“OK Boomer”: Demagogic Discourse and Intergenerational Communication

According to Said, the construction of Orientalism is operated under the mechanism of cultural hegemony -- where the West controls the power of interpretation toward “the Orient”. Researches in the field of international communication also found a similar operation in intermedia agenda-setting: the media of First world set agendas for the media of the Rest. While Taiwan’s media highly depend on foreign wire service on international news stories, it is possible that Taiwan’s three major newspapers are also affected by the international intermedia agenda-setting, and therefore duplicate First World media’s “representation of the Other” when reporting the stories on American government’s justification of sending out troops to Iraq. Through the methods of cross-table statistics on news themes and news sources, the applying critical discourse analysis to futher explore the discourse of “the Other” in Taiwanese newspapers reporting on the eve of the second Iraqi War, this thesis found that three major newspapers’ news agendas are indeed set by certain geo-political areas and certain media, which refers to US media, especially the New York Times and Washington Post when reporting this issue. Under international mass media system, the three major newspapers took the viewpoints that the First world have on Iraq, thinking that Taiwan is at “the same” world system status along with the First world, which regards the Islam as “the Other”. However, the three major newspapers also use a large number of articles by local journalists and correspondents, indicating that Taiwan’s media are also trying to develop autonomous viewpoints toward international affairs, not just receiving the agendas set by the First world.

This thesis examines the contribution made by the U.S. print media to the development of Nelson Mandela's public persona. The period studied is from 1985 to June, 1990. This thesis explores the following questions: 1) How did the public persona of Nelson Mandela evolve in the dominant U.S. print media; 2) How do these stories, in content and form, serve to establish Nelson Mandela as a public hero; 3) What cultural myths structure the news stories of Nelson Mandela that serve as the interpretative framework for public belief and action? Data for analysis were drawn from The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Each newspaper has a daily circulation of over 1 million. It was found that during the period studied, the development of Mandela's public persona occurred in two distinct phases: 1985 to mid-1989 and late 1989 to June, 1990. Analysis reveals that the media relied on narrative form to create an image of Mandela which invites the reader to accept, believe in, and support Mandela and his cause. During these phases the media established Nelson Mandela as a hero and celebrity for their reader audience via a number of rhetorical practices. These include: the introduction of Mandela as a legend and hero among black South Africans; the practice of surrounding Mandela with mythical reference; establishing Mandela as an individual who subscribes to many traditional American values and; the serial reporting of pseudo-events. Implications of the study and suggestions for further research in the areas of textual analysis, policy analysis, and audience analysis are discussed.

This paper investigates the features of the US mass media approaches in creating the image of Hugo Chavez on the eve of the Venezuela 1998 Presidential Elections. The paper studies the historical context, which influenced the creation of Chavez's image. The socio-economic and political development of Venezuela in those days is analyzed. The key traits of Chavez’s image highlighted during the period under study, as well as the emotional background of the publications, are analyzed. Although both the domestic and foreign historiography has paid a most sufficient attention to the history of Venezuela, the biography and political activity of Hugo Chavez, his image as a presidential candidate in the 1998 Venezuela elections remains unexplored. This work aims to fill this gap. The paper systematically examines the materials of the three major US newspapers, namely, the “New York Times”, the “Wall Street Journal”, and the “Los Angeles Times”, published from July to December, 1998. The established methodologies of document analysis and quantitative content analysis are applied. The study leads to the conclusion that the USA mass media created a negative image of Hugo Chavez during the pre-election period, implementing understatements and a negative emotional background in their publications.

Who sets the corporate social responsibility agenda in the news media? Unveiling the agenda-building process of corporations and a monitoring group

This study investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the connotative language used in news articles, leveraging sentiment analysis to gauge shifts in societal attitudes and potential implications for mental health. Utilizing the statistical programming language R, we extracted and analyzed texts from 645 articles published before and during the pandemic by nine authors across three major U.S. newspapers: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and The Washington Post. Employing the AFINN and NRC sentiment lexicons, we observed a statistically significant decrease in sentiment during the pandemic period (p < 0.0001), suggesting a pervasive shift in media discourse. This decline, consistent across newspapers and journalists, highlights the profound impact of the pandemic on societal attitudes, reflecting the pain and stress experienced by many. Such a decline in sentiment can create a negative feedback loop that exacerbates the already significant health and behavioral challenges triggered by the pandemic and its associated mitigation measures. Our findings underscore the value of sentiment analysis and text mining in assessing the effects of high-stress, long-term events on global public health while identifying a gap in the existing literature that prioritizes disease-focused research over holistic well-being. This study highlights the critical role of journalists and leaders in shaping public sentiment during crises, advocating for early recognition of concerning trends. It also offers a valuable framework for future research connecting major events with the overall media sentiment and their subsequent effects on public health.

Dietary Supplements: Ethical Considerations

The Connections puzzle is a word association game published daily by The New York Times (NYT). In this game, players are asked to find groups of four words that are connected by a common theme. While solving a given Connections puzzle requires both semantic knowledge and abstract reasoning, generating novel puzzles additionally requires a form of metacognition: generators must be able to accurately model the downstream reasoning of potential solvers. In this paper, we investigate the ability of the GPT family of Large Language Models (LLMs) to generate challenging and creative word games for human players. We start with an analysis of the word game Connections and the unique challenges it poses as a Procedural Content Generation (PCG) domain. We then propose a method for generating Connections puzzles using LLMs by adapting a Tree of Thoughts (ToT) prompting approach. We evaluate this method by conducting a user study, asking human players to compare AI- against human-generated Connections puzzles. Our findings show that LLMs are capable puzzle creators, and can generate diverse sets of enjoyable, challenging, and creative Connections puzzles as judged by human users.

Triage and the Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Case of Medical Tourism

Purpose This study examines the lexical density of articles from The New York Times (TNYT) and Arab News (AN) , analyzing its impact on the readability and accessibility of content for general audiences, particularly non-native English speakers. It also considers other features affecting readability in these newspapers. Design/methodology/approach The chosen method for lexical density is Ure’s content-to-total word ratio, while readability is calculated with the help of the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level. The analysis involves the use of descriptive statistics and Pearson’s correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between lexical density and readability. A qualitative content analysis is used for in-depth analysis of contextual factors affecting text comprehensibility. The dataset comprises 100 articles: 50 articles from TNYT and 50 articles from AN , between 2022 and 2024 and covered topics related to climate change and the environment. Findings The findings revealed that AN has an average lexical density of 56.54% while TNYT has 57.96%. Nevertheless, the above difference is not statistically significant. In addition, lexical density has a positive correlation (0.6332) with Flesch–Kincaid Grade-Level scores. Therefore, this implies that reading comprehension decreases as lexical density increases. Qualitative findings indicate that AN emphasizes regional adaptation and increased contextual explanations, which can increase comprehensibility for non-native English speakers. Research limitations/implications One of the limitations of this research involves the exploration of two English-language newspapers from Western and Middle-Eastern world regions. This means that the findings cannot accurately reflect the audiences in these two regions. Additionally, this study did not involve the comparison of tolerance thresholds for lexical density among different groups, such as native and non-native English language speakers. In the future, researchers should examine the same topic by considering other Western and Middle-Eastern newspapers that were not covered in this study. In addition, interviews with experts and tests should be administered to compare the impacts of lexical density on comprehensibility between native and non-native English language speakers. Originality/value This research contributes to the knowledge of how lexical density affects readability in Western and non-Western English newspapers. It provides insights for media outlets aiming to enhance content accessibility for diverse, global audiences.

This study employs a multisemiotic approach to analyse various paratextual framing devices in online news texts, including news headlines, photographs and captions, as well as section names. Translated news articles about the 2014 Hong Kong protests were collected from the Chinese-language website of The New York Times (NYT) published between 28 September and 16 December 2014 and their original versions from its English website. The study finds that the Chinese edition mainly frames the events covered in the articles through paratextual rather than textual elements and, through those paratextual elements, a slightly different social reality to their English version for the events was (re)framed. This study underscores the influential role of paratextual devices in news translation, demonstrating how they can subtly shift the framing of events and potentially influence public perception.

For the majority of couples, conception is a process involving the woman’s own eggs and the sperm of her male partner. This makes parental identity, for the most part, straightforward—the woman is the child’s rightful mother and the biological father is the child’s rightful father. However, assisted reproductive technology (ART) has brought new definitions to the term parenthood. The legal sanction of parenthood now extends beyond individuals who pass along their DNA or choose to adopt children—sperm donors, egg donors, and gestational carriers now vie for the title of parental ownership. With the rapid rise in ART, the traditional framework of rightful parentage must be reevaluated, especially when considering sperm donors. The laws on this issue vary across states, and in some states, laws regarding donor sperm are still unclear. Traditionally, a donor of genetic material is not legally considered to be the parent of the child. Specifically in California, the family code does not consider a sperm donor to serve as the parent if he is not married to the woman conceiving. Only if a written agreement exists before the conception of the child can the donor be deemed the legal parent. However, the judicial system is beginning to reconsider who might be the “intended” parents of a child. Case by case, the courts often evaluate the adult who has served as a parent to the child and decide whether or not the individual can be considered the legal guardian. The topic of sperm donation becomes most ethically entangled when discussing non-anonymous sperm donors. A recent case in California sheds light on the intricacies involved in using a non-anonymous donor and his legal rights to the conceived child. Achieving national publicity, this case helped to ignite the introduction of a new bill into California legislation, known as the Modern Family Act. The non-anonymous sperm donor has been struggling to obtain parental right to his biological child, while the mother continues to uphold a strict restraining order and denial of any paternal relationship. The former couple did not form an agreement before the child’s conception and broke up permanently shortly after the birth. Although the son shares a middle name with the father’s familial lineage, and spent a significant amount of time with his biological father during infancy, the mother’s lawyer insists on referring to the father as simply the sperm donor. Anonymous donors make up the vast majority of the more than 30,000 estimated births annually resulting from donated sperm. The California Cryobank, which is the nation’s largest sperm bank, administers less than 10 non-anonymous samples a month out of 2,000 total.[1] Although this is not a large number, the frequency of issues that occur from such donations prove that states would greatly benefit from clear-cut regulations. The aforementioned example, along with many other similar non-anonymous sperm donor cases, raises the question of original intention. Issues with same-sex couples create their own confusion; however, the situation can grow even more complicated when the biological parents were originally in a relationship together, could not conceive naturally, sought ART services, and then later permanently split apart. Situations like this beg the question: what type of relationship did the biological father originally intend to have with the future child when he offered his genetic material? Disagreements and legal battles could be more easily prevented if patients who used a fertility center were required to make these life-altering decisions about their future child before seeking physician assistance. Another way to look at these circumstances would be to consider what it would have been like if the pair could have conceived naturally. If this were possible, then the father would have undoubtedly been both biologically and legally the parent. Is it fair that just because the child was conceived through in-vitro fertilization that the mother can use this condition as leverage to label her former partner as a mere sperm donor? Moreover, it is important to consider the well-being of the child. One would think that denying the child of a father-son relationship gravely affects their upbringing. Fortunately, if California’s new law passes, it will require donors to enter into a formal, written agreement before donating semen for artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization. Along with many other implementations, some more controversial than others, the Modern Family Act would demand that all parties sign a statement of parental intention before any medical procedure can take place. This would eliminate many of the ambiguities infiltrating the tangled web of assisted reproductive medicine and would prevent the hundreds of cases that have already surfaced in courts across the country due to disagreements over child custody. As the modern world reveals, people create their families in different ways. This act would allow people the freedom to safely enter into agreements. California has recognized a need for clarity and regulation within the assisted reproductive realm, and one hopes that they will set a precedent for other states as well. [1] “Does Sperm Donor Mean Dad?” by Brooks Barnes - New York Times.

This dissertation consists of two essays investigating the impact of news released in the financial press on accrual anomaly and earnings management. Sloan (1996) shows earnings announcements to be information events driving the correction process of the mispricing of accruals. The first essay focuses on news released in the financial press as an additional driver of the correction process. Using 83,016 Wall Street Journal news articles from 1993 to 2006, I find that in addition to earnings announcements, news in the financial press also reveals valuable information for the correction of accruals mispricing. Prior studies have documented that the existence of information asymmetry between managers and shareholders creates an information environment conducive to earnings management. In the second essay, I investigate the impact of news coverage on earnings management by classifying news articles into two distinct types of news: earnings-related News (EN) and non-earnings-related news (NEN). Based on 48,972 news items reported in the Wall Street Journal and 32,177 firm-years for firms traded on the NYSE/AMEX/NASDAQ between 1994 and 2004 fiscal-years, I find that NEN is positively related to the degree of information asymmetry, whereas EN is negatively related. More importantly, I find that NEN, which increases information asymmetry, is positively associated with earnings management, while EN, which reduces information asymmetry, is negatively associated. The results also show that these associations of NEN and EN with earnings management are more profound for firms engaging in income-increasing earnings management and for large-size firms. This dissertation improves the understanding of the role of financial press as an information intermediary in capital markets.%%%%%%%%

This paper focuses on two corpora of headlines and subheadings from news articles about the coronavirus, published in China Daily (CD) and in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) between January 7 and February 8, 2020. Applying Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and Systemic Functional Linguistics, particularly the nominalization framework (Halliday, 1997/2004) and Appraisal (Martin & White, 2005), the paper explores how the virus and actions taken against it are framed in the corpora through the use of metaphors, nominalizations, and evaluative language in general. Results highlight similarities in the metaphorical conceptualization of the virus/disease in the corpora, but also key differences in terms of framing. In China Daily , metaphor and nominalization function to frame the situation and the actions taken in mainly positive terms; conversely, in WSJ , the emerging outlook is predominantly pessimistic. The conclusive section takes stock of such differences, also in the light of the socio-cultural contexts in which they are embedded. Finally, remarks are made about the usefulness of the proposed theoretical and methodological approach, the main advantages being the holistic perspective on textual data emerging from the combination of metaphor and nominalization analysis – as the two phenomena often work synergistically – and systematicity brought about by integrating the appraisal framework into metaphor studies. At the textual and contextual level, the relevance of the findings lies in their contribution to a deeper understanding of different national responses, and their media representation, at the onset of the coronavirus crisis.

Iran–US relations – strained at the best of times since the 1979 Iranian revolution – have never been worse than during the past six years, due to the much more intense interaction between the two ...

G E R A L D H A S L A M Sonoma State University Alternative Publishing in the West Small Press Review was founded by Len Fulton in the spring of 1967. The initial issue featured a long tribute to Alan Swallow written by Martha H. Hume, a symbolic linking of the old western small press scene and the new. “Alan Swallow worked night and day. It was not labor, but a con­ tinuing romance with publishing,” wrote Hume. The same could be said about a contemporary western publisher such as Art Cuelho of Seven Buffaloes Press, a farmer who fell in love with letters and who works out of his home, night and day, living on what his books realize plus whatever gainful employment he can find, and who continues scouting for promising writers. Theirs — Swallow’s and Cuelho’s — is a labor of love, a romance in the noblest sense. Despite the overwhelming rise in numbers of alternative publishing outlets, at the core of the movement remain dedicated individuals such as Swallow and Cuelho, John R. Milton, Glena Luschei, Albert F. Gegenheimer , Margaret Hartley, and Marvin Malone, the best of them tough as well as talented, for they must buck seemingly overwhelming financial odds, as well as popular tastes, in their continuing quest for excellence. Nonetheless, it is the very number of alternative publishers that is most astounding. The current issue of Fulton and Ellen Ferber’s The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses is nearly 600 pages long and features over 4000 entries such as: SCREE, Duck Down Press, Kirk Robertson, PO Box 1047, Fallon NV 89406, 702-423-6643. 1973. Poetry, fiction, articles, art, photos, cartoons, interviews, satire, reviews, letters, parts-of-novels, longpoems , collages, concrete art. “Prospective contributors should send 5-7 poems, 1-2 stories, or a sampling of artwork/photos and must include a S.A.S.E. if they want a reply. Interested in: work related to the visual arts — 86 Western American Literature photography, collage, etc.; material from oral traditions; work that speaks strongly of the author’s place — internal or external. Some contributors: A1 Masasrik, Charles Bukowski, Ted Kooser, Charles Potts, Art Cuelho, Charles Plymell, Bern Porter, Wayne Ude, Michael Hogan, Richard Shelton, Bill Fox, Dave Ether, Albert Drake, Tom Clark, etc., etc.” circ. 1M. 2 issues (4#s) /yr. Pub’d 2 issues in 1982; expects 2 issues in 1983, 2 issues in 1984. Sub. price: $8.50 . . . Reporting time: 2 weeks or so. Payment: copies and $ if possible. Copyrighted, reverts to author. Pub’s reviews: 60-100 in 1982. Ads: inquire. CCLM. Despite the growth and considerable vitality of alternative publishing, one occasionally reads in mainstream journals articles such as one that appeared not long ago in The New York Times: “Lit Mags are Revived,” blared the headline, and the story went on to discuss the proposed resur­ rection of The Evergreen Review, a “respectable” literary magazine with establishment support. A headline in The Wall Street Journal — “Nation’s Small Presses Prefer Literary Values to Commercial Success” — was closer to the truth because out in the country, where America really lives, literally thousands of magazines have emerged since the sixties, some to die, others to thrive, evidencing the considerable distance between assumptions about the nature of publishing in America and the reality. Observes James Sallis, “for many years the little magazines were our literary underground; now they are close to becoming our only ground.” “Small presses are the primary access to publishing for most new novelists and poets,” explains Len Randolph, who headed the National Endowment for the Arts’ literature program during the 1970s when alternative publishing burgeoned. “Their contribution to literature can’t be overstated. About 99% of the time this is purely an act of love.” Adds James Camp of Burning Deck Press, “The advantage of a small press is that it will very often take chances. The history of much recent poetry reflects this.” Perhaps an even more telling comment on the state of America’s traditional publishing industry comes from William Abrahams, senior editor at Holt, Rinehart and Winston. “The gulf is widening . . . between the good and serious book aimed at...