Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-1985

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Paul Ashdown

Abstract

The majority of research in the field of international communications concerns news flow rather than specific issues of comparison. This study is a bilingual cross-cultural content analysis of French and American newsmagazines concerning a specific world event, the Falkland Islands War. The study seeks to identify newswriting themes evident within either country's newsmagazine. The top two French newsmagazines and the top two American newsmagazines were investigated in order to test the hypothesis that French newswriting contains themes of political opinion and American newswriting contains themes of sequential events. Every issue of each magazine was examined for a ten-week period to identify three variables: the amount of opinion versus narrative in the newswriting, the kinds of sources used to substantiate the news content, and using the Merrill scale of biases, the types of biases incorporated in the newswriting style.

Findings indicated that French newsmagazines were indeed more opinionated than American newsmagazines. Surprising, however, was the finding that American newsmagazines contained biases that were almost always linked to overemphasis of the United States' role in the Falkland Islands War. Conclusions suggest that the French newsmagazines and the American newsmagazines are intended to serve two divergent roles in their respective countries. French newsmagazines seek to provide a forum for political debate and American newsmagazines try to explain how world events affect Americans. Finally, scholars comparing the news media of various nations must take into consideration those nations' cultural expectations.

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