This thesis quantifies the volume, type, and tone of images used by the mass-market newsweeklies -- Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report -- to depict Iran and the Iran hostage crisis in an attempt to characterize related media coverage. In four chapters, this study's quantitative approach describes the entire lifecycle of hostage crisis media -- from its creation in Tehran and Washington by news service reporters and Iranian photojournalists, its communication on the pages of the American news magazines, a statistical examination of news media consumption by various strata of American society, and a comparison of the American press and its Arab analogue. This thesis also tests a number of core assumptions about hostage crisis media coverage that dominated the contemporary press and continue to linger in the current historiography, providing a new, more accurate image of the crisis's cultural impact.