Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The vast majority of the world initially responded to the September 11th attacks on the US with outpourings of sympathy, condolences and offers of help to catch the perpetrators. On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, popular opposition to the Bush administration's conduct of the War on Terrorism in many of the US's strongest allies replaced much of that earlier sympathy and offers of help. Why? Why, in particular, did this occur in Australia, one of the closest of US allies? One explanation is that the Bush administration mishandled the communicative requirements of the soft power elements of post-Cold War international affairs, which center on the the ability to achieve desired outcomes?through attraction rather than coercion (Nye and Owens, 1996: 21). Soft power and, relatedly, public diplomacy, spotlight empowerment of civil society actors to increasingly pressure their governments, if not participate directly in, world politics due to the global reach of the information revolution. The result is that achieving diplomatic goals today requires cultivating and attracting the support of foreign publics. One pillar of public diplomacy is explaining policy to the foreign press, which then conveys the goals and rationales of that policy to their respective audiences - a seminal step in cultivating and attracting foreign public support. Whether this communicative act succeeds, however, is an open question. The Independent Task Force on Public Diplomacy, sponsored by the Council of Foreign Relations, criticizes US foreign policy communications. By and large, the CFR charges that they are targeted primarily to US audiences and presume a deep understanding of political institutions, political culture and values and fail to link US policies to the political values of other countries. Whether this is a problem depends on the extent to which US foreign policy communications are conveyed in the foreign press. To answer this question we carry out content analyses of Bush's major post-September 11th speeches and of all of the major Australian newspapers. We code each news story for the sentences it directly quotes or paraphrases from Bush's speeches. We then perform regressions to uncover whether the extent to which different Australian presses recounted Bush's statements are a function of the political frame they invoked, if they were a stated fact, a stated decision, used metaphorical language, and if they made use of international wire services.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examined coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in five newspapers based on themes introduced through government press releases. Specifically, it compared the newspaper coverage to the press releases and investigated the role of the releases as information subsidies in the coverage. The findings suggested that the releases were not used as information subsidies in the way the newspapers reported the disasters because there was no connection between information provided by press releases and stories covered by newspapers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: To evaluate the validity of health insurance coverage estimates from surveys, we selected a sample from four health insurance under-writing pools of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and administered a health insurance screener module from the Coordinated State Coverage Survey (CSCS) to 4,500 respondents in the state of Minnesota (AAPOR response rate 4 was 62 percent). The four under-writing pools were Medical Assistance (i.e., Medicaid), seniors (i.e., Medigap policies), commercially insured (both privately purchased and employer sponsored), and Minnesota Care (a Minnesota specific public health insurance program). Our main concern is to examine whether people who have health insurance coverage self-report that they are uninsured and therefore bias our estimate of uninsurance upward. In addition we also attempt to identify the validity of the respondent’s answers to the various types of health insurance coverage survey items. We are interested in whether respondents are able to correctly classify themselves as to whether they are on public coverage (Minnesota Care, Medicare, and Medicaid) or private coverage (commercial insurance that is employer sponsored or privately purchased). Furthermore, we examined whether respondents are able to correctly identify what type of public and private insurance they are covered under. Most surveys of health insurance coverage (e.g., The Current Population Survey Annual Demographic Supplement, the National Survey of America’s Families, and the National Health Interview Survey) ask very specific questions about public programs and the counts from these survey items are used to analyze health policy. Our analysis will shed light on whether this is a valid practice. The implications of our results for health insurance surveys and health policy will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Our study examines media coverage of the legal challenge to a Texas sodomy law known as Lawrence and Garner v. Texas. We use content analysis of newspaper articles and broadcast media programs to explore how media coverage of the case and sodomy laws generally varied over time and by media outlet to determine if that coverage was biased. We assess bias by examining overall coverage and the tone of coverage. Our analysis suggests that media outlets varied in their coverage of the case and that some outlets tended to be more biased in their tone than others. The bias in tone was sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but most outlets were relatively neutral in their coverage of the case. We briefly investigate explanations for variations in media outlet coverage and explore the potential implications of media coverage in the case.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is described as the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in recent US history. But, the tragic loss of life, the extensive damage to property and the destruction of communities have causes deeply rooted in poverty and social inequities. Storm damage data show that flooding in New Orleans disproportionately affected the elderly, African Americans, people who rented homes, the unemployed and the poor. This study uses narrative analysis to examine how the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the New York Times referred to poverty and social inequalities in coverage of post-Katrina New Orleans. The results indicate that issues of poverty and social inequality were largely absent from stories about the disaster. Absent too, were explanations referring to larger social and political issues connecting race, poverty and economic inequalities. Instead, reportage relied on conventional and familiar news narratives to provide dramatic stories of rescue and tragic tales of untold suffering. No clear explanation was provided as to why specific communities were disproportionately affected by the disaster.