Archives for January 2012

International Communication Division

Open Competition
The Absence of Fairness in Philippine Newspapers • Geri M. Alumit, Michigan State • Content analysis results of two newspapers, Malaya and Manila Bulletin in the Philippines, show little fairness in the coverage of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. Interviews with reporters and editors at those two newspapers suggest that fairness is not an objective of Philippine journalism, and is also the product of other factors such as laziness, “press release journalism” and “envelopmental journalism.”

Dutch Audience’s Use and Interpretation of Economic News First Results From a Cross-National Explorative Study • Florann Arts, The Amsterdam School of Communications Research • In this paper focus groups show that the public’s relative disinterest in hard economic news is caused by the perceived gap between the issues covered and people’s daily lives. Television programs are perceived to increase the tangibility of economic news. Also, trust in the accuracy of economic coverage was found to be related to people’s confidence in the future state of the economy. The results furthermore suggest that people believe economic news does have more impact on others than on themselves.

Values Representations in International News • Christopher E. Beaudoin and Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia • This study sets forth a values approach to understanding international news coverage in a prestige American newspaper. Via a content analysis, a system of 13 values — including altruism, freedom, materialism, and peace — was examined in terms of how foreign nations, groups, and individuals were represented. Conflict values were clustered, as were positive values. Asia was stereotyped as materialistic, Western Europe as beautiful, Africa as power ridden, and the Eastern bloc as concerned with the value of security.

Myths and News Narratives: Toward a Comparative Perspective for the Study of News Content • Dan Berkowitz, Iowa and Hillel Nossek, Tel-Aviv • Comparative research across cultures provides a fruitful terrain for research into myths and narratives that are embedded into news content. This study offers a nexis of structuralist and ethnographic approaches that offers a conceptual complement for that vein of research. Following a conceptual discussion, the paper addresses methodological considerations and offers and scheme for conducting research with a cross-cultural research team.

This case study examines media literacy as it relates to the encoding Media Literacy And India’s Ramayan In Nepal: Are TV Aesthetics Universal Or Culture-Bound? • Elizabeth Burch, Sonoma State • This case study examines media literacy as it relates to the encoding and decoding of messages intended for non-western viewers. A qualitative methodology of contextual aesthetics examines how production techniques clarified and intensified the narrative of Ramayan • one of India’s first Hindu soap operas produced for television and aired in India and Nepal in the late 1980s. The purpose is to identify whether televisual conventions are culturally-bound or universal. The study finds that culture plays a key role in the way television messages are constructed and perhaps interpreted.

Linkages of International and Local News • Gene Burd, Texas-Austin • This study of how five daily newspapers made local tie-ins to international news on page one covers the month of January 1999 for the Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News and San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner. It surveys research on criteria for international news, professionals’ worries about scanty resources and skewed priorities, and the sparse training and textbook guides for both staff and free-lancers connecting “main street” to the larger world whose political boundaries are being dissolved by the electronic and natural environment.

From Globalization to Localization: World’s Leading Television News Broadcasters in Asia • Yu-li Chang, Ohio • This paper addresses globalization of CNNI, BBC World, and CNBC in Asia by analyzing and comparing program schedules of these three broadcasters. Globalization for them means adopting regionalization and localization in their programming strategies. CNBC Asia leads in its efforts of localization, followed by BBC World. While CNNI Asia Pacific has not moved beyond regionalization, it may soon adopt localization in Asia.

The Image of Muslims as Terrorists in Major U.S. Newspapers • Natalya Chernyshova, Washington and Lee University/American University in Bulgaria • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Discrepancy of Gratifications of Online News Readers • Jung-Yui Cho, Alabama • Discrepancy of gratifications of online news among U.S. and foreign readers was investigated based on different themes of gratifications including remote access, immediacy, surveillance, and entertainment. The discrepancy between GS and GO was demonstrated to be of statistical significance. Besides, due to the fact that online news provides instant access to hometown news anywhere in the world, international participants of the survey revealed a very active use of the medium with more experience.

Between the Government and the Press: The Role of Western Correspondents and Government Public Relations in Reporting on the Middle East • Mohammed el-Nawawy, West Florida and James D. Kelly, Southern Illinois • Western news correspondents and three Egyptian and Israeli government PR officers were interviewed in 1998 to determine their role perceptions within the context of two theoretical models. Correspondents said analysis of complex issues was their primary role and PR officials said theirs was provision of information to correspondents. Israeli officials were far more accessible and easier to work with than their Egyptian counterparts, but correspondents were more skeptical of Israeli information. The newsmaking model best described the relationship.

Government, Press and Advertising Revenue: Impact of the 27 October, 1987 Suspension of The Star’s License to Publish on The Star and the Competing New Straits Times • Tee-Tuan Foo, Ohio • This study seeks to understand the relationship among an authoritarian government, the newspapers and the advertisers. It content analyzed the advertising that appeared in two Malaysian leading English Newspapers, The Star and the New Straits Times, before and after The Star was temporarily suspended by the government on 27 October, 1987. The results found that the Malaysian government’s suspension of The Star’s publishing license decreased the newspaper revenue and increased those of its main competitor, the New Straits Times, following The Star’s return to publication.

The Transitional Press Concept And English-Language Newspaper Readership In The Post-Communist Czech Republic • Bruce Garrison, Miami • Hachten has identified five political concepts of the world press, including the Western free press model. Ognianova has defined a “transitional press concept” for news organizations in nations that had been under Communist Party control and the newly independent press of Central and Eastern Europe that are moving toward the Western concept. This paper analyzed the role of an English-language newspaper in a region where English is not the dominant language.

Post-Cold War Bulgarian Media: Free and Independent at Last? • Robyn S. Goodman, Alfred • Immediately following the Cold War’s collapse, many Bulgarian journalists suddenly declared the Bulgarian mass media “free.” Ten years later, they now argue that the Bulgarian media are far from achieving an independent, democratic status. This study describes changes in the Bulgarian mass media during the Cold War’s final years through the post-Cold War era to answer the following question: How close are the Bulgarian media to establishing themselves as a free, independent Fourth Estate?

McQuail’s Media Performance Analysis And Post-Communist Broadcast Media: A Case Study Of Broadcasting In Estonia • Max V. Grubb, Southern Illinois • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Prospects And Limitations Of World System Theory For Media Analysis: The Case Of Middle East And North Africa • Shelton A. Gunaratne • This essay points out the potential of applying the world system theory to global communication and media analysis as a “humanocentric” enterprise covering both the present and the past. It attempts to identify the world’s core countries using a weighted index of a country’s size of the economy (GNP) and of the exports. It applies the index to rank order the countries in the Middle East and North Africa region to ascertain the likelihood of a core-periphery structure within the region itself and to test whether media freedom and media penetration follow the pattern of that structure.

Attitudes, Communication Behavior, and Cognition: A Trans-Cultural Test of Grunig’s Situational Communication Theory • Kingsley O. Harbor, Mississippi Valley State • This study tested Situational Communication Theory to ascertain its cross-cultural generalizability. The path model employed here comprised attitudinal, communicative, and motivational variables most of which were predicted by the theory. The systemic relationship so formed explained the intention of Developing World students to or not to return home after their studies in the USA. Study used stratified random sample of 400 Developing World students attending an American university. Phone interview refusal rate was 23%. Data analysis involved regression and path analytical models.

After the Rape: The Elite Newspapers’ Use of Sources in their Coverage of Okinawa, 1995-1998 • Beverly J. Horvit, Winthrop • This paper examines journalists’ use of sources on a noncrisis foreign policy issue • the debate over the U.S. troop presence in Okinawa after a child’s rape. A 1995-1998 content analysis of the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times shows journalists relied heavily on official sources. In addition, eight of 10 American sources quoted were administration sources. Furthermore, the type of sources quoted was dependent on from where the reporters were reporting.

The Relevance of Mass Communication Research in a Global Era: Localization Strategies of International Companies Entering India • Geetika Pathania Jain, North Texas • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Television and Perceptions of Values among Korean College Students • Jong G. Kang, Illinois State and Seok Kang, Georgia • This study was designed to determine whether the relationship between culture and individualistic or collectivistic value structure types truly exist within the Korean sample of college students. Using the postulates and methodology of the value structure theory by Schwarts to mass communication, this study also employed value type analysis to investigate how respondents’ cultural background and television viewing habit are associated with their responses to value types. This study found significant correlations among individualist, collectivist, and mixed value types.

Glocalization As a Metatheory for International Communication Research • Marwan M. Kraidy, North Dakota • This paper proposes glocalization as a metatheory for international communication research. First, the theoretical problematic of international communication is introduced and international communication paradigms are reviewed. Second, the implications of the literature on globalization and localization for international communication theory are discussed. Third, the concept of glocalization is explained and proposed as a metatheory for international communication. The paper concludes by proposing a research agenda for international communication guided by the metatheory of glocalization.

Locating Asian Values in Journalism: A Content Analysis of Web Newspapers • Brian L. Massey and Arthur Chang, Singapore • The two major positions in the debate over Asian values in journalism were tested by a content analysis of news stories posted to English-language Web newspapers in 10 Asian nations. The findings offer some support to each position. Asian values do appear in reporting by Asian journalists. But they are neither pan-Asia values nor applied uniformly to all news events. This work could provide a benchmark for future studies of Asian values in journalism.

The Transitional Media System Of Post-Autocratic Nigeria • Anthony A. Olorunnisola, Penn State • This paper reviews the character of Nigeria’s recent transition in order to politically locate its media system. A combination of press concepts provides the heuristic basis for the suggestion of the margin of political freedom as a way to determine the latitude available to a transitional media. Also, the margin of political freedom enabled a prediction of the intrinsic readiness of the Nigerian media to face post-autocratic challenges.

Sovereignty, Alliance and Press-Government Relationship: A Comparative Analysis of Japanese and U. S. Coverage of Okinawa • Mariko Oshiro and Tsan-Kuo Chang, Minnesota • Within a comparative framework, the purpose of this paper is to determine the form and content of news coverage of the Okinawa reversion issue between the United States and Japan from 1969 to 1972. The Okinawa reversion issue was one of the most important and controversial diplomatic problems in post-war U.S.-Japan relations because of the 1951 security arrangement. The general theoretical approach in this study is based on two major factors that have been found to influence the news content: ideological structure in society and press-government relationship.

Korean Environmental Journalists: How They Perceived A New Journalistic Role • Jaeyung Park and Robert A. Logan, Missouri-Columbia • This study examined how Korean environmental journalists conceptually perceived a new journalistic role that they played in covering environmental campaigns launched by the news media since 1992 in South Korea. Despite being inadvertently put in situation to receive an unprecedented role of encouraging civic participation in environmental preservation, Korean environmental journalists showed considerable sophistication of understanding their social role. They were not only able to differentiate the challenging role conceptually but also understand it clearly and quickly.

Reading and Rating the Press: Press Freedom and Fair Reporting in Zambia • Greg Pitts, Southern Methodist • Democracy’s sweep through Sub-Saharan Africa during the l990s signaled multiparty elections, spawned additional media voices, and at least deference to a free press. Zambia is an example of a new democracy dealing these changes. A survey Zambia Parliamentarians found that 89% of respondents read at least one newspaper. However, Parliamentarians give Zambia’s newest privately owned daily newspaper a low score on fair reporting though resource scarcity and socialization of Parliamentarians may contribute to this perception.

The Flow of News About Environmental Risk in Mexico 1983-97 • Donnalyn Pompper, Tallahassee • This textual analysis of environmental risks of Mexico examined hegemony as encoded in two mainstream U.S. daily newspapers, 1983-1997. Five themes emerged upon examination of images, concepts and premises used in newsmaking. Furthermore, texts underscored power relations between the two nations. U.S. government and industry were influential in matters of air, water and land pollution, habitat loss, and industrial safety in Mexico. Mexican policymakers, by omission, were passive.

A Talking Nation, Not a Talking Individual: A New Order in Tanzania? • Jyotika Ramaprasad, Southern Illinois • Using a survey of 141 journalists, this study profiles the Tanzanian journalist in terms of demographic, workplace and attitudinal variables. The Tanzanian journalist’s pursuit of his profession is deliberate and he subscribes to its lofty ideals. He rates accuracy, analysis, investigation, and such high, and places considerable importance on the public affairs role of journalism, more so than on the material benefits of the job. At the same time, the years of socialization under “ujamaa,” the socialist policy of development which enrolled the press as partner, and the political policy of a one-party state have left their trace and are evident even in these more liberal times.

Factors Affecting the Internet Adoption by Thai Journalists: A Diffusion of Innovation Study • Anucha Thirakanont and Thomas Johnson, Southern Illinois • This research was designed to examine what factors affect the adoption of the Internet by newspaper journalists in Thailand. The diffusion of innovation (Rogers, 1995) was used as a primary theoretical framework for the study with English language introduced as an additional variable. The results indicated that the perceived attributes of innovation • relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability • were useful predictors of the adoption. The additional attribute • English-language compatibility of the Internet • did not turn out to be a significant predictor of adoption because likely-adopters and nonadopters did not appear to be aware of the problem.

The Pacific War: A Retrospective Look at Anti-Japanese Propaganda In The New York Times and Anti-American Propaganda in Asahi Shimbun • Hideko Yoshimoto and Diana Stover Tillinghast, San Jose State • The study, which examines anti-Japanese propaganda in The New York Times and anti-American propaganda in Asahi Shimbun during the Pacific War, found that the propaganda in the Times was a mirror image of the propaganda in Asahi in the time periods from the bombing of Pearl Harbor until Japan’s surrender. This finding held for both newspapers across all five thematic categories of propaganda • authoritarianism, patriotic appeal, self-image, enemy image, and morale manipulation.

Changing Relationships Between The Press And The State: A Sociopolitical And Communication Law Perspective • Kyu Ho Youm, Arizona State • The far-reaching evolution of the statutory framework on the freedom and control of the Korean press since 1987 is a fascinating case study. While there is still a legacy of suppression in some press statutes in Korea, other statutes make press freedom become closer to a reality for Koreans. The press statutes in and of themselves, however, cannot be an accurate indication of how the Korean press exercises its freedom with or without constraint.

Markham Competition
News Media Representation of the Yanomami Indians as a Reflection of the Ideal Audience • Tania H. Cantrell, Brigham Young • Using Narrative Paradigm Theory and Narrative Analysis, this study investigates news media coverage of the Yanomami Indians, an indigenous tribe residing in northern Brazil and Venezuela. Eight themes are described and plausible interpretations of ideal audience member values are presented. This project explores the reflective nature of the news media, discusses insights into the question of human identity, and concludes recommending further study to assess how the Yanomami would tell their own story.

Support of the Film Industries in France and Italy in the late l990s • Joseph Denny, Indiana • France and Italy each possess a proud film history. Both have made significant efforts to bolster their film industries for most of the 20th century. The results have been mixed. This paper examines and compares the efforts of France and Italy to maintain their film industries in the second half of the 1990s. It also offers policy recommendations for the future.

New Portraits in Old Frams: US and Chinese Media Utterances on the 50th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China • Yun Ding, Minnesota • This article seeks to delineate prominent media frames in the brief but intense reportage of the 50th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by major U.S. and Chinese press. In a renewed attempt to unravel the China Knot, the U.S. media evinced a strong anti-Communist sentiment, whereas the Chinese press, under direct ideological dictate and institutional control, continued to betray its entrenched style of sing-along journalism. Taken together, they afforded us an opportunity to examine how competing discursive communities handled the heavy topic of Communism on the eve of a new century.

We Are French Too, But Different: Radio, Music and The Articulation of difference among Young North Africans In France • Nabil Echchaibi, Indiana • Research on migrants in media studies has focused mainly on representation in and reception of the mainstream media of the host country. While such research is still valuable, it obscures the role of migrants as active participants and producers of alternative media outlets that help in the articulation of their diasporic experience. This essay discusses how, through radio and music, young North Africans in France negotiate, elaborate, and reappropriate different cultural forms to carve out a place for themselves in French culture.

Manufacturing Consent of ‘Crisis’: A Content Analysis of the New York Times’ Reporting on the Issue of North Korean Nuclear Weapon • Oh-Hyeon Lee, Massachusetts • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Communicative Distance and Media Stereotyping in an International Context • Deepak Prem Subramony, Minnesota • This paper transfers the constructs of communicative distance and stereotyping commonly found in the interpersonal communication literature into an international communication context. It hypothesizes that stereotyping by the media of one nation, of news from another nation, is positively correlated with the communicative distance between the two nations. Using innovative operationalizations of the communicative distance and media stereotyping constructs, the paper presents six international content analyses in support of the above hypothesis.

Historicizing Japanese Television Dramas: Technology, Drama Workers, and the Rise and Fall of Social Drama, 1945-1960 • Eva Tsai, Iowa • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

The European Press And The Euro: Media Agenda-Setting In A Cross-National Environment • Olaf Werder, Gainesville • Coverage of the Euro currency introduction was analyzed in the leading news publications in the UK and Germany. Specifically, we probed whether (l) coverage of the same cross-national issue differed in level of support and (2) the two national media applied different news frames. The study showed that the London Times opposed the Euro even with pro-Euro sources, whereas the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung maintained neutrality. The Times used an episodic, while the F.A.Z. employed a thematic style.

<< 2000 Abstracts

History Division

Collusion and Price Fixing in the American Newspaper Industry, 1890-1910: A National Trend • Ed Adams, Brigham Young • This study cites examples of price fixing and collusive practices used among newspapers in several cities across the United States during the late 1890s and early 1900s. An examination of the E.W. Scripps papers reveals secret agreements or “combinations” that were utilized between competitors to gain market advantages or to limit competition. These practices were used to limit or eliminate competition. The practices included, but were not limited to profit pooling, price fixing, collusion and contract exclusivity.

The Birth of the Demise of Valentine Decision: Development of the Supreme Court’s Opinion Toward Commercial Speech • Soontae An, North Carolina • This study traces the development of the Supreme Court’s opinion toward commercial speech from 1942 to 1976. Early cases demonstrated that the Court’s uncertainty on what made certain speech commercial led to subsequent difficulties in deciding the boundary of the First Amendment protection for other categories of speech when they entailed commercial features in their messages. From his first remark in 1959, Justice Douglas consistently argued the deficiencies in the Valentine decision and urged the Court to set a more appropriate standard for the commercial speech.

Selling the National Pastime: The Formation of Major League Baseball Public Relations • Bill Anderson, Georgia • Understanding how one industry used publicity in the nineteenth century generated insights into how the field as a whole was utilized. In the case of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs owners, they learned that maintaining the top player talent ensured favorable newspaper coverage. To maintain sympathetic media coverage while fighting to maintain the top player talent, the owners started their own publications, and bribed reporters to present their side of the industry.

The U.S. Military and War Correspondents in World War II: Roles and Relationships • Alan Armitage, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville • The relationship between the U.S. military and war correspondents during World War II affected coverage of the war as much as the rules of censorship. Colin Sparks’ six roles which the state plays in relation to the media (patron, censor, actor, masseur, ideologue, and conspirator) are the basis for an examination of works by and about World War II war correspondents to explore the impact of the relationship on coverage of the war.

“A Society Without A Newspaper is Like a Body Without a Head”: Chicago’s Immigrant Workers And Their Press • Jon Bekken, Suffolk • At the turn of the century, Chicago’s immigrant working class developed dense networks of community institutions, bound together by weekly and daily newspapers which were integral parts of those communities. This paper briefly examines the Lithuanian, Italian and Croatian immigrant press, examining the ways in which these newspapers helped give shape to developing communities and to define and make their place in the world around them.

“American Press Coverage of Sociologist Herbert Spencer During His 1882 Visit to America” • Jack Breslin, Minnesota • Herbert Spencer, the English philosopher and social scientist of evolution, enjoyed remarkable popularity in post-bellum America. This paper describes the newspaper coverage of Spencer’s 1882 visit to America in an attempt to discern what views of Spencer’s were conveyed to readers which shaped how they perceived him. Through content analysis of relevant news stories, feature stories, dispatches and editorials in nine selected major newspapers, this study of press coverage of Spencer’s visit offers an insight into this country’s acceptance or rejection of his intellectual contribution.

First Use: The Emergence and Diffusion of “Yellow Journalism” • W. Joseph Campbell, American University • This paper seeks to resolve a matter of enduring dispute among media historians by presenting specific and compelling evidence about the date and context of the earliest published use of the term “yellow journalism”: It appeared first in Ervin Wardman’s New York Press in January 1897. Wardman, before seizing upon “yellow journalism,” had experimented with at least one other phrase – “nude journalism” – as a substitute for “new journalism,” which then was commonly associated with the newspapers of Hearst and Pulitzer.

The (S.C.) Palmetto Leader: A Successful Start, 1925-1927 • Kenneth Campbell, South Carolina • The Palmetto Leader was a vibrant (but now little known) black weekly that got off to a successful start in 1925 because it catered to the emerging black middle class in South Carolina, particularly in Columbia. This research addresses the factors that made the weekly successful, both those traditional factors and others that might set The Leader apart.

William G. Brownlow and the Knoxville Whig: A career of Personal Journalism or Partisan Press • Alisa White Coleman, Texas-Arlington • An example of personal journalism was The Knoxville Whig, edited by William Gannoway Brownlow, Tennessee’s first Reconstruction governor. Brownlow used his newspaper as a tool for the Whig party, his own religious beliefs, and to further the interests of himself and his friends. This paper takes a historiographical approach to examine Brownlow’s editorial stand on the issues concentrating on the period from 1849, when he moved to Knoxville, to 1865, when he was elected governor.

Yosemite’s Transition from Space to Place: An Historical Investigation into Media’s Role in the Place-Making Process • Nickieann Fleener and Edward Ruddell, Utah • In the early 1850s very few individuals knew that the area which now constitutes part of Yosemite National Park existed. Yet the area’s obscurity was short lived and by 1864 Yosemite was protected by federal mandate. Cultural geographers refer to this transition from space to place and acknowledge the integral part media play in the place-making process.

Chicago Newspaper Theater Critics of the Early 20th Century: Mediating Ibsen, the Syndicate and the Little Theaters • Scott Fosdick, Missouri • This paper responds to the near total lack of scholarship on the Chicago newspaper theater critics of the period 1900 to 1920 by offering a preliminary look at who these critics were and how they responded to three challenges they faced: the controversial new “problem plays” of such European playwrights as Ibsen and Shaw, the expansionist tendencies of the New York theatrical Syndicate, and the Little Theater movement.

The National Geographic Magazine and Environmental Coverage, 1970-1980 • Jan Knight, Ohio • In 1970, National Geographic began covering environmental pollution, an editorial shift away from its eighty-two-year-old policy of avoiding controversy. Through a review of the magazine’s history from 1888 to 1980, editor’s letters to readers, and interviews with staff members, this paper reveals that the magazine’s environmental coverage focused largely on threats to U. S. energy sources and was tempered by fears that disgruntled, but powerful, readers would challenge the National Geographic Society’s nonprofit status.

The Creation of the “Free” Press in Japanese American Internment Camps: The War Relocation Authority’s Planning and Making of the Camp Newspaper Policy • Takeya Mizuno, Missouri • This study investigates how the War Relocation Authority (WRA) planned and documented the newspaper publishing policy in Japanese American internment camps during World War II. The WRA allowed internees to publish their own newspapers “freely” without “censorship” but under the authority’s “supervision.” This study examines the process and content of the WRA’s camp press policy. This study also shows that the federal government’s propaganda tactics had much to do with the WRA’s “free under supervision” scheme of press control.

The Klan and Press in Atlanta, 1919-1921: A Tale of Public Relations and Newspaper Opposition • Hanna Norton and Karen Miller, Georgia • This paper analyzes press coverage of the Klan in three Atlanta newspapers before, during and after its Imperial Wizard hired a public relations firm in June 1920. Scholars have not reached a consensus on the national press’s importance to the rise or destruction of the Klan. They have, however, most often condemned the press for not undertaking active opposition to the Klan. Our own research found that all three Atlanta daily newspapers did comment negatively on the organization during the two week period surrounding the 1921 Congressional investigation.

Race and the Construction of News: Press Coverage of the Tuskegee Study, 1972 • April L. Peterson, Washington • On 26 July 1972, Associated Press reporter Jean Heller broke the story of a 40 year-old Public Health Service study of syphilis in a population of African American men in Macon County, Alabama. This paper reviews news coverage of that story as a case study of race and the construction of news by examining news stories in the mainstream press and black press of the period. News frames are discussed to illuminate how news is constructed.

Czars, Presidents, Philosophers, and Miscegenation: The Cultural Power of Early Motion Pictures • Elaine Walls Reed, Kutztown University-Pennsylvania • From the vantage point of time, aided by access to the personal documents of movie czar Will H. Hays and philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, motion picture historians and critics learn more about the public and private negotiations that helped to shape 20th century American race relations.

The Confederate Press Association: A Revolutionary Experience in Southern Journalism? • Ford Risley, Penn State • This study examines the guidelines for telegraphic reporting established by the Confederate Press Association during the Civil War. The association’s superintendent liked to say the practices, which stressed concise, timely, and factual news reporting, represented a “complete revolution” in Southern journalism. Indeed, they were a major change in a region where timely news reporting traditionally had taken a backseat to editorial opinion. Although the work of the association was not the revolutionary experience claimed, the standards it sought to live up to clearly raised the bar for Southern journalism.

Crisis Public Relations at Pennzoil: An Organization’s Corporate Communication Response During a Landmark Legal Battle • Dennis R. Robertson, Arkansas State University • Pennzoil’s battle with Texaco in the 1980s over the Getty Oil reserves was legendary legal history. It was also public relations history. This paper examines the role of public relations in the Pennzoil-Texaco battle. Through literature review, personal interviews and oral histories, the research documents the policies, practices, and tactics of Pennzoil’s public relations department during one of the most fascinating events in American corporate history.

“Pounding Brass” for the Associated Press: A Surviving Press Telegrapher Recalls His Craft • J. Steven Smethers, Oklahoma State • Before the widespread adoption of the teletype, the Associated Press employed telegraph operators to dispatch news copy to member newspapers. This paper chronicles the heyday of press telegraphy through the reminiscences of a former AP telegrapher, Aubrey E. Keel of Kansas City, covering various aspects of this lost profession, including the training, daily routines, professional standards and the eventual displacement caused by the industry’s conversion to teletype technology.

Bat Masterson: Sheriff of the Sports Page • Mike Sowell, Oklahoma State • Bat Masterson not only was one of the last heroes of the Old West in the late nineteenth century but also one of the first heroes of a new frontier at the turn of the century the sports page of the American newspaper. This paper is an examination of how Masterson’s sports columns from 1903 to 1921 reflected his self-appointed role as a de facto “sheriff of boxing,” and how he used his forum as a sports writer to apply his Western sense of honor and justice to the boxing ring.

Science, Journalism and the Construction of News: How Print Media Framed the 1918 Influenza Pandemic • Meg Spratt, Washington • This paper examines how the relationship between scientific method and journalistic norms shaped news frames of the 20th Century’s most deadly pandemic in both scientific and mainstream publications. By examining journalistic coverage in Science, Scientific American, Survey, and The New York Times of the Spanish Influenza at the height of the 1918 pandemic, it becomes apparent that reliance upon objectivity, neutrality, and empirical data supported the views of authoritative sources while almost obliterating the voices of victims and average citizens.

Liberal Journalism in the Deep South: Harry M. Ayers And The “Bothersome” Race Question • Kevin Stocker, Brigham Young • This paper looks at why Anniston (Alabama) Star editor Colonel Harry Ayers progressed then retrogressed on the race issue. He befriended blacks in the 1920s and advocated economic, educational, and electoral equality in the 1930s and 1940s but opposed integration. A study of his writings provides a unique look at a member of an ignored group of southern community newspaper editors who tried to build a New South without harming the old one.

Strange Bedfellows, or a Marriage Made in Heaven? Advertising, the Federal Government, and the Second World War • Inger Stole, Illinois • Contending that the Second World War helped solidify the institution of advertising in the economy, the polity, and American culture, this paper chronicles how the American advertising industry navigated the treacherous political waters of Washington D.C. in the early 1940s, primarily through its newly created public relations arm, the (War) Advertising Council. It argues that the Council successfully neutralized the threat of hostile government actions towards advertising, and helped establish cordial relations between the federal government and the advertising industry.

Expanding the “Dual Role” Concept: The Latvian Newspaper Kanadietis, 1913-1914 • Andris Straumanis, Wisconsin-Eau Claire • Adopting the work of anthropologists who have studied “rites of passage,” this paper suggests that the long-standing debate about the role of the immigrant press should be reexamined by stressing the liminal stage. Expanding the notion of a “dual role” allows for inclusion of media that do not fit the traditional dichotomy of cultural maintenance vs. acculturation. The Latvian-language newspaper Kanadietis, published in Winnipeg, Canada, from 1913 to 1914, is presented as a case study.

Covering the Century: How Four New York Dailies Reported the End of the 19th Century • Randall Scott Sumpter, Texas A&M • This study compares how two groups of New York dailies covered the end of the l9th century. The “yellow” press linked the century’s end to jingoistic predictions, self-promoting scoops and coverage of sensational topics. Other editors, seeking reader and advertiser niches not yet dominated by the yellow journals, avoided sensation and tempered optimistic predictions with stories about possible shortages. Their efforts furnish another example of how market competition nourished the development of “objective” news practices.

New York City Press and the McKinley Assassination: Debates About Journalism Ethics When a Newspaper Was Accused of Killing a President • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois • William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal was accused of inciting a presidential assassination following the shooting death of President William McKinley in September 1901. At that point the Journal and a rival, The New York Sun, promptly engaged in a letters to the editor war. This paper examines public reaction and debates about journalistic responsibility published in five leading New York City daily newspapers -The New York Journal; The Evening Post; The New York Sun; The New York Times; and The New York World.

Burning Crosses and Activist Journalism: The Unlikely Heroism of Two Mississippi Editors • Jan Whitt, Colorado • Journalists summarize lifetimes and abbreviate events in order to serve the interests of public knowledge and/or social action. It is tempting for them to write the stories of everyday citizens as if their subjects are somehow more courageous, more spiritual, or more committed than the average person. Telling the stories of “heroes” • such as Pulitzer Prize-winning Mississippi journalists Ira B. Harkey Jr. and Hazel Brannon Smith • requires an understanding of the nature of both journalistic and historical narrative.

World War I and the Success of the United Press • Dale Zacher, North • This study uses extensive original source documents to examine the importance World War One played in the eventual financial success of the United Press wire service. The U.P., created in 1907, faced a difficult task in covering a global war, yet emerged from it stronger than ever. The U.P. was able to use several notable scoops early in the war to establish a long-lasting reputation, overcoming problems with censorship, technological limitations and cutthroat competition.

<< 2000 Abstracts

Cultural and Critical Studies Division

This Mythical Place, El Pais de Las Mujeres: Representing Women in a Venezuelan Telenova • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Georgia • Latin American telenovelas stand out as a genre that has successfully challenged its U.S. counterpart — the soap opera — in a global media environment that is increasingly dominated by the U.S. Drawing on cultural studies, this report focuses on how women are represented in a Venezuelan telenovela, El Pais de las Mujeres (The Country of the Women). These representations are negative in themselves. However, the storylines reverse these negative constructions by ridiculing them (and the characters that voice them), providing, in this way, a vehicle of empowerment for Venezuelan women.

The First Amendment and the Doctrine of Corporate Personhood: Collapsing the Press-Corporation Distinction • David S. Allen, Illinois State • This paper examines the legal concept of corporate personhood, entitling corporations to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights, as it applies to the press. Following that doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has struggled to differentiate the press from corporations, collapsing First Amendment distinctions. It is suggested that the Court’s actions hurt press freedom, but more importantly creates another opening for corporate domination of the public sphere.

Reconstructing the Concept of Public Trusteeship in the Digital Broadcasting Era: Public Trusteeship for a Deliberative Democracy • Misook Baek, Iowa • This paper attempts to construct the political-philosophical foundation of public trusteeship to realize the democratic potential of digital broadcasting, shifting away from the narrow debate of regulatory scheme and policy. Thus, this paper proposes the conceptualization of public trusteeship for a deliberative democracy emphasizing an informed citizen and civic participation in political processes. This paper relies on Dewey’s and Habermas’ theoretical discussion of the media, the community, and democracy, and the communitarian interpretation of the First Amendment.

Telemedicine in South Dakota: A Cultural Studies Approach • Warren Bareiss, South Dakota State • This study examines how socio-economic relationships are negotiated with regard to telemedicine in South Dakota — a state where telemedicine has rapidly developed in response to an ongoing crisis in health-care. An overview of economic conditions in South Dakota is followed by examinations of network structures through which telemedicine operates and an analysis of how telemedicine is rhetorically constructed. Concluding sections discuss the hegemonic nature of telemedicine in South Dakota and raise new questions about telemedicine.

Marginalized, Excluded and Invisible: The Portrayal of Labor in Journalism Textbooks • Jon Bekken • Journalism textbooks play a key role in not only training journalists in their craft, but also in inculcating professional ideology. This study examines 29 newswriting, media writing, and reporting textbooks, documenting their systematic marginalization and exclusion of labor. Even texts that address the need for labor coverage often undercut that message through examples and assignments, which rely exclusively upon management and government sources. This “hidden curriculum” simultaneously undercuts the textbooks’ stated intentions, and ideologically prepares journalists to serve as stenographers to power.

Cyberspace: The New Disney Universe • Jeffrey Layne Blevins • The Disney empire comprises one of the top media conglomerates in the world and their most notable move in Cyberspace has been the addition of an Internet search engine. The purpose of this study is to explore Disney’s expansion into Cyberspace and analyze the relationship between its Internet search engine and burgeoning media empire. This newest search engine will most likely power an effective vehicle for Disney to cross-promote its vast empire.

What’s Wrong with a Little Media Manipulation, Anyway?: Longing for Althusser • Bonnie Brennen, Missouri-Columbia • This convention paper focuses on the current one billion dollar anti-drug public service announcement deal, through which the United States government has been inserting propaganda into prime time television shows. It draws on the work of French philosopher Louis Althusser, specifically his contributions to the development of ideology, in an attempt to illustrate the continued relevance of his work to understanding the complex relationship between media and society.

A Tradition of Dissent: West Indians and Liberian Journalism, 1830 to 1970 • Carl Patrick Burrowes, Howard • West Indians immigrants were conspicuously present in the Liberian press, especially in forms of journalism that challenged the hegemonic order established by African-American repatriates. Notably among them were John B. Russwurm, founder of the first Black newspaper in America, and Edward Wilmot Blyden, a leading nineteenth-century Black intellectual. Their ideological challenges consistently evidenced a duality that is said to characterize Caribbean culture: a social conservatism coupled with a political radicalism.

Between Cultural and Social Identities: A Discourse Analysis of Web Diaries on Hong Kong’s Handover • Hong Cheng and Guofang Wan, Bradley • This paper is a discourse analysis of Web diaries concerning Hong Kong’s handover from Britain to China. It pinpointed numerous dynamic and multifaceted interactions of language, culture, and ideology in Hong Kong people’s heart and soul searches for cultural and social identities during the territory’s sovereignty transfer. The paper also examined communication strategies used in Web diaries and analyzed this new communication genre’s potential for empowering mass audience as well as enlarging knowledge gap.

What Language Do Cyborgs Speak? • Mia Consalvo, Wisconsin-Milwaukee • This paper explores fan communication online, and how online communication in general is changing. This is due to two factors — the development of hypertext, and our vision of ourselves as cyborgs. I argue that hypertext changes the way we think about knowledge, it de-centers authority, and challenges the linear. As we move online, and learn how to exploit this new “language” we will develop new and revolutionary uses for it. However, we must use this new language and way of being to ensure that everyone has access to it, for it to be truly revolutionary.

The Reality of Virtual Hate: A Fantasy Theme Analysis of the Rhetorical Vision of Hate Groups Online • Margaret E. Duffy and Victoria A. Palmer, Austin Peay State University • The development and growth of the Internet and Worldwide Web have provided a new and persuasive medium for business, education, and social interaction. It has also provided a powerful new medium for hate groups seeking to disseminate their message and recruit new followers. This paper uses Ernest Bormann’s fantasy theme analysis to examine hate group websites as a means to understand the worldviews expressed and the resulting potential for persuasion.

Janet Malcolm: Constructing a Journalist’s Identity • Elizabeth Fakazis, Indiana • This article explores the role that Janet Malcolm played in defining the boundaries of legitimate journalism as she defended herself against charges that her journalistic methods and her identity as a professional journalist were suspect. Malcolm positioned herself as a journalist and metajournalist, defining her methods as representing the norms of the profession while challenging the dominant conception of journalism as an enterprise ideally involving disinterested, institutional voices rather than individual authors subjectively interacting with their subjects and texts.

Negotiating Consumption, Play and Masculinities through Role-Play/Trading Cards Games: An Exploratory Research on the Players of Magic: The Gathering¨ in Iowa City • Mirerza Gonzalez-Velez, Iowa • In an attempt to understand the relationship between the construction of cultural identities and the consumer culture, this paper explores role-play/trading cards games such as Magic: The Gathering¨. Using as evidence data of an exploratory qualitative research developed with non-participant observation and semi-informal interviews, the paper argues that games as Magic: The Gathering¨ represents both a commodity of the culture industry and a cultural space in which male identity is constructed.

The News of Inclusive Education: A Narrative Analysis • Beth A. Haller, Towson and Bruce Dorries, Radford • This paper investigates a nationally publicized case in the debate over the best method of educating millions of children with severe disabilities. Using Fisher’s narrative paradigm, this paper analyzes four years of the extensive media coverage of the legal battles of Mark Hartmann’s family. The 11-year-old’s parents took the Loudoun County, Va., Board of Education to court to reinstate their autistic son in a regular classroom. Much media attention focused on the story because it dramatized the issues concerning the national debate about inclusion.

The “Forgotten” 1918 Influenza Epidemic and Press Portrayal of Public Anxiety • Janice Hume, Kansas State • Journalists and scholars often use the idea of a shared “American anxiety” in their analyses of trends, yet no one has looked historically at how media depict public anxiety. This study examines magazine coverage of a domestic crisis that should have made Americans anxious, the 1918 influenza epidemic, to explore references to anxiety, and to try to understand why this epidemic, which killed more people than World War 1, is lost to American public memory.

Theorizing Automotive Radio: Prosthesis, Technology, and Cultural Form • Matthew A. Killmeier, Iowa • Automotive radio and broadcasting emerged in the 1950s as a unique cultural form of radio, rather than a particular manifestation of radio. As a mobile medium, it required a mobile society, audiences and content. This paper is a theoretical engagement with the meanings and significances of automotive radio, including mobility, space and over place, technology and information.

‘Grimm’ News Indeed: ‘Madstones,’ Clever Toads, and Killer Tarantulas (Fairy-Tale Briefs in Wild West Newspapers) • Paulette D. Kilmer, Toledo • Editors in Nevada, Texas, Arizona, or California sprinkled fanciful items among editorials boosting their new El Dorado and sober news accounts. Besides connecting East and West via the imagination, these fairy-tale briefs provided a respite from the harsh reality reported graphically in the news columns and too often experienced personally by readers in frontier communities during the late Nineteenth Century.

The Active Audience in a Panic: A Case Study of the Interaction between Media Discourse and Public Opinion prior to Labor Law Revision in December 1996, Korea • Nam-Doo Kim, Texas at Austin • This paper examines the interaction between mainstream media discourse and public opinion before labor law revision in 1996, Korea, and evaluates the nature of the public through the redefinition of “active audience.” While the media coverage of labor issue and background issue was unbalanced toward pro-employer side, there were some indicators that the public responded sensitively to the marginalized oppositional theme in the media discourse. The activeness in the general audience was motivated by the mass fear.

Examining the Problematic of Auteur Theory: The Case of David E. Kelley and Picket Fences • Karen E. Kline, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania • This paper explores the contemporary critique of auteur theory in the realm of commercial television production, which has been asserted, from poststructuralist, materialist, and dialogic perspectives. Drawing upon ethnographic research conducted within the David E. Kelley production company, the author argues that Kelley is a television auteur, albeit one whose authorship is implemented in ways consistent with the auteurist critique. Thus, this paper offers a variegated view of television authorship, which incorporates that critique.

Polysemy, Resistance, and Hegemony: An Audience Research of a Korean Prime-Time Drama • Oh-Hyeon Lee, Massachusetts • While exploring the polysemic nature of a Korean prime-time drama, Bogo Ddo Bogo, and its viewers’ interpretations, this paper examines the hegemonic power of the show, the agency of the audience, and the power relations between them. This study finds that the viewers actively construct various meanings of the program, even resistant to the dominant ideological meanings and values articulated in the program. However, the hegemonic power of the program seems to overpower the agency of the audience.

Capote’s Legacy: The Challenge of Creativity and Credibility in Literary Journalism • Mark H. Masse, Ball State • Thirty-five years ago (1965), Truman Capote published his best-selling “nonfiction novel,” In Cold Blood. The book has been both praised for its compelling writing and criticized for its inaccurate and misleading reporting. The legacy of Capote reflects the enduring challenge facing authors of literary journalism in producing creative and credible works. This paper examines Capote’s historical contributions to the craft of narrative nonfiction writing and the critical response to In Cold Blood since the 1960s.

Rosa Luxemborg, The Thomas Paine of the Russian Revolution: A Pamphleteer, a Martyr and a Socialist with a Human Face • Beverly G. Merrick, New Mexico State • The purpose of this research into intellectual history is to explore the contributions of Rosa Luxemborg, as pamphleteer and political columnist. She predicted the fall of the Leninist-Marxist model, and proposed a kind of social democratic model that is a cousin to similar political and social movements in the United States. Although she became a martyr for her contributions to the thenradical thought of freedom of expression in Soviet Russia, more than 40 years before the sixties movement of the New Left, Luxemborg is the ideological founder of that movement.

The Symbolic Repertoires of Contention: The Rhetoric of California Latino Strikers and Media Framing • Young Min, Texas at Austin • The present paper explores the collective action frames of a Latino labor strike in California and probes the media’s framing of the walkout. By employing various polarizing frames and religious rhetorical markers, the strikers try to mobilize various audiences as supporters and invalidate the management’s new labor policies, but do not radically challenge capitalist law and order. Being dissonant with the strikers’ collective action frames, the news frames color the strike as a matter of conflicts between strikers and replacement workers and posit the company’s neo-liberal labor policies as reasonable business decisions.

Ideology and Manufactured Environments: An Analysis of the Disney Home Page • Randy Nichols, Oregon • This paper provides a critical analysis of the way in which the Disney web page is set up to enforce Disney’s ideological stance. By drawing on political economic studies of the Disney corporation as well as studies of how the Disney corporation controls space for its ideological ends, a better understanding of the implications of the company’s web page is gained.

Hemp in the Media: Social Struggles over a Controversial Plant • Andy Opel, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examines the recent effort to revitalize the hemp industry in the United States. Contrasting information from the hemp advocates websites and popular literature with newspaper coverage from three major dailies over a three-year period, this discourse analysis reveals a struggle over the definition of the hemp plant. The media discourse around hemp in the late 1990s is found to be more than a semantic debate, and includes connections to the larger cultural debates of the “drug war” and the “culture war.”

Discourse about Global Media in Postcolonial India: Beauty Contests, Gender, and Nationalism • Radhika E. Parameswaran, Indiana • The controversial Miss World beauty contest that was held in India in 1996 is the focus of the proposed project. The controversy arose from protests expressed against the pageant by factions such as religious leaders, political parties, and feminist activists. This study is based on intensive interviews with organizers and sponsors of the pageant, and with other informants who were involved in managing and supporting the pageant.

The Talk of Movers and Shakers: Class Conflict in the Making of a Community Disaster • Lana F. Rakow, North Dakota • Communities and disasters are both products of communication. Communities are created by interactions of residents and institutions; disasters are named and blame assigned. In 1997, Grand Forks, North Dakota experienced a serious flood, which altered communication processes and highlighted class conflicts. Two groups, “movers” and “shakers,” represent conflicts over definitions of the event, political ideologies, and control of material and symbolic activity. While both groups “talk,” only one has “voice,” further embedding class differences.

Myth of the Southern Box Office: Lining Domestic Coffers with Global Prejudices • Elaine Walls Reed, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania • In the first half of the 20th century, the foreign market for domestic motion pictures dictated screen content that helped to institutionalize a domestic version of British imperialism. The Southern box office became the scapegoat, and American race relations suffered because of it.

Veiled Promise: The Meaning of “Chador” as a Late 20th Century Signifler • Elizabeth Lester Roushanzamir, Georgia • This inquiry investigates U.S. media texts demonstrating how processes of articulation and negotiation help construct a strategic version of Iran, which promotes the goals of transnational capital and U.S. foreign policy. While at times the goals of capital and state diverge, the construction of a gendered Other complements media representations of ethnicity, “race,” nationality and class to further common goals. In particular, representations of Iranian women in the news media, flat simplistic, iconic and memorable form a discourse of power that differs significantly from 19th century Orientalist representations.

Chiapas and the New News: Internet and Newspaper Coverage of a Broken Cease-fire • Adrienne Russell, Indiana • Taking the norms of journalism as exhibited in newspaper coverage of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas as its starting point, this study analyzes online discourse centered around the rebel movement in order to reveal characteristics unique to computer mediated discourse. The paper focuses on the mechanisms by which traditional journalism and computer mediated communication each produces a particular truth about the Zapatista movement.

One of Those Shows: What Ally McBeal Tells Us about the Fate of Feminism • Camisha Ann Russell, American • Ally McBeal is a popular and fiercely debated show. The Ally character is simultaneously seen as feminist, postfeminist, and anti-feminist. The show was even used in Time magazine to ask: “Is Feminism Dead?” Such a question rests heavily on particular interpretations of the show and of feminism itself. Ally McBeal and the discussion surrounding it have more to tell us about the way our society views feminism than about feminism’s actual condition in that society.

Sunny Days on Sesame Street?: Multiculturalism and Resistance Postmodernism • Ute Sartorius, South Dakota • After thirty years of broadcasting, Sesame Street, which has been called one of the most influential children’s shows ever, plays an important role in shaping society’s construction of multiculturalism. This paper addresses the role of educational children’s television as a contributor to the forging of the notion of multiculturalism by analyzing Sesame Street’s suitability as an instrument for multicultural pedagogy.

Return of the Mummy: Hollywood Horror Revives Orientalism • Soon-Chul Shin, Georgia • Edward Said’s Orientalism explains how historical narrative have framed and distorted the images of the “Other.” The spectators are led to an exotic place, while watching Orientalistic films, where historical, spatial, temporal, and cultural contexts are totally fictitious, not just distorted; Imperialistic narrative rather “refract” the Others instead of “reflect” them. Tales of “the other” narrated by Orientalistic discourse boosted exploration of cinema’s particular capacity to reproduce an object in “verisimilitude” without truth.

Contradictory by Nature: The Dream of Attaining Nirvana through Materialism: A Critical Analysis of Silicon Valley Internet Start-ups and Entrepreneurs • Helga G. Tawil, Colorado • This is a preliminary research project based on in-depth interviews with individuals at Silicon Valley start-ups. From the Critical Theory approach, the aim is understanding and analyzing the forces in, and reasons for joining start-ups; attempting to understand the struggle and reconciliation between individuality and social pressures, looking at how the individual preserves his autonomy and individuality in the face of overwhelming social forces in Silicon Valley start-up culture, as well as addressing those socio-economic forces.

Dubuque’s First Political Prisoner: Violence, Class, and the ‘Frameup’ of Labor Journalist Archie Carter • James F. Tracy, Iowa • This paper is an analysis of the circumstances preceding and following the arrest and conviction of labor journalist, organizer, and political activist Archie Carter on a sodomy charge in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1938. Examination of newspapers, oral histories, court documents, and personal materials of Carter’s associates indicates that Carter was framed by powerful business interests and state authorities because of his activities as labor organizer and journalist.

Presidential Politics, the Emergence of Entertainment Journalism, and the Battle for Headlines: An Examination of the 1994-1995 Baseball Strike • Robert Trumpbour, Pennsylvania State • The capacity to inject ideology into sports-related content is explored, utilizing Presidential involvement with the 1994-1995 Major League Baseball strike. It is argued that entertainment-based media content may be perceived as culturally neutral by some citizens, but several media-related trends may serve to intensify the influence of these messages. President Clinton’s participation in the 1994-1995 baseball strike appeared to be a policy failure, but upon closer inspection, several successes were achieved.

Locating a Theoretical and Methodological Field for Contemporary Japanese TV Dramas: Discourse Hierarchy, Critical Ethnography and Radical Space of Television Writers • Eva Tsai, Iowa • This essay critiques various kinds of built-in theoretical hierarchies in television studies that have shaped the ways scholars position and evaluate television institutions, forms and workers in the Japanese context. I specifically address a much neglected and disciplined space of TV writers and argue that such a state is related to the theoretical and methodological perceptions of writers as marginalized media workers. Ultimately, I urge that researchers studying TV writers use critical ethnographic methods to deal with the issue of power relationship between the researcher and his or her subject.

The Use of Race as Political Strategy by Political Candidates: A Case Study of Opinions Expressed by Voters during a U.S. Presidential Campaign • Niranjala D. Weerakkody, Deakin University (Australia) • Taking the social constructionist position, this case study examines the opinions expressed on race by voters in depth and focus group interviews at different locations and different stages of the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign and what effect media messages shown as stimuli to the focus groups had on these opinions. It qualitatively analyzes the framing of these opinions by both whites and non-whites, under the themes “Candidates’ racial prejudice” and “Race is used as political strategy.”

Ideology and Race in California: The New York Times Coverage of Proposition 187 • Chris Williams, Texas at Austin • Using critical cultural and media sociology theories of ideology, race and the media, this study examines the New York Times’ coverage of Proposition 187, California’s plan to deny social services to undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom are non-white. It concludes that although the Times editorialized against the discriminatory nature of 187, its news coverage perpetuated the elite “blame the undocumented” discourse that diverted public attention from other important aspects of the immigration issue.

The Political Economy and Content of Television: The Soap Opera Paradigm • James H. Wittebols, Niagara • This paper seeks to show how television has responded to the increasing pressure to focus on market interests by appropriating elements from soap operas which have proven so successful in fulfilling market values. The techniques present in soaps which serve market interests are applied to an analysis of non-soap programming to present evidence that the political economy of television plays a significant role in how stories are told across fictional, sports and public affairs programming.

<< 2000 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology Division

Faculty
Profiling TV Ratings Users: Content-Based Advisories and Their Adoption • Robert Abelman and David Atkin, Cleveland State • In the aftermath of the ineffectiveness of the age-based MPAA television advisory ratings, this investigation examined parents’ use of the content-based ratings in their decision-making. The parents most likely to utilize TV ratings information tended to fit the profile of the target audience formed by the literature and set by the television industry: infrequent mediators of their children’s televiewing who are likely to employ a highly restrictive (deprivation-based) method of mediation, believe that television can have a significant impact on children, and are more concerned with behavioral- than cognitive-level effects.

Gender Schema and Alcohol-Related Messages: An Extension of the Message Interpretation Process Model • Julie L. Andsager, Erica Weintraub Austin, and Bruce E. Pinkleton, Washington State • The Message Interpretation Process Model posits that adolescents employ logic and emotion in analyzing messages. Gender schema theory argues that gender roles are internalized by adolescence; gender should affect information processing. We exposed 578 ninth and twelfth graders to eight alcohol-related messages. Boys were more aware of production values, especially in advertisements; girls noted emotional appeals. Both boys and girls found fantasy-based messages amusing; they were affected by realism. The MIP model should incorporate gender.

The Effects of Increased Awareness on College Students’ Interpretations of Magazine Advertisements for Alcohol • Erica Weintraub Austin, Amber Reaume, John Silva, Petra Guerra, Neva Geisler, Luxelvira Gamboa, Orlalak Phakakayai, and Bryant Kuechle, Washington State • An experiment with 496 college students tested whether heightened awareness during media exposure would affect the message interpretation process by enhancing skepticism, with the enhanced skepticism influencing both affective and cognitive aspects of decision making. The results suggest that skepticism has affective and logical components, which can be represented by trust (more affective) and perceived realism (more logical), and that skepticism’s effects on affective and logical decision making are revealed somewhat differently.

Negative Implications of the Third-Person Effect on Program Assessment Validity: An Experiment with the Drug Abuse Resistance Education Program • Stephen Banning, Texas A&M • While the third-person effect hypothesis has undergone considerable testing since its inception nearly three decades ago, this research is the first project to investigate an applied use for the concept. This study introduces a formula for calculating a differential impact index and demonstrates with an experiment using middle-school age students in a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program that a first-person or third-person effect can produce a confounding variable into traditional program evaluations.

An Effect Model of Political News and Political Advertising: The 1996 Presidential Election • Mahmoud A. M. Braima, Southern University and A&M College; Thomas J. Johnson, and Jayanthi Sothirajah, Southern Illinois-Carbondale • To determine the positive influence of exposure to an election campaign and the negative impact of the advertising campaigns of a presidential contest, we used structural equations to simultaneously assess 11 causal links between issue involvement, political news exposure, political advertising exposure, political news attention, political advertising attention, knowledge of candidates’ issue stands and voting intention. Two data sets, one from a survey of 320 adult residents of Jackson County in Illinois during the primaries and another from a survey of 368 adult residents of Pulaski County in Arkansas prior to the election, were used in the study.

Sex, Alcohol and Billboards: Memory, Attitude Change, and Purchase Intention • Xiaomei Cai, Annie Lang, Kevin Wise, and Seungwhan Lee, Indiana • This study examines the effects of product type and sexual appeals in billboard messages on college students’ recall and recognition in relation to their drinking levels. Results show that alcohol billboards are recalled better than not-alcohol billboards, particularly for alcohol billboards using sexual appeals. Heavy drinkers recall alcohol brands better than light drinkers. However, sexual appeals reduce brand free recall for heavy drinkers. Heavy drinkers also have more positive attitude towards alcohol products.

Conceptualizing and Testing the Construct “Impactiveness”: Analyzing the Effect of Visual Stimuli Eliciting Eye-Fixations, Orienting Responses and Memory-Stored Images on Ad Recall • Fiona Chew and Jay Sethuraman, Syracuse • Impactiveness is coined and proposed as a construct consisting of visual stimuli which elicit eye-fixations, orienting responses and/or memory-stored images. It was conceptualized using the seven-step inductive-deductive process outlined by Donohew and Palmgreen and predicated on theories of attention and involvement. Eighty color print ads from Gallup and Robinson’s 1996 Which Ad Pulled Best were coded and analyzed for impactiveness which was hypothesized to obtain higher recall. Findings seemed to support this hypothesis and validated the construct.

Use of Cause-Related Marketing Ads to Bolster Image in the Light of Negative News • Sameer Deshpande and Jacqueline Hitchon • University of Wisconsin – Madison • This paper presents an experimental study conducted among 178 subjects to test a bolstering strategy from Image Restoration Theory. Three different kinds of ads were compared with respect to bolstering brand image and the reputation of a nonprofit organization (NPO) after the release of an unfavorable news story: brand ads, PSAs, and Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) ads. As hypothesized, CRM ads produced more favorable responses than brand ads prior to scandal, but lost their advantage in the light of negative news.

Transactionalism Revisited: The Development of Transactional Thinking and its Impact on Communication Theory • Wolfgang Eichhorn, der Universitat Munchen • In the first half of the 20th century, John Dewey developed a concept of transaction as an alternative to stimulus-response based theories of human perception and action. Consequences of the transactional paradigm can be found in philosophy, psychology, semiotics and communication theory. This paper gives a short overview over the development of the concept of transaction and the way transactional thinking into communication theory and suggests an increased incorporation of the concept into reception research.

News Information Processing as Mediator Between Motivations and Public Affairs Knowledge • William Eveland, Jr., Ohio State • Empirical support is offered for the proposed cognitive mediation model of learning from the news. The cognitive mediation model is situated within an information processing framework and integrates existing theory and research on uses and gratifications and news information processing. It proposes that motivations for news media use influence the processing to which the news information is put, and that this processing is the proximal determinant of learning from the news.

The Assimilation of Soap Opera Portrayals into Viewer’s Relational Knowledge Structures • Steven J. Hoekstra, Kansas Weslyan and Tom Grimes and Catherine Cozzarelli, Kansas State • Two studies were conducted to test the degree to which exposure to soap opera television influences individuals’ relational schemas. Participants in the first study completed a series of questionnaires that measured their beliefs about romanticism, relationship fragility, the utility of conversation in relationships, and sexual attitudes. All participants reported their habits for television viewing in general and soap opera viewing in particular. Results showed that general and relationship-specific beliefs predicted relationship satisfaction, but that soap opera viewing time did not appear to be a central influence in either general or specific relationship beliefs.

Communication Behavior as a Critical Factor on the Third-Person Effect • Yu-Wei Hu, National Taiwan Normal University • This study examines the influence of communication behavior on the magnitude of the third-person effect. The results of a telephone survey indicate that, during an election campaign, higher level of media use will reduce the magnitude of the third-person effect. Moreover, while previous studies had ignored the possible influence of interpersonal communication on the third-person effect, this study finds a significant negative correlation between interpersonal communication and the third-person effect.

Neighborhoods, Communication and Policial Beliefs • Leo W. Jeffres, Richard Perloff, David Atkin, and Kim Neuendorf, Cleveland State • Although people tend to mobilize around local problems and restrict their political involvement at other times, the political communication literature generally has focused on national politics and elections. This is particularly surprising in investigations of political efficacy since it is at the community level that people should feel more efficacious. Also, both mass and interpersonal communication should be more significant locally given their importance in strengthening community ties. The study reported here focuses on these relationships in a community context, with a survey of six inner-city neighborhoods and six suburbs also classified on status using census data.

Receiver Control of Pacing with Mass Media: Effects on Comprehension and Persuasion • Tom Kelleher, University of Hawaii-Manoa • This study tests receiver control of pacing as a variable for examining learning and persuasion outcomes with mass media. Fifty students participated in the study’s 2X2 factorial experiment. Receiver control of pacing and the presence of images in the stimuli were the dichotomous independent variables and comprehension and attitudes toward the stimulus material were the main dependent variables. Results of the study showed that print and Web conditions • media that allow receivers control of pacing • had a significant advantage over radio and video in affecting comprehension of the science-related stimulus material from NASA. Control of pacing did not have an advantage in affecting attitudes.

Revisiting the News Media’s Liberal Bias: An Alternative Measurement of Journalists’ Political Ideologies • Tien-tsung Lee, Hawaii Pacific • A traditional approach to answer whether the news media have a liberal bias is to survey journalists. Findings of previous studies suggest that journalists tend to identify themselves as liberals and are more likely to vote for Democrats. Such results have been used to support the argument that the news media have a liberal bias. The present study revisits the issue with a more refined measurement of political ideology, and concludes that the liberal bias claim is only a myth.

Media Influences on Voter Learning, Cynicism, and the Vote in an Off-Year Issue Election • Glenn Leshner and Maria E. Len-Rios, University of Missouri • This study examined the influence of campaign news and advertising media on voter knowledge, cynicism and voting in a 1999 issue election. It also compared the patterns of association between three measures of vote behavior • vote likelihood, self-report vote, and actual vote • and demographic, political, and media variables. Two cross-sectional telephone surveys were administered • one month before the vote and the other immediately after the election. Hierarchical multiple regression models were tested. Attention to all of the campaign media predicted knowledge about the dominant issue on the ballot at the beginning of the campaign, but only attention to newspapers predicted knowledge at the end of the campaign.

The Effects of Erotica and Dehumanizing Pornography in an Online Interactive Environment • Chad Mahood, Sriram Kalyanaraman, and S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State • The present study employed a fully mixed 3 (low vs. medium vs. high interactivity) X 2 (erotica vs. de-humanizing pornography) factorial between-subjects design. After exposure to dehumanizing material, subjects held less sexual conservatism. Medium interactivity led to the most sex role satisfaction. An interaction effect showed that exposure to dehumanizing pornography with medium and high levels of interactivity led to more acceptance of violence toward women, while highly interactive erotica led to less acceptance of violence toward women.

Exploring News Media Use and Interpersonal Communication as Correlates of Accuracy and Inaccuracy in the Perception of the Climate of Opinion • Ann Marie Major, Pennsylvania • This study examines the psychological and social correlates of accuracy and inaccuracy in assessments of the climate of opinion about environmental problems from a telephone survey of 1002 adults. News media use, news media influence, and information-seeking were associated consistently with accurate assessments of the majority opinion. Problem and constraint recognition provided a means of determining whether or not respondents were accurate or were simply projecting their own opinions to the majority. Interpersonal discussions and environmental concern were associated with inaccuracy.

Cognitive Structure as a Mediator of the Influence of Communication • Jack M. McLeod and Jessica Zubric, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan; Maria Powell, Weiwu Zhang, and Sameer Deshpande, with Dhavan Shah and Mike Schmierbach, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study demonstrates the importance of examining the processes that mediate the influences of communication on civic life. In this study, we analyzed the role of cognitive structure as affected by media use and interpersonal communication, and its mediating role influencing willingness to participate in a public forum on the urban growth issue. Findings illustrated that various communication patterns had distinct effects on four dimensions of cognitive structure: width, depth, causal attribution and remedy articulation.

The Ideological Dimensions of Stereotyping in the Media: Toward a Conceptual Clarification • Rick Clifton Moore, Boise State • Searching for stereotypes in the mass media is a common scholarly endeavor. Much research assumes that the media are full of stereotypes and their effects are deleterious. This study investigates the concept of “stereotype” as developed by Lippmann and examines current use of the term in mass communication research. The author suggests that most often the term is poorly conceptualized and the implications of this misconception deserve closer scrutiny by the academy.

Discussion Networks, Media Use, and Deliberative Conversation • Patricia Moy and John Gastil, University of Washington • Not all political conversation is deliberative conversation, characterized by an openness to political conflict, the absence of conversational dominance, clear and reasonable argument, and mutual comprehension. Extending McLeod, Scheufele, and Moy’s (1999) model of democratic engagement, we examine the antecedents of deliberative conversation. Structural equation modeling results indicate that network characteristics affected deliberative conversation. Print media use and interpersonal discussion tend to enhance deliberative conversation, while television news viewing hindered logic of argument and comprehension of others’ viewpoints.

Press-State Relations: A Critical Reappraisal • Hong-Won Park, University of Minnesota • This essay offers a critical reappraisal of the current thought about press-state relations. Existing studies of press-state relations are examined in terms of the normative, institutional, and symbolic approaches. To base press-state relations on a concrete theoretical framework, I consider models of power. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge enables to see the press-state nexus as a discursive terrain, where diverse actors struggle for dominant position.

The Theory is the Press: A View of the Press as Developer of Informal Theory • Robert Pennington, New Mexico State • This article proposes that the press develops and disseminates informal theories, derived from the primary culture, that govern institutions. Press freedom requires freedom from cultural restraints that are difficult to recognize. Emphasis on press content often ignores implicit relationships. In the absence of explicit relationship definition, culture defines the relationships in press content. Conflict occurs when social components reject or ignore an asserted relationship type. This study recommends analyzing relationship as monadic, dyadic or triadic.

Media Articulated Hegemony: A Symmetrical Perspective of Dominance and Resistance • Thomas Ruggiero, University of Texas at El Paso • A media “articulated” hegemony model, while recognizing that domination is presumed in any capitalist system, also acknowledges the possibility of subordinate resistance. It is in the articulation and de-articulation of media rhetoric that a political and/or cultural space is created by the tension between the two, and resistance may occur. Through a rhetorical analysis of the failed 1994 Disney’s America theme park, this study found that specialized media served as circulators of both universalizing and singularizing ideological narratives about American society.

Optimistic Bias and the Third-Person Effect: Public Estimations of Y2K Effects on Self and Others • Michael B. Salwen and Michael Dupagne, University of Miami • Telephone surveys during late November and early December 1999 gauged Americans’ beliefs about the predicted detrimental effects of Y2K and the persuasive effects of news coverage of Y2K. Drawing on optimistic bias and the third-person effect, approaches that share a “perceptual component” • an awareness of the existence of others and others’ beliefs and opinions • respondents appraised effects on “self” and on others. Optimistic bias predicts that individuals believe they are less likely than other people to experience deleterious events.

Real Talk: Manipulating the dependent variable in spiral of silence research • Dietram A. Scheufele, James Shanahan, and Eunjung Lee, Cornell • This study examines a key issue in spiral of silence research: whether the “realism” of the setting in which respondents are asked to express opinions affects their willingness to do so. Some reviews of spiral of silence theory have argued that survey measures do not capture the effect adequately because respondents see them as too hypothetical. In this study, we use a split-ballot technique to compare two closely related ways of assessing willingness to express opinions.

Individual Losses and Societal Gains: Interactive Framing Effects on the Activation of Mental Models • Dhavan V. Shah, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan; Mike Schmierbach, and Jessica Zubric, with Jack M. McLeod, Maria Powell, and Hee Jo Keum, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although numerous studies have examined the effects of frames on individual behaviors and opinions, there has been a paucity of work looking at the possible interactions among frames. Additionally, relatively little research has tested the multivariate effects of frames on basic cognitive variables, such as common-sense mental models. Using a 2X3 experimental manipulation concerning urban growth embedded within a broader survey, this study tests for the interactive effects of two different frame dimensions on the cognitions of individual respondents concerning this issue.

Self-serving Bias and Self-esteem in Estimating Risk? • Michael A. Shapiro and David A. Dunning, Cornell University • Understanding how people form estimates of risk is important to understanding how people process risk-related messages. One speculation is that risk estimates may be related to people’s motivation to put themselves and their actions in the best possible light • a self-serving bias. Studies in other domains have shown that challenges to self-esteem tend to increase self-serving bias. The experiment reported here did indeed find a self-serving bias about behaviors related to health risk.

Effects of Communication on Economic and Political Development: A Time Series Analysis • Kim A. Smith, Iowa State • Using time series data from 1965-1996 in 107 nations, this paper re-examines effects of social, mass media and telecommunication indicators on economic and political development. Among the indicators of social development, urbanization showed a much stronger relationship with economic and political development than percent illiterate or school enrollment. Newspapers, radios, and televisions per 1,000 people all substantially predicted economic and political development. Only telephone mainlines per capita among the telecommunication indicators significantly covaried over the 32-year period of the study with both types of development.

Modeling Information Seeking, Exposure and Attention in an Expanded Theory of Reasoned Action • Craig Trumbo, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This article examines the use of communication variables in research based on Ajzen and Fishbein’s Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The literature review shows that a significant amount of such work has included communication and information variables, but perhaps not in a manner designed to purposefully elaborate the function of communication and information in these theories. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of the TRA-TPB literatures identifies a half-dozen variables that function significantly in the TRA-TPB, none of which involve communication or information.

Play Theory Revisited: Dimensions of Play in Television and Internet Use • Stanley T. Wearden and Joseph M. Harper, Kent State • It has been more than 30 years since William Stephenson’s book, “The Play Theory of Mass Communication” was published. Since then, an intuitively appealing and plausible theory has been largely neglected. Writing about it 15 years after the book’s publication, Stephenson himself acknowledged that the book had been a polemic for Q methodology and urged that the methodological approach to the theory be broadened in order to better understand it. This study attempts to do just that.

Priming Perceptions of Foreign Countries: How the Media Influence How We Think About Other Nations • Lars Willnat, Joseph Graf, and Paul Brewer, George Washington • This experimental study attempts to broaden the scope of priming research in three ways. First, unlike previous priming experiments, which have primarily relied on television news to test the effects of media priming, this study test the priming effects of printed news stories. Second, rather than assessing the impact of media priming on evaluations of political figures, as has been done in the past, we propose that the media can also prime other, less narrow defined political perceptions.

Show Me Your Beer: How Sex and Alcohol Affect the Cognitive Processing of Billboards • Kevin Wise, Annie Lang, and Xiaomei Cai, Indiana • This study investigates college students’ cognitive responses to the presence of alcohol and sexual appeal on billboards. Results show that subjects orient to billboards, and that the presence of sexual appeal in billboards leads to more attentive controlled processing. Furthermore, the interaction between the presence of alcohol and sexual appeal significantly affects the extent to which orienting occurs, as well as attention, arousal and emotional valence.

Effects of Sponsoring Negative Political Advertising on Political Decision-Making: The Roles of Involvement and Source Credibility in the Development of Voter Cynicism • Kak Yoon, Sogang University; Bruce E. Pinkleton and Wonjun Ko, Washington State • Candidates’ use of negative political advertising continues to generate objections among citizens and concern among scholars and journalists. We examined the effect of negative political advertising on political decision-making by investigating the roles of situational voter involvement and source credibility in participants’ vote determination and their development of cynicism. Research results indicate that participants’ voting intention for the sponsor of negative political advertising was higher for a high-credibility candidate, regardless of their level of involvement.

Agreement Index as a Reliability Indicator for Nominal Scales with Two Coders • Xinshu Zhao, University of North Carolina • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Student
By the Numbers: Documenting the “Newspaper Habit” • Clyde Bentley, University of Oregon • Studies of newspaper readership have traditionally focused on demographic predictors. This study examines whether habit • a factor much less obvious than the powerful predictors of age, education and income • is at work in the importance to the individual of newspaper readership. Based on a statewide telephone survey, the study showed habit is at work in the individual’s perception of how important it is to read a newspaper. Reading habits or ritual not only correlated positively with the importance of newspaper reading, but remained a significant predictor when age, education and income were controlled through regression.

News Framing as a Multi-Paradigmatic Research Program: A Response to Entman • Paul D’Angelo, Villanova • The concept “framing” is at the center of a growing body of mass media research, centering particularly on news framing. The purpose of this essay is to respond to Entman’s (1993) call for the establishment of a paradigm of news framing research. Drawing on work in the sociology of knowledge, it is argued that news framing is a research program that consists of three inter-related paradigms, introduced here as constructionist, critical, and cognitive.

It’s All About the Information: Salience Effects on the Perceptions of News Exemplification • Francesca Dillman Carpentier, Hong-Sik Yu, and Coy Callison, University of Alabama • This study expands upon previous base rate v. exemplification research in examining salience effects on perceptions of mediated messages. Using an ecologically valid news stimulus, salience is shown to interact with base rate and exemplified information with interesting results. Case information is shown to impact issue perceptions under high salience, whereas the more familiar influences of base rate and exemplified text are illuminated under low salience. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.

Issues in Qualification of Electronic Internet-based Sources for Academic and Business Historical Research • Alexander Gorelik and Jodie Peele, University of South Carolina • The paper presents a methodology for qualification of Internet-based information sources. A summary of the existing techniques for qualification of traditional mass communication sources is included. An integrated qualification strategy, consisting of four steps: pre-evaluation, classification, evaluation (application of classification) and criticism is proposed. Techniques and evaluative methods from business are adapted, and new techniques presented, aimed at reduction of ambiguity in “volatile” information and non-linear documents, such as hyper-text or multimedia documents.

News Content Matters: An Experimental Study of the Agenda-setting Effect of News Stories Depicting Negative Consequence • Yulian Li, University of Minnesota • This is an experimental study on the agenda-setting effect of threat messages or fear appeal messages. Applying the protection motivation theory, this study found that there was a positive linear relationship between the amount of threat and people’s perception of issue importance. Obtrusive issues were more susceptible to manipulation than unobtrusive issues.

Substantive and Affective Attributes on the Corporate Merger Agenda: An Examination of Second-Level Agenda-Setting Effects • Joon-Soo Lim, University of Florida • Two broad sets of attributes on the merger agenda were investigated to find whether the transfer of attributes of agenda from the media to the public occurred. Results showed that media affective attributes have varied with time and media types. Combining content analysis and Gallup Poll results, this study revealed there have been similar patterns between public opinion on the corporate mergers and media’s substantive and affective attributes on the merger agenda.

Political Distance and Message Desirability: Three Studies of Political Advertising and the Third-Person Effect • Patrick Meirick, University of Minnesota • This paper conceives of social distance as political distance, using Democrats, Republicans and the public as the groups of others on whom effects of political ads are judged. It also argues that desirability of political ads depends upon the recipient’s affiliation. In three studies using student and non-student samples, a pattern of increasing effects with increasing distance from the self was found for ads from an opposite-party candidate, while the reverse was found for ads from same-party candidates.

Timing of the Third-Person Effect Study and Winter Weather Advisories • Richard Waters, Syracuse • Through surveys before and after a winter ice storm (N=128), this project explores the strength of the relationship between the third-person effect and winter weather advisories. Drawing on previous research, which tested the nature of communications and the third-person effect’s influence on opinions on earthquake predictions, this project found people positively viewed winter weather advisories after ice storms; however, they viewed them negatively before ice storm. The third-person effect was present before the ice storm occurred, and it was not present after the inclement weathers.

<< 2000 Abstracts

Communication Technology and Policy Division

Student and Open Competition
Realizing the Potential Marketplace of Ideas: Utilizing the First Amendment to Advance Universal Service & Access to the Internet • Justin Brown, Pen State • During the last several years concerns have risen over the “digital divide.” This paper examines the potential new marketplace of ideas that exists in cyberspace through adopting a postmodern lens and recommends that we realize the cultural aspects and potential of the Internet. We therefore have an opportunity to utilize the First Amendment to ensure that citizens are provided with universal access opportunities to new media, thereby increasing the diversity of expression and discourse in society.

Opinions Online: The Extension of Computermediated Communication for Survey Research in Research Organizations • Kelli S. Burns, Florida • The extension of computermediated communication tools for survey research is revolutionizing the research industry. The growth rate of online research suggests the Internet may become the most widely used communications tool for conducting research (CustomerSat.com, 1997). The present study interviewed 27 executives to understand the perception and use of online survey methods within their research organizations. Because the literature has yet to examine the use of online surveys throughout the industry, this study is both exploratory and descriptive.

Productivity and Integration in Communication Policy Scholarship: A Content Analysis of the Journal Literature, 1970-1999 • Carl Patrick Burrowes, Umaru Bah and Cleve Mesidor, Howard • This study explores issues of productivity and integration in the communication policy literature based on a content analysis of 288 journals from 1970 to 1999. Productivity was measured by the number of articles published by each author, as well as from each institution and each country. Integration of the field was operationalized as the number of articles published by authors located in a county other than the one in which they reside, and by the number of articles published in a journal located in other countries.

Internet Use and Knowledge About Retirement Financial Planning • Alice P. Chan, Cornell and Teresa Mastin, Middle Tennessee State • We surveyed 189 residents of a southern state on their Internet use, their perceptions towards its credibility and their knowledge about retirement financial planning. While Internet use was associated with higher issue knowledge, interpersonal communication was still the most important contributor to building issue knowledge. Moreover, while Internet users rated the Internet to be more credible than non-users, perceived Internet credibility did not moderate the relationship between Internet use and retirement planning knowledge.

North Korea and the Internet • Jung-Yul Cho, Alabama • North Korea, an output of Cold War, is facing a new challenge with the advent of the Internet. To provide a perspective of how a country tries to control and increase its power as a nation-state in the world of global telecommunication network, this study investigated the development of North-Korean Internet sites and characteristics of those sites. A list of pro-North Korean sites and discussion with experts are also included.

Information Source Use and Dependencies for Investment Decision-Making • Oi-yu Chung and Lulu Rodriguez, Iowa State • This study explores the patterns of information source use of three types of investors: traditional, on-line, and mixed. Testing the uses and gratifications leading to dependency hypothesis, investors’ information seeking behaviors and their dependence on 11 information sources with respect to perceived market uncertainty were examined. The results failed to support the hypothesis that on-line investors are more uncertain about the investing environment. They do, however, have more diversified functional alternative information uses.

Internet Uses and Gratifications: An Online Survey of Bulgarians at Home and Abroad • Daniela V. Dimitrova, Florida • One of the fastest developing technologies of today’s communication world is the Internet. The global “network of networks” provides access to information to people all over the planet, and yet very little attention has been paid to how people use the Internet on the individual level. Even less attention has been paid to non-English speaking populations’ Internet behavior. This study focuses on Internet use of Bulgarians in Bulgaria and Bulgarians abroad.

WANTED: Your News Photo: Police Claims of Fair Use and the Protection of Digital Photos • Victoria Smith Ekstrand, North Carolina • Law enforcement’s use of WANTED Web sites is creating new conflicts with the media. This paper examines two recent incidents in which police took news photos and posted them on their WANTED Web sites without permission of news organizations. This study finds that law enforcement may be successful arguing for the fair use of such photography.

The Transition to Digital Television: A Case Study of KNME-TV • Gillian Kennedy Gonda and Richard J Schaefer, New Mexico • This study applies diffusion theory and understanding based on the social construction of technology toward the implementation of digital television (DTV) at a mid-sized PT V station. The researchers relied on various interpretive techniques to analyze how KNME workers viewed digital television. The findings suggest that public television employees neither accepted the FCCs and other social groups’ technological framing of DTV nor were they prepared to face the funding and organizational challenges posed by the technology.

New Hope or Old Power: New Communication, Pornography and the Internet • Don Heider, University of Texas at Austin and Dustin Harp, University of Wisconsin-Madison • New communication technologies in general and the Internet in particular have led some scholars to speculate that we are ushering in a new era of pluralistic and democratic communication. This paper takes a critical look at this optimistic view. Using textual analysis and a feminist theoretical framework, this research examines pornography sites on the World Wide Web to illustrate how the Internet seems to be reifying existing power structures, i.e. male dominance and the exploitation of women.

Priming Effects of Accidental Exposure to Internet Pornography: An Experimental Study of Construct Accessibility in Search Engine Output • Sriram Kalyanaraman, Chad Mahood, S. Shyam Sundar and Mary Beth Oliver, Penn State • What happens when you type in a innocuous word in a search engine and get a series of search results with links to pornography sites? An experiment was designed to explore the perceptual effects of such accidental exposure to descriptions of pornography. Participants (N = 93) were exposed to a search-results page that featured either none, some or exclusively pornographic descriptions, resulting in differing perceptions of social reality. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Broadcast Policy Research Of Japan: A Historical Overview • Tsutomu Kanayama, Sophia University, Japan • The expansion of the global media market has led to an unprecedented growth of feedback from news consumers toward media vendors, such as newspapers, television programs, and magazines. Also, the recent digitization of the industry offers media entrepreneurs a good chance to actively participate domestically and globally in the media marketplace. Every country has unique social, economic, political background which shape its media system.

Firm Characteristics Influencing the Extent Of Electronic Billing Adoption: An Empirical Study In The U.S. Telecommunication Industry • Seongcheol Kim, Michigan State • The goal of this paper is to examine the extent to which the U.S. telecommunication service providers are leveraging the electronic billing system to transform their business practices for competitive advantage. We found that electronic billing adoption is still in the early stage in all the basic sectors of the U.S. telecommunication service industry. We also found that big and geographically diversified incumbent firms might be the first movers in the adoption of electronic billing.

The Global Internet Diffusion • HoCheon Kwon, SUNY-Buffalo • Each day, nations, corporations, political groups, nonprofit organizations, and individuals tap into an expansive computer network known as the Internet, and utilize the World Wide Web (WWW) (Bobbitt, 1995; Santoro, 1994). Therefore, the world seems to be on the threshold of a new communicational revolution. The Internet with global reach, communication new technology that has multimedia function, is at the epicenter of this revolution (Atkin, Jeffres & Neuendorf, 1998).

Interactivity: A New Approach • Jae-Shin Lee, Cornell • This paper extensively reviews the various approaches of interactivity studies and summarizes the ample definitions and dimensions of interactivity suggested by researchers. The author argues that there exist two types of interactivity and the researchers’ failure of recognizing such fact has led to the current confusion prevailed in interactivity studies. A new model was developed and suggested to help the future research. The model suggests that the user perception is the key element in studying interactivity.

New Communication Technologies and Market Competition: A Niche Analysis on Internet Shopping, Cable TV Shopping, Catalog Shopping, and Store Shopping • Shu-Chu Sarrina Li, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan • With satellite technology and the Internet rapidly improving, Internet and cable TV shopping emerge as new types of non-store shopping in Taiwan, and are expected to impose a great deal of influence on the traditional store shopping. This study adopts the niche theory that defines market competition by the overlap of resource use to examine the market competition among Internet shopping, cable TV shopping, catalog shopping, and store shopping.

Predicting Online Use Activity via Motives, Innovative Traits and News Media Use • Carolyn A. Lin, Cleveland State • As the 20th century comes to a close, the online industry has taken on a completely different economic as well as social status. The online medium, as a cross-breed of communication technologies, embodies a medium that offers the optimal and perhaps even maximal human communication channel functions. This study intends to address the Internet use activity as a phenomenon where users are set out to get on line with a set of communication motives much like the way they approach other “older” communication media such as the traditional electronic and print media.

Reconceptualizing the Public Sphere: The Differential Role of Media Systems in Enabling Political Elites to set the Public Agenda • Johnette Hawkins McCrery and John E. Newhagen, Maryland • This paper explicates the concept of the public sphere as a virtual space created by newspapers in which political elites set the public agenda. Jurgen Habermas originally conceptualized the public sphere in terms of European salons and coffee houses where the bourgeois gathered to discuss politics. He emphasized that this discussion was both rational and interactive. While he recognized newspapers as important links between these discussion groups, he understated their importance as an enabling technology, bringing them together as a political force.

What is Interactivity and What Does it Do? • Sally J. McMillan, Tennessee • Interactivity has been defined as both process and perception. This study operationalizes measures of interactive processes based on the interactive features at Web sites. Measures of interactive perceptions are operationalized based on individuals’ perceptions of interactivity at those same sites. Relatively few significant relationships were found between processes and perceptions. However, perception of interactivity seems somewhat stronger than interactive processes as a tool for explaining both attitude toward Web sites and future site-related behaviors.

The Internet and The Legacy Of The Communication Decency Act, 1996: Divergent Perceptions of A New Communication Technology • Mustafa Taha, Ohio • This paper examines the legacy of the 1996 Communication Decency Act (CDA) and the controversy it triggered. The paper explores how politicians, lawmakers, entrepreneurs, and educators perceived the Internet as a new communication technology. The paper focuses on how the proponents and the opponents of the CDA envisaged protection of minors from indecent material on the Internet. The paper highlights the analogies presented by the advocates of the CDA, in the Senate, the House, media and courts, and matches these arguments with criticsÕ counter-arguments.

Broadcasters on the Web: Moving From Allocution to Consultation • Mark Tremayne, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study empirically confirmed a model of broadcast transformation proposed by in 1986 by Bordewijk and van Kaam. A longitudinal study of interactivity and nonlinear storytelling on broadcast news web sites found evidence of a shift from the allocution to the consultation pattern of mass communication. However, the statistically significant increases for these variables from 1997 to 1998 are not repeated into 1999.

The Hypermedia News Story • Mark Tremayne, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This two-part study consists of l) a detailed analysis of one WashintonPost.com web story and 2) a longitudinal analysis of the use of hyperlinks in news stories. The study revealed greater context on the web story versus the print counterpart and an increasing use of hyperlinks on national news web sites. The number of initial links in these stories climbed from 4 in 1997 to more than six in 1999.

Global 500 companies’ outreach to worldwide consumers online: A content analysis of corporate web sites to evaluate organizational and intercultural communications • Vandana Vijayasri, Syracuse University • A content analysis of 60 Global 500 corporations’ web sites was conducted using a computer-aided tool specifically designed for analyzing online presence by corporations. The companies’ levels of revenue were used to determine if corporate strategies vary based on their position on the Global 500 list. The results conclusively indicate that visual cues account for lack of multilingual options and that companies’ country of origin affects predomination of English as the lingua franca.

China’s Great Wall Restricting the Free Exchange of Ideas • Xiaoru Wang, Ohio • The Internet has posed People’s Republic China in a complex dilemma. While China needs computer networks to assist the plan for economic revitalization, the government fears the uncontrolled exchange of information between China and the rest of the world over the Internet. In this study, a survey was conducted to examine how China’s Internet: users perceive the censorship. Results suggested that China’s Internet censorship would be effective in the short time.

<< 2000 Abstracts