Browsing by Subject "Mass media"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Communicative Structure and the Emergence of Armed Conflict
    (2008-04-22) Warren, Timothy Camber
    The goal of this dissertation is to provide a logically coherent and empirically grounded account of the relationships between collective communication, collective loyalties, and collective violence. Drawing on research from an array of disciplines, ranging from psychology to economics and sociology, I develop a new theoretical framework that I term "communicative structuralism." The central claim of this framework is that the communicative processes upon which the formation of collective identities and loyalties are based are structurally constrained in systematic ways. More specifically, it claims that public communicative structures, those which transmit synchronized messages and thus generate joint awareness of those messages amongst a collective audience, are central to the development of national, sub-national, and transnational symbolic allegiances because they create communities of shared experience and thereby generate symbolic touchstones which allow individuals to feel connected to a seemingly unified moral community. To test this theory, I collect data on the structural properties of the most prominent public communicative structures in the contemporary state system - those constituted by the mass media networks of newspapers, radios, and televisions - in 177 countries for the period 1945 - 1999. I then use this data to test the implications of the theory at two separate levels of analysis: (1) at the individual level the theory is tested using cross-national survey data on media exposure and state allegiance from over 30,000 respondents in 38 countries, and (2) at the state level the theory is tested using cross-national time-series data on civil conflict, identity fragmentation, and regime stability. I each case, the central finding is that mass media structures are fundamentally involved in generating the conditions for the formation of collective audiences (that is, audiences which are composed of members who are jointly aware of themselves as a collective). The dissertation demonstrates that such collective audiences, when constituted on a national scale by dense public communicative structures (i.e. mass media), make individuals more inclined to feel affective attachments to their country, and reduce the propensity to sociopolitical fragmentation thereby lessening the risk of large-scale civil conflict. In making this demonstration, the dissertation attempts to triangulate through the use of a wide variety of quantitative techniques, including multilevel hierarchical linear models, structural equation models, non-parametric tests of predictive accuracy, Bayesian model averaging, social network analysis, and agent-based computational simulations. I also ground the analysis in careful qualitative process-tracing of the disintegration of the Yugoslavian federation.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Politics, Mass Media, and Policy Change: Recreational Water Rights in Colorado Communities
    (2008-04-02) Crow, Deserai Anderson
    This study looks at the process of local policy change in environmental policy decisions. It employs a comparative case study research design to analyze the creation of a new recreational water right in Colorado to support whitewater boating. It compared the 12 communities that have applied for the new water right to 6 non-adopter communities. Factors including stakeholder groups, citizens, policy entrepreneurs, mass media, policy knowledge, policy timing, and politicians' motivations are analyzed to determine their role in local policy decisions. This research also considers how policy change in local communities promoted new state laws, and was in turn influenced by them. The dataset includes interviews with 75 Colorado water experts and community decision makers, mass media coverage of the policy process, and legal and legislative documentation of the process. These data were then analyzed within cases and across cases to create a model of community policy change. This research found that three elements were present when a community's policies changed regarding the use of natural resources. First, the community was dependent on the resource, either economically or socially. Second, a policy entrepreneur was present to influence the community's decision makers to enact a new policy regarding natural resource use. These policy entrepreneurs were most often experts in water law or management. Finally, the community had access to accurate information regarding the new policy. The case study analysis found that neither mass media coverage of the issue nor citizen participation influenced policy change. This may have occurred primarily because water rights were viewed as a technical detail to be handled by experts. Citizens usually became engaged in the process only after the decision to file for the water right had been made. Similarly, media coverage of recreational water rights was present in most cases only after the policy decision had been made. This study provides an understanding of the processes that communities go through in deciding to change policies to account for new non-consumptive uses and the factors that influence those decisions. This research is not only relevant to water law in Colorado, but also to environmental policy in general.