2009: Magisterarbeit von Martin Kuhlmeier „Press Performance of Quality and Tabloid Newspapers during the U.S. Presidential Election 2008“.
The goal of this study was the assessment of press performance of tabloid and quality newspapers in the Presidential Election 2008. The quality of the content produced is only one indi-cator of press performance, yet it is the most crucial one and thus the sole focus of this paper. The following thesis consists of two parts of roughly equal length. The first part consists of a theoretical analysis discussing the components and origins of rivaling news standards and a comprehensive overview of previous studies of diverse but interrelated aspects of news quality. It is followed by an empirical part based on knowledge gained in the literature review, which utilizes quantitative content analysis to evaluate selected aspects of newspaper election coverage. The central objective of this study is to find a comprehensive set of measures that can be employed to study various aspects of election coverage and news quality in tabloid and quality newspapers alike, and to assesses and compare the quality of content of selected American daily newspapers. Further, the coverage of tabloid and quality newspapers will be compared along the lines of how well they performed in covering an election.
The entire study, from the initial stages of the literature research to the final stages of the writ-ing of this report was planned and carried out at Boston University’s College of Communica-tion. All research was conducted from the Mugar and Pardee libraries at Boston University, as well as from the central branch of the Boston Public Library. The project would not have been possible without the gracious support of the DAAD and the IfK Förderverein at TU Dresden.
