word choices and the context of their words in these pronouncements. The question, "Do analysts matter?," has been explored before and has been answered in terms of the securities analysts' quantitative earnings forecasts and their effects on the capital markets. I investigated the discourse used in these earnings forecasts and other statements regarding the focal firm or industry in analyst reports. Therefore, I answered the question, "Do analysts matter, as defined by their words used, and do they change investors' judgments about a firm's future prospects?" The study employed content analysis of analysts' language to determine whether the words they use in their statements cause a response in the market. The study also investigated how the analysts' language differs based on their affiliations. To examine this question, I drew on the efficient markets theory from finance. Data sources included the Chicago Centre for Research on Security Prices (CRSP) tapes and First Call analyst reports. The research applied quantitative computer text analysis, the event study methodology, and regression to test the hypotheses. By studying statements from the All-American Team analysts, the present work shows that investors do consider the pronouncement of analyst statements significant. The results demonstrate support for the idea that analyst statements have an impact on the stock market. Moreover, the statement characteristics have an incremental effect on the market response. The key findings illustrate that words in the analysts' report matter. The analyst characteristics were instrumental in deciding the words that the analysts use in their reports. Finally, analysts use words to signal information to investors when they are pressured from investment banking relationships.Item Bridges in the global news arena : a network study of bridge blogs about China(2012-08) Zheng, Nan, Ph. D.; Reese, Stephen D.; Chyi, Iris; Dahlby, Tracy; Lasorsa, Nick; Straubhaar, JoeThe concept of bridge blogs and their function to foster awareness and public discourse across the world was examined by content analysis and network analysis of 426 blog posts and 1026 links in 11 bridge blogs about China from 2009 to 2010. This study proposes a theoretical framework to examine how bridge blogs’ network characteristics are related to their communicative practices. Three variables were examined with respect to the network characteristics of bridge blogs. First, this study identifies different types of bridge blogs according to the distinctive sites with which they choose to link. Second, bridge blogs’ role as bridges is directly tested by the extent to which they connect between online information sources that are otherwise separated from one another. Third, this study examines bridge blogs’ level of centrality, which is based on the number links they receive from others in the network. For communicative practices, this study measures the type of links bridge blogs use as sources in their posts and the communicative frames used to structure the blog posts. Bridge blogs exhibit internal diversity in terms of what distinctive sites they linked to, level of betweenness and centrality. The finding supports the theoretical framework proposed in the study that bridge blogs’ three network characteristics are associated with their practices of communication as reflected in their use of links and content structure. Bridge blogs that play a crucial interconnecting role and are central points of reference in the network are more likely to bring Chinese content (as oppose to Western media coverage) and citizen voice (as oppose to professional media content) to English speaking readers. In addition, the translation of Chinese content, which contributes more to the flow of information and views from China to the outside world, is valued more by bridge blogs (than others?) that are important interconnecting actors in the network and positioned as central points of attention in the network. Further, a textual analysis further enriches the understanding of how the communicative frames are practiced by the bridge blogs, as illustrated in their references to four high profile news stories about China.Item Climate change framing in the New York Times : the media’s impact on a polarized public(2015-12) Goff, Paepin D.; Jensen, Robert, 1958-; Wilson, KristopherWhile the threat of climate change grows stronger along with the consensus of scientists about the certainty of anthropogenic causes, researchers observe an opposite effect in the public’s acceptance of climate science. While climate change is a salient topic in society, the media’s presentation of climate change has varied over time and the public remains politically divided on the issue. This content analysis of 134 New York Times’ climate change articles between 2001 and 2013 identified six different types of media frames associated with climate change coverage and investigated the presentation of scientific information within those frames. This study also investigated the congruence between scientific consensus regarding climate change, the public’s perception of current scientific knowledge and the way climate change is talked about in the media.Item Follow me! I will be your best friend : global marketers’ Twitter use(2011-05) Kwon, Eun Sook; Sung, Yongjun; Choi, Sejung M.Social media have grown into a powerful marketing communications tool in the global market. A number of companies are dedicating their time and resources for building trust and rapport with consumers through various social media platforms, but there is a dearth of research on their use of Twitter. The current study, therefore, examines global brands with a Twitter account and their tweets targeted at consumers. The results indicate that marketers attempt to attribute human characteristics to their brands using human representatives, personal pronouns, verbs in the imperative form. Also, satisfaction and investment were the most frequently found consumer-brand relationship determinants in the global brands’ tweets. This study offers the perspective that Twitter serves not only as an optimal vehicle for disseminating corporate information but also as a means to develop and cultivate consumer-brand relationships. Limitations and future research are discussed.Item How newspapers shaped the culture of golf in Austin, Texas : an historical analysis(2016-05) Farr, Jeffrey Robert; Todd, Jan; Ozyurtcu, TolgaThis study looks to answer the question as to whether or not newspaper coverage concerning a particular sport can influence the participation of that sport of an era. In order to answer this question, this study conducts an historical examination rooted in the process of content analysis to identify the impact that the Austin Statesman had on participation in golf between the years of 1958-1965 in Austin, Texas. A content analysis was conducted, trends were identified and themes emerged from the body of literature that conclude that the writers and editors of the Statesman were an influencing factor on the citizens of Austin in relation to their motivation to participate in golf.Item The instability of incivility : how news frames and citizen perceptions shape conflict in American politics(2013-12) Muddiman, Ashley Rae; Stroud, Natalie JominiPoliticians and media elites have been calling for a return to civility in United States politics, and the vast majority of citizens agree that civility is necessary for a strong democracy. Yet incivility is an ever-present and misunderstood part of politics. In my dissertation, I focus on news, politics, and incivility by asking three questions. First, to what extent does news coverage portray political conflict as uncivil? Second, what political behaviors do citizens perceive as uncivil? Finally, how does news that portrays politics as uncivil affect citizens? I used a mixed method approach to answer these questions. I, first, conducted a content analysis of news surrounding four high-conflict political events to determine whether two conflict frames (interpersonal-level and public-level conflict) emerged. Second, I conducted two experiments and drew from social judgment theory to determine whether citizens perceived multiple types of incivility and whether their partisanship influenced how acceptable they found political behaviors to be. In a final experiment, I tested whether exposure to mediated conflict frames prompted perceptions of incivility from citizens and affected their reactions to politics. This project makes clear that news coverage of conflict emphasizes incivility and negatively affects citizens. Media elites shape political conflict using interpersonal-level and public-level conflict frames. Citizens perceive both types of conflict, as well, and tend to think that likeminded partisans are behaving appropriately while counter-attitudinal partisans are behaving badly. Finally, and importantly, the coverage of political conflict affects citizens in troublesome ways. Particularly when both types of conflict frames are present in the news, citizens feel more anxiety and aversion, have decreased levels of favorability toward political institutions, and think of political arguments in partisan ways. Overall, I conclude that incivility is not stable. Instead, incivility is a two-dimensional concept that is shaped by the media, perceived by citizens, and advanced by partisans. By recognizing these dimensions of incivility, researchers may find new and important effects of incivility, and people interested in ridding politics of incivility may be more successful by beginning with the recognition that what is uncivil to one person is not always uncivil to another.Item Mathematical needs of biological sciences students(2016-08) Duran, Pablo; Marshall, Jill Ann; Barufaldi, James; Empson, Susan; Roux, Stanley; Sadun, LorenzoThe main purpose of this study was to investigate the mathematical needs of biological sciences students and how the current undergraduate curriculum is aligned with these needs. Primary efforts to investigate these needs and propose new curricula have been made by scientific associations such as the NRC, the MAA and the AAAS. The curricula proposed in these projects, however, are not clearly supported by student needs assessment studies. This study is intended to address this gap in the literature investigating the needs of biological sciences students through a mixed-methods based approach. Following a typical needs assessment methodology scheme, student needs were measured by the difference between students’ acquired competencies in college and the future competencies required in their workplace. This assessment was based on a mixed-method approach comprised of a content analysis of peer-reviewed journals, a nationwide cross-sectional survey, and semi-structured interviews. The study was guided by two main research questions: (1) What are the mathematical needs of biological sciences undergraduate students as perceived by certain stakeholder groups? and (2) Is the curriculum aligned with these needs? Major findings included: (1) The most consistent need across disciplines is the use of experimental design. (2) An overall understanding of math models is needed at least for scientific literacy; (3) The mathematical needs of students strongly vary depending on their disciplinary tracks. Students from ecology, evolution and animal behavior need training in the areas of descriptive and inferential statistics, precalculus, calculus, stochastic processes, linear algebra, differential equations, and mathematics models in general. On the other hand, students from developmental biology need training in the areas of precalculus, descriptive and inferential statistics, and mathematics models. These differences between disciplinary tracks imply the need for a flexible undergraduate curriculum that starts with introductory courses in experimental design and mathematics models, and offers options to pursue in depth particular research approaches according to students’ interest. An analysis of students needs and the curricula proposed in the literature, and a brief discussion of the implications of these results to the biological sciences undergraduate curriculum of the University of Texas at Austin is also included.Item Media misdiagnosis? : a longitudinal analysis of frames, primes, and public opinion in relation to newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS and smoking(2016-08) Suran, Melissa Nicole; Coleman, Renita; McCombs, Maxwell E.; Johnson, Thomas J.; Lasorsa, Dominic L.; Mackert, Michael S.Medical issues are considered among the most popular topics in the media. However, because much health news research tends to focus on specific attributes rather than macro frames that are universally applicable to medical issues at large, paired with the fact that most framing studies do not examine topics for more than a decade, this study explores how macro frames and stereotype primes in medical news change over time as well how these changes affect public opinion. This was accomplished by developing a content analysis to longitudinally examine medical news content from The New York Times and The Washington Post. Two topics— HIV/AIDS and smoking—were strategically selected for this study, as they both have been considered major issues for decades and written about extensively. A follow‐up, agenda‐setting study comparing HIV/AIDS and smoking news to related public opinion polls was also conducted to determine how much the media influence the public over time and if the general opinion corresponds with framing and priming changes in the news. Previous research about frames, most of which examines less than a decade of coverage, emphasizes that topics in the news tend to gradually change from being episodic to thematic in nature. Therefore, the first study of this dissertation contributes to framing theory by determining whether similar patterns occur when analyzing issues during a longer period of time. The findings of the first study revealed that when examined over the course of decades, frames did not change in a particular direction; rather, there was an ebb and flow of frame changes based on whether the events of a particular year were inherently episodic (e.g., a celebrity death) or thematic (e.g., the release of a groundbreaking study). Because journalists strive for objectivity, how the news is framed tends to be influenced by the sources they choose. Therefore, this study also examined what sources predict the frames found in news about HIV/AIDS and smoking. The results indicated that experts and government organizations were significant predictors of thematic news while laypeople predicted episodic coverage. This study also determined that the media did not perpetuate exaggerated stereotypes in coverage of HIV/AIDS or smoking. The second study found that coverage of HIV/AIDS with combined episodic and loss frames was significantly associated with the public attributing the contraction of HIV/AIDS to individual blame. News that featured both thematic and loss frames significantly correlated with the public being in favor of societal efforts to end smoking. Thus, this study confirmed the results from experimental research that found pairing thematic and loss frames causes similar audience effects. However, unlike the former experiments, this study concluded that episodic/loss frame combinations influence public opinion as well.Item Pakistani media, public opinion, and the downfall of Pervez Musharraf : news attribute agenda-setting, and cognitive liberation in the Lawyers’ Movement(2016-05) Bajwa, Hena Khursheed; Coleman, Renita; McCombs, Maxwell E.; Jensen, Robert; Todd, Rusell; Straubhaar, Joseph; Young, MichaelIn 2007, Pakistan saw its first popular mass protest movement in decades. Subsequently known as the Lawyers’ Movement, the protest was initiated by Pakistani lawyers in response to then dictator President General Pervez Musharraf’s decision to unconstitutionally suspend Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. This dissertation explores the second-level attribute agenda-setting effects of Pakistani news media on public opinion regarding General Pervez Musharraf, and the consequent sense of “cognitive liberation” – the collective sentiment that the public can affect social change – among Pakistanis, that eventually lead to Musharraf’s political downfall. A content analysis of 318 news stories was conducted from the English language daily The News over seven time periods between 2007 and 2008. The newspaper was selected as representative of one of Pakistan’s most powerful media groups, the Jang Media Group. The content analysis results were then compared with Pakistan public opinion polls conducted by the International Republican Institute over seven time periods between 2007 and 2008. Spearman’s Rho correlations were used to describe the relationship between the tone of The News’ descriptions in its stories and Pakistani public opinion regarding General Musharraf during the Lawyers’ Movement. Social Movement Theory was also used in a textual analysis of The News reportage to contextualize the various political processes during the Lawyers’ Movement, and also to help explain how and why the movement was different from others in Pakistan’s recent history. The results of both analyses suggested that the tone of the attributes of General Musharraf highlighted by the Pakistani press during the Lawyers’ Movement did significantly influence public opinion about General Musharraf. Further, The News’ media representation during the Movement played an important role in the shared belief among Pakistanis that they could effectively unite to oppose Musharraf’s leadership.Item Themes in videogame research : a content analysis of scholarly articles(2010-08) Broussard, Ramona Lindley; Geisler, Gary; Feinberg, MelanieIn trying to provide access to videogame materials for scholars, collecting organizations must build standards for building and structuring collections, and in turn information professionals must assess the information needs of users. In order to begin the assessment, this paper presents a content analysis of scholarly videogame articles. The results of the analysis will provide the basis for structuring videogame archives, libraries, or databases. Metadata schemas are important to access, and to collecting. That metadata will aid patrons is widely accepted, but too often schemas and vocabularies are based on only experts’ opinions without taking into account patrons’ ideas of what is important. To address this dearth, the content analysis presented in this paper combines historical ideas of metadata standards from expert archivists with an analysis of what themes are important, common, and sought for in the literature of videogame scholars, who are the likely users of videogame collections.Item Trust me : how the GOP talked Americans out of trusting(2016-05) Stephens, Maegan Ryan; Jarvis, Sharon E., 1969-; Stroud , Natalie J; Brummett, Barry; Johnson, ThomasPolitical scholars have long viewed trust as central to democratic political systems because people must have it, to some degree, to function together in a civil society. As of 2016, however, it is difficult to find trust anywhere. Guided by framing theory as advanced by Gamson (1992) and Entman (1993), this dissertation complements trust studies by asking a language-based question: “How have elites invited audiences to think about trust?” This longitudinal project assesses elite trust-talk from 1948 – 2012 by using a combination of content analysis (n = 1,990) and thematic analysis. After identifying the prominent frequencies and significant differences within each chapter, I returned to the tokens-in-context to better understand elite frame-building surrounding trust. The themes and sub-themes are organized into four analysis chapters: candidates during campaigns (Chapter 3), presidents during governing moments (Chapter 4), journalists during campaigns (Chapter 5), and journalists during governing moments (Chapter 6). Chapter 3 reveals that candidates (namely Republicans) made trust relational. Conversely, Chapter 4 shows how presidents (again Republicans) led the charge with their institutional trust-talk. The data in Chapter 5 reveals that journalists politicized trust during campaigns and then broaden the narrative during governing moments (Chapter 6). By listening to voices across time and circumstance, I found that Republican politicians offered the public a rather dysfunctional relationship with respect to trust. The media often recirculated the toxic trust-talk and did very little to invite a more secure connection.Item Understanding reactions to advocacy advertising through sentiment analysis(2018-09-05) Jiang, Piaoping; Eastin, Matthew S.This thesis introduces a new measure to evaluate the effectiveness of advocacy advertisements to generate audience sentiment. While more traditional ads focus primarily on products, there is an increasing trend toward ads that focus on advocacy or specific stances related to public policy and political issues. Although they can be topical and attention-getting, advocacy ads also carry inherent risks such as eliciting contention from those with opposite stances and potentially offending members of the existing consumer base. In short, the ads can generate negative, rather than positive audience sentiment. Of further interest related to this phenomenon is the amplification of the resulting sentiment via social media channels. In this study, I use content analysis and audience sentiment analysis, a big data technique of machine learning and natural language processing, to explore online responses to the implicit and explicit messages present in sampled advocacy ads. The study finds that advocacy ads can be a feasible way to communicate the socially responsible aspects of a corporation, but the strategy needs to be conducted properly to arouse positive, rather than negative, sentiment.Item What does money mean? : frames of wealth and economic identity in U.S. politics, 1980-2020(2022-07-28) Park-Ozee, Dakota E.; Jarvis, Sharon E., 1969-; Hart, Roderick P; Stroud, Natalie J; Coe, KevinIn this dissertation, I interrogate the ways political candidates’, elite journalists’, and everyday peoples’ discourses address the U.S. political hierarchy in terms of the role(s) of money in politics and of wealth and wealth-based identities. I am interested in if and how groups in the U.S. use or ignore differences in class and wealth to order who and what is important in our democratic republic. This dissertation focuses on that concern in six chapters. In the first chapter, I overview the historic and contemporary contexts of wealth in the United States, address the place of money in politics, and provide a theoretical framework for the project. In Chapter Two, I present the research design and methodological choices for the three cases that compose my analysis. In the subsequent chapters, I present my results. Chapter Three is an inductive, computer-assisted, quantitative analysis of wealth-based frames promoted by presidential candidates across 40 years of U.S. elections (1980-2020). Chapter Four uses a deductive, human-coded, quantitative content analysis to assess the frames propagated by print and television news organizations across the same period. Chapter Five uses open-ended survey responses from 2020 to inductively and qualitatively examine how the language of everyday individuals frames money and political power. In the closing chapter, I synthesize my findings and compare the wealth-based hierarchies crafted by presidential candidates, elite journalists, and everyday individuals in political and public life in the U.S. In the end, I argue there is a top-down effort to background class-based identities and flatten different socioeconomic experiences to the moniker of middle class, but there is also a ground-up rebuttal to challenge the overdetermining power of money in U.S. political life and use that power to create a moral, equitable democracy.Item Working for the competition : an analysis of the local news pool(2012-05) West, Katharine Elizabeth; Coleman, Renita; Poindexter, Paula; Browning, Larry; Strover, Sharon; Chyi, IrisThe Local News Pool or “LNP” as it’s referred to concerns competing television news stations within a single market forming a cooperative partnership in order to share content such as video and interviews. This study used depth interviews with assignment editors, producers, and photographers in Austin, Texas, Tampa, Florida, and Denver, Colorado, and incorporated a quantitative content analysis of news stories assigned to the LNP in Austin to discover how this convergence model operates, its effects on workers, and the potential for homogenization. This study discovered that by incorporating this convergence model into a newsroom and categorizing certain stories as “shared” it altered the level of importance photographers and producers placed on the story. By these journalists having prior knowledge that the competition might use or have an interest in a certain story, it altered the value placed on it to one of something “extra” or “filler” and not highly desired for the news broadcast. In addition, this study provides an updated look at the multilayer gatekeeping process by incorporating competing organizations within this decision making process. This study found gatekeepers cooperate on stories each find would produce similar content if their station were to send their own crews. The aspect of competition becomes present when gatekeepers request stories not intended for the LNP such as breaking news. The level of cooperation is often based on ratings and perception of one’s willingness to reciprocate if needed.