Magazine 1999 Abstracts

Magazine Division

The Framing of Saddam Hussein: U.S. Foreign Policy and Coverage of Iraq in Time Magazine, 1979-1998 • Abhinav Aima, Ohio University • This study examined Time magazine’s coverage of Saddam Hussein for the last twenty years. The content analysis checked for the viability of the propaganda model within the framework of a statistically significant change in the nature of framing of Saddam along a corresponding change in U.S. foreign policy. It was found that the propaganda model was viable, with the number of mentions of Saddam increasing dramatically over time, a sharp decrease in the number of references praising him.

Environmental Issue Salience and Advertising: A Content Analysis of Business Week from 1988 to 1992 • Soontae An & Hyun Seung Jin, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This study attempts to measure the relation between the public’s concern over the environment and the presence of environmental advertising. Public concern over environmental issues was measured by compiling the results of monthly national polls, in which similar versions of the question “What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?” were asked. Business Week from 1988 to 1992 was content analyzed to represent the frequency of environmental advertising.

False Hope: A Historical Review of Magazine Coverage of the First Artificial Heart Transplant • Raymond N. Ankney, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper evaluates how magazines framed coverage of the first artificial heart transplant. Articles published in the first month after the transplant framed it as a tremendous success. Articles published during the next three months framed the operation as an unsuccessful, costly medical experiment. Finally, when Clark died after 112 days with the artificial heart, an interesting framing shift occurred. The articles were highly positive and similar to the articles published immediately after the transplant.

The Pursuit of Perfection: A Narrative Analysis of How Women’s Magazines Cover Eating Disorders • Ronald Bishop, Drexel University • Editors at the nation’s top women’s magazines devote only moderate coverage to eating disorders. This paper uses narrative analysis to explore the dominant themes in the 42 feature articles on eating disorders appearing in women’s magazines since 1980, when eating disorders found a recurring spot on the public’s agenda. One of the reasons for the sporadic coverage is the fact that publishers are reluctant to show readers the end-result of overzealous dieting.

Out of Their Hands: Framing and its Impact on Newsmagazine Coverage of Indians and Indian Activism, 1968-79 • Jennifer Bowie, Ohio University • This content analysis identified and described a media frame used by Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report to marginalize Indians and Indian activists from 1968-79. All seventy-eight stories that appeared during this period were analyzed. Activist events set a large portion of the magazines’ agenda. Indians were framed as a violent, militant, and divided out-group. Based on this deviant and illegitimate frame-and on limited survey data.

Education For The Bodybuilder Or Alibi For The Publisher? Sexual Mores In The Weider Muscle Building Course Of The 1950s • Bryan E. Denham, Clemson University • Joe Weider has been involved with bodybuilding since the late 1930s, and today he operates a health and fitness empire in Woodland Hills, California. His organization produces exercise equipment, nutrition supplements, books, and magazines, such as Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Shape and Men’s Fitness. This essay looks back to the 1950s and examines the sexual mores he advanced in a mail-order course designed for young men interested in weightlifting.

The Impact of Larry Flynt: An Overview of One Publisher’s Legal Battles • Amy M. Drittler, Ohio University • This study examines the long and colorful legal history of Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine. The paper focuses on four lawsuits, all appealed to the Supreme Court, involving the publication. Each case set an important precedent, but not every precedent was favorable from a media standpoint. The paper also examines Flynt’s personal influence upon the content in Hustler, and critiques his transformation from self-proclaimed porn king to self-proclaimed civil liberties activist.

Black in a Blonde World: Race and Girls’ Interpretations of the Feminine Ideal in Teen Magazines • Lisa Duke, Florida • Middle-class African American and European American female readers of teen magazines were interviewed for their interpretations of the feminine ideal presented by the texts. Black girls were uninterested in models because their culture values a heavier physique. Grooming advice was similarly seen as specific to White girls, who consequently invest more authority in the magazines’ counsel and images. The magazines are a one-way mirror through which Black girls observe White beauty culture.

The Women’s Liberation Movement, 1969-1972: Did the Graphics and illustrations in Ms. Magazine During the First Year of Publication Reflect or Contradict the Themes of the Movement? • Deborah M. Gross, Florida • During the late 1960s and early 1970s, feminist periodicals were founded to reflect and impact the women’s liberation movement. Ms. magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem, officially began publication in July 1972 and was one of the few feminist magazines that continued to flourish after its debut. This paper explores how the second wave of feminism influenced the portrayals of women in Ms. magazine editorial illustrations and graphics during the first year of publication.

Charles Moore’s Life Magazine Coverage of the Civil Rights Movement, 1958-1965 • John Kaplan, Florida • On September 3, 1958, photographer Charles Moore witnessed an argument between the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and two policemen on the steps of the Montgomery, Alabama courthouse. His picture of the local minister’s subsequent arrest was the first of Moore’s celebrated civil rights pictures to be published in Life Magazine. By 1965, Life had published Moore’s coverage of many of the significant events of the era including the fighting surrounding James Meredith’s admission to the University of Mississippi, the dogs attacking protesters in Birmingham and the savagery of the Selma March.

Brand Extensions Within The Magazine Industry: A Study Of Brand Extensions Of “Shelter” Magazines • Patricia Kinneer, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This exploratory study examines brand extension strategies within home and garden magazines. Findings from a mail survey to the top thirty-three circulation magazines shows that publications extend in order to attain additional revenue by attempting to increase readership and create new avenues for advertisers. Corporate mandates are also a key factor for extensions. Consumer research and new product promotion are key predictors of a brand extension’s success, while extensions fail for a variety of reasons.

Coverage of Major Diseases in Popular African Magazines and Scholarly Medical Journals, as Public-Health Priorities • Cornelius B. Pratt, Zambia and Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce-Southern Africa • This study investigates the frequency and the format of health-related messages and their associated words, metaphors and phrases in four publications distributed widely in sub-Saharan Africa. The coverage of Africa’s five major diseases during a l7-year period (1981-1997) indicated the dominance of HIV/AIDS items, from the early to the mid-1990s; however, its coverage was minuscule in the early 1980s. In aggregate terms, malaria had the second-highest coverage, followed by tuberculosis.

Magazines In The ‘90s: Are They Really Turning Boys Into Girls? • Cheryl Rainford, Drake University • Several authors have recently argued that men’s magazines are becoming more like women’s. This study uses magazine covers and cover blurbs to examine GQ, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue from the 1980s and 1990s to note changes. No trends toward increasing similarity over time were noted. In fact, men’s magazines broadened their range of editorial focus, while women’s narrowed.

Exploring Patterns In Coverage of the Internet by Three U.S. News Magazines • Matthew M. Reavy, Scranton • This study examines coverage of the Internet by three U.S. news magazines, uncovering evidence of a Positive-Negative-Neutral in reporting of the emerging phenomenon. During the initial year of coverage, the magazines devoted more space to overly positive coverage than to overly negative. The percentage of negative coverage rose significantly during the second year. Negative coverage, as a percentage, dropped during the third year, as reporting became more objective.

The Rise of “Good Reading” over “Good Writing”: How and Why Women’s Magazine Fiction Changed in the 1950s and 1960s • Alison M. Rice, Northwestern University • This paper examines the shift from literary to “reader identified” fiction in the women’s magazines of the 1950s and l960s. Rather than analyzing the content as previous scholars have done, however, it seeks to provide the institutional context for these changes in fiction. It does this by drawing upon more than 800 pages of magazine business correspondence written by Wade H. Nichols, Jr., editor-in-chief of Redbook and Good Housekeeping during this time period.

Have Female Stereotypes Changed over Time?: A Longitudinal Analysis of Women in Magazine Photos • Shelly Rodgers, Missouri-Columbia • This study uses a longitudinal approach to measure changes in female stereotypes in newsmagazine photographs. The results indicate a slow but steady increase in the number of females represented in news photos between the 1970s and the 1990s. Likewise, the male-to-female ratio shows a decreasing trend. Improvements in stereotypes were also noted. More females appeared in nonstereotyped than stereotyped roles. And, although more females were stereotyped in terms of the photo topic, females did appear in a wider variety of topics overall.

It Was A Tough Year For The Babe… And Even Tougher For Roger Mans: Combining Interviewing And Content Analysis To Explain Coverage • John P. Smith, Drake University • This paper is an attempt to capture the coverage and characterization in the magazine press of the man Roger Mans, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa were chasing in the 1998 baseball season. How did the newsmagazines cover Roger Mans in 1961, and why did the contemporary record-breaking hitters react so differently to press scrutiny than Mans had? Coverage from both baseball eras is examined in Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report.

Baking a Bigger Pie: How Television Helped Magazines, 1950 to 1970 • David K. Sumner, Ball State University • This article argues that television helped the magazine industry grow. It presents quantitative data showing that both circulation and advertising revenue grew steadily between 1950-1970. It also presents data showing that ad expenditures for all media grew more rapidly the economy, thus creating a larger “advertising pie.” The reason that television helped magazines is because magazines exist only to satisfy various interests. Television exposed people to more ideas, new places and hobbies to be interested in.

<< 1999 Abstracts

Law 1999 Abstracts

Law Division

Shielded by Privilege: A New Layer of Protection for Journalists in Florida • Laurence B. Alexander and Anthony L. Fargo, Florida • In 1998, Florida became the 30th state to enact a shield law to protect journalists from being subpoenaed unnecessarily to disclose information they have compiled in the course of newsgathering. Later in the same year, the state Supreme Court also gave its assistance to the press when it decided in favor of reporters in three separate cases involving the much-litigated issue of protection for nonconfidential information. This research paper reviews the history of the common-law journalist’s privilege in Florida and analyzes the shield law that was created to codify and strengthen the common-law privilege.

Radio Without Radios: Audio Broadcasting And Copyright On The Internet • Timothy E. Bajkiewicz, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • A new type of broadcasting exists online, called streaming or webcasting. FCC-licensed and Internet-only radio broadcasters can deliver music and information via the Web. The copyright issues surrounding streaming are examined as they relate to these stations. Case law in this area has yet to be established, however, two new statutes have redefined how music is considered over digital media and will greatly impact not only online radio, but also the future of digital audio.

News or Nuisance? Regulation of Home Delivery of Free Newspapers • Andy Bechtel • Louisiana State University • This paper examines legal cases involving restrictions on delivery of free newspapers to private residences. Municipalities have attempted to regulate newspaper delivery in a number of ways, such as requiring carriers to apply for licenses or to obtain a government-maintained list of residents who do not wish to receive free newspapers. These regulations, however, often fail the “time, place and manner” test because they are not narrowly drawn.

Actual Malice: When Journalists Behave Badly, Politicians Can Still Win Libel Suits • Ginny Carroll, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • In New York Times V. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court stood traditional libel law on its head and established the doctrine of actual malice. Almost a decade has passed since the Court last visited the concept. Subsequently, although the Court specified that common law malice was not an element of actual malice, lower courts have continued to consider ill will or harmful intent as a key factor in actual malice determinations.

Ban Spam?: Exploring the Legal Issues and Constitutionality of Federal and State Statutes and Bills Regulating Junk Email • Hwi-Man, Chung, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The purpose of this study is to examine the constitutionality of both federal and state bills and statutes regulating unsolicited commercial electronic mail via the Internet. This paper suggests that in genera! federal and state bills and statutes can pass the Central Hudson test if they aim to prevent the ‘cost-shifting’ from advertisers to Consumers. However, this paper also suggests that the privacy protection will not pass the Central Hudson test because the Supreme Court had different rulings about privacy protection.

Liable to be Liable: The News Media, Search Warrants, and the Fourth Amendment • Stacey Cone, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examines an issue currently before the Supreme Court: does the news media’s presence during the execution of search warrants violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The Court’s decision is expected in June, but a turbulent history of case law at the state and federal appellate levels indicates the problematic nature of the issues involved.

Navigating the Channels of Effective Communication: Courts Assess Media Access in Defamation Cases • Constance K. Davis, Iowa • In its 1974 Gertz V. Welch decision, the Supreme Court gave lower courts some vague guidelines to use in determining which plaintiffs were limited-purpose public figures. One way to distinguish between public and private plaintiffs, said Justice Powell, is that public plaintiffs usually have “significantly greater access to the channels of effective communications.” But do they really have that access? This paper explores recent cases and finds that courts have rendered access almost irrelevant.

I Know It When I See It: Should Internet Providers Recognize Copyright Violation When They See It? • Irina Dmitrieva, Florida • The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 created a new standard of knowledge for Internet service providers in copyright infringements suits. The paper argues that in light of the statute’s legislative history, courts should narrowly construe the new knowledge requirement. Otherwise, service providers would have an incentive to restrict more online speech than necessary for enforcing copyright law on the Internet.

In the Wake of R.A.V. v. St. Paul Examining the Predictions and Implementation of a Controversial U.S. Supreme Court Decision in the U.S. Courts of Appeals • Joshua Hylton Godwin, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In 1992, the United States Supreme Court ruled on the controversial case of R.A.V. v. St. Paul. Members of the Court had widely differing reasons for corning to the decision The decision was said to be certain to confuse the lower courts and to weaken First Amendment protections by both justices and legal scholars alike. This paper examines the decision, the predictions made about the implications of R.A.V., and if those predictions have become reality.

“Moral Rights” Versus Amoral Rights, “Fair Dealing” Versus “Fair Use”: A Comparison Of The Copyright Statutes Of Canada And The United States • Laura Hiavach, Indiana University • The Canadian “fair dealing” copyright provision is not as broad as the U.S. “fair use” doctrine, but Canadian “moral rights” provisions are broader. Why do these important distinctions exist? What is the potential impact on these neighbors’ shared intellectual property markets? This paper examines the historical development of the U.S. and Canadian copyright acts and the cultural bases for these differences. These distinctions subtly reflect an international split on how copyrights should be conceived.

Free Speech And The Rule Of Law: Jury Nullification Activists And The First Amendment • Kathleen K. Olson, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Activists intent on informing jurors of their “right” to return a verdict contrary to the facts and/or law have increasingly sparred with judges and court administrators intent on protecting jurors from their message. This paper examines this clash of rights and the First Amendment implications of the restrictions that have been placed on jury nullification activists.

Hidden Cameras, Hidden Microphones: The State Of The Law In The 50 States • Kathleen K. Olson, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper examines the various statutory approaches taken toward eavesdropping and the use of secret recording devices and cameras. Part I addresses the federal interception statute, which governs wiretapping and secret recording and which serves as a model for two thirds of the state statutes. Part II analyzes those statutes, examining both their common features and their unique provisions. Part III examines state laws that specifically address the use of hidden cameras, a common technique of investigative journalism.

Pirate Radio’s Challenge to the FCC: Direct Action and the Judiciary as Tools for Change • Andy Opel, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper examines recent court decisions involving illegal micro radio broadcasting It explores the legal arguments made by the micro broadcasters and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Looking at U.S. v. Dunifer and four other cases, this paper outlines the challenges to current FCC policy and the response of the courts to these challenges. The FCC response to these challenges is explored through a recent notice of proposed rule making for low power FM.

Threats v. Theater: Does Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition Of Life Advocates Signify That Tests For True Threats” Need To Change? • Ashley Packard, Houston-Clear Lake • In a recent and controversial case, Planned Parenthood v. American Coalition of Life Advocates, a Portland, Ore., jury fined a group of abortion protesters $109 million for threatening abortion providers with a Web site and wanted-style posters. The Web site and posters contained no explicit threats, specified no time element and were not directed specifically to the plaintiffs. The case highlights a disparity between theories expressed in Supreme Court cases regarding threatening speech and those applied by the various federal circuits. U.S.

The Myth of Specialness: Why Broadcasting Is Entitled to Full First Amendment Protection • Paul Riismandel, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • In this paper I demonstrate that the principal rationales justifying the curtailment of broadcasters’ First Amendment rights are suppositions, not fact. Scarcity exists only due to governmental allocation and is not an a priori condition of the broadcast spectrum, while the special power of broadcast is a controversial notion that is not proven. Therefore, the First Amendment is best served by increasing broadcast spectrum and protecting broadcasters’ spectrum rights, not regulation of content or access.

The Status of Copyright Law: The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act • Johanna M. Roodenburg, Florida • Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in response to changing technologies impact on copyright law. This paper compares four titles of the DMCA to the copyright case law on digital works and reveals that copyright law already incorporated most of the legal principles embodied in the DMCA. Thus, the DMCA is an example of fine tuning copyright law only enough to implement the WIPO treaties while avoiding issues not yet judicially addressed.

Changing Circumstances, Contexts, and Concepts: Analyzing the Supreme Court’s Use of Public Through a Half-Century of Rulings on Electronic Media • Susan Dente Ross and Julie Andsager • Communication policy rests upon the concept of a public whose interests can be, should be, and are served by government. Yet the concept of public has been criticized as vague, poorly understood, and inconsistently applied by the Supreme Court. This study used a computer assisted content analysis program to analyze the use of the term public within the text of Supreme Court rulings. This method illustrates the highly contextual meaning of public as applied by the Court in its electronic media rulings since the mid-1900s.

The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act Of 1994: Does Congress Have The Constitutional Authority To Override State FOI Laws By Regulating Access To State Driver’s Licenses? • Joey Senat, Oklahoma State University • Seven federal courts have examined the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA). While the conflict between individual informational privacy and public access to millions of government records is at the heart of the statute, its fate more likely depends upon how courts resolve a conflict between the Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment. This research concludes that Congress unconstitutionally commandeered states’ freedom of information policies when it enacted the statute.

Grumbling Barriers to Newsroom Searches: The Erosion of the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 • Dan Shaver, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • The Privacy Protection Act of 1980 was enacted to create barriers to the issuance of warrants for newsroom searches in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Zurcher vs. Stanford Daily decision This study finds that although newsroom searches are not widespread, adverse court rulings, limited sanctions for violations, law enforcement-and sometimes press-ignorance of the law, and Congressional tampering have significantly weakened the intended protections of the Act.

Congress Shall Make No Law Defining Who Is A Journalist • Kathy Sheehan, Washington • Despite the First Amendment, American courts have made case law numerous times defining who qualifies for legal protection as a journalist and who does not. With the explosion of Internet publishing in the 1990s, anyone with a computer and a modem can be a journalist. This paper examines cases, especially with state shield laws, where courts have created definitions for journalists. It also discusses how such definitions might be applied on the Internet and what problems could develop there.

Reno v. ACLU And Its Progeny: Implications For Communication Professionals • Truda Shinker, Ohio University • In Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court’s first encounter with the Internet and an indicator of the medium’s legal future, the Court ruled the Communications Decency Act of 1996 unconstitutional and granted the Internet the broadest possible protection under the First Amendment. In this paper, the author discusses the issues surrounding the Internet, the Communications Decency Act, and the Court rulings in the case, as well as the implications the case has for the future.

To Filter or Not To Filter: The Role of Public Libraries in Determining Internet Access • Barbara H. Smith, Florida • To filter or not to filter-that is the question facing public librarians who must decide if they can legally restrict patrons’ access to “offensive” web sites. The purposes of this paper are to examine the theoretical and practical aspects of blocking Internet content and to analyze the recent federal district court’s ruling that stated a Virginia library’s filtering policy was unconstitutional because it constituted prior restraint, was not narrowly tailored and was overly inclusive.

Dangerous Liaison: Speech in a Climate of Violence • Josie Tullos, SUNY Brockport • It is usually assumed that potentially dangerous speech will be evaluated under standards developed in advocacy cases or “fighting words” cases. Recent decisions involving various types of expression by anti-abortion activists indicate, however, that a different analysis may apply. The law of “true threats” is now being followed in cases involving speech that is not, on its face, a threat. This analysis relies heavily on context and raises questions about what expression is protected under the First Amendment when the context includes a general climate of violence.

Incitement: Hit Men, Hit Lists and Hit Movies • Lorna Veraldi, Florida International University • Recently, a jury awarded $107 million dollars in damages to abortion providers who claimed the posters and Web site of anti-abortion activists constituted a threat. The award seems unlikely to withstand a Constitutional challenge under the narrow incitement test set forth in Brandenburg v. Ohio. However, recent decisions concerning potential liability for “aiding and abetting” violence may signal a change in the court’s willingness to hold speakers accountable for speech that provokes violence.

Make ‘em Laugh: Assessing the Outcome of Actionable Humor Cases Against Intellectual Property and Publicity Right Challenges • Nancy Whitmore, Michigan State University • The degree of First Amendment protection parody, satire, and other forms of humor receive varies with the cause of action applied and type of humor the court determines is at issue in the case. This paper uses a content analysis research design to explore the correlates of the outcomes of cases involving actionable humor and intellectual property and publicity right challenges in order to assess the factors that have a relationship to the disposition of these cases.

Must-Carry: A Flawed Economic Analysis • Nancy Whitmore, Michigan State University • The must-carry rules, which require cable operators to carry the signals of local broadcast television stations, was hailed as a measure that would preserve the economic viability of the local independent broadcaster by unlocking the anticompetitive grip the local cable company placed on access to its system. But in the end, local independent stations became economically viable not because they were guaranteed carriage on a cable system, but because they represented a practical programming outlet for conglomerate firms with large investments in content production.

The Consent Defense in Television News Gathering • Scott D. Wiltsee, Georgia • When television news reporters enter private property or reveal private facts about individuals, they walk a fine line that may ultimately subject them to trespass or other privacy torts. This analysis examines a number of key court cases in which reporters relied on either explicit or implied consent defenses for trespass and privacy violations. These precedents reveal that reporters must remain particularly vigilant, because the success of the consent defense remains a moving target.

<< 1999 Abstracts

International Communication 1999 Abstracts

International Communication Division

Open Competition
Transnational Journalism And The Story Of AIDS/HIV: A Content Analysis Of Wire Service Coverage • Nilanjana R. Bardhan, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • This study links two global phenomena, AIDS/HIV and transnational journalism, and treats them both as dependent variables that intertwine to generate global images of AIDS/HIV. Weaving the concepts of news framing and agenda-setting with global news flow literature, this extensive study analyses the AIDS/HIV news frames of five transnational wire services-the AP, Reuters, AFP, ITAR-TASS and IPS-for the period 1991 to 1997. The strength of this study lies in its global scope. It addresses a global issue from a global platform.

A Distorted Mirror On The World: Photographs In The Los Angeles Times • Christopher E. Beaudoin and Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia • This study examines, via an extensive content analysis, the manner in which the Los Angeles Times covers the world via photography. The study relies on four theoretical frameworks, involving ideologies, personal values, news values, and stereotypes. Although the Times fared well in offering equal coverage of the developing world, focusing on Latin America and Asia, and offering a good mix of topic domains, it slipped up in terms of stereotyping individuals, especially women and non-adults.

Refining The Participatory Approach To Development Communication Through The Public Relations Excellence Model • Dan Berkowitz and Nancy Muturi, Iowa • Theoretical models of development communication have made a transition in recent years from a traditional top-down approach towards a participatory approach where beneficiaries of development efforts provide input for communication programs. This paper interfaces concepts from the recent public relations literature on communication excellence with the central ideas of the participatory approach. The conceptual discussion is then applied to a case study of a women’s reproductive health program in Kenya.

The Impact of Cable Television on Political Campaigns in Taiwan • Peilin Chiu, United Evening News, Taipei, Taiwan and Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted, Florida • This study examined the impact of cable TV on Taiwan’s election campaign strategies, the implications of political affiliation/ownership of cable TV to political campaigns, and cable’s role in Taiwan’s democratization process. The results showed that cable has provided an alternative platform for the opposition parties and encouraged the emergence of rational politics in Taiwan. More campaign media budget has been allocated for this emerging political medium, campaign candidates and staff are taking a pro-active role in expending their cable airtime.

Is the System Down? The Internet and the World Intellectual Property Organization • Dane S. Claussen, Georgia • Gore says Internet is an educational and democratic miracle. But Clinton proposes to WIPO treaties making it looking at copyrighted webpages a violation. Clinton’s rationale: unless copyright is dramatically toughened, artists/authors won’t create. His other rationale: anything received free on the Internet would otherwise be paid for (although little but pornography is now paid for). In contrast, this paper concludes that intellectual property’s domestic issues are unchanged, and related international issues are largely unresolvable.

Praising, Bashing, Passing: Newsmagazine Coverage Of Japan, 1965-1994 • Anne Cooper-Chen, Ohio University • This longitudinal study of Japan, the world’s #2 economic power, analyzed all 290 pieces that Newsweek published during 30 years. Japan was portrayed positively (praised)1965-74, but more negatively (bashed) as Japan grew in power and then in a balanced way after 1985. The study found a decade of inattention 1975-84, followed by a surge of coverage 1988-93, and then a drop (passed) in 1994. In those high-attention years, longer stories and an accentuated linking of the United States to stories about Japan occurred.

Missionary Translation in Colonial Kenya: Groundwork for Nationalism • David N. Dixon, Regent University • Missionaries engaged in massive evangelistic efforts throughout the colonial period in Africa. An important element in their work was publishing, and toward this end they reduced African languages to writing and taught the people to read. Missionary translation, however, had unintended political consequences that reverberate even today. This paper examines two case studies in Kenya, the Friends Africa Mission and the Africa Inland Mission, and explores the political effects of literacy.

Sixty-Five Years of Journalism Education in Latin America • Leonardo Ferreira, Donn J. Tilson and Michael B. Salwen, Miami • This paper reviews the state of journalism education in Latin America. It reports both historical and contemporary developments, noting how events in the region’s past affect the present. This inquiry is based on scholarly and biographical works, documentary materials, personal interviews and data from directories and catalogues. After decades of modernization and critical-oriented approaches, Latin American journalism started shifting away from its neo-Marxist past, even before the end of the Cold War.

Development News?: A Case Study Of The Coverage Of United Nations’ Activities In Somalia • Anita Fleming-Rife, Penn State University • This case study examines the coverage of the United Nations Operation in Somalia during a two-month period in 1993. It examines the coverage, not only in five western newspapers but in the United Nations’ press briefing notes as well. Findings show that the UN briefed the correspondents about development activities, but western correspondents ignored this topic-choosing to focus on conflict instead.

Public Relations Functions and Models: U.S. Practitioners in International Assignments • Alan R. Freitag, North Carolina-Charlotte • Based upon Grunig and Hunt’s four-stage public relations model construct and upon Broom and Dozier’s role classification theory, this research explores approaches taken by U.S. practitioners in international assignments. A survey of PRSA members indicates practitioners stress craft/technician functions in international assignments more than in their U.S. duties. Similarly, respondents favor the press agentry model in international assignments to a greater degree than in U.S.-centered practice, though this publicity-focused model dominates both facets of their practice.

A Cross Cultural Analysis of the Perceived Credibility of Television Reporters • Sarah Kay Happel and Charles A. Lubbers, Kansas State University • This study compares the perceived credibility of television reporters between the United States and Finland. The source credibility theory was tested by comparing female reporters to male reporters when covering a war story, and also when covering a fashion story. There were no sexist attitudes discovered in either country when a female reporter covered a non-traditional topic. However, American men and Finnish women perceived the male fashion reporter as less credible than the female fashion reporter.

The Influence Of Ideological Perspective On Three North American Chinese-Language Newspapers’ Framing Of China’s Resumption Of Sovereignty Over Hong Kong • Jui-Yun Kao and William A. Tillinghast, San Jose State University • This content analysis of the tone and news framing of China’s China Press, the World Journal owned by a Taiwanese news group, and the Sing Tao Daily owned by Hong Kong interests found that newspapers did follow a pro-government stance on the issue of China regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 and that content of the three newspapers differed significantly from each other before and after the return.

Making a Difference: U.S. Press’ Framing of the Kwangju and Tiananmen Pro-democracy Movements • Sung Tae Kim, Indiana University-Bloomington • The purpose of this study is to examine how the New York Times and Washington Post framed two student-led pro-democracy movements in East Asia in 198 Os, Kwangju of South Korea and Tiananmen of China. The findings showed the U.S. elite newspapers used news sources and symbolic terms in an opposite manner to differentiate the two similar international movements. In addition, to detect different news frames concerning national interests and ideological perspectives, the different responses of U.S. government and other potential factors during these two movements were also discussed.

Front Pages Of Taiwan Daily Newspapers 1952-1996 • Ven-hwei Lo and Hsiaomei Wu, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan; Anna Paddon, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • After years of martial law in Taiwan, editors no longer publish under licensing and page restrictions and have had the opportunity during the past ten years to introduce design innovations. Using content analysis, the front pages of three Taiwan dailies were examined for their use of color, graphics, headline styles, modular design and number of stories. To what extent these newspapers, which print characters rather than letters and use vertical rather than horizontal lines of type, have adapted contemporary newspaper design styles is described.

Manifestations of Ethnocentrism in U.S.-Japan Press Coverage • Catherine A. Luther, Tennessee • The purpose of this study was to explore if manifestations of ethnocentrism could be found in U.S.-Japan press coverage. A sample of news items concerning U.S.-Japan relations was selected from the United States’ New York Times and Japan’s Yomuri newspaper. Using attributional biases as indicators of ethnocentrism, each news item was examined to see the types of attributions mentioned in the item. Results showed the presence of ethnocentrism, but mainly in the U.S. news items.

Worthy Versus Unworthy Victims in Bosnia and Croatia, 1991 to 1995: Propaganda Model Application to War Coverage in Two Elite Newspapers • Lawrence A. Luther, Ohio University • A content analysis of news articles in The New York Times and The London Times was conducted. The war in Bosnia and Croatia was divided into three periods of study between 1991 and 1995. Examined were articles that mentioned the perpetrators and victims of ethnic cleansing, and refugees. Results demonstrated that the Serbians were presented as the main group responsible for ethnic cleansing. The Bosnian Muslims were named in almost exclusive terms as the victims.

Interactive Online Journalism At English-Language Web Newspapers In Asia: A Dependency-Theory Analysis • Brian L. Massey, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and Mark R. Levy, Michigan State University • Three different measures of socio-economic development were used in an attempt to account for differences in the degree of interactivity associated with English-language Web newspapers in Asia. A five-dimension conceptualization of interactivity was used, and two hypotheses based on the Dependency Theory of national economic development were tested. A content analysis of 44 Asian Web newspapers showed that interactivity neither decreased regionally, from Asia’s developed center through to its economically peripheral nations, nor sub-regionally.

How Should Development Support Communication Address Power And Control Issues In Third World Development? A Nomological Analysis • S. R. Melkote, Bowling Green State University • This essay is an attempt to sketch a nomological framework for development support communication (DSC). The author defines what he/she believes should be the outcome for research and practice in this field, look at the relationships and differences between constructs, examine the practices or exemplars and explicate the role implications for DSC practitioners in the intervention process. The focal point of this essay is the concept of empowerment.

Split Images: Arab and Asian Political Leaders’ Portraits in Major U.S. News Magazines • Hye-Kyeong Pae, Georgia State University • This study reports how Arab and Asian political leaders are portrayed in news magazines. The content analysis was based not on the space allotted in the magazines but on the feature of language used. The language was primarily categorized by five biases and then was classified by another four biases in terms of degree of favorableness. The results support the contention that news magazines in the U.S. pay more attention to the nations affecting U.S. interests and that there are split images between the allies and non-allies.

Professionalism and African values at The Daily Nation in Kenya • Carol Pauli, Marist College • An survey of 15 journalists at Kenya’s largest independent newspaper finds that they place high importance on such hallmarks of professionalism as willingness to go to jail to protect sources and belief in the value of education (McLeod and Hawley, 1964). It also suggests a journalistic role of “ombudsman/peacemaker,” which is different from American ‘roles (Johnstone, Slawski, and Bowman, 1976; Weaver and Wilhoit, 1986) but consistent with African communitarian values, as suggested by Bourgault (1993).

The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Thailand: From Mass Media Campaigns to Community Interventions • Pim Pisalsarakit and Diana Stover Tillinghast, San Jose State University • The study traces the progress of the HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns in Thailand from 1987 to present. Three campaign phases are examined-the initial mass media campaigns, the multisectorial collaboration campaigns, and the current community mobilization campaigns, which use mass media as a complement to interpersonal interventions at the grassroots level. The paper includes findings from a field study of three community campaigns aimed at modifying the at-risk sexual behavior of students as well as residents of Bangkok’s slum communities.

Human Rights and Press Freedom in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Four-Nation Analysis • Cornelius B. Pratt, Zambia and Evelyn Hone College • The institutionalization of human rights in sub-Saharan Africa is as vital to the region’s search for sustainable development, foreign direct investments, social and economic enterprise and good governance as it is to press freedom. Therefore, this disquisition, among other things, affirms the interplay between human rights and press freedom in four African nations. It argues that the inherent synergy between both will, in the long run, make each to more directly embolden the other.

Can Broadcasting Serve the Public Interest and Diversity Today? A Look at the Political Economic Underpinnings of Broadcast Deregulation in Europe, the U.K and the U.S. • J. A. Rush, Jr., Brigham Young University • In the U.S., the U.K. and Western Europe, the time-honored goals and functions of public service broadcasting are under attack from several quarters. The most prevalent of these is the drive to digitize the system awhile allowing the business demands of the marketplace to determine some issues traditionally reserved for government rules and policy-making. This paper takes a political economic look at some of the reasons and outcomes of global de-regulation of broadcast media.

Problematizing Comparative Studies, Institutional Research Environment and Feminist Perspectives in Japanese Television Drama Discourse • Eva Tsai, Iowa • In this paper I critique three areas of the scholarly discourse that has emerged to describe and explain Japanese television dramas. First, scholars must go beyond cultural comparisons to study Japanese television. Second, the television industry in Japan has directed the course of Japanese television studies. Third, feminist scholarship, in addition to its image analyses of Japanese programs, could add to the discourse by addressing the issue of positionality.

Wag the Press: How Changes in U.S. Foreign Policy Toward China Were Reflected in Prestige Press Coverage of China, 1979 vs. 1997 • Zaigui Wang and Dennis T. Lowry, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • This study used content analysis to compare the news coverage of four U.S. prestige newspapers of the state visits of Chinese Vice-Premier Deng Xiaoping in 1979 and Chinese President Jiang Zemin in 1997. The results showed that news coverage of Deng’s visit (1997) was (a) more favorable, (b) had more coverage of controversial issues, (c) used more ideologically loaded labels in reference to the Chinese government.

International Advertising Strategies in China – A Worldwide Survey of Foreign Advertisers • Jiafei Yin, Central Michigan University • This paper explores how international corporations advertise in China. A worldwide survey of foreign advertisers in China, the first of its kind, was conducted. The study has’ found that the predominant majority of the companies surveyed use the combination strategy, that is, partly standardized and partly localized. Factors that relate to the advertising strategies used in China are the number of subsidiaries, the perceived importance of localizing language and product attributes, and the perceived importance of mostly Chinese cultural values.

Libel Law And Freedom Of The Press In China • Kyu Ho Youm, Arizona State University • In the context of libel law and press freedom in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this paper examines “how the particular rules chosen reflect differing assumptions respecting reputation and a free press” by focusing on the constitutional and statutory status of reputation as an individual interest in China, on the judicial interpretation of Chinese libel law, and on the impact of the libel law on the Chinese press.

TV and the Perception of Crime and Violence Among Greek Adolescents • Thimios Zaharopoulos, Washburn University • This study looks at Greek adolescents’ television viewing and its role in influencing their perception of crime and violence. Greek adolescents accurately perceive the chances of becoming a crime victim is higher in the United States than Greece. Generally, as a group, they give accurate estimates of crime; chances of being victimized; and of the proportion of people working in law enforcement (first-order effects). On first examination, television seems to relate to how heavy viewers, as opposed light viewers, perceive the above issues.

Markham Competition
Coverage of Three Disruptive International Events in U.S. Newspapers • Raymond N. Ankney, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This papers reviews the factors that contributed to U.S. newspapers covering three disruptive international news events. The cross tabulations identified several factors that influenced coverage. First, the higher the newspaper circulation size, the more likely a newspaper was to cover the events. A second factor was the presence of a foreign news editor. A third factor was the presence of an overseas news bureau.

Friend Or Foe? Bertelsmann And Kirch – Two German Media Companies And Their Uneasy Relationship With Regard To Digital Television • Kai Hattendorf, American • In today’s global media market, cooperation between competitors is increasingly common. The paper discusses the attempt by the German-based media companies Bertelsmann and Kirch-Gruppe to jointly develop digital Pay-TV in Germany. It shows as well that in Europe political control mechanisms minimize the power of the market by focusing on the policy of the European Unions Commissioner Karel van Miert.

How 10 American newspapers and the AP covered the world: A content analysis of June 29, 1998, to July 26, 1998 • Beverly Horvit, Missouri • A content analysis of 10 midsize and small U.S. newspapers was conducted for June 29 to July 26, 1998. Their international coverage was compared with The Associated Press’. The study showed the newspapers devoted a smaller percentage of their coverage to the Americas than did the AP; seven published a higher percentage from Western Europe. The newspapers ran about 6-11 international items – many briefs – a day, while AP offered about 48 items daily.

This Game is Brought to You Commercial-free: A Comparative Analysis of World Cup Soccer Television Coverage in Germany and the U.S. • Christian Kaschuba, Washington • This study analyzes “commercial elements” (advertising and sponsoring) in the television coverage of the 1998 Soccer World Cup in Germany and the United States. Hence, it compares coverage by non-commercial, public service broadcasters (ARD and ZDF in Germany) with commercial, i.e. profit-seeking, enterprises (Disney’s ABC and ESPN in the U.S.). The results of a content analysis clearly show that the coverage by ABC and ESPN in the U.S. is far more commercialized than the coverage by their German counterparts.

The Framing of Globalization in the First and Third Worlds: A Case of the Asian Economic Crisis and the IMF Rescue • Sung Tae Kim and Krista Kathleen Eissfeldt, Indiana University-Bloomington • This is a comparative study aimed at detecting ‘globalized’ news frames in major newspapers and newsmagazines published in the United States and South Korea. A content analysis was conducted of news coverage concerning the recent Asian financial crisis and the subsequent IMF bailout. Our findings are discussed with reference to cultural imperialism theory. Overall, we found that globalized news frames do exist in news stories, as evidenced by an unquestioning acceptance of neoliberalism, the imposition of blame on debtor-nations and traces of a “mentality of austerity” cultivated in media of the developing world.

Getting Neighbor’s News from “Monsters” living Thousand Miles Away? International News Flow among Asian Countries in the Internet Age • Yong-Chan Kim, Southern California • The present study examined whether the Internet affects the relationship between global news suppliers and local news organizations in Asia. This research critically reviewed the Malone’s “electronic market hypothesis”: the network technology will reduce transaction cost for interorganizational relations and the cost reduction will transform the hierarchically structured relations to market-type one. According to the interviews with 15 Asian journalists, the Internet is more likely to reinforce the current hierarchical relationship between the major Western news agencies and local news media in Asia.

A New Era of Freedom Latin American and Caribbean News Media Confront the Challenges of the 21st Century • Kris Kodrich, Indiana University • The news media in Latin America and the Caribbean have a tremendous opportunity in the 21st Century. Because of a new era of democracy in the region, the media have unprecedented amounts of freedom. They also are becoming more ethical, professional and technologically advanced. But the media also face incredible challenges. The region’s economies are teetering, and too many people are poor, hungry, sick and uneducated. Government restrictions are nowadays more legal than lethal.

National Interest and Coverage of U.S.-China Relations: A Content Analysis of The New York Times & People’s Daily 1987-1996 • Xigen Li, Michigan State University • This study tested the effect of national interest on the coverage of U.S.-China relations by The New York Times and People’s Daily. It examined the relationship between extramedia variables and the news coverage, and the relationship between national interest emphasis in the news coverage and the references to trade and non-trade political issues. The findings support the proposition that national interest affects the coverage of U.S.-China relations both in The New York Times and People’s Daily.

Songs of Freedom: A Communications Approach to the Study of Mau Mau Rebellion • Samuel Chege Mwangi, Iowa • This paper proposes a new way of conducting international Communication research in societies where illiteracy is high. It examines the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and how music was used as a form of communication. It compares the songs against existing text books on the Mau Mau and makes the case that events as recorded in the music are corroborated in the books and therefore this is a credible and innovative way of conducting research.

Participatory Communication in a High School Setting: Lessons Learned and Development Alternatives from a Development Communication Project in Colombia • Rafael Obregon • The past two decades have witnessed an Increasing tendency to emphasize community participation as a key component in development programs. Development communication scholars and practitioners view participation as a crucial element in communication-related projects. Yet, the literature often highlights big scale projects that require high investments, often sponsored and implemented by international organizations without giving similar attention to small-scale, low-cost programs based on community participation approaches.

The Presidential Candidates In Political Cartoons: A Reflection Of Cultural Differences Between The United States And Korea • Jongmin Park and Sungwook Shim, Missouri-Columbia • This study examines the content of political newspaper comics in presidential elections to compare the culture of the United States and Korea from three perspectives: (1) the context of communication, (2) individualism vs. collectivism, and (3) confrontation. It finds a clear difference between candidate images in the cartoons of America and Korea. These three dimensions were good indicators of cultural differences between Western and Asian society.

Media Of The World And World Of The Media: A Crossnational Study Of The Ranking Of The “Top 10 World Events” From 1988 To 1998 • Zixue Tai, Minnesota • This paper studies the ranking of the top 10 world events from 1988 to 1998 by 11 media representing eight countries and examines the similarities as well as differences between/across media and nations. Findings indicate that all media display bias of their own in their ranking of the top world events and are myopic to those stories that are culturally, geographically and psychologically close. Media from the same national setting show strikingly similar patterns in their evaluations of world news.

Chilean Conversations: On-line forum participants discuss the detention of Augusto Pinochet • Eliza Tanner, Wisconsin-Madison • More than a thousand people participated in an on-line discussion of the October 1998 London detention of Chile’s ex-dictator and actual senator-for-life Augusto Pinochet. This textual analysis of 1670 letters shows that participants in the Spanish-language forum of La Tercera en Internet created and interacted in a virtual space that was important to them. Forum participants saw this communication as essential to the Chilean reconciliation process and a way to strengthen civic life.

Giving Peace a Chance? Agenda-building influence of Nobel Peace Prize announcements in U.S. newsmagazines, 1990-1997 • Michelle M. Tedford, Ohio University • This study found no support for an agenda-building influence in U.S. newsmagazines by the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement of Peace Prize winners. Stories about the winners were measured for the two years surrounding each announcement since the end of the Cold War. Those not already considered news makers before the announcement received little coverage after the announcement. In stories announcing the winners, greater space was devoted to those already on the news agenda.

<< 1999 Abstracts

History 1999 Abstracts

History Division

In Search of African-American Identity: A Comparison of the Early Black Press with the Oral Tradition • Bill Anderson, Georgia • The early black press was first designated by historians as exclusively abolitionist newspapers. Later historians argued that the early black press covered more diverse issues than just slavery. This paper argues that these diverse issues, when examined through the class prism, further understanding of the early black press as an exclusive vehicle for middle-class, elite, issues.

The Roots of Academic News Research: Tobias Peucer’s De relationibus novellis (1690) • R.A. Atwood, Idaho and A.S. de Beer, Potchefstroom University, South Africa • Probably the first graduate study of news reporting was a doctoral dissertation, De Relationibus Novellis (On News Reporting), written in Germany in 1690. A history and analysis of 17th century news reporting, it anticipated major themes of news research not fully explored until the latter half of the present century. Peucer’s research contributes to our understanding of early news reporting and offers scholarly insights still relevant today.

An Editor’s office is a Thankless One: Reassessing the Journalism Career of John Brown Russwurm • Carl Patrick Burrowes, Howard • John Brown Russwurm (Oct. 1, 1799-June 9, 1851) is well known for his role as Co-founder of Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American newspaper This paper examines his life after the Journal. It also challenges four claims made by historians regarding his tenure as editor of Freedom’s Journal. These myths regarding Russwurm have remained unchallenged due to an uncritical reliance on abolitionist sources, as well as a failure to transcend certain logical fallacies.

Journalism Revolution or Evolution?: The Bangor Daily Whig & Courier Covers the American Civil War • Crompton B. Burton, Ohio • While significant research has been conducted chronicling the experience of major metropolitan dailies during the Civil War, little exploration of the challenges and practices of less well-known newspapers has been produced. Exploits of famed correspondents and their editors at the New York Tribune, The New York Times, Baltimore American, Boston Journal and even the Cincinnati Commercial are well-documented suggesting the conflict ignited a revolution in American journalism. While this may hold for more established and noteworthy newspapers of the day, it is not symbolic of the entire press experience during the war.

Not Likely Sent: The Remington-Hearst ‘Telegrams’ • W. Joseph Campbell, American University • This paper examines the purported exchange of telegrams between Frederic Remington and William Randolph Hearst in 1897, in which the latter is said to have promised, “I’ll furnish the war.” The paper concludes it is exceedingly unlikely that the messages were ever sent, and discusses several reasons why. Among those reasons is that the sole original source of the colorful anecdote, James Creelman, only could have learned about it second hand. Moreover, Hearst’s pithy reply to Remington appears uncharacteristic of Hearst’s telegrams.

The Embryo, Birth, and Renaissance of Advertising in China: A Historical and Institutional Analysis of Its Seedbed • Hong Cheng, Bradley University • Seeing advertising as a social communication, this paper examines the social forces that have influenced and shaped the growth of advertising in China. Taking historical and institutional approaches, it provides an in-depth review and analysis of the embryo of Chinese advertising in distant history, its birth early this century, and its renaissance since 1979. This study strongly supports that only a properly functioning market economy can be a fertile seedbed for advertising.

Peggy Charren: A Bohemian Activist • Naeemah Clark, Florida • This paper is one in a series dealing with the history of the regulation of children’s educational television. The series begins in 1968 and ends in the early 1990s. For this paper, biographical information of Peggy Charren, founder of advocacy group Action for Children’s Television is used to depict the early days of the organization and the grass roots efforts to change children’s television regulation. This paper uses Federal Communication Commission information materials from magazines and industry publications in order to gather the correct information for the research.

The Shameful Delay: Newspapers’ Recruitment of Minorities Employees, 1968-1978 • Lori Demo, North Carolina • Ten years after the Kerner Commission admonished the nation’s media for being “shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring, training, and promoting Negroes,” the American Society of Newspaper Editors adopt its Year 2000 goal, which called for minority employment in newspapers newsrooms to mirror the US. population by the year 2000. This paper explores why it took editors ten years to make a definite and public commitment to racial parity.

Political Elites, the Press, and Race Relations: Insights From the Late Nineteenth Century • David Domke, Washington • In public discourse about race relations, social and political actors interact with the press with the goal of shaping the picture of social reality accepted by policy-makers and citizens. In a departure from research focusing on how elites shape news coverage, this research examines what policy-makers do – in a strategic sense- with discourse about race in news media. Evidence linking press content and/or journalists’ comments about race with advocacy by elites of certain legislative policies would be suggestive of how mass communication has been “used” in public discussion about race relations.

Passion And Reason: Mississippi Newspaper Writings Of The Secession Crisis, 1860-1861 • Nancy McKenzie, Loyola University • For 130 years, historians and writers have presented a view that pro-secession forces achieved hegemony in the South just before the Civil War. However, an examination of the newspapers of Mississippi, the second states to secede, shows a lively discussion on what course the state should take in response to Abraham Lincoln’s election. Although the state had its share of fire-eating, pro-secessionist editors, it also featured other editors who advocated alternatives to immediate secession.

The Naked Truth: Gender, Race, and Nudity in Life, 1937 • Dolores Flamiano, North Carolina • The establishment of Life magazine in 1936 marked a turning point in the history of photojournalism. Henry R. Luce’s weekly picture magazine was an important source of visual communication before television, providing news and entertainment for millions of Americans. Lift is best known for its contributions to the news-oriented photographic essay, but it also provided plenty of frivolous fare. For example, a cheesecake feature called “How to Undress” created controversy in 1937 and continues to raise questions about photojournalism’s affinity for sex and sensation.

The Big, Not-So-Bad Wolf: Cultivating A New Media Image • Richard Gross, Missouri • The author examines historical literature regarding the wolf’s negative image in Europe and America. Using the cultivation theory of media effects, which considers exposures over time, the author examines recent periodical writing about the wolf. The author discusses the more favorable recent print media imagery, particularly in most areas where wolves were reintroduced. The author concludes that continued favorable imagery may cultivate a more balanced view of the animal vis-à-vis humankind.

Launching the Radio Church, 1921-1940 • Tona J. Hangen, Brandeis University • This essay explores the struggle among religious groups for access to the radio airwaves for religious broadcasting from 1921 to 1940, and the broader context of that struggle: a deepening divide between modernism and fundamentalism, the ongoing debate over religion’s role in democracy, and the commercialization of radio itself. An examination of various religious groups and their radio strategies sheds new light on radio’s cultural impact in its first two decades.

The Forgotten Battles: Congressional Hearings on Television Violence in the 1950s • Keisha L. Hoerrner, Louisiana State University • Although Congress has been interested in television violence for over four decades, little scholarly attention focuses on its first actions. This paper looks at the 1952, 1954, and 1955 hearings, which laid the foundation for every subsequent congressional hearing on the issue as well as legislation passed in the 1990s. The paper utilizes historical methodology as well as legal analysis to expand the discussion beyond a simple summary of these first-yet so important-hearings.

Mediated U.S. Foreign Policy Rationales in the Cold War’s Early Years • Emily Erickson Hoff, Alabama• Historians and political scientists have generally portrayed the first decade of the Cold War as one in which virtually all foreign policies were based on the goal of “containing” the Communist threat to democracy. Was this period so simple? Traditionally, there have been other forces driving American foreign policy-from mundane economic self-interest to the rather heady notion of “manifest destiny.” Were these buried in the threat of nuclear war and Communist imperialism, or could careful analysis yield more foreign policy rationales than simply those pertaining to containment?

Making a Pitch for Equality: Wendell Smith and His Crusade to Integrate Baseball • Chris Lamb, College of Charleston • Pittsburgh Courier sports editor Wendell Smith has been called the most talented and influential of the black journalists” of the 1930s and 1940s. In his personal crusade to end baseball’s color barrier, he not only wrote emotionally about the need to integrate the national pastime, he worked behind-the-scenes with progressive baseball executives such as Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey, who ended segregated baseball by signing Jackie Robinson. Ultimately, Smith became Robinson’s confidante and biographer.

John Miller: A Forgotten Soldier in the Fight for Freedom of the Press • Patricia G. McNeely, South Carolina • This paper is a study of John Miller, printer of at least six major London newspapers, who was caught up in freedom-of-press battles in England between 1770 and 1783. This paper examines Miller’s role as one of the principal characters in five cases involving freedom of the press in England and his subsequent efforts to begin a new career in America where he established the third daily newspaper in the new republic.

Ruth Gruber, Arctic Journalist, Carves a Northwest Passage Through the Ice of the Red Scare, With Coverage of Alaska and Soviet Russia • Beverly G. Merrick, New Mexico State University • Ruth Gruber was a lecturer, journalist and foreign correspondent who was fascinated with other cultures and whose operative word was brotherhood. In 1935, at the age of 23, she became the first foreign correspondent, male or female, to obtain permission to enter the Soviet Arctic and the Gulag during Stalin’s iron-fisted presidency, interviewing party members in Moscow and reporting on the frontier of the Soviet outposts. Gruber obtained the Arctic assignment through a traveling fellowship awarded her by the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs.

The East Coast vs. Middle America: Cultural Geography, Authoritarian-Populism and Early PBS • Laurie-Rutgers Ouellette, Rutgers • In 1972, Richard Nixon vetoed an important funding bill for the newly-operational U.S. public television service. While provoked by the politics of a few PBS programs, the Nixon White House expressed its opposition in cultural and geographical terms that spoke to the resentments of local affiliates and the “silent majority.” Nixon’s advisors formulated an “authoritarian-populist” discourse that aligned the president’s vision for public television with Middle America against a “liberal East Coast aristocracy.”

Ambivalent Colleagues Of the Kansas Black Press: B.K. Bruce And S.W. Jones, 1890-1898 • Aleen J. Ratzlaff, Florida • In the late-nineteenth century, black editors were influential in shaping public opinion through their newspapers, which acted as unifying mechanisms to draw their readers together by providing a particular point of view about events, topics, and issues. This study examined newspapers edited by Blanche K. Bruce of Leavenworth and Samuel W. Jones of Wichita. The journalists’ ideological positions and differing backgrounds affected how their newspapers addressed political advocacy, racial uplift, and lynching.

Charles Osborn, Elihu Embree and the Tennessee Manumission Society: How Pioneers of the Abolitionist Movement Conceptualized Free Speech • Amy L. Reynolds, Miami University-Ohio • This paper details the abolitionists’ early reliance on and views about free speech rights by focusing on one of the earliest abolitionist societies, two of its members and the first abolitionist newspapers. Specifically, this paper focuses on the importance of the Tennessee Manumission Society, founding member Charles Osborn, and Elihu Embree, a prominent member of the Tennessee society who published the first abolitionist newspaper (Manumission Intelligencer in 1819) and subsequently published the Emancipator in 1820.

Exotic Americana: The French-Language Magazines Of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans • Sam G. Riley, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University • Listed and described in this paper are 42 non-newspaper periodicals that were published in French during the 1800s in this most exotic of American cities. These magazines are separated into the following categories: miscellanies, humor and satire, medical, literature and the arts, club organs, women’s, and other. Attention is given to how these periodicals fit into the social history of their city.

“Tuning” the Wireless World from 1906-1912: The Six Turbulent Years it Took to Solidify the Berlin Proposals in London • Darrell L. Roe, Marist College • The nations attending the Second International Conference on Wireless Telegraphy in Berlin, 1906, strove for cooperation and standardization of maritime radio protocols. The United States delayed approving the resolutions because of political disputes. Nevertheless, the validity of the Berlin concerns was soon borne out by frequent shipping disasters which influenced the framing of the U.S. Wireless Ship Act of 1910 and led to the revival of the 1906 concerns at the Third International Conference in London in 1912.

The Pre-Brown Black Press in the 20th Century: A Historiographical Exploration • Wim Roefs, South Carolina • From the 1920s to the 1940s, the black press came of age in terms of circulation, exposure and professionalism. Still, the amount of research about the black press in these decades is remarkably limited, both in terms of volume and the degree to which it systematically explores issues such as the press’s general development, role, content, and influence. This historiographical paper discusses the treatment of these issues in the literature while identifying unexplored questions.

Sex Could Sell A Lot Of Soap: Popular Formulas Of Magazine Advertisements, 1920-1929 • Juliann Sivulka, Bowling Green State University • Although various critiques of advertising have emerged over the years, useful studies of “critical” methods to analyze the “meanings” of advertisements are remarkably few. This study of advertising history, then, illustrates how formula can be used as a method to examine advertisements in a social-historical context. Like popular entertainment, formulaic conventions are also present in advertising, and ads can be analyzed in similar terms of story formula • settings, plot, characters, theme, and props.

What’s a Fish Among Friends? Victorian Cartoonists Mock a Two Century Old Border Dispute • David R. Spencer, Western Ontario • From almost the beginning Canada and the United States have enjoyed friendly international relations. However, among all good friends disputes arise. One, over fishing rights in the waters shared by these two nations, has been continuous since 1783. These disputes impacted on both nations as they tried to find their respective places in North America during the turbulent and expansive l9th century. Canadian-American relationships dominated the pages of Canada’s newest press, the literary and humour magazines.

Fighting for the Rights of American Labor • Rodger Streitmatter, American University • The earliest labor newspaper published in America appeared during the late 1820s with the beginnings of industrialization. This paper looks at three of those newspapers, the Mechanic’s Free Press (1828-31) in Philadelphia and the Free Enquirer (1828-35) and Working Man’s Advocate (1829-49) in New York City. Based largely on the content of the three publications, this paper identifies and discusses some of the major issues of concern to the early labor press.

President Nixon’s China Initiative: A Publicly Prepared Surprise • Zixue Tai, Minnesota • President Nixon’s announcement to normalize relations with China on July 15, 1971 took the world by surprise and marked a dramatic turning point in U.S. media coverage of China. The media were caught unprepared and generally deplored the lack of information about Nixon’s moves in U.S. policy shifts toward China prior to the sudden announcement. However, Nixon himself called his China initiative “one of the most publicly prepared surprises in history.”

Humbug, P.T. Barnum and Batmen on the Moon: Editorial Discussion of the Moon Hoax of 1835 • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois University • The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 is presented in journalism history texts as a colorful newspaper fraud that caused little comment among readers and editorial writers. But the moon hoax has more to teach us about journalism standards of the day when examined within the context of the anti-slavery movement and the rise of the flamboyant promotional genius of P.T. Barnum. This paper examines letters to the editor and editorials before, during, and after the hoax in four leading New York City daily newspapers.

Designing Difference: Business Concerns and Turn-of-the-Century New York Newspaper Buildings • Thorin Tritter, Columbia • In the period between 1890 and 1905 New York City’s newspapers began to move away from the traditional newspaper center on Park Row. This paper explores the motivations for this shift and the architecture of the buildings that resulted. It argues that the decentralization of the industry was not only due to the growth of the city but also due to changes in the way news was produced and marketed.

Communicating With the Folk: Mark Twain’s Journalistic Storytelling • Betty Houchin Winfield, Missouri and Cathy M. Jackson, Norfolk State • If ever one writer had his work analyzed, that person is lark Twain. Scholars have long noted Twain’s uses of folklore in his fiction. Yet, few studies have examined his journalism for the language of the “folk”. This paper attempts to marry orality to narratology through Twain’s journalistic techniques of folklore. As the consummate nineteenth century storyteller, Twain’s journalism offers a clue to his national success and later writings.

<< 1999 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology 1999 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology Division

Re-thinking the Role of Information in Diffusion Theory: An Historical Analysis With an Empirical Test • Eric Abbott and J. Paul Yarbrough, Iowa State University • The 1930-1960 period, during which much of communication theory began to develop, was a time of “rediscovery” of the group-the idea that the group serves as the interface between the individual and society. In the case of diffusion theory, this rediscovery engendered a “dominant paradigm” focusing on group processes interpersonal communication, and influence-informed by a spurt in empirical research and several new conceptual leaps-that shaped and was itself influenced by researchers whose funding base and interests were practical and applied.

Pleasant Company And The Construction Of Girlhood: Cultural Studies Theory And Methodology, A Case Study • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Georgia

Young Adults’ Processing of Messages in Alcohol-Related Public Service Announcements and Advertising • Julie L. Andsager, Erica Weintraub Austin and Bruce E. Pinkleton, Washington State University • This study’s purpose is to determine how a primary audience for anti-drinking public service announcements and advertisements evaluates those messages. Evaluations of 246 college-age respondents to 10 alcohol-related ads and PSAs produced differences in quantitative and qualitative responses. Results indicated that perceived realism is an important factor in PSAs’ persuasiveness. Respondents rated PSAs as more realistic than ads, but questioned their realism and relevance. More research is needed regarding young adults’ processing of persuasive messages.

The Operationalization Of “Political Knowledge” In Communication And Political Science Research • Raymond N. Ankney, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Few studies examine what the construct “political knowledge” actually means and how it should be measured. This paper reviews the operationalization of political knowledge in scholarly research over the past eight years. One hypothesis was that even though the political knowledge questions are used to measure how effectively the media transmit political information, researchers will rarely use a content analysis or review news stories to develop the knowledge questions. This hypothesis was supported.

The Media and Smoking: Predicting Attitudes and Norms in the Theory of Reasoned Action • Michael Antecol, Stanford, Esther Thorson, Missouri and Andrew Mendelson, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville • In this paper, we examined how exposure and attention to different mass media predict attitudes and norms that individuals have regarding smoking. It is our belief that the mass media play a pivotal role in creating individual attitudes and subjective norms regarding smoking. The results showed that, while neither the news media attention variable nor the PSA attention variable predicted attitudes and norms, these two variables did interact in an unexpected, yet consistent way.

The Relationship of Parental Reinforcement of Media Messages to College Students’ Alcohol-Related Behaviors, Age of Experimentation and Beliefs About Alcohol • Erica Weintraub Austin and Yin Ju Chen, Washington State University • Alcohol consumption is a problem on the college campus, but beliefs and behaviors predictive of alcohol use are in development in children as young as third grade and develop partially in response to interpretations of media messages, for which parents can have an influence. As a result. this study examined whether college students’ recollections of parental reinforcement of media messages were associated with alcohol-related beliefs and behaviors. Recalled positive mediation was negatively associated with skepticism, and positively associated with desirability and expectancies.

In the Public’s Interest or Interesting to the Public? • Clyde H. Bently, Oregon • The concept of what constitute “news” is basic to journalism. Nevertheless, there is little consensus about who “owns” the definition-the journalist or the audience. This paper explores the literature on the definition of news, outlining a schism between those who believe news is information provided to the audience in the public’s best interest and those who believe news is information the audience finds interesting and useful.

Don’t Look At Me! Third-person Effects and TV Violence • Lois A. Boynton, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper assesses the role of third-person effects-how people overestimate influences mass communications have on others-on attitudes toward television violence. A statewide poll measured respondents’ estimated impacts of television violence and investigated demographic and sociopolitical factors that shape people’s attitudes and reaction toward television violence. Results indicate that people perceive a greater degree of influence on others than themselves; discriminant analysis of third-vs. first-person effects did not yield conclusive findings.

An Efficacy Model of Electoral Campaigns: The 1996 Presidential Election • Mahoud A.M. Braima, Southern and A&M, Thomas J. Johnson and Jayanthi Sothirajah, Southern Illinois-Carbondale • This study developed and empirically tested a conceptual model of political efficacy during an electoral campaign. We used structural equations to simultaneously assess 12 causal links between campaign interest, political news exposure, political ads exposure, internal and external efficacy, political participation and voting intention. Data from a survey of 362 adult residents of Pulaski County in Arkansas provided support for the hypotheses that campaign interest leads to exposure to information-rich sources which, in turn, political efficacy.

Attention To Counter-Attitudinal Messages In Tile 1998 Election Campaign • Steven Chaffee, Melissa Nichols Saphir, Joseph Graf, Christian Sandvig and Kyu Sup Hahn, Stanford University • Attention to counter-attitudinal political messages is worthy of study even though previous research following the “selective exposure” model has focused on avoidance of such messages. Surveys of youth (N = 417) and parents (N = 432) examine attention to newspaper, television and Web messages about candidates. While there is slightly more attention to consistent messages, forms of political involvement (knowledge, curiosity, discussion) that predict consistent attention also predict counter-attitudinal attention.

Forestry Referendum and the Press in Oregon: The Role of Demographics, Attitudes and Priming in Voting Behavior • Kuang-Kuo Chang, Michigan State • The role of demographics, environmental attitudes, political attitudes, communication channels and priming effect in voting behavior regarding Oregon’s defeated forestry regulation, proposed to ban clear-cutting and pesticide use by the logging industry, is investigated using content analysis and two-stage regression. The research revealed that age, in addition to media use and interpersonal communication, is a strong predictor for the priming effect and certain voting behavior. But, individuals’ long-held environmental attitude was the greatest indicator for voting decision.

The Influence Of Mass Media And Other Culprits On The Projection Of Personal Opinion • Cindy T. Christen and Albert C. Gunther, Wisconsin-Madison • The study reported here analyzed the relative predictive power of four theoretical models that have been widely and variously tested as explanations for the projection bias – the tendency for people to see others’ opinions as much like their own. Our analysis focused particularly on audience processing of information in mass media, and in doing so we proposed a revision of the standard logical information processing model. We tested this set of hypotheses using data from a random telephone sample of over 600 U.S. residents who answered opinion items about four current science, environment and health issues.

News Media, Racial Perceptions, And Political Cognition • David Domke, Kelley McCoy, and Marcos Torres, Washington • This study examines the linkages among news media, racial perceptions, and citizens’ political cognitions. We theorize that news coverage of political issues not only influences people’s thinking about the issue, but also activates associated racial or ethnic stereotypes held by individuals and then influences whether these perceptions are applied in politically meaningful ways, such as in the formation of issue positions or evaluations about whether certain political, economic, or legal outcomes are positive for U.S. society.

Impact of Order on the Third-person Effect • Michel Dupagne and Michael B. Salwen, Miami and Bryant Paul, California-Santa Barbara • A nationwide telephone survey was conducted to investigate the impact of question order on the. perceptual and behavioral hypotheses of the third-person effect. Key questions included estimated effects of media issues on self, perceived effects on others, and support for restrictions on the media. Four question-order conditions (restrictions-others-self, restrictions-self-others, others-self-restrictions, self-others-restrictions) were tested with three issues (television violence, televised trials, and negative political advertising). In line with past research, the order of the self, others, and restrictions questions did not affect the perceptual hypothesis.

The Third-Person Effect and the Hierarchy of Communication Effects: The Perceived Persuasive Power of Public Relations • Martin Eichholz, Syracuse University • This study is the first to link the third-person effect with theories of hierarchical communication effects and to use the public relations domain to test the third-person effect. Results of a regional telephone survey (n=368) support the notion that people perceive others to be more strongly affected by public relations messages than themselves. while the perceived effects of public relations on self follow the traditional communication effects hierarchy, the perceived effects of public relations on others follow an alternative sequence.

The Power of the Story: Narrative Analysis As A Tool For Studying The News • Christopher Hanson, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper discusses how narrative analysis – a branch of rhetorical study that focuses on story lines and why they resonate – can best be applied to the analysis of news reports. The paper surveys several strands of narrative analysis, including mythic study, which posits that some modern story-lines resonate powerfully because they evoke the plot-lines of ancient myths. It describes how each of these strands can provide insights into the power and resonance of news texts.

The Third-Person Effect: Social Cognition or Academic Creation? • Yu-Wei Hu, National Taiwan Normal University • While most studies of the third-person effect assumed that people naturally think about the influence of media while they are exposed to media presentations, this study provides evidence to show that this assumption may not always be true. Some individuals may have never considered the impact of media on others until researchers ask them to make a judgment. In this case, their third-person perception is actually an elicited social comparison rather than a spontaneous social cognition.

A Reconceptualization Of Cultivation As A “Good Theory” With Help From The “Thin Ideal” • LeeAnn Kahlor, Bradley W. Gorham and Eileen Gilligan, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper tries to argue for a refinement of cultivation based on critiques lodged against it for the past 30 years. If a reconceptualization, including an acknowledgment of varying content and psychological processing, for example, can be considered, cultivation could fit into the realm of “good theory.” The “thin ideal” is used as a model case for applying this broadened approach to cultivation as a working, explanatory theory.

Setting the Proximity Frame: Distance as an Affective Attribute in Reporting Terrorism Events • Kenneth Killebrew, South Florida • This research examined proximity as an element at the second or attribute level of agenda setting theory. Using two nations, the United States and Great Britain, the study examined potential correlations between distance and how stories were reported. VBPro, a verbatim text computer analysis program, was used successfully in identifying and counting selected terms for observation. While the hypotheses were not confirmed, there were findings that are encouraging for future studies on affective attributes.

Opinion Expression As A Rational Behavior • Sei-Hill Kim, Cornell • This study understands individuals’ opinion expressions as a rational behavior based on a conscious calculus of expected benefits and costs. The influences of “issue benefit”; “opinion congruence”; and “issue knowledge”, as sources of benefits and costs, on opinion expression were hypothesized and tested. This study also examined the interaction effects of those factors and the types of opinion expression. For the tests, 171 university students were surveyed in 1997 regarding their willingness to express opinions on the issue of “doctor-assisted suicide.”

Looking Beyond Job Approval: How Media Coverage of the Monica Lewinsky Scandal Influenced Public Opinion of the Presidency • Spiro Kiousis, Texas • Last year’s Executive scandal involving Monica Lewinsky perplexed many media experts because a story of such magnitude would normally be expected to heavily sway public opinion of the presidency, yet most media accounts described minimal fluctuations. Anchored in agenda setting, priming, and the elaboration likelihood model of attitude change, the purpose of this paper was to, over time, trace and compare media coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal to public opinion of the presidency.

Does Media Publicity Matter? An Analysis of the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis across Issues with Differential Degrees of Media Publicity • Nojin Kwak, Wisconsin-Madison • This study was an attempt to analyze the role of differential degree of media publicity in the knowledge gap phenomena, and has investigated three main issues: (1) whether differential levels of media publicity influence the education-based knowledge gap; (2) whether the extent of publicity given to issues results in a differential relationship between education and motivation in the context of the knowledge gap hypothesis; and (3) whether differential effects of newspaper news use and television news use on the education-based knowledge gap vary across issues with different levels of media publicity.

Emotional Experience and Physiological Arousal During Violent Video Game Playing: Gender, Experience, and Presence Matter • Annie Lang, Indiana University; Edd Schneider, Instructional Systems Technology and Rick Deitz, Indiana University • This paper examines the effects of action required by the game, gender, and experience on violent video game players strategic, physiological and emotional responses. Results show that playing violent video games is a positive, arousing, and dominant activity. Experience increases dominance and decreases arousal. Gender has no effect on dimensional emotional experience. When comparing types of action (hunt, see, fight, kill) results show physiological arousal increases over game playing for fighting and decreases for hunting.

Contesting “Lie Significance Of A Global Media Event: The Case Of Hong Kong’s Handover • Chin-Chuan Lee, Minnesota and Joseph Man Chan, Zhongdang Pan, and Clement Y. K. So, Chinese University of Hong Kong • The world media had expected to cover Hong Kong’s handover with various constructed scenarios of major conflicts that did not happen. The media spectacle became as important as the event itself. Hong Kong’s handover, as a media event, was treated as a coronation. The journalistic community could only try to “hype” the event as if to make up for deficiency in conflict, drama and theatricality. International news discourse, however, represents ideological contestation over the significance of nationalism versus colonialism, democracy versus authoritarianism, and capitalism versus socialism.

Personal Involvement as a Mediating Variable in the Agenda-setting Process • Yulian Li, Minnesota • This study examines personal involvement as a mediating variable that affects the agenda-setting effect. It content analyzes both newspaper and television coverage of obtrusive and unobtrusive issues and finds a dichotic phenomenon: Newspapers, with their verbal information, tend to have a stronger agenda-setting effect on people with a high level of personal involvement, while television, with its visual images, tends to have stronger influence on those with a low level of personal involvement.

How Sexual Strategies Theory, Gender, and the Third-Person Effect, Explain Attitudes About Pornography • Ven-hwei Lo, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, and Anna Paddon, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • The inter-relationship of the factors that influence attitudes in support of restrictions on pornography are explored using third-person effects theory and sexual strategies theory, which contrasts the sexual pairing behaviors of males and females. From survey data of Taiwan high school students a model was constructed depicting these relationships. All subjects perceived pornography to have greater negative influence on others than on themselves, but females had a lower level of past exposure to pornography and perceived greater negative effects of it on themselves and others.

Behind The Third-Person Effect: How People Generate Media Impact Assessments And Link Them To Support For Censorship • Douglas McLeod, Delaware, Benjamin H. Detenber, Nanyang and William P. Eveland, Jr., California-Santa Barbara • This study investigated factors related to two types of judgments that make up the third-person perception: media effects on others and effects on self Specifically, separate regression path models revealed that estimates of effects on others are based on a relatively naive schema for media effects that is similar to the “magic bullet” model of media effects (i.e., more exposure leads to greater effects). On the other hand, assessing effects on self involves a more complex, conditional effects model.

Understanding Community: A Closer Look at the Categorization and Complexity of Citizens’ Understanding of Community • Jack M. McLeod, Dietram A. Scheufele, Jessica Hicks, Nojin Kwak, Weiwu Zhang and R. Lance Holbert, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper explicates individual-level perceptions of community and their role in communicatory and participatory processes. A strong emphasis is based on a meaning analysis of the construct that we label “understanding of community,” including both the breadth and depth of people’s understanding of community. We also differentiate this more individual-level, cognitive variable from more objective, structural links that individuals have to their communities. In a second step, we explicate measures of different dimensions of understanding of community.

Mass and Interpersonal Communication Effects On Public Deliberation • Patricia Moy, Washington • This study examines the extent to which engagement in the public deliberation process is influenced by three distinct groups of antecedents: demographics, interpersonal influences, and mass communication. Analyses of data from a Midwestern city (n=416) indicate that demographics exert no influence. The diversity of one’s discussion network and political discussion enhanced the likelihood of engaging in public deliberation, and the only media effect to emerge was for newspaper reading. Implications for civic journalism and democracy are discussed.

Influence of Political Campaign Advertising • Michael Pfau, R. Lance Holbert, Erin Alison Szabo and Kelly Kaminski, Wisconsin-Madison • Spending on soft-money-sponsored issue advocacy advertising has grown dramatically in recent years and, in some campaigns, now approaches levels of candidate-sponsored advertising. However, the question of the influence of soft-money-sponsored issue advocacy advertising on the electorate or its indirect influence on democratic processes has received scant attention in political communication research. This investigation examined the influence of soft-money-sponsored issue advocacy advertising in House and Senate campaigns, comparing its effects with candidate-sponsored positive and negative advertising on candidate preferences and matters intrinsic to democratic processes.

Sounds Exciting! !: The Effects of Auditory Complexity on Listeners’ Attitudes and Memory for Radio Promotional Announcements • Robert F. Potter and Coy Callison, Alabama • This experiment tested the ability of a limited-capacity model of cognition to predict listener reactions to changes in the structural complexity of radio promotional announcements. Past research shows that certain auditory structural features cause listeners to automatically allocate cognitive resources to message encoding. This study shows that increasing the number of such features in promos leads to better recognition, free recall, delayed free recall, and more positive attitudes about promos and the stations that produce them.

Opinion Leadership And Social Capital The Role Of Dispositional And Informational Variables In The Production Of Civic Participation • Dietram A. Scheufele and Dhavan V. Shah, Wisconsin-Madison • In recent years, a number of scholars has bemoaned declining levels of social trust and civic engagement in our society. A decline in trust, some have argued, is reciprocally linked to a decrease in civic engagement and vice versa. Our study examines the processes through which social capital is maintained. We differentiate three dimensions of social capital: social trust, life satisfaction, and civic engagement. Further, we examine the influence of demographic variables, opinion leadership, political interest, and informational variables on these dimensions of social capital.

A Systematic Approach To Analyzing The Structure Of News Texts • Michael Schmierbach, Wisconsin-Madison • Despite increasing research examining media texts, there is no systematic approach to news discourse. This paper considers some of the issues raised by work in framing and discourse analysis and then suggests a systematic approach to analyzing media texts – such an approach could provide data that would be more useful for the development of theories about how the structure of news discourse influences audiences, authors and the texts themselves.

The Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Gun Control: Framing Campaign Issues and Voter Decision-Making Strategies • Dhavan V. Shah, Wisconsin-Madison, David Domke, Washington and Daniel B. Wackman, Minnesota • This study examined the relationships among cognitive and affective media frames of gun control, voters’ interpretations of this issue as well as their emotional arousal about it, and patterns of decision-making. Subjects were presented newspaper articles about a simulated election contest and asked to make a candidate choice. Within issue environments containing candidate stands on four issues, the textual frame of a single issue, gun control, was altered within a 2 x 2 design.

Does Social Accountability Ameliorate Television’s Effects on Social Reality? • Michael A. Shapiro, Cornell University • The meaning of relationships between television viewing and social reality estimates continues to be controversial. Less attention has been paid to whether television’s putative distortions of social reality influence real-world decision making. Many, if not most, decisions are made in a social environment in which people feel somehow accountable to others. In an experiment, shopping mall participants who anticipated discussing their social reality answers with an expert whose viewpoint was uncertain or an expert who believed that people usually overestimate, gave lower social reality estimates than participants assured their answers were completely private.

The Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model: A Framework for Theoretical Development in Persuasion and Message Effects • Michael D. Slater, Colorado State University • This paper overviews the Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model, and reviews recent research supportive of the theory’s claims. The Extended ELM argues that involvement should be conceptualized in terms of message recipient’s goals in processing the message and the resulting processing strategies. Based on this premise, propositions about processing of persuasive content across message genres including entertainment narrative, news, and persuasive messages have been articulated and tested.

When Evaluation Design Affects Results: Meta-Analysis of Evaluations of Mediated Health Communication Campaigns • Leslie B. Snyder and Mark A. Hamilton, Connecticut • To examine how methodological choices and artifacts of evaluations affect the likelihood of detecting health behavior changes in media campaigns, we meta-analyzed 48 mediated health campaigns. Effect sizes were greater when evaluations maintained experimental control, used a cross-sectional sample, measured close to the end of the campaign, and used more equivalent intervention and control communities. Using a self-selected sample inflated effect sizes. The results are useful for evaluators and researchers to understand the precise impact of methodological factors.

Cognitive Filtration of Crime and Violence News • Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia and Michael Antecol, Stanford University • The study examines the impact of news media consumption and attention on knowledge of and attitudes concerning crime and violence. Crime and violence coverage in news is argued misrepresent reality in a variety of ways. The more people watch local television news and read a local newspaper, the more they overestimate the occurrence of violent crime, the more they fear victimization by crime, the less likely they are to know crime has decreased in their city, and the more they support punitive and reject preventive solutions to crime.

Challenging the ‘Mobilization Model’ of Agenda Setting • John Bentley Zibluk, Arkansas State University • Agenda-setting researchers often assume an underlying “mobilization model” of mass communication in which citizens supply story ideas to media outlets. The resulting stories serve as catalysts for change in politics and society. However, in the last decade some studies have questioned that model. By revealing who influences or controls the agenda presented to the readers of three small daily newspapers in Northwest Ohio regarding local school coverage, this paper examines that model.

<< 1999 Abstracts

Communication Technology and Policy 1999 Abstracts

Communication Technology and Policy Division

Blind Spots of the Communications Decency Act Debate: A Critique of Jeffersonian Free Speech • Misook Baek, Iowa • This paper criticizes that cyber civil liberty groups in the Communications Decency Act (CDA) debate only paid attention to government censorship, ignoring pervasive market-based constraints on free speech and public interests. Then, the paper reveals that these groups held profoundly different political philosophies of and policy strategies for free speech and universal service (access), although they held the same view that universal service, as well as, free speech, is essential in democratizing new technologies.

Free Air Time for Candidates: An Attempt to Improve Political Discourse • Douglas Bailey, Ohio • Many Americans think the costs of campaigns are increasing at an alarming rate. One proposed solution to the perceived problem of the money-chase is free air time provided by broadcasters. This paper begins with an historical perspective of political advertising and campaign finance laws. Then, the arguments pro and con are examined followed by some recent proposals. Lastly, a look at recent free air time experiments points out some of the benefits and weaknesses.

Comprehension and Recall of Internet News: A Quantitative Study of Web Page Design • D. Leigh Berry, Louisiana State • This experimental study examined the effects of multimedia on internet news readers. Subjects viewed one of two versions of the same Web site-one with multimedia and one without. Dependent variables were comprehension, recall, and response to site. Findings did not support a significant difference in comprehension, recall, or response arising from presence or absence of multimedia. Comprehension and recall with regard to items such as current events knowledge, gender, and advertisements are also discussed.

Computer-Mediated Communication in Education: Student Perspectives • Amy Nelson Bosley and Michael A. Mitrook, Central Florida • Colleges and universities are adopting computer-mediated communication (CMC) into the classroom with unprecedented speed without questioning the end-user, the student, as to its efficacy. A series of focus groups was conducted to gain insight into the ways students are using and perceiving CMC in the classroom. Several key CMC issues were identified across the focus groups, including student/faculty relationships, components of successful classes, levels of skill and access to computer equipment.

An On-line Study of the Uses and Gratifications of Internet Pornography • Ryan J. Burns, Oklahoma • Despite the controversy over Internet pornography, relatively little is known about users and patterns of consumption of Internet pornography. This research investigated individuals consumption of Internet pornography, the types of Internet pornography consumed, and reasons for consumption. Data for this research were obtained from an on-line survey of 231 consumers of Internet pornography. Statistical results revealed that individuals did not consume different amounts of Internet pornography compared to traditional pornography; they favored the consumption of hardcore rather than softcore Internet pornography.

Internet Use and Issue Knowledge of the College-Age Population • Alice P. Chan, Cornell and Teresa Mastin, Middle Tennessee State • This paper reports on the findings of a study aimed at investigating how college-age young adults use the Internet, as well as the extend to which this new medium affects students’ knowledge levels of issues particularly salient to their age group. Our survey of 496 university students show that the Internet is a consulted information source, complements other selected mediated and interpersonal information sources, and does affect issue knowledge.

David Meets Goliath: Portland, Oregon, Takes on AT&T-TCI over High-speed Internet Access • Constance K. Davis, Iowa • In June 1998 AT&T and TCI announced plans to merge. Nearly 1/4 of the 4,000 communities in which TCI holds a cable franchise were required to approve the franchise transfer to AT&T. All of the communities approved the transfer – except Portland, Oregon. It required nondiscriminatory access for ISPs to provide high-speed Internet access through cable modems. AT&T sued Portland, claiming it had no authority to require that access. Portland may, indeed, have that authority.

Examining Information Processing on the World Wide Web Using Think Aloud Protocols • William P. Eveland, Jr., California-Santa Barbara and Sharon Dunwoody, Wisconsin • A substantial literature indicates that whether or not learning takes place depends on how information is processed. Theorists have argued that the Web encourages individuals to process information efficiently and effectively, producing meaningful learning; however, critics have claimed that Web navigation often results in disorientation and thus can inhibit learning. This study examined the processing of information conveyed via the Web, using think aloud protocols and a newly-developed quantitative coding scheme based on existing theory.

Telecommunications for Rural Community Development: The Effects of Community Projects on Attitudes and Adoption Among Community Members • C. Ann Hollifield, Georgia and Joseph Donnermeyer, Gwen Wolford, and Robert Agunga, Ohio State • In the mid-1990s, rural communities began investing in local telecommunications development projects. This study examines the effects of two of those projects on resident’s attitudes towards, and adoption of, new technologies as compared to residents of control communities. Results show the projects have had some effects. However, differences in adoption were not significant, raising questions about whether investments in such projects are justified. Residents of project communities did, however, have significantly more positive attitudes towards new technologies.

Japanese Television Broadcast Policy-Making Analysis: From Analog to Digital 1987-1997 • Tsutomu Kanayama, Sophia University, Tokyo • This paper has chosen to examine the way Japan came to make the transition from analog to digital standards in terrestrial and satellite broadcasting from 1987 to 1997, an earth-shaking decade for Japan’s broadcast industry. Particularly, this study is to investigate political actors involved for the policy-making processes which affected television broadcasting based on the central question of who were the most influential actors.

Broadening the Boundaries of Interactivity: A Concept Explication • Spiro Kiousis, Texas • The use of interactivity as a variable in empirical investigations has dramatically increased with the emergence of new communication channels such as the World Wide Web. Though many scholars have employed the concept in analyses, theoretical definitions are exceedingly scattered and incoherent. Accordingly, the purpose of this project is to engender a detailed explication of interactivity that could bring some consensus about how the concept should be theoretically and operationally defined.

Privacy in the Information Age: A Socially Learned Concept • Linlin Ku, National Taiwan University, Taipei • This study focuses on the attitudes of college students toward privacy. Questionnaires were distributed among students from four colleges in northern Taiwan, and a total of 319 completed questionnaires was returned. The research findings show that the respondents were most concerned about telephone privacy. Most disagreed that the government could wiretap telephone or intercept e-mail messages for various reasons. Women were more concerned about information regarding private matters or their body, whereas men were more concerned about information regarding finance.

Privacy, Security and Intellectual Property: Proprietary Interests over the Internet • Laurie Thomas Lee, Nebraska-Lincoln • The Internet presents a kind of tradeoff between incredible gains in economic, political, and social opportunities, and corresponding losses in privacy and intellectual property rights. While it offers exciting new ways to communicate and collect, market, and deliver information, some of the online information is considered proprietary. Who has the right to access, collect, use, and exploit this online, digital material? This paper provides a useful overview of the online issues and policies associated with privacy, security, and intellectual property rights on the Internet.

The Effects of Three Different Computer Texts on Readers Recall • Moon J. Lee, Mary Ann Ferguson and Matthew C. Tedder, Florida • This study investigated the effects of three different computer texts on readers’ recall based on working memory capacity, risk-taking tendencies, and hypertext familiarity and knowledge. The results varied by gender. There was a significant text format effect on the male subjects’ recall but not on the female subjects’ recall. The subjects’ risk-taking tendencies were shown as significant factors for the males’ recall while the working memory capacity (reading span) was a significant indicator for the females’ recall.

Tracing the Evolution of Interactive Media and Funding Models through the Trade Press • Sally J. McMillan, Tennessee • Analysis of a five-year sample of trade publications suggests interactive media and funding models are stabilizing but still diverse. Sixteen types of interactive media were identified, but the World Wide Web has become dominant. Five funding models were analyzed. Advertiser Support dominates the advertising trade press, User Fees are the primary model in the computer/telecommunication press, and more than half of all broadcasting/publishing articles mention multiple funding models.

Credibility and Journalism on the Internet: How Online Newspapers Handle Errors and Corrections • Berlinda Nadarajan, Stanford and Ang Penghwa, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore • The Internet, with its speed and unlimited capacity, poses several challenges for journalism-in particular, the issues of how to ensure accuracy and reliability of information, and whether the online medium might require certain journalistic practices to be redefined or modified. This paper examines how online newspapers are applying correction policies to the digital environment and the problems that arise, with the aim of pointing to issues that need to be addressed in online editorial policy.

Adoption of Audio Information Services in the United States • Kimberly A. Neuendorf, David Atkin and Leo W. Jeffres, Cleveland State • Ongoing deregulatory measure, such as the Telecommunication Act of 1996, should hasten the arrival of telephony as a dominant player in the electronic media environment. This paper outlines adopter characteristics for audiotext broadly defined to encompass such vehicles as most 1-900 systems, many 1-800 numbers and related audio-information services.

The Virtual Sphere: The Internet as a Public Sphere • Zizi Papacharissi, Texas • The Internet and its surrounding technologies are frequently touted for their potential to revive the public sphere. Several aspects of these new technologies simultaneously curtail and augment their ability to transform the public sphere. First, the information storage and retrieval capabilities of net-based technologies do infuse political discussion with facts otherwise unavailable, however, information access is not universal and equal to all. Second, net-based technologies do enable discussion between people on far sides of the globe, but also frequently fragmentize political discourse.

Creating Cable Television: Technology, Policy and the Development of the Cable-Satellite Distribution System • Patrick R. Parsons, Penn State • This paper examines the development of the cable-satellite distribution system through the 1960s and 1970s. While typically acknowledged as an important step in the evolution of the modern telecommunications network, the story has never been adequately told. While filling a gap in the narrative history, the examination also offers lessons concerning the interaction of technology, regulation, and economics, the relationship of influential individuals to established social conditions, and the incremental nature of technological change.

Son of CDA: Will the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 meet Constitutional Muster? • Johanna M. Roodenburg, Florida • Congress has recently passed a second law to regulate on-line speech. Although arguably more narrowly tailored than the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) still suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive. This paper compares the two laws and finds that while there are slight differences between the two laws, the differences are insignificant compared to the COPA’s remaining constitutional defects.

Toward a Typology of Internet Users and Online Privacy Concerns • Kim Bartel Sheehan, Oregon • Americans overwhelmingly report that they are concerned about their privacy online, yet online commerce continues to grow and few users report any incidence of privacy invasion online. Privacy has always been considered situational, the contextual nature of the Internet enhances its complexity. This is explored using a national sample of online consumers. A previously-developed tripartite typology of consumers and their approaches to privacy is used to examine online users privacy concern.

Do They Need a “Trick” to Make Us Click? • David Thompson, Columbia Daily Tribune and Birgit Wassmuth, Missouri-Columbia • A new form of online banner advertising is emerging. It uses “tricks” to generate clicks. This paper defines the term “Trick Banner,” introduces two main types of trick banner ads (verbal and visual), and creates eight categories of visual trick banners (fake pulldown menu, fake keyword search, fake horizontal scroll bar, fake vertical scroll bar, fake play button, fake error message, fake forced choice, and redundant button). A pilot study of the use of visual trick banners by online newspapers is summarized.

Media Convergence on the Internet • Mark Tremayne, Wisconsin • This study involved an examination of 14 national news web sites in 1997 and 1998. Print sites initially presented more stories and used more interactive features than broadcast company web sites, while the broadcast sites made greater use of nonlinear storytelling. The longitudinal study found print and broadcast sites converging on the number of front page stories and on the use of interactive features. Print and broadcast web sites were found to be diverging on the use of hypertext links.

The Effects of National Policy Initiatives on ICT Adoption: A Taiwanese Perspective • Eunice Hsiao-hui Wang, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan • Increasing the pervasive adoption of ICT has been strongly emphasized by most East Asian countries. This paper examines the effects of Taiwan’s policy initiatives on ICT adoption and applications. The top management of respondent firms evaluated building telecommunications infrastructure as the most effective ICT policy measure. Further, the importance of upgrading human resources in Taiwanese enterprises was confirmed by the respondent organizations, as another greatly effective national policy measure.

Blurring Public and Private Behaviors in Public Space: Policy Challenges in the Use and Improper Use of the Cellular Mobile Telephone • Ran WEI and Louis Leung, Chinese University, Hong Kong • This study examines issues arising from the popular social use of the cellular mobile telephone. Findings of a general survey show that the use of mobile telephones has gained tremendous social popularity. Improper uses of the mobile telephone in public places were on the rise. Complaints of respondents focused on the “loud talk,” the “ringing,” and the “widespread discourteous uses” that blurred the boundary between public and private behaviors. “Self-discipline” was the favored solution.

FCC Policy Considerations in the Development of Advanced Television, 1987-1997 • Scott D. Wiltsee, Georgia • Much of the discussion surrounding advanced television has focused on the technological innovation involved. However, the interest in ATV in the United States has not been strictly technological. This analysis examines the history of U.S. efforts to develop standards between 1987 and 1997. It attempts to identify reasons for ATV’s high-priority status in government, broadcasting, and manufacturing circles. In addition, it identifies some of the major debates that have threatened to block the technology’s development.

Killing Physicians with Fighting Words: A Free-Speech Challenge to Internet Community Building • Terry L. Wimmer, North Carolina • A February 1999, decision by a federal court jury in Oregon raised intriguing questions about free speech on the Internet when a group of physicians were awarded $107 million because of a campaign by anti-abortionists that created a “hit list” against the physicians because they perform abortions. The challenge to free speech centers on issues of incitement to harm and on immediacy of reaction to speech that does incite.

<< 1999 Abstracts

Advertising 1999 Abstracts

Advertising Division

PF&R
A Content Analysis of Black-and-White Advertisements Used in Magazines • Euijin Ann, Michigan State • This study employed content analysis to examine the usage pattern of black-and white (B&W) advertising in magazines. Results showed that (1) B& W ads appeared to be an important type of advertising tactic, (2) of the B&W ads examined, color-highlighted type appeared most often, (3) B&W ads appeared most often in ads for health care, publication, services, and fashion and beauty, (4) most B&W ads employed emotional appeals rather than informational appeals.

Ethical Issues Associated with Qualitative On-Line Research: Toward a Common Platform • Denise E. DeLorme, Central Florida, George M. Zinkhan and Warren French, Georgia • This paper examines the possibility of a unified professional code of ethics which has the potential to provide solutions to ethical conflicts in qualitative on-line research. A national mail survey and replication e-mail survey were conducted with an interdisciplinary sample. Overall, respondents felt that there should be an ethics code, indicated all core value statements presented are important to include, and noted challenges in industry acceptance of a code. The paper concludes by offering guidance in constructing, implementing, and enforcing such a code.

Perceptions of Harmful Female Advertising Stereotypes and Eating-Disordered Thinking among Female College Students: a Q Method Analysis • Robert L. Gustafson and Mark N. Popovich, Ball State and Steven R. Thomsen, Brigham Young • This study employs Q methodology, personal interviews and a self-administered questionnaire to explore how female college students, a population segment with one of the highest incidences of anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders, rank magazine advertisements that feature a variety of potentially harmful female stereotypes. Specifically, the study examines how ads that feature stereotypes promoting the “thin ideal” rank in comparison to other harmful stereotypes. The findings are compared to measures of the subjects’ anorectic cognitions, body anxiety and dieting behavior.

The Emergence of Integrated Marketing Communications: A Theoretical Overview • John M. McGrath, Pittsburgh-Johnstown • This paper traces the origins of the emerging field of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), critically reviews research literature which is seminal to the field, and discusses the future of IMC, including an opportunity for new research.

Research
Complexity and Blame Focus in Anti-Smoking Television Commercials: The Role of Complexity and Individual vs. Industry Blame on Smokers and Non-Smokers • Michael Antecol, June Flora and Lisa Henriksen, Stanford University, Esther Thorson, Missouri, Annie Lang, Indiana University, Robert F. Potter, Alabama • Two experiments are reported. They address these research questions: (1) how does the structure and (2) the blame focus of anti-smoking ads affect ad-specific responses of smokers and non-smokers? Structure was examined by varying an ad’s global complexity scores. Blame focus was examined by comparing “individual blame” anti-smoking ads to “industry blame” ads. Experiment 1 showed that complexity has an effect on the effectiveness of anti-smoking ads, both at autonomic and self-report levels.

Cyberbrand Development: A Study of the Impact of Self Concept and Web Site Personality Congruity • Kelli S. Burns, Florida • In cyberspace, traditional rules for brand building are currently being tested and challenged. Understanding consumer personality may further the ability of an online advertiser to project the appropriate brand image. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the congruity between a Web site and the user’s personality is related to the user’s evaluation of the site. Strausbaugh’s brand personality instrument was used to measure the personality of 157 undergraduates and two Web sites.

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Political Advertising in the 1996 Presidential Election Campaign in Taiwan and the United States • Chingching Chang, National Cheng-chi • This study applied Hall’s (1977) culture-context theory and Hofstede’s (1991) individualistic/collectivistic aspects of cultural differences to understand how content and appeals of political advertising in Taiwan and the U.S. differ from each other. The aspects examined included the presence of direct and indirect attacks, the presentation of issues in the ads, types of settings, and the use of metaphors, symbols, and songs. Analyses showed that most of the findings were consistent with cultural expectations.

Advertising vs. Public Service Announcements: The Role of Message Type in Safer-Sex Campaigns and Third-Person Perception • John R. Chapin, Penn State • Fifteen years ago, Davison introduced the third-person effect hypothesis, that individuals believe they are less influenced than others by media messages. Although third-person effect is a perceptual bias, Davison believed that individuals act on such misperceptions. Few studies since have tested the behavioral aspect of the third-person effect. In addition, previous studies reporting differences in third-person effect due to message type (i.e. PSAs vs. advertisements) controls to isolate the effects of message type from content and context.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion After Two Decades: A Review of Criticisms and Contributions • Sejung Marina Choi and Charles T. Salmon, Michigan State • Over the past twenty years, the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (ELM) has emerged as one of the most influential theories of persuasion in the fields of communication, psychology, and by extension, advertising. In spite of its prominent contributions, the ELM has been criticized in detail for both theoretical and empirical limitations. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the current status of the model through revisiting the criticisms as well as replies to those criticisms by proponents of the ELM.

Effects of Culture and Self-construals on Comparative Advertising Effectiveness • Yung Kywn Choi, Gordon E. Miracle and Linda Cowles, Michigan State University • This study examines cross-cultural differences in comparative advertising effectiveness by tracing possible links between culture, individual values, and advertising effectiveness. A significant main effect of culture was found and a path model was proposed for illuminating the underlying process between culture and advertising effectiveness. The data were generally consistent with the model. Culture was systematically related to self-construals. However, the relationship between self-construals and advertising effectiveness were different depending on the type of an advertisement.

A Content Analysis of Internet Banner Advertising: Focusing on Korean and U.S. Cultural Differences • Hwi-Man Chung, North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Euijin Ahn, Michigan State University • The Web is emerging as a new advertising medium vying strongly with the more traditional media. Despite the Web’s capability of becoming a potentially powerful medium, there is little empirical studies about the banner advertising in the Web. Previous studies about traditional media have suggested that there are differences among different countries and cultures in terms of advertising types and degree of informativeness.

Qualitative Evaluation of Print Ads by Assessors Using the Creative Product Semantic Scale • Alisa White Coleman, Texas at Arlington and Bruce L. Smith, South Dakota • The purpose of the study was to ascertain whether advertising professionals judge advertising creativity in the same way as college students who have had no advertising training, and whether demographic variables significantly affect judgments about the creativity of advertising. Fifteen print ads were evaluated using the Creative Product Semantic Scale. The judgments of students and professionals were significantly different. There were also significant differences on the basis of demographic variables.

Beefcake, Breadwinner, or Babysitter: A Content Analysis of Male Images in Female-Targeted Magazine Advertising, 1978-1998 • Mikalee Dahle and Jennifer Greer, Nevada-Reno • A content analysis of ads featuring men was undertaken for women’s magazines published in 1978, 1988, and 1998. Ads in 1978 publications tended to feature men in a clear role and related to the product; those in 1988 presented men in no clear role and unrelated to the product (a purely decorative role); and images in 1998 served as the middle ground between the two extremes. Clear trends also emerged across different magazine titles.

The Effect of Idiocentrism and Involvement on Attitude, Cognition and Behavioral Intention with respect to AIDS Appeal Types • Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Minnesota • This study looks at the role played by idiocentrism/allocentrism in shaping consumers’ attitude, cognition and behavioral intention in the context of AIDS appeal types. The level of involvement emerges to be a significant moderating factor that interacts with idiocentrism to shape audience preference. This provides direction for an entirely new dimension of research in public health both from theoretical and applied perspectives. Cultures and sub-cultures may be studied in the context of individualism and its effects that may be observed at a cultural level.

Excessive Drinking by College Students: When Advertising and Ritual Behavior Intersect • Edward R. Frederick and Joyce M. Wolburg, Marquette • This study examines university student drinking as part of campus culture. It uses survey data to explore whether students perceive that student drinking rituals influence their drinking and tests a set of survey items for measuring the impact of student drinking rituals. It found evidence that Community and Order rituals do. It also explored whether alcohol advertising influences student drinking. Results show that attention to television alcohol commercials is related to self-reported drinking behavior.

A Study Of The Facets Of The “Country-Of-Origin” Image And Its Comparison Among Different Countries • Wang, Jang-Sun, Tennessee-Knoxville • “Country-of-Origin” image is an important factor, which affects consumers’ evaluations of foreign products in the international marketplaces. This study aims to compare the CO images of three countries – Japan, South Korea and India-having different levels of economic developments, and to explore the components of CO image. It examines the three CO facets of each country and their interrelationships. Additionally, it is observed if CO effects vary by the patriotism, a critical factor affecting CO.

Made In Taiwan And The U.S.A.: A Study Of Gender Roles In Two Nations’ Magazine Advertisements • Kim E. Karloff and Yi-ching Lee, California State • While American women can be found in the driver’s seat, literally, in American magazine advertisements, the same cannot be said of Taiwanese women in Taiwan magazine advertisements. And the American image of the lone cowboy means little to Taiwanese ad-makers. Family, however, means mom and dad in both countries. Such are the findings in this study of gender roles in a cross-section of magazines found in the United States and in Taiwan.

Advertising Representation of Female Bravery During the 1990’s and it’s Relationship to Creative Production • Linda Jean Kensicki, Texas-Austin• Through the work of previous scholars and primary focus group research, this study defines bravery as an essential characteristic of the creative individual. In an attempt to address decreased creative production in women, imitation effects on televised commercial content is examined as a possible collaborator in the development of creativity within women. An analysis of over six hundred commercials during the 1990’s found few women working in advertising agencies and almost no instances of female bravery in commercials.

The Impact of Culture on Political Advertising-A comparison between the U.S. and Korean Newspaper Ads • Chun-Sik Kim, Mokwon University and Yoo-Kyoung Kim, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies • This study examines the impact of cultural characteristics on political advertising between the United States and Korea. A total of 446 advertisements from 1963 to 1997 were content-analyzed in this study. Results of the study showed that there were differences of contents and valences of political advertising between the U.S. and Korea. Also, discussions based on study results showed mixed and intertwined arguments against or for the expectations for this study.

The Impact of Market Mavenism and Shopping Orientation on the Consumer’s Use of the Web, Catalogs and Retail Stores as Shopping and Buying Channels • Cheng Kuo, National Chengchi University and Hairong Li, Michigan State University • Through an online survey, information about 999 Internet users was collected and analyzed with a view to examining their channel selection behavior Two path models were proposed and tested to examine the effects of the individual’s demographics, market mavenism and shopping orientation on their use of the Web, catalog, and retail stores as shopping and buying channels. LISREL covariance analysis was used in testing the models. Results from the analyses have indicated that the level of market mavenism and certain shopping orientation indeed affected the respondents’ channel selection.

Information Cues In Renmin Ribao Advertisements (1979-1998) • Susanna W.Y. Kwok, Hong Kong Baptist University • A content analysis of 448 print advertisements in Renmin Ribao from 1979 to 1998 was conducted. The Resnick and Stern evaluation criteria were used to determine the level of advertising information content and to trace its development. The result indicated that both product nature and medium characteristics had a significant effect on the information level of advertisements in China. Nevertheless, the changing information levels over time were conflicting and called for further study.

Communication Effectiveness of Print Advertising Endorsement in Hong Kong • Vivien S. Y. Leung, Hong Kong Baptist University • This study examined the communication effectiveness of advertising endorsement on consumer purchase intention in Hong Kong. Two products, life insurance and wholesome beverage, were chosen to represent product category with high and low consumer involvement. Two of the eight print advertisements using three types of advertising endorser, celebrity, typical consumer and expert, and a no-model (control) advertisement, were randomly distributed to 120 Hong Kong Baptist University students in April 1998.

The Power of Words: Another Look at the Verbal and Visual Components in Print Ads • Yulian Li, Minnesota • This experimental study compares the effects of three types of ads-verbal, visual and verbal-visual combined-on people’s ad attitude, brand attitude, recall and purchase intention. It finds that verbal ads are more powerful and effective than visual ads, and that the visual component in a verbal-visual combined ad may interfere with the effect of the verbal component on people’s brand attitude and purchase intention. It also finds a superior effect of brand attitude over ad attitude.

The Presence of Nostalgia in Television Commercials • Wendy Martin and Wei-Na Lee, Texas at Austin • This paper reports the results of a study examining the use of nostalgia in marketing/advertising communications. A content analysis of 2,208 television ads was performed to examine the use of nostalgia in advertising, including the concentration of ads and products advertised and possible segmentation based on age or sex differences. Nostalgia was used in 8.3% of the ads sampled in this study, as compared to 10% found in an earlier study.

Does Good Work Pay Off? A Preliminary Study Of Advertising Awards And Financial Growth • Ann Maxwell and Charles Frazer Oregon and Wayne Wanta, Florida • No abstract

Does Reputation Management Reap Rewards? A Path Analysis of Corporate Reputation Advertising’s Impacts on Brand Attitudes and Purchase Decisions • Jongmin Park and Glen T. Cameron, Missouri and Lisa Lyon, Georgia • Claims are made for the importance of corporate reputation as essential to the effective, integrated marketing of a company’s branded products. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood and Combined-Effects Models of persuasion theory, an experiment was conducted to examine the value of one tool in corporate reputation management – the corporate ad or corporate image ad. Using path analysis, findings indicate that the corporate reputation ad had a greater impact on purchase intention under low involvement conditions than under high involvement conditions.

This Page is Brought to You By… An Experimental Test of Sponsorship Credibility in an Online Newspaper • Shelly Rodgers, Glen T. Cameron, Ann M. Brill, Missouri-Columbia • Advertisers are being asked to sponsor pages in online newspapers. E-newspapers and advertisers have anecdotally reported success, however, no study has examined the effects of such sponsorship. This study seeks to remedy that through an experiment that tests the effects of sponsorship on memory and credibility through the manipulation of timing, story type and sponsor type. Findings suggest that there are steps advertisers and e-newspapers can take to optimize the relationship between advertising and news content.

Recall, Liking and Creativity in TV Commercials: A New Approach • Gerald Stone, Donna Besser and Loran Lewis, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale • Three advertising effectiveness dimensions were linked in a local random telephone survey asking respondents’ most disliked or liked commercial. The survey included describing the commercials, brand preference, television viewing hours and demographics. Seniors in advertising judged the ads’ creativity. Among many findings related to past research was the suggestion that people “carry a set” of liked and disliked commercials. The study’s major contribution may be its novel way of identifying memorable ads and assessing creativity.

Who We Are and What We Choose to Read: A Psychological Exploration of Media Use • Fang Wan, Ken Doyle and Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Minnesota • This study expands the advertising literature by demonstrating the usefulness of personality types in identifying patterns of media usage. On a quota sample of the US adult population, ordinal and quasi-interval analyses showed that Introverts used print media substantially more than Extroverts, except for special situations, “Tenderminded Introverts” were the most frequent print media consumers. Discussion addressed the use of this information to improve the cost-effectiveness of media planning.

Everything Old is New Again: The Use of Nostalgia Appeals in Advertising • Jennifer L. Williams and Ronald J. Faber, Minnesota • The use of nostalgia in advertising, as well as in other elements of the culture, has been growing as the end of the millennium approaches. Yet little is known about how nostalgia is portrayed in advertisements. This study provides an examination of the content of 108 television commercials that utilize nostalgia in their appeals. The results support the notion that the definition of nostalgia needs to be expanded to include both negative and positive memories and both personal and historical references.

Teaching
Group Personality and Performance A Model for Managing Advertising Student Teams • Shannon Richard, Marilyn Roberts and John Sutherland, Florida • Effective teamwork and interaction skills are a necessity in today’s world. Students are in need of these skills if they are to become successful team players in the work place. Educators are in need of cues as to which group interaction skills are most essential and how to incorporate them into course content. This paper outlines such essential tools in a model for effectively managing student teams. The group behavior of an advertising campaigns course is evaluated to provide a picture of these tools in action.

Incorporating a Promotional Products Teaching Component into the Advertising Campaigns Course: A Partnership Pilot Program • Denise DeLorme, Central Florida • Since the emergence of IMC, it has become increasingly important for students to have an understanding and appreciation of a variety of marketing communications tools. One industry segment that is sometimes overlooked is promotional products. This paper describes the process of incorporating promotional products into the campaigns course through a partnership pilot program. The program’s three phases are discussed: preparation through six instructional planning steps, implementation involving four major learning activities, and evaluation including five key outcomes resulting from surveys of students. The paper concludes by providing educators with future recommendations.

How Media Planning Professionals See Changes in the Marketplace Affecting the Teaching of the Media Planning Course • Carla V. Lloyd, Syracuse University, Jan S. Slater, Ohio University and Brett Robbs, Colorado • Those involved with today’s media-planners, buyers, sellers and distributors must cope with these changes daily, while anticipating the changes yet to come. Not only has the landscape changed, so have the players. Technology is fueling immense competition, creating an overly crowded marketplace vying for limited advertising dollars and waning consumer attention. Media planning professionals, who must navigate through all this change to find ways to deliver clients’ messages to consumers, work during a time that is perhaps like no other in media’s history.

A Practical Exercise of Teaching Ethical Decision Making to Advertising Students • David L. Martinson, Florida International University • Students too often do not understand the important role that ethics plays in their personal or future professional lives. The Hastings Center suggests that the first two steps in teaching ethics center around stimulating the moral imagination in order that individuals will be able to recognize ethical issues. In this paper the author presents a practical exercise that moves ethical decision making out of the strictly theoretical.

Contract Teamwork: A Tool for Tearing Down Ivory Towers • Sally McMillan, Tennessee-Knoxville • How can teamwork be implemented effectively in university-level advertising classrooms? This paper reviews literature on the nature, structure, and function of teams and processes for managing teamwork. Based on this literature an innovative approach to contract teamwork is introduced. The author provides information on implementation and evaluation of that approach with suggestions for improving and expanding contract teamwork in advertising classrooms.

Special Topics
Branding Religion: Christian Consumers’ Understandings of Christian Products • Eric Haley, Candace White, Anne Cunningham, Tennessee • Recent years have witnessed a boom in Christian marketing, both the marketing of Christian products and the use of “Christian-owned” as a loyalty building tool for businesses. Despite the enormous growth in Christian retailing, researchers have paid little attention to the phenomenon. This study offers an entree into the subject by examining how self-described Evangelical Christians, who are the primary consumers of Christian products, make sense of their purchase and use of Christian products.

Testing An IMC Evaluation Model: The Impact Of Brand Equity And The Company’s Reputation On Revenues • Yungwook Kim, Florida • This paper is trying to establish the relationships among variables in corporate communications, especially between advertising and public relations, and to establish an evaluation model for integrating the effects of communication activities in the context of integrated marketing communication (IMC). For testing, a new approach for integrating the effects of communication activities was introduced and the IMC evaluation model was specified. The proposed model was tested with existing secondary data.

Driving Toward Equality: Automobile Advertising and Gender Views, 1920-1940 • Erika J. Pribanic, Alabama • Automobiles have long been considered a masculine area. In Taking the Wheel, Virginia Scharff wrote, “The automobile was born in a masculine manger, and when women sought to claim its power, they invaded a male domain.”’ This theme is often parodied in the modern television sit-com Home Improvement: the car is powerful, dirty, masculine, and off limits to women. The automobile’s inherent masculinity reaches back to the Victorian age, when women were considered too feeble-minded and flail-bodied to even leave their homes, let alone drive automobiles.

Not on Target: Effects of Gender-Targeted Web Sites on Liking and Visit Intent • Shelly Rodgers, Cynthia M. Frisby, Missouri-Columbia • This experiment addresses the effects of gender-targeted web sites on likability and visit intent. A 3 (male vs. female vs. neutral web site) x 2 (gender) between-subjects factorial design was used. Findings suggest that neutral sites are preferred over gender-specific sites. In fact, both genders rated the neutral site as more likable than either the male or female sites. Intent to revisit the neutral site was also more likely for both genders.

An Exploratory Study Of The Synergy Among Ad Attention, Promotional Offers And The Use Of Grocery Buyer Cards In Building Customer Loyalty • Mary Alice Shaver, Hyun-Seung Jin and Carol Pardun, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study measures the impact of having a grocery card on using advertising and responding to promotions on shopping habits and customer loyalty. A statewide survey of 589 adults found that, while heavy users of grocery cards do pay more attention to advertising and plan shopping to take advantage of advertised specials and promotions, this behavior does not result in loyalty to the store as defined by regular shopping.

<< 1999 Abstracts

Status of Women 2000 Abstracts

Commission of the Status of Women

Fresh, Youthful, and Female-Positive: Analyses of Feminist Identity in Web Sites for Women • Debashis ‘Deb’ Aikat, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • The research for this study was based on concepts related to cultural studies and detailed discourse analyses of top four mainstream women’s Web sites • Chick Click (http://www.chickclick.com/), Cybergrrl (http://www.cybergrrl.com/), iVillage (http://www.ivilla~e.com/) and Women.com Networks (http://www.women.com/). This study examined the level of discourse regarding feminist identity based on five specific categories: 1. Empowerment, 2. Sexuality, 3. Justice and equality, 4. Action for Social, Political and Economic Change, and 5. Other Pertinent Themes.

Images of Women’s Basketball Players on the Covers of Collegiate Media Guides • Kiki Nigel Baker, Louisiana-Lafayette • In the advertising and news media. female athletes are consistently trivialized and marginalized through stereotypical images and minimal coverage. These media seem to still ignore the fact that female athletes have professional careers and continue to emphasize the personal areas of their lives. This image of a female athlete may begin at the collegiate level and may be encouraged by stereotypical portrayals of female athletes in publications produced by sports information departments. The purpose of this study.

Career-Related Advice and Information in Women’s Magazines: A Content Analysis of Work Options and Topics • Kimberly K. Cass, Drake • Career-related messages in magazines tell women what to think about their careers and how to act at work. This study examined such messages in Mademoiselle from 1961 to 1999. The 1960s and 70s were characterized by a focus on appearance and its relationship to obtaining employment. By the 1980s-90s, focus expanded to address a variety of topics. However, coverage throughout the study period was shallow, and types of careers covered were unrealistically glamorous.

Nurturing Motherhood: The Portrayal of Gender Roles and Childbirth in “A Baby Story” • Erika Engstrom, Nevada, Las Vegas • The author examines portrayal of gender roles and childbirth in The Learning Channel’s “A Baby Story,” a thirty-minute reality based television program that traces the story of couples anticipating the birth of their child. The show provides a medium for public discourse about childbirth while embodying several themes related to gender roles and childbirth in the 1990s, including conflicts experienced by women regarding careers and motherhood, and increased involvement of male partners in childcare.

Four Gender Equity Models and Why They Matter to Mass Communications Education • Kim Golombisky, South Florida • With women comprising the majority in mass communications classrooms, “gender equity” in education must be a priority for mass communications educators. This essay provides a general review of the issues. First it critiques four “gender equity” models • “equal,” “equitable,” fair,” and “affirmative” • and then it examines how these models relate to mass communications education. Finally it suggests a classroom “gender equity” audit and offers some practical strategies for developing a” sex affirmative” mass communications learning environment.

“You Can Never Be Too Thin” – or Can You?: Presenting Research Intended to Combat the Effects of Digital Manipulation of Fashion Models’ Weight, Leg Length and Skin Color • Jacqueline C. Hitchon, Shiela Reaves, Sung-Yeon Park, Gi Woong Yun, Wisconsin-Madison • Media scholars have recently linked the consumption of magazine images to eating disorders. Exposure to the thin ideal has been shown to create body dissatisfaction, reduce women’s self-esteem, encourage attempts at dieting, fuel a drive for thinness and contribute to eating disorder symptomatology. Previous research has neglected the role of digital manipulation of images in creating the thin ideal, which can better be described as a mirage. The paper explores the relationship between digital manipulation and focal psychological indices that lead to eating behavior problems.

The Last Male Bastion Enters the 21st Century: The Changing View of Women’s Professional Basketball In One Newspaper’s Sports Department • Lynn Klyde-Silverstein, Ohio • This qualitative case study uses participant observation and interviews to examine the way one newspaper sports section has covered the Women’s National Basketball Association in the three years of the league’s existence. Grounded in framing theory, standpoint theory, and critical theory, the study looks at the sports department’s changing relationship with its hometown WNBA team.

A Woman’s Place: Newspaper Advice Columns in the Wake of the Nineteenth Amendment • Jacquelyn Lowman and Lucinda D. Davenport, Michigan State • The Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the vote, was just one manifestation of the social, political, legal, and economic changes that roiled the United States during the 1920s. Traditional roles filled by men and women were being questioned. In a world where such customary sources of support and information as kin and local community were weakening, newspaper advice columnists filled the void as objective, sophisticated authorities. This study examines more than a decade of national advice columns in the wake of the Amendment, and finds them to be both a promoter of new ideas and a reflector of reality.

Does Sex Make a Difference? Job Satisfaction of Television Network News Correspondents • Cindy J. Price, Wyoming • Women have been entering the work force in large numbers starting in the 1940s and been increasing ever since. However, the number of women in network television news has not grown at the same rate as some other industries. This study surveyed all network television news correspondents at ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and PBS to determine if there were any differences between men and women in their job satisfaction.

The Language of Abortion: A Case Study of the Des Moines Register and the Quad-City Times, 1992-1999 • Heather Wiese Starr, Drake • This case study/content analysis examines newspaper coverage of Planned Parenthood and abortion and reproductive services in two city newspapers. In Des Moines, IA, Planned Parenthood has a long-established presence, and the DM Register was found to cover abortion in a balanced manner. In the Quad Cities, IA, a new Planned Parenthood clinic will open this year. Coverage of women’s reproductive rights was minimal before the clinic was announced, and noticeably negative during construction, in the Quad-City Times.

Margaret Sanger as Dissident Journalist: Demanding Wider Access to Birth Control Information • Rodger Streitmatter, American University • This paper documents the central role that Margaret Sanger and her two magazines • Woman Rebel and Birth Control Review • played in creating and sustaining the Birth Control Movement in America. It also identifies and articulates the major themes that dominated the editorial content of the two magazines. Although numerous scholarly works have previously been published about Sanger, they have portrayed her primarily as an activist. This study posits that Sanger also should be recognized as a highly effective dissident journalist.

<< 2000 Abstracts

Small Programs 2000 Abstracts

Small Programs Interest Group

Assessing the Need for Change: A Survey of Grammar Curricula in American J-Schools • Marc Seamon, West Virginia • Spelling, punctuation, grammar, and AP style errors are among the factors that are hurting media credibility in the public’s eyes. Some have said J-schools share the blame for sloppy grammar because they don’t properly prepare students. This survey of 100 J-schools and examination of their syllabi found plenty of awareness that spelling, punctuation, grammar, and AP style are important. However, the standards of instruction and assessment varied widely, suggesting the need for a new, consistently high standard for teaching grammar in all J-schools. Improvements and future research are recommended.

<< 2000 Abstracts

Science Communication 2000 Abstracts

Science Communication Interest Group

The Influence of Mass Media and Interpersonal Channels on White and Nonwhite Men’s and Women’s Health Behaviors • Cynthia Coleman-Sillars, Georgia State and Edward Slaughter, Rodale Press • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Self-monitoring, Issue Involvement and Appeal Selection in Health Communication: A Strategic Approach • Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Minnesota • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Local Coverage of a Chemical Explosion: A Case Study in the Media’s Use of Right-to-Know Information • Sharon M. Friedman, Lehigh • This paper examines a case study of a major chemical explosion to describe how well reporters for a local newspaper and television station – who were not full-time science or environmental reporters – used federal right-to-know laws to report about the chemicals involved in the explosion. Besides outlining initial media responses to the explosion, it examines problems encountered by these reporters in developing the chemical aspects of the immediate and continuing coverage of the explosion.

The Visual Presentation of Expertise: Y2K Experts on Television • Joshua Greenberg, Cornell • The recent Year 2000 Computer Problem (Y2K) offers a relatively contained event within which we can examine the construction of expertise. This paper surveys the ways in which images of technical expertise were visually created on U.S. television. Drawing on an innovative method for computer-aided television archiving, the study treats an unprecedented range of programming, from “high culture” media like network television news to “low culture” media such as daytime talk shows.

Construction of Technology Crisis and Safety: News Media’s Framing the Y2K Issue • Ju Yong Ha, Southern Illinois-Carbondale • This study analyzed the Y2K coverage in the Washington Post over two-year period, paying particular attention to the framing of the Y2K computer problem. The Y2K problems was assumed to be the kind of issue which are not directly experienced by the public until it happens, news media’s construction of the Y2K could have an influence on the public’s awareness and perception on the problem. The results demonstrates that the number of the Y2K coverage increased over time and government was the major source of the information.

Accounting for the Complexity of Causal Explanations in the Wake of an Environmental Risk • LeeAnn Kahlor, Sharon Dunwoody Wisconsin-Madison and Robert J. Griffin, Marquette • In 1993, Milwaukee-area residents experienced an outbreak of cryptosporidium, a parasite, which infested the metropolitan drinking supply and sickened some 400,000 people. Using survey data gathered from 610 residents in the wake of that outbreak, this study looks at predictors of the complexity of people’s understanding of two causal components of the outbreak: l) how the parasite got into the water and 2) how it causes illness once in the human body.

Is Television Ever an Environmentally Friendly Medium?: A Review of the Research Literature • Patricia M. Kennedy, Syracuse • As a preliminary stage in an effort to reconcile perceived disagreement over television’s capacity to serve as an actor for environmental protection, this paper summarizes research conducted between 1972 and 1999 that specifically looks at television coverage of environmental subjects, influences on television’s environmental content, and the role of television in enhancing or inhibiting environmental knowledge and environmentally “friendly” (pro-environment) attitudes and behaviors.

Environmental Coverage in National Geographic Magazine 1960-1998 • Jan Knight, Ohio • In 1970, National Geographic announced that it would cover environmental pollution, a shift from its longstanding policy of avoiding controversy. A content analysis revealed that after the editorial shift, the magazine’s environmental coverage did increase, but it did not rank environmental issues highly, showed environmental beauty far more often than degradation, and covered endangered species and environmental issues that concerned U. S. energy resources far more than real-world events or public environmental activism.

Theory and Practice of Public Meetings • Katherine A. McComas, Cornell • Public meetings are among the most commonly used, frequently criticized, yet least understood methods of public participation in environmental management. Yet while systematic research is sparse, a vast amount of experiential knowledge exists, which can form the basis for a working theory on why some public meetings work, and why others do not. This paper offers a working theory of successful public meetings based on interviews with 35 state environmental and health department officials.

Consumers’ Use of Science Content and Site Address to evaluate Web Health Stories • Suzanne Pingeee, Robert Hawkins, Gi Woong Yun, Sung-Yeon and Ronald Serlin, Wisconsin-Madison • The Web is unregulated, and the potential for misinformation is unlimited. This experiment examined how web consumers use the information present in a URL (site address) and the content (quality of the science) when they read web science stories. Results were minimal for scaled items, but for subject-generated essays about the science stories, both site address and good or bad science in a story affected responses to the web science stories.

Using Databases from Interactive Health Communication Applications for Formative Research on Program Development and Inductive Theory Building: A Case Study of the CHESS Program • Bret Shaw and Gi Woong, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper explains how to extract and utilize data from an interactive health communication (IHC) application designed for women with breast cancer. The paper also describes how to use inductive data analysis strategies to gain a better understanding of specific patient populations, inform subsequent development of IHC applications, and assist in building and refining existing communication and psychological theories. Specifically, health tracking data is presented and inferences are made about what variables appear to be most important to women coping with breast cancer.

Understanding Environmentalism And Information Effects In Water Conservation Behavior: A Comparison Of Three Communities Sharing A Watershed • Craig W. Trumbo and Garrett J. O’Keefe, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper describes a set of environmental attitudes, and their relationship to water conservation behavior. The analysis contrasts three distinct communities located in the Califomia-Nevada Truckee River watershed. The characteristics of such differences can provide important information for the execution of persuasive information campaigns on water conservation. Analysis is based on 733 telephone interviews. Results show specific conservation attitudes, social norms, and information seeking predicting intention to conserve to varying degrees in all three communities.

Whose Voices? Health Professionals and Consumers as Sources in Daily Newspaper Coverage of Health Issues • Kim Walsh-Childers, Jean Carver Chance, Carolyn Ringer Lepre and Leslie Mullen, Florida • A study of the types of sources included in a sample of 780 health-related daily newspaper stories showed that health professionals were significantly less likely to be included in stories focused on the health care system than in other health stories. More than 75 percent of health system stories included no health professionals as sources. Consumers had even less voice in these stories; only 18 percent of health system stories including even one consumer source.

Non-profit Healthcare Organizations’ Use of the World Wide Web to Relay Medical and Scientific Information • Richard D. Waters, Syracuse and Matthew J. Nee, Georgia • Through a content analysis of the World Wide Web sites of the nation’s top 129 non-profit healthcare organizations, this study explores how these organizations relay scientific and medical information to the public. The organizations mostly use the Web to relay basic information about the organization, including its mission, programs and services and contact information. A majority of the organizations also placed press releases, newsletters and recent media coverage of issues related to the organization on their Web sites.

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