• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.32
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• pp.75-111
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to investigate the dependency level of news attributes on the government source and to measure up the impact of news negativity, press ideology, and the conflict level on the forementioned relationship in the context of the prime definer role of the government. The prime definer means that the official source such as the government may dominate media access and create media dependency on the issue and issue attributes. To test the research questions, the content analyses of both the government briefing materials and newspapers were conducted. Textual arguments regarding the new administrative capital were chosen for the analysis. The results showed that the government source played a prime definer role in framing issue attributes of news reporting. This prime definer role was not diminished even among the negative coverage about the chosen topic. However, press ideology and the conflict level influenced the relationship between news attributes and the government-released information in some extent.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.39
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• pp.140-177
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• 2007

The purposes of this study are to analyze how the media reflects the source competition between the activist group and the governmental source in the news contents. Media ideology and the conflict phase also were chosen as situational variables for evaluating how those variables could influence the source competition process. To answer the proposed research questions, the study chose the 'screen quota' issue as a research unit and analyzed documents from three sources, media news, the activist group for maintaining screen quota, and the governmental source during six years and three months. The results showed that the government source played a primary definer role in media reporting related to the screen quota issue, compared to the activist group. The governmental source's primary definer role was maintained against the highly contested social issue while the media ideology, to some degree, leveraged the activist group's comparatively unstable primary definer power. The governmental source's primary definer role was escalated as the conflict phase evolved.