Wired words: An analysis of newspaper coverage of the personal computer and the Internet.

摘要

This dissertation employs a frame analysis to analyze two periods in newspaper reporting where the personal computer and the internet were the subjects. This dissertation analyzes the language and metaphors used in construction of frames that emphasized the usefulness of the personal computer. Such frames involved a variety of metaphors which supported the dominant ideology and helped make the introduction of the personal computer, and later, the internet, seem natural and inevitable. In my research I explore the implications of these framing devices and how they helped in the dissemination of the computer into popular consciousness. In my section on further research I suggest that a combination of public journalism and media ecology may help to suggest alternative ways for reporters to analyze new technologies in a more skeptical way, one that acknowledges both the inherent strengths and weaknesses of new technologies as they are assimilated into mainstream society.