Date of Award

7-16-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Mass Communication

First Advisor

Dale Zacher

Abstract

The Japanese internment camps of World War II were small communities throughout the United States that utilized camp newspapers to distribute information to residents as any local newspaper. Under the unique operating circumstances, however, limitations were placed upon their operations. This thesis focuses on the Communique/The Denson Tribune and The Rohwer Outpost camp newspapers located at the Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas internment camps respectively. These camp newspapers are evaluated based on their coverage in order to determine which roles of community, prison, and ethnic media were fulfilled, if any. After careful evaluation, the author argues that a limited number of community, prison, and ethnic roles were actually fulfilled due to government oversight and regulation. Additionally, the evaluations showed that these publications possessed the characteristics of prison journalism, which described these publications as merely a sounding board with little influence.

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