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Pope Francis’s 2015 visit to Cuba provided a unique opportunity for a comparative study of state-controlled and independent media systems. This study, grounded in the interpretivist tradition, uses symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis to explore how visuals created by United States-based AP Images, United Kingdom-based Reuters, and Cuba-based Prensa Latina reveal the underlying rhetorical visions, ideologies, and priorities of each culture’s media system. More specifically, state-controlled and independent media depicted the Pope’s visit differently in the degree of personalization shown, the social actors who were depicted, the purpose of the visit, how the Pope was shown in relation to others, and the location where the action occurred. Each media system highlighted its news values and priorities through these differences. Additionally, the images revealed two master narratives: Cuba as a model of Catholicism and the Pope as a model of hierarchy and conformity.

This study analyzes how business and editorial staff members at US newspapers rhetorically construct or deconstruct the metaphoric norm of a wall or line of separation between news and advertising functions. The study is based on 18 in-depth interviews with news and advertising professionals at middle-market US newspapers and the subsequent analysis of their rhetoric about the relationship between the news and advertising sides of their organizations. The study seeks to understand the rhetorical construction of an institutional norm and our observations are focused on the organization level. This study aids understanding of two related phenomena: how institutional norms are rhetorically constructed and how norms are rhetorically renegotiated or deconstructed.

This study offers an ethnographic analysis of the merger of the digitally native news nonprofit the St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio. Researchers observed news work and interviewed journalists before and after the merger, paying close attention to how routines shifted subsequently. Through the lens of gatekeeping theory, researchers discuss how new specialized roles, technical changes, and shifting news judgments affected communication routines, and how journalists did their jobs. These findings are discussed in the context of the ever-changing journalism industry and what this means for future gatekeeping studies.

This study uses the theoretical approach of cultural materialism, suggesting that cultural artifacts such as newspaper articles offer useful documentary evidence of representations and misrepresentations of lived experience. It compares the rhetorical strategies in New York Times news articles, editorials, columns, and advertisements used to frame Japanese-Americans in the first four months following Pearl Harbor with those used to describe Muslim and Arab-Americans following September 11. This research suggests that strategies used to frame these groups as the "Other" encourage the emergence of a specific ideological vision in the news coverage which has cultivated a climate of fear in United States citizens.