International Communication Division

Sold American: The Influence of U.S. News Consultants on Newscasts in Great Britain and Germany • Craig Allen, Arizona State University • With little fanfare, American news consultants recently have made major inroads into the news media abroad. In the first examination of international news consulting, consulted newscasts in the UK and Germany were found to have most of the characteristics of consulted local TV newscasts in the United States. Further investigation revealed that U.S. consultants operate not just in these two countries but in at least eighteen others. Because issues in domestic TV news have transferred overseas, more study of international news consulting is indicated.

Three American Newspapers’ Stand Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflicts • Khaled M. Batarfi, University of Oregon • This study explores questions of bias in U.S. prestige press in relation to Mideast conflicts. It content-analyzed the editorials of The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The New York Times published within a month of three Arab-Israeli conflicts. Coders looked for statements about aggression, intransigence, peace seeking, terrorism, land legitimacy, action justification, competence and incompetence attributed to either party. They also qualitatively evaluated the paragraphs for bias. Statistical tests supported all the hypotheses.

The Importance of International Contributions To the Evolution of Mass Communication Theory • Bruce K. Berger, University of Kentucky • Mass communication theory-making is often considered to be an American invention, and one largely based on empirical research methodology. However, this paper identifies some of the substantial contributions of international scholars to mass communication theory within three broad categories of theory: social/behavioral, critical/cultural, and normative. It’s further demonstrated that these international contributions are rich and generative in that they increase our stock of communications knowledge and broaden our search for an illuminating theoretical framework.

New York Times’ Use of Symbolism In Foreign Conflict Reporting: The Case of the Eritrean War (1962-1991) • Messeret Chekol, Minnesota • The question of whether the media are independent of U.S. foreign policy or its followers in foreign news reporting has been a subject of debate among international communication scholars for sometime. This paper takes the New York Times as representative of mainstream media, and attempts to analyze its use of symbolism in the Eritrean war over a span of two political periods covering a total of 29 years (1962-1991). These two periods are marked by two regimes in Ethiopia (the host country of the war) which maintained sharply contrasting relations with the United States. We hypothesize that the media tend to follow U.S. foreign policy in international news reporting: therefore, the New York Times’ use of symbolism in reporting on the Eritrean conflict is likely to follow the changing U.S. policies toward the situation over the years.

To Mourn, to Cheer, or to Fear? Three Different Chinese Perspectives on the Death of Deng Xiaoping • Shiau-Ching Chou, Margaret E. Thompson, University of Denver • This paper examines the news coverage of Deng Xiaoping’s death in February, 1997, by three newspapers in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, using discourse analysis within a critical theoretical framework. The results reveal that the Chinese government, directly or indirectly, influenced the gatekeeping process of all three newspapers. Although the newspaper reports reflected different political perspectives toward ongoing issues regarding China’s relationship to Hong Kong and Taiwan, all appear to reflect more conservative attitudes toward the Chinese government.

Looking East, Leading West: Ideology, Foreign Policy and International News in the Electoral Victory of the Bulgarian Communist/Socialist Party in 1990 • Anelia K. Dimitrova, University of Northern Iowa • This study investigates the relationship between ideology, foreign policy and international news in the cataclysmic changes in 1990. Specifically, it explores how the Bulgarian Communist Party agenda-setting newspaper Dello, and later, its successor, Duma. articulated the party’s foreign policy new priorities during the dramatic collapse of the Soviet bloc. Looking East, but leading West, the Bulgarian Communist/Socialist party traded its former ideological subservience to the Soviet Empire for its evolving political and economic interest in the United States. Ultimately, this strategy ensured its electoral victory in the first free democratic elections in 1990.

Through the Dragon’s Eyes: News of the United States in the Press Releases of the New China News Agency • Charles Elliott, Hong Kong Baptist University • News coverage research was conducted to explore how the U.S. was portrayed in the press releases of the New China News Agency. Content analysis was used to examine content and presentation features of news items about the United States issued in the l950s and l980s. A comparison of time periods indicated a more positive and objective image of the United States in the latter period. Changing standards of professionalism were also indicated in content and presentation style differences.

Global News Flow in Africa: Nigerian Media Coverage of International News, 1979-1995 • Festus Eribo, East Carolina University • This study, a part of the global news flow analysis in 1995, focuses on Nigeria. Using a content analysis, it compares the 1995 study with an earlier study in 1979. The findings support other analysis of geographic and cultural proximity as predictors of news coverage in the United States, Russia, and other countries. Findings such as the increase in the coverage of international trade over the coverage of international politics and the prominence of gender issues point to changes in the coverage of international news in Nigeria between 1979 and 1995; some evidence of post-cold war effects on the media.

Why the Opening of Japan’s Exclusive Press Clubs to Foreign Reporters Will fail to Advance Japanese Press Freedom • Hal Foster, University of North Carolina • Japan opened its exclusive press clubs, or kisha clubs, to foreign journalists in the summer of 1993. The club system had long been accused of fostering government management of the news, so both Japanese and non-Japanese critics of the clubs expressed hope that the presence of foreign reporters would lead to Japanese reporters being less reluctant to take on the establishment. This paper contends the critics’ hopes will be dashed Ñ for four reasons.

Fujimori Puts the PR in Peru and PromPeru Leads the Way: How the President is Projecting his Administration’s Neoliberal Policies • Alan Freitag, Ohio • A relatively small government agency called PromPeru is behind an aggressive, comprehensive, corporate-style communication campaign that is channeling the message of Peru’s extraordinary President Alberto Fujimori in an effort to recast Peru’s image in the global arena. This paper examines that agency and analyzes its techniques and output within the context of the political and economic forces that underpin Fujimori’s objectives. The agency is employing classic PR techniques to attract international investment on a grand scale; its efforts may signal a major step forward in Latin America’s PR evolution.

Terrorists on the Web: Propaganda and Public Diplomacy in Cyberspace • Alan Freitag, Ohio • When rebels captured 450 international hostages in Lima, Peru, on Dec. 17, 1996, they also elevated the level of sophistication of correlated mass media techniques aimed at maximum impact on the global stage. Part of their plan included a slick, extensive, multi-language site on the World Wide Web. This paper analyzes that site within a dual framework of propaganda and public diplomacy theories, concluding that circumspection is needed to understand fully the potentially manipulative effects of this surprising use of the new mass medium.

International News Agency Coverage of the Fourth World Conference on Women • C. Anthony Giffard, University of Washington • This study examines coverage of the Fourth World Conference on Women by three international news agencies: the Associated Press, Reuter and Inter Press Service. The research question is whether common criticisms of coverage of women and gender issues are substantiated, and whether there were differences in the coverage by the three agencies. We found little to substantiate allegations that women are depicted in a condescending or degrading manner. There was a tendency, however, for central concerns of the conference to be overshadowed by important but peripheral issues.

Who’s Setting the News Agenda on Sino-American Relations? Prestige Press Coverage from 1985 to 1993 • Robyn S. Goodman, Alfred University • This study examined whether Sino-American news coverage was more government independent after the Cold War’s collapse than during the Cold War proper. Content analysis of 1,177 New York Times and Washington Post articles and 399 government articles were compared via descriptive statistics and time series analysis. The study concluded that Sino-American press coverage from the Cold War’s demise through the post-Cold War era was more government independent than its Cold War predecessor.

Getting the News: How Japanese and American International Correspondents Choose Their Sources • Beverly Horvit, University of Missouri-Columbia • No Abstract available.

Development News From a Developed Country: A Content Analysis of Spanish Regional Television’s Contributions to CNN World Report, 1987-96 • Paul Husselbee, Ohio • Spain has struggled over the past two decades to repair its global image as a backward, repressive country. Simultaneously, she has attempted to revive a sluggish economy while coexisting with ever-increasing demands for political and cultural autonomy by its two of her most economically solvent regions Catalonia and the Basque Country. Television stations were established in these regions in 1983, in part to promote their respective languages and customs. Employing an alternative definition of development news, this study analyzes these stations contributions to CNN World Report over the international news program’s first nine years. Key research questions include the extent to which Spain’s regional television stations have used CNN World Report to distribute development news and longitudinal trends in the coverage.

The United States-China Copyright Dispute: A Two Level Games Analysis • Krishna Jayakar, Indiana University • For some years, U.S. media and computer software industries have alleged that they lose billions of dollars to copyright piracy in China. Negotiations under Special 301 have produced a series of domestic laws and international agreements with China, without affecting the rising trend of piracy statistics. Why is China unwilling to take action against a pirate industry even at the risk of trade sanctions? Why is the U.S. reluctant to impose sanctions even when statistics clearly indicate that its objectives are not being realized? This paper uses two level games theory to explore these questions. It summarizes the growth of the Chinese copyright system since the late 1970s under the influence of domestic and international factors. It then traces out the connection between domestic interest group configurations and international agreements, and the influence of negotiating strategies on the outcome of two level games. Based on this analysis, the paper finally discusses the prospects for future Special 301 enforcement actions.

Hegemonic Frames and International News Reporting: A Comparative Study of the New York Times Coverage of the 1996 Indian and Israeli Elections • Ritu K. Jayakar, Indiana University • The 1996 elections in Israel and India were considered to be crucial for important national objectives in both countries. The determinants of international news coverage in the U.S. press lead us to expect that there will be important quantitative and qualitative differences to the coverage accorded to the two events. This paper looks for these differences in The New York Times’ coverage of the Indian and Israeli elections. It uses the framing theory to abstract the major themes and narrative streams in the election coverage. In brief, the Indian election coverage was cast in the frame of the exotic east, while that of Israel was covered in the framework of the Arab-Israeli peace process.

AFKN (American Forces Korea Network) as a U.S. Postwar Propaganda Program: A Hypothesis • Jae-Young Rim, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • This study deals with two areas of the blind spot in the field of international communication and the history of Korean-American relationship: U.S. forces’ activities in the cultural domains in Korea during the postwar era and historical implications of AFKN. AFKN, managed by the U.S. Army Broadcasting Service, is a unique foreign medium that have existed in Korea for almost 50 years. By analyzing the relationships between the U.S. postwar international information plan and the establishment of AFKN, this study goes to propose a hypothesis that AFKN is a cultural propaganda medium extended from U.S. international policy after World War II.

The Coup D’etat Model: Public Broadcasting Under Control • Shin Dong Kim, The University of Chicago • The formation of media system in the midst of a radical political change, i.e., coup, can be quite different from that in a normal political situation. The public broadcasting system of Korea in early 1980s, as analyzed here in the framework of the coup model of media formation, shows that the state monopoly public broadcasting paradoxically grew to be a corporate behemoth while faithfully served the coup state with propaganda mission.

Shifting Perspectives in International Communication: Implications for the Study of Communication Practices in Third World Cultures • Jothik Krishnaiah, University Of Minnesota • Much of the current globalization discourse is a response to the new realities of the post-cold war world order ambiguous cores and peripheries, the global spread of information technologies, and the increasing fluidity and uncertainty in the international communication system. Responding to these real world developments, the emerging theoretical discourse of globalization adopts a multi disciplinary approach to offer new definitions of globalization and examine new questions about the interrelationships between economic practices, cultural consumption, and identities. In this context, this paper reviews the shifting theoretical concerns and questions in international communication to address their implications for studying contemporary communication practices in Third World cultures.

The Roles of the Media and Mediated Opinion Leadership in the Public Opinion Process: A Content Analysis of a Political Incident in Korea • Nojin Kwak, University of Wisconsin-Madison • An attempt to explore situational factors of public opinion, this paper content-analyzed newspapers regarding a political incident in Korea, where the government reversed its initial policy position, yielding to the public demand. Proposing the significance of alternative media and societal opinion leaders in helping public opinion affect this policy reversal, this paper compared the coverage of mainstream and alternative newspapers and addressed the potential influence of the societal opinion leaders, as demonstrated in newspaper content. Findings indicated that the coverage of alternative newspaper might have been a better source for quality aspects of pubic opinion (knowledge, over-time consistency, and opinion organization) and for intensity aspects of public opinion (opinion certainty and behavioral likelihood to actualize one’s position); possible influence of societal opinion leaders on activities of public and routinized critical groups (dissidents and oppositional parties) emerged. Findings are discussed in light of shared responsibility among the media and other actors in political controversies.

Development and Disjuncture on Television in India • Divya C. McMillin, Indiana-Bloomington • Using narrative theory and discourse analysis, this study examined ideologies embedded in 18 documentaries, serials, and song-based programs on Indian television, and explored the possibilities of integrating educational issues within entertainment programs. The analysis showed that ideologies of class and gender were embedded within both entertainment and education programs. The author concludes that even the best-researched documentary on minority welfare is futile if it reinforces dominant ideologies that identify the oppressed as the cause of development problems and as recipients of development solutions.

Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and The Press: Paradigms, Procedures, Possibilities • John McNamara and Les Switzer • No Abstract available.

Press Nationalism and The New York Times Coverage of the Bosnian War • W. Matt Meyer, Tennessee, Daniel Riffe, Ohio University • This study uses content analysis to examine the New York Times by looking at how changes in its coverage of the Bosnian War may have been linked to changing American foreign policy. This study also uses extramedia sources to examine links between the press, the policymakers and the public. The study found a marked difference between early and later coverage, with Times coverage focusing more on American centered story topics and actors later in the war.

Democratization and Press Freedom in Africa’s High-Context Cultures • A. N. Mohamed, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania • The process of political liberalization in Africa during the l990s raised hopes for the press to evolve into an effective watchdog that would hold government officials accountable. So far, however, expectations have not been matched by reality. This paper uses the framework of Edward Hall’s analysis of high-vs-low-context cultures to argue that, sociological and cultural factors, like oral tradition and group orientation, affect both the form and content of African expressions of political dissent. Because these expressions are different from Western forms of discourse, some observers have mistakenly concluded that what Africa needs is her own version of the Bill of Rights.

Information Sources, Teen-age Pregnancy, and Contraceptive Use in Kenya: Implications for HIV and AIDS Control and Prevention • Isaac Obeng-Quaidoo, United Nations Fund for Population Assistance, Nairobi, Kenya, Cornelius B. Pratt, Michigan State University, Charles Okigbo, African Council for Communication Education, Nairobi, Kenya, Waithera Gikonyo, United Nations Fund for Population Assistance, Nairobi, Kenya • This study explores information sources and knowledge of contraceptives among Kenyan teen-agers. Respondents rely more on health clinics than on any other source for information on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), their most commonly cited health problems; however, those with high knowledge about contraceptives are significantly more likely than those with low knowledge to report that the mass media are information sources. The implications of these results for preventing and controlling STDs in sub-Saharan Africa are presented.

Re-Assessing America’s Program of Media Assistance in a Fluid Democratic State: The Case of Zambia • Folu Folarin Ogundimu, Michigan State University • This paper examines the US media assistance plan to Zambia under the five-year, $15 million-dollar Democratic Governance Project which the US Agency for International Development is now winding down. Using and interdisciplinary policy analysis framework, the paper shows that whereas AID may have unwittingly micromanaged the project, Zambia nevertheless benefited greatly from institutional transfers by way of technical capacity, and human resource development.

Western Romance Fiction As Urban English Popular Culture In Postcolonial India • Radhika E. Parameswaran, The University of Iowa • No Abstract available.

The Consumption of Korean Television Programs in U.S.A.: Television Viewing, Gender, and Power • Seung Hyun Park, Ho-kyu Lee, Indiana University • Television viewing needs the investigation of both viewing context and of cultural factors which explain why some viewing patterns happen. Dealing with the Korean people who live at a small campus-town in America and enjoy watching their own country’s programs, this study explores the relationship of gender to domestic power revealed in television viewing. Major themes of the study are the reason for watching the Korean program, styles of viewing, control over a remote-control device, and control over the program choice.

Purchasing Involvement in South Asia: Its Relationship with Attitude Toward and Beliefs About Advertising • Jyotika Ramaprasad, Southern Illinois at Carbondale • A survey of 825 university students in five South Asian countries measured the relationship of social, economic, and hedonistic beliefs, media use, and attitudes to advertising with purchasing involvement. All three beliefs, AG, and media use significantly predict purchasing involvement. However economic beliefs and media use have a negative relationship with purchasing involvement. High purchasing involved consumers .may be less critical of advertising for its influence on values, they may even enjoy it and evaluate it positively, but because the they are careful shoppers they do not credit it as a source of information or an economic necessity. Possibly for that reason lower levels of media use are associated with higher levels of purchasing involvement.

Changes in Polish Television as Reflected in Submissions to CNN World Report • Zbigniew Rytell, Texas Tech and Naiyu Zhang, Timothy N. Walters and Lynne Masel Walters, Texas A&M; • The authors investigate changes in Polish TV journalism as reflected in submissions to CNN’s World Report. The author reviews reports from two years before and two years after the collapse of Eastern European communism (1988,1989, 1994, 1995). The authors discover the latter reports dealt with more hard news/issues, and came closer to Western standards of objectivity. Each set used many government sources; the latter had greater source variety and usually was more critical.

Changes and Challenges: History and Development of Broadcasting in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, 1930-1993 • Juliette Storr, Ohio University • The history and development of broadcasting in the Bahamas parallels the history and development of the country. The British implemented broadcasting in the Bahamas in the 1930s. From its inception broadcasting was state-owned, a condition that remained in effect until 1993. Throughout its existence the system, which comes under the governance of the Broadcasting Corporation of the Bahamas (BCB), faced many economic, political and social changes changes and challenges in its operations. This study examines the growth of broadcasting in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas from its inception in 1930 to the beginning of private commercial radio broadcasting in 1993. The study identifies four significant periods in the growth of broadcasting in the Bahamas.

Culture Language and Social Class in the Globalization of Television • Joseph Straubhaar, Brigham Young University, Luiz Duarte, Michigan State University, Stephanie Kahl, Michigan State University, Vetumbuavi Veii, Government of Namibia, Robyn Goodman, Alfred University • This study briefly reviews the literatures on media imperialism and globalization of television. It finds that much current discussion of globalization and international flows of television misses the growth of new layers of television production, distribution and consumption that are neither global nor national. The main focus of this paper is to examine the nature of emerging markets for television that seem to be defined by culture and language. Both national and regional or cultural-linguistic markets for television have grown, aided or protected by what seems to be a desire by most of the audience for cultural proximity, culture production such as television that is close or similar to them, their cultural references and their tastes. However, this argues that people in national television audiences are not homogenous and that cultural proximity does not uniformly seem to apply. Audiences are divided by both cultural capital (education, language ability, travel, knowledge of ways of life, etc.) and by economic capital (income which buys access to newer media).

PR Goes to War The Effects of Public Relations Campaigns on Media Framing of the Kuwaiti and Bosnian Crises • James W. Tankard, Bill Israel, University of Texas-Austin • Foreign governments hired American public relations firms to present their cases to the world in two recent international crises the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Bosnia war. This study investigated the effects of the campaigns of the public relations firms on media framing of the two crises. Results showed little evidence for an effect on media framing for the Kuwait case, but some support for an effect in the Bosnia case.

A Pernicious New Strain of the Old Nazi Virus and an Orgy of Tribal Slaughter: A Comparison of U.S. News Magazine Coverage of the Crises in Bosnia and Rwanda • Melissa Wall, Washington • This study compares U.S. news magazine coverage of conflict occurring in Bosnia and Rwanda. Bosnia’s violence was characterized as an aberration for Europeans, while Rwanda’s violence was presented as typical of Africans. Coverage suggests that in Bosnia, participants made a logical, albeit evil, decision to commit violence in an attempt to seek revenge for past grievances. In contrast, Rwanda’s violence is depicted as having no logical explanation and is portrayed as irrational and so alien from Western understanding as to defy explanation.

Inside the Shop: A Case Study of a Global Advertising Affiliate in Beijing • Jian Wang, Iowa • The concept of globalization is marked by the interlocking duality of globalization and localization in cultural change and formation. It takes into account both the global in the local and the local in the global. This case study of a global advertising affiliate in Beijing suggests the co-existence of both the globalization and localization tendencies in the production and circulation of foreign ads in China. The institutional design of the ad agency embodies both global standardization and local adaptation. Its media planning, buying and monitoring are highly localized activities. The plurality of the workforce and in its work process also illustrates the co-operative nature of advertising production.

The New York Times Covers Africa: What Has Changed Since the Cold War? • Janice Windborne, Ohio University • Building on a previous study, this research looks at the New York Times from 1989 through the beginning of 1997 to see how the countries in Africa are being covered post-Cold War. Violent conflict remains the primary focus. Environment, science, and business are mostly ignored. Human interest stories focus on the negative. South Africa is consistently covered. Countries which are stable are unlikely to be covered. Some have been invisible for over twenty years.

Geographic Distance and U.S. Newspapers’ Coverage of Canada and Mexico • Denis Wu, University of North Carolina • No Abstract available.

Systemic Determinants of International News Coverage in Four Developed Nations: Germany, Japan, New Zealand, and the U.S. • Denis Wu, University of North Carolina • No Abstract available.

Creating A New Man, Creating A New Nation? The Media and the Making of Role Models in China’s Market Economy Era • Chen Yanru, Nanyang Technological University • No Abstract available.

The Long March: Coverage of AIDS in Newspapers from the People’s Republic of China as the Product of the Nexus of Cultural Values • Naiyu Zhang, Lynne Masel Walters, Texas A&M University, Timothy N. Walters, Northeast Louisiana University • This study examined the coverage of AlDS-related topics in three newspapers from the People’s Republic of China during 1987. The newspapers largely viewed the disease as something accompanying Western lifestyles and through the prism of Chinese morals and Chinese traditions of communication. This viewpoint is important. For scholars and observers must remember that ideological influences on media in the People’s Republic of China consists of the nexus of Chinese traditional values, Marx’s communism, and Western concepts. China has never forgotten Confucian ideology. The effects of this belief system can be seen in the coverage of AIDS through: 1) praise of the achievements of China and of things Chinese; 2) approval of Chinese traditional lifestyles and disapproval of Western lifestyles; 3) lack of coverage of subjects regarded as violating traditional values, such as homosexuality; and 4) sympathetic treatment of the innocent victims AIDS.

Campaign Chinese Style: A Case Study of China’s Family Planning Communication • Shuhua Zhou, Indiana University • Abstract not available.

<< 1997 Abstracts

History Division

An Early Hostile Corporate Takeover: The Split of the Scripps Newspaper Empire, 1920-1922 • Edward E. Adams, Angelo State University • In July 1996, the Scripps League consummated a deal with the Pulitzer Company to sell its sixteen daily and thirty non-daily newspapers for $216 million. Although trends in corporate media mergers, splits, and consolidation continue to occur, little information is known about early historical events and developments in this area. This paper examines an early corporate split and consolidation within the Scripps newspaper empire, one that would lead to the organization of the Scripps League and Scripps Howard. It also examines reasons for the split and the effects upon employees, management, stockholders, and the corporate structure. It further provides an illustration of E.W. Scripps disintegrating power and his attempts to retain power.

Shipboard News Nineteenth Century Handwritten Periodicals at Sea • Roy Alden Atwood, University of Idaho • The eight handwritten shipboard papers examined here demonstrate that the vast oceanic communication system in place by the l9th century included the production of news publications at sea. These shipboard periodicals certainly provided entertainment (not unlike many of their land-based contemporaries) for long and monotonous journeys, but they also chronicled the stories of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of passengers and crew (the equivalent population of many villages or towns of their day) and covered the events and activities on their floating communities that imputed meaning, value, and significance to their odyssey. These handwritten papers at sea varied little from those printed on shore. By the l9th century the newspaper form had become such a deeply entrenched component of Western culture that the passengers and crews on board ships independently reproduced that journalistic form from Boston to San Francisco to Australia to the Arctic. In that context, these shipboard papers were natural extensions of the vast system of oceanic communication that reached as far as ship and sail could carry.

The International Institutional Press Association 1966-1968 • Constance Ledoux Book, North Carolina State University • A research project examining the role of a patient run newspaper at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, uncovered the newspaper’s affiliation with an organization known as the International Institutional Press Association (IIPA). Only one document affiliated with this organization was available through the Library of Congress, a 1968 Directory of Members. The Editor of the Directory was located in Bremerton, Washington. Several oral and written interviews, along with the Editor’s personal collection of materials, established a history of the International Institutional Press Association. This paper is a first step toward documenting the IIPA’ s existence, purpose and ideology for media historians.

Upholding the Womanhood of Woman by Opposing the Vote: The Countermovement Rhetoric of the Remonstrance, 1890-1920 • Elizabeth V. Burt, University of Hartford • This paper examines the anti-suffrage rhetoric and structure of The Remonstrance, the publication of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. By examining the content of the publication as well as the records of the MAOFESW from 1890 to 1920, the author demonstrates that because it was a countermovement publication, The Remonstrance was principally reactive, that is, driven to respond to suffrage claims and strategies. Basic themes illustrated the ideology of the anti-suffrage movement: woman’s place was in the home, woman suffrage was a burden, and women did not want the vote. Further, the ideology of the anti-suffragists was reflected in the organizational structure of both the MAOFESW and the publication. Although both the association and its publication changed with the passage of time, they failed to keep step with the broad social and cultural changes that affected women’s lives in the early twentieth century. Although they might have reflected the mainstream rhetoric of nineteenth century prescriptions for women’s behavior in 1890, they no longer did in 1920.

Public Relations Enters the Space Age: Walter S. Bonney and the Early Days of NASA PR • Ginger Rudeseal Carter, Georgia College and State University • Gaining public support was the Herculean task that the NASA’s public affairs office faced after its creation in 1958. This paper examined the genesis of the NASA public affairs office in 1958 and its operation for the next six years, predating existing articles on NASA public relations by more than seven years. Using primary source documents from the NASA archives and oral history interviews, this paper traced the development of policy as America prepared to send a man into outer space.

Of Heathens and Heroines: Constructions of Gender and Empire in the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Press, 1869-1895 • Janet M. Cramer, University of Minnesota • Using themes derived from colonial discourse theory, this research examines the role of women’s missionary publications in the construction of ideas of womanhood and of imperialism, defined as ideas of one nation’s superiority over another. Publication content conformed to these themes and projected an image of moral and influential womanhood: this ideology was exported to women in other countries and used to support the missionary endeavor, thus suggesting a link between ideas of gender and empire as constructed by these publications.

Goodly Comforts and Honest Enjoyments: The Life and Death of the Chicago Press Club, 1880 -1987 • Richard Digby-Junger, Western Michigan University • Press clubs have played an important, yet neglected role in the development of the reporting profession and the creation of the stereotype of journalists as do anything for a story hard drinkers. Based on records destined to be thrown away, this paper examines the history of the largest press club in the world, how it helped foster the stereotype in reality and fiction, and why it and many other big city, full service press clubs have failed in recent years.

Edward H. Butler of the Buffalo News: The Ascent and Corruption of a New Journalism Pioneer • Michael J. Dillon, SUNY-New Paltz • Edward H. Butler, who founded the Buffalo News in 1873, was an important pioneer of the reformist and socially conscious New Journalism that swept America after the Civil War. Even as it created an inclusive public forum in an impersonal age, however, the New Journalism created vast new wealth for its practitioners. The rise of big money eventually corrupted its democratic possibilities. This paper traces this transformation of journalism by synthesizing key episodes in the career of Butler, an emblematic figure of his age who changed from populist social reformer to conservative elite as his Buffalo News prospered.

Change on Tap for Nashville: The Telegraph and News Content, 1860 • Frank E. Fee Jr., University of North Carolina • Case study of the Nashville (Tennessee) Daily Gazette in 1860 expands analysis of how the early telegraph affected news coverage and presentation. Findings suggest that on the eve of the Civil War, with a technology about a dozen years old, telegraph use for news reporting was not intuitive or preordained by the technology. Editors removed from Eastern urban centers can be seen experimenting with the telegraph’s potential, reshaping and redefining news as a consequence.

Wisconsin and the Fight for States’ Right in Radio: The WHA-WLBL Merger Case, 1929-1931 • Andrew Feldman, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Recent studies have focused on the part that the Federal Radio Commission’s (FRC) reallocation of broadcast frequencies under General Order 40 played in the marginalization of public broadcasting in the 1920s and 1930s. This paper argues that scholars have neglected to consider the role of state politics in the disenfranchisement of the public sector of the fledgling interwar broadcast industry. To illustrate, the study here examines the controversy that arose when the University of Wisconsin attempted to merge its station, WHA, with WLBL, the outlet licensed to the State Department of Agriculture and Markets. The dispute ignited rural-urban tensions, became embroiled in gubernatorial politics and assembly races and ultimately led University and state officials to abandon the project. The failure of the merger also had national implications. University officials presented a case to the FRC that provided a precedent for channel reservations for noncommercial stations.

Enlisting the Black Press: The War Department’s Editors Conference of 1918 • Hal Foster, University of North Carolina • Worried that blacks, who were smarting from repression, would refuse to support World War 1, the War Department held a conference with 31 of the nation’s leading black editors in June of 1918. The gathering was a seminal event in the relationship between the black press and the U.S. government in wartime. It led to President Woodrow Wilson making a public denunciation of lynching and commuting the sentences of 10 black soldiers who had been sentenced to death for rioting.

Convicts and Clerics: The Role of Emancipists and Religion in the Infancy of the Press In Sydney, 1803-1840 • Victoria Goff, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay • Recognizing the paucity of historical research on Australian journalism in this country and in Australia, this study fills in the holes in our knowledge of Sydney’s colonial press from its founding in 1803 until 1840. Due to unique social, political and economic conditions in colonial Sydney, the paper focuses on the role of religion and Emancipists (ex-convicts) in the development of the infant press and examines ownership, audience, content, and the interconnections and interactions between competing newspapers and between rival journalists. The following newspapers were examined: The Sydney Gazette (1803-1842); The Australian (1824-1848); The Monitor (1826-1841); The Gleaner (1827); The Sydney Herald (1831-present); and The Colonist (1835-1840). Although a lot of research remains to be done, the study will hopefully be a significant contribution to the wider context of Australian press history and will aid general historians of Australia, who sometime use information in newspapers piecemeal without understanding newspaper history.

The Hindu-German Conspiracy: An Examination of the Coverage of Indian Nationalists in Newspapers From 1915-1918 • Karla K. Gower, University of North Carolina • During the World War I era, nativistic attitudes flourished in the United States. People who advocated un-American ideas were routinely prosecuted. But Indian Nationalists who sought to overthrow the British Government in India received relatively benign treatment. This paper examines how a newspaper’s frame of a minority group may help determine how Americans view that group. The framing of the Indian Nationalists in the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle from 1915 to 1918 is examined. The time period analyzed includes the coverage of the Hindu-German conspiracy trial, in which the Indian Nationalists were convicted of violating the United States neutrality laws by conspiring on American soil with Germany to overthrow the British Raj. The paper concludes that by framing the Indian Nationalists as fools who were not to be morally condemned, the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, with the assistance of the Indians themselves, helped to create an atmosphere of tolerance for the Indian Nationalists and their movement.

The Publications of the Carlisle Indian School: Cultural Voices or Pure Propaganda? • Beth A. Haller, Towson University • This study of publications such as the Eadle Keatah Toh, The Arrow, The Morning Star, and The Red Man and Helper at the Carlisle Indian School explores whether these publications fit with other historic forms of dissident and disenfranchised media or whether they could be more accurately described as the propaganda arm of the school. This paper investigates a paradox as reflected in the publications: The school tried to uplift and educate Indian children, yet this help was imbedded with an overt assimilationist agenda. The findings illustrate that the school publications may have allowed the voices of American Indian children to be heard, but only in an European-American context, in which they were forced to express disdain for their own families and cultures.

Julia Collier Harris at the Columbus Enquirer-Sun: Contributions Toward, and Consequences of, The Pulitzer Prize • Marie Myers Hardin, University of Georgia • Julia Collier Harris was the daughter-in-law of the famous Southern storyteller Joel Chandler Harris, and wife of Pulitzer award-winning editor Julian Harris. Yet Julia Harris herself was an accomplished journalist and author of three books. This paper explores the tenure of Julia Harris at the Columbus Enquirer-Sun, 1920-1929, and focuses on her contributions toward the winning of the Pulitzer by the paper in 1925. Julia Harris wrote hundreds of editorials for the publication, some of which were submitted for Pulitzer competition. She also contributed to the overall development of the paper as a critical success throughout the South. Explanations for Julia’s relative lack of prominence during this time period, and her lack of recognition for the paper’s attainment of the Pulitzer, are discussed. Julia’s decision to work from her home, and without an official capacity during her early years at the paper, are two reasons her name quickly fen into relative obscurity in Southern journalism, despite her accomplishments.

China’s Political Transformation and Television Development in the Mao Era (1958-1976): A Critical Analysis • Xu Yu and Yu Huang, Hong Kong Baptist University • Attaching great importance to primary materials and original sources, this paper explores the use of television as a political instrument in the Mao era by tracking down important events in the early development of China’s television and by analyzing the political implications of those events. It also investigates the structural patterns, operational models, program changes, and role in intra-Party power struggle of China’s television in the Mao era. It is argued that television in Mao’s China was more a political creation than a technological imperative and that development of television in China was unique with typically Maoist characteristics in pursuit of his radical political transformation.

Private Lives, Public Virtues: Remembered Values of Women’s Lives in Suffrage-ERA Obituaries • Janice Hume, University of Missouri School of Journalism • As the United States moved from the nineteenth century to the twentieth, the nation’s social structures shifted, affecting the lives and the very character of citizens. And with the new century came a dramatic, substantive change in the democracy as ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 finally affirmed woman’s right of access to the nation’s political franchise. Battles over who was worry of full citizenship had become gender based, challenging long-held beliefs about woman’s role in the democracy and her duty to family. Scholars differ in their interpretations of just how this new political role affected women in the decade following the amendment. To provide one small piece of the puzzle, this study examines newspaper obituaries published in mass circulating newspapers before and after this 1920 turning point as reflectors of changing culture and American public memory. The purpose is to determine if new ideas about citizen inclusion had an impact on the socially agreed-upon value of the lives of individuals, especially women, in early twentieth century America.

Issues of Openness and Privacy: Press Coverage of Betty Ford’s Breast Cancer • Myra Gregory Knight, North Carolina • Although the state of the President’s health had been scrutinized by the press for years, First Ladies generally were accorded more privacy. In the wake of Watergate, however, Betty Ford’s mastectomy suggested a new direction. This article examines factors that figured in the change, the newspaper coverage that ensued, and the public’s reaction. The event was found to influence future White House news coverage, the range of subjects suitable for public discussion and the development of medical journalism.

War Stories: Coverage of U.S. Military Operations in Vietnam by Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report, 1965-1973 • James Landers, University of Wisconsin-Madison •Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News and World Report provided sustained coverage of U.S. military operations during the Vietnam War. The interpretive journalism of the weekly newsmagazines offered readers of each a distinct perspective on the war at different times. Newsweek and U. S. News & World Report were skeptical, for different reasons, about war strategy and tactics by early 1966; Time by late 1967. This wariness about the prospects for victory preceded similar editorial treatment by the television networks by many months. Each news magazine described combat realistically, although from an American perspective that ignored civilian casualties caused by aerial bombardment and artillery. All three newsmagazines overwhelmingly portrayed U.S. military personnel positively throughout the war: of the 893 editions with military-related articles, only twenty-three had articles about mistreatment of civilians by American troops, or drug use, discipline and morale problems. Most of these were not published until 1970-1971.

John Shaw Billings The Demons that Drove Time/Life’s Editor’s Editor • Michael F. Lane, University of South Carolina • No Abstract available.

Selling Cable Television in the 1970s and 1980s: Social Dreams and Business Schemes • William J. Leonhirth, Florida Institute of Technology • Development of the cable television industry in the 1970s and 1980s included two phases of promotion with arguments that cable television could provide more television services than broadcasting and an information revolution with narrowcasting and two-way services. Federal government policy promoted cable television in preservation of community and democracy. By 1984, industry and government officials acknowledged that cable profits were to come from delivery of traditional broadcast-like fare and not home interactive services.

The Japanese-Language Press and the Government’s Decision of the Japanese Mass Evacuation During World War II: Three Japanese Newspapers’ Reception of the War, the Japanese Americans’ Wartime Status, and the Evacuation • Takeya Mizuno, University of Missouri-Columbia • The present research attempts to explore how the Japanese-language press in the United States covered World War II and subsequent Japanese mass evacuation and how it fulfilled the major functions of the ethnic press. This study conducted a qualitative content analysis of three Japanese papers Ñ the Rocky Nippon, Doho, and Utah Nippo Ñ between early 1941 and mid 1942 and concludes that each paper assumed particular roles but all similarly accepted evacuation with little resistance.

Down with Fiction and Up with Fact: Publishers Weekly and the Postwar Shift to Nonfiction • Priscilla Coit Murphy, University of North Carolina • An exploration of the postwar shift in book publishing to nonfiction from fiction. The industry’s choices and perceptions are investigated through editorials and yearly reviews in its trade journal, Publishers Weekly. The nature of the shift is discussed using production statistics. Historical and economic factors are discussed, including the impact of changes wrought by other media, and aspects of the industry culture affecting ideas about publishing’s mission are explored, toward understanding what drove the changes and how publishing saw them.

Duff Green’s Political Crusade Through the Press, 1827-1830 • William Greg Newsome, Georgia State University • As literacy grew in the early nineteenth century, so did the need to transform the press into an effective political organ. A newspaper named the United States Telegraph was efficient in retaliating against slanderous claims that would influence negative public opinion towards a candidate. To try to alleviate any doubts the common man might have on election day the editor, Duff Green, molded the U.S. Telegraph around developing a positive image of Andrew Jackson. Knowing the ramifications of losing the 1825 election, Jackson made a major effort to reach the people by financially supporting the Telegraph to achieve presidential victory.

Free at Last? Religious Contradictions in the Origins of the Black Press • Allen W. Palmer, Hyrum Laturner, Brigham Young University • The rise of the black press in the early l9th Century can be linked to the incongruity of a Christian liberation theology taught to black slaves based on the religious doctrine that promised blacks a spiritual, but not secular, freedom. In this cultural history, the work of influential black editors, particularly Frederick Douglass, are reviewed for clues to their religious roots; and then extended to the experience of their era. Although religion was taught by slaveholders to encourage temporal self restraint, it produced the patience necessary for the editors of the black press to become the voice for the anti-slavery movement, and to play a key role in the rise of the abolitionist movement.

Rod Serling’s Hegemony Zone • Bob Pondillo • This research paper traces the changes of a 1956 teleplay by Rod Serling entitled Noon On Doomsday. Serling based his television script on a true-life event of the mid-1950s, the killing of Emmett Till, a black youth who was lynched in rural Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. The paper seeks to understand and explain the ideological and extra-media forces that vitiated this powerful drama because it challenged the sensibilities and hegemony of the time.

Bombastic Yet Also Insightful: The Newspaper Correspondence of Georgia Soldiers During the American Civil War • Ford Risley, Penn State University • This paper examines the Civil War journalism of the soldier correspondents from Georgia. Soldier correspondents provided a significant portion of the news that appeared in the newspapers of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Yet their contributions to the literature have been overlooked. The worst correspondents wrote in a bombastic style, had no concept of what constituted news, and were only interested in glorifying war or their regiment. The best, however, wrote in a straight-forward manner, recognized what was newsworthy, and provided insights into the tragic war.

Why Did They Leave the Newsroom? Stories of Quitting by Twentieth Century Women Journalists • Linda Steiner, Rutgers University • This paper examines the lives and careers of seven women who sought careers in journalism and but then left the newsrooms, in the mid-twentieth-century: Marie Manning, known as advice columnist Beatrice Fairfax; New York World staffer Elizabeth Jordan; Mary Margaret McBride, who eventually turned to radio; Ellen Tarry, who wrote for African American weeklies; and Kathryn Windham, who covered the civil rights movement for Alabama newspapers; and two foreign correspondent. The major basis for the research is their autobiographies, which are an excellent resource for studying the nature of the journalism workplace, including whose voices or ways of doing things have been excluded. The research contradicts a dominant notion of the time, which was that women left journalism jobs happily, in order to devote themselves to their families.

Seeking the Editorial High Ground: E.W. Scripps Experiment in Adless Journalism • Duane Stoltzfus, Rutgers University • This paper examines The Day Book, published in Chicago from 1911 to 1917 and regarded as the nation’s first sustained adless daily newspaper. E.W. Scripps wanted to create a paper supported entirely by circulation revenue and committed to a higher threshold of editorial integrity and independence than he regarded as possible with advertising-subsidized journalism. Eighty years later, The Day Book remains largely a forgotten experiment. An analysis of The Day Book’s content suggests that the paper did succeed in covering department stores and other businesses in a way that expanded the boundaries of news and held advertisers accountable. In so doing, Scripps laid the groundwork for a new model of public-interest journalism that can inform present debates on public policy for the Internet.

The Price of Iconoclasm: The Correspondence of E.W. Scripps and Frank Harris Blighton During Arizona’s Pursuit of Statehood • Michael S. Sweeney, Utah State University • This paper is the first historical examination of an iconoclastic, pro-labor newspaper, Voice of the People, which circulated in Tucson, Arizona, during 1910 and 1911, contributed to the passage of a progressive state constitution and until recently was believed to have no surviving copies. The author draws upon the correspondence between the paper’s editor, Frank Harris Blighton, and newspaper chain-builder E.W. Scripps, which has been preserved in the Scripps Manuscript Collection at Ohio University. Although Scripps was notorious for being tight-fisted, he gave Blighton $1,500 and free access to Scripps’s wire services. The author analyzes the letters and the few remaining copies of the newspaper and concludes that Scripps and Blighton formed a mentor-protege relationship that ultimately failed because of the extramedia and ideological-level pressures that Blighton’s iconoclasm produced in his community.

Extinction of the Panther: A Study of the Black Panther Newspaper’s Reports of FBI Subversion • John C. Watson, University of North Carolina • This paper is a study of the Black Panther Party’s weekly newspaper from 1968 until 1971 to assess how it reported the effects of the FBl’s subversive actions against the party. The study indicates that the newspapers coverage was greatly affected by the fact that its primary purpose was to serve as the public face of the party and advance its goals.

Dorothy Day and the Early Days of the Catholic Worker-Social Action Through the Pages of the Press • Sheila Webb, University of Wisconsin-Wisconsin • The Catholic Worker was a product of its time, a period of intense idealism and great crisis. During the early 1930s, the paper battled with the Daily Worker for the allegiance of the working-class poor. This intense struggle accounts for the paper’s tone, concerns, themes, and coverage. In order to explicate the ways in which the Catholic Worker’s passionate desire to define itself, its mission, and its audience took shape in 1933, this paper looks in detail at the very early years of the paper. To place this analysis historically, this paper examines the prevailing norms both in mainstream press and in the radical press.

A Labor from the Heart: Lesbian Magazines from 1947-1994 • Jan Whitt, University of Colorado Boulder • This study chronicles the origin, growth and disappearance of four significant lesbian publications Vice Versa, The Ladder, Focus, Journal for Lesbians and Sinister Wisdom from 1947 to 1994. Secondly, the study examines their raison d’etre and traces their achievements, placing them in a broader cultural context. Finally, although a few gay publications profoundly influenced public policy (especially during the 1960s), this study argues that lesbian newsletters and magazines, although often tied to politically active organizations, existed primarily to help individual lesbians come to terms with a homophobic world and to provide social connections and essential support systems. Less financially secure than their counterparts in the gay male magazine industry, lesbian publications were labors of love and rarely survived.

Publicity or Espionage?: The Scripps Newspapers Fight To Stop Income Tax Evasion, 1915-1916 • Dale Zacher, Creighton University • This study looks at the Scripps Newspaper chain’s efforts to force the Wilson administration to champion the publication of income tax returns. Long a populist cause, E.W. Scripps pushed his newspapers to begin an editorial campaign for the tax publicity after the new tax raised less money than expected. Scripps also tried to withhold political support for Wilson unless the President agreed. This study relies heavily on primary source materials ignored by earlier research.

<< 1997 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology Division

Finding Common Ground: Quantitative and Qualitative Mass Communications Research Methods and Feminist Epistemology • Linda Aldoory, Syracuse University • There has been an ongoing debate over quantitative versus qualitative research methods for mass communications and feminist scholarship. A gulf exists between the two, with qualitative research considered more appropriate for feminist work. This paper first outlines some prevailing characteristics considered relevant for feminist research in mass communications. It then uses these characteristics as guides for examining common quantitative and qualitative methods in mass communications research. Finally, some alternative epistemological approaches are suggested.

Learning From Television: Parasocial Interaction and Affective Learning • Michael Antecol, University of Missouri • No Abstract available.

Long-Term Television Effects: Beginning a New Paradigm Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion • Michael Antecol, University of Missouri • No Abstract available.

The Roles of Media Use and Media Content Evaluations in the Development of Political Disaffection • Erica Weintraub Austin and Bruce E. Pinkleton, Washington State University • A random-digit-dialing survey of (592) Washington state voters during the month prior to the 1996 presidential election assessed registered voters’ levels of media use, involvement, confidence in the media representations of reality, and political disaffection. Perceptions of incompleteness tended to amplify feelings of anger/cynicism and depress newspaper and television use, but content perceptions had no effects on use of radio. Perceptions of oversimplification associated with increased involvement. Use of newspapers decreased cynicism/anger and use of radio talk shows associated with decreased negativism. Use of television had no relationship to political disaffection as measured in this study. The results suggest that media use and media perceptions may affect cynicism but not negativism, that media with more interactivity and more depth of content have larger effects, and that perceptions of oversimplification in the news is more damaging than unrepresentativeness.

Invisible Defamation Plaintiffs: A Methodological Critique of Gender and the Legal Research Process • Diane L. Borden, George Mason University • This paper offers a feminist critique of the legal research process, based on a historical study of gender and defamation, that body of law that concerns itself with reputational harm. The paper suggests that new methods of analysis, when used in conjunction with traditional methods, such as empiricism, description and explanation, can reveal powerful insights into both the system of law and the culture with which it is entwined.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It: Attention and Memory for Deviant and Imagistic Headlines • Jennifer Borse, Prabu David, David Dent, Annie Lang, Rob Potter, Paul Bolls, Shuhua Zhou, Nancy Schwartz and Gail Trout, Indiana University • This study examines subjects’ attention to, and memory for news headlines presented on a computer screen. Four types of messages were selected from among the following combinations; high deviance/low imagery, high deviance/high imagery, low deviance/low imagery, and low deviance/high imagery as defined by David ( 1996). Heart rate was measured in order to determine whether or not subjects had orienting responses to the stimuli that were presented, and a recognition test was used to determine subjects’ memory for stimuli. Results from this study indicate that people do not have orienting responses to news headlines presented in this manner. However, results did replicate previous research findings which showed that there is better memory for deviant and imagistic headlines than for non-deviant and non-imagistic headlines.

Interacting with Thin Media Images: Mass Communication Theories Predict Adolescent Girls Body Image Disturbance and the Internalization of a Thin Ideal • Renee A. Botta, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The impact of media images on adolescents’ body image disturbance and formation of an unrealistically thin ideal has been consistently asserted in the body image literature, yet has remained inadequately tested. With a sample of 100 high school girls, this paper tests Social Learning, Social Comparison, cognitive processing and Cultivation theories in predicting adolescents’ body image disturbance and formation of an unrealistically thin ideal with processing and consumption of media images. Media variables predicted a combined 26% of variance for Drive for Thinness, 21% for Body Dissatisfaction, 13% for Bulimic Behaviors, and 40% for Endorsing a thin ideal.

New Media Use as Political Participation • Erik P. Bucy, University of Maryland, Paul D’Angelo, Temple University, John E. Newhagen, University of Maryland • This paper reexamines the contention that mass media have been a primary cause of the erosion of civic life and that increased media reliance, especially on television, has led to a decrease in social capital or citizen engagement in community affairs. Data are presented from two election-year surveys of suburban Maryland residents showing that political audiences regard several forms of new media including political talk radio, computer discussion groups, and call-in television, as well as traditional network news, as civically useful and politically important. Call-in shows in particular predict a significant amount of interest in politics. Consistent with these findings, the study concludes that use of the new media, especially political talk shows and the Internet, is an emergent form of civic participation for an increasing number of voters. Rather than destroying civic life, as the social erosion thesis maintains, certain media channels appear to be engaging the electorate and building a new base of mediated civic activity that may rival conventional forms of participation.

The Newspaper as an Agent of Political Socialization in Schools: Effects of El Diario en la Escuela in Argentina • Steven Chaffee, Stanford University, Roxana Morduchowicz, ADIRA (Buenos Aires), Hernan Galperin, Stanford University • This study demonstrates effects of newspaper-based teaching on political socialization of 6-7th graders in Argentina. Students using newspapers in class exceeded a control group in political tolerance, support for democracy, expressing political opinions, discussing politics, and reading newspapers at home. Each effect was stronger among students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Teaching about the free press system enhanced these kinds of effects, as did assigning students to write essays on controversial issues in the newspaper.

All Countries Not Created Equal to Be News: World System and International Communication • Tsan-Kuo Chang • No Abstract available.

The Determinants of Ethical Values Among Communication Researchers in Academia and Industry: A Case of Practice Informing Theory • Fiona Chew and Hao-Chieh Chang, Syracuse University • This study proposed to identify factors predicting core ethical values (beneficence, role conflict, integrity and confidentiality) among communication researchers in academia and industry. A survey of these two groups (395 vs 241) was conducted. The influence of path coefficients predicting ethical values was assessed using a regression model. Findings suggest that while the overearching determinants of ethical values were similar across groups, work conditions and practice led to differences. Beneficence was influenced by confidentiality mediated by integrity and role conflict.

Media Priming Effects: Accessibility, Association, and Activation • David Domke, Dhavan V. Shah, and Daniel B. Wackman, University of Minnesota • In studying priming effects the process by which activated mental constructs can influence how individuals evaluate apparently unrelated concepts and ideas political communication scholars have focused primarily on the frequency and recency of construct use in the accessibility, of specific cognitions; less attention has been given to the spread of activation among associated cognitions. Drawing from both of these research interests, we argue that media framing of issues in moral or ethical terms can prime voters (l) to make attributions about candidate integrity, and/or (2) to evaluate other political issues in ethical terms. To examine these relationships, this research utilized the same experimental design with two sub-populations evangelical Christians and university undergraduate students expected to differ in the centrality of core values and the inter-connectedness of those values with political attitudes. A single issue, which varied in the types of values in conflict, was systematically altered across four otherwise constant issue environments to examine priming effects. Findings suggest that future research should conceptualize priming more broadly to include considerations of both accessibility, of cognitions in short-term memory and the associations among information in long-term memory.

Beyond Sex: The Political Gender Gap in the 1996 Presidential Election • B. Carol Eaton, Syracuse University • A telephone survey of Syracuse, New York, residents was conducted in October/November 1996 to test the study’s hypotheses regarding the political gender gap and media sources utilized to obtain political information. The fact that this study’s results failed to replicate previous political gender gap findings is significant. Findings demonstrate that the historical distinction between traditionally male and female political issues may be changing in today’s political climate. This analysis also successfully developed a reliable gender scale which extends conventional telephone survey research methodology.

Television Portrayals and African American Stereotypes: Examination of Television Effects When Direct Contact is Lacking • Yuki Fujioka, Washington State University• A self-administered survey questionnaire distributed to Japanese international (n = 83) and White (n = 166) students measured stereotypes of African Americans and vicarious contact (television) variables. Results supported process-oriented learning model of behavior, but not cumulative model of cultivation. The study demonstrated that the media could affect one’s impression of other races, and further suggested that effects of mass media are more significant when direct information is limited. Implications of an influential role of television in stereotype formation were also discussed.

Public Opinion and Ideological Center in Media Coverage: the Center-Seeking Mechanism in Electoral Politics • Anthony Y.H. Fung, University of Minnesota and Tien-tsung Lee, University of Oregon • This paper, from a micro politico-economic perspective examines the relationship between (l) public opinion, (2) media coverage of candidates and (3) election outcomes in political campaigns. An analysis of five American electoral campaigns in 1994 and the data of the National Election Studies reveals that (l) those who were portrayed by the media as one occupying the central position in the ideological spectrum are mostly likely the elected, and that there is a correspondence between the ideological center portrayed by media and the majority public opinion (measured in the NES). The results helps rebuild the simple effect model of media and public opinion on voting results into a two-step model. We suggest that the formation of the majority opinion is the consequence of the voters’ exposure of the framed ideological center in the media, and thus the mediated ideological center indirectly influences the voters choices and hence the election outcomes.

Cognitive Processing and Cultivation Effects: Integration of Several Trends in Theory and Evidence • Eileen Gilligan, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper tries to expand beyond Kellerman’s (1985) use of memory paradigms to integrate recent paradigms of memory and cognitive processing of cultivation effects research. Connectionism, the embodiment framework, and implicit/explicit memory are discussed in light of recent evidence from Shrum & O’Guinn (1993, 1996) on the importance of repetition in cultivation effects and Devine’s (1989) evidence for cognitive processing of stereotypes. The embodiment framework is viewed as the overarching cognitive processing structure that may best explain cultivation effects.

Refining a Uses and Gratification Scale for Television Viewing • Jennifer Greer, Cyndi Frisby and David Harris Halpern • To create a more sensitive instrument for testing uses and gratifications, Conway and Rubin’s 1991 general television viewing scale was refined and tested with 289 subjects who completed the scale for 10 different program types. Researchers found that the six dimensions identified for television viewing in general did not hold across various program types. The research produces refined scales that could better test the gratifications being met for each program type as opposed to the medium as a whole.

Effects of News Slant and Base Rate Information on Public Opinion Inferences • Albert C. Gunther, Cindy T. Christen, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper examines the hypothesis that people infer public opinion based on subjective assessments of media content and the presumed effects of such content on others. Experimental results support the hypothesis of a persuasive press inference, even when content includes base rate information that contradicts story slant.

Television and Commodity Culture: A Research Proposal for the Multi-Level Analysis of Commodification in Children’s TV Shows and Ads • Joseph Harry, Michigan State University • Commodification, the theoretical notion that human and commercial values are increasingly hard to distinguish in a mass-mediated capitalist society, is conceptualized. The concept is linked with Baudrillard’s semiotic theory of language, and a general research proposal is offered as a way of incorporating commodification within mass media theory. The research proposal offered here is directed at children’s television programs and accompanying ads, but is broad enough to be applied to television programming in general.

The Third-Person Effect of Election News: The Synthesis of Contingent Factors into A Causal Model • Yu-Wei Hu, National Taiwan Normal University, Yi-Chen Wu, Catholic Fu-Jen University • This study examines a causal model on the third-person effect of election news. A number of contingent factors on the third-person phenomenon are integrated into the model to demonstrate the process of the third-person effect. The solutions to the path diagrams support the theoretical thinking underlying the model. The results suggest that higher educational level and greater involvement with an election campaign may stimulate the individual to seek more information about the campaign through mass media and interpersonal channels. The communication behaviors may increase the self-perceived knowledge on the campaign issues, and the self-expertise may then strengthen the third-person effect of election news. Future studies can elaborate the model to see whether the third-person effect of election news could result in the bandwagon effect when most of the news suggest that one or some candidates have greater chances to win the election than the other candidates do.

The Impact of Motivated Information Processing Goals and Political Expertise on Candidate Information Search, Decision-Making Strategies, and Recall • Li-Ning Huang and Vincent Price, University of Michigan • An experiment was conducted to investigate how impression-driven on-line (systematic/evaluative) processing, impression-driven shallow (non-systematic/evaluative) processing, memorization (systematic/non-evaluative) processing, and careless (non-systematic/non-evaluative) processing influenced people’s candidate information search depth and patterns, decision-making strategies, and recall. The results showed that while systematic information processing led to a deeper and within-candidate information search, a preference for a non-compensatory decision strategy, and a better recall, evaluative processing resulted in a shallower and across-candidate information search and a preference for a non-compensatory decision rule.

Information Task Equivocality and Media Richness: Implications for Health Information on the World Wide Web • Tracy Irani, Tom Kelleher, University of Florida • This experiment examines the effects of health-related information task equivocality on media choice. Equivocality is the ambiguity, or lack of clarity, of information. Media choice is based on perceived richness, a medium’s tendency to convey rich or lean information. Experiment data collected from 88 college students suggest that individuals facing a high-equivocality information-seeking task will choose a richer World Wide Web site over leaner media, and that individual media choice in low-equivocality situations may be based on perceived self-efficacy with the Web.

Unobtrusive Issues and the Agendas of the President, the Press, and the Public: The Case of the Environment, 1987-1994 • Patrick M. Jablonski, Shannon Crosby, Erica Bridges, John Daniele, Betsy Gray, Lisa Mills, University of Central Florida • This study examines the relationship among the agendas of the mass media, the president, and the public regarding the issue of the environment in the United States from 1987 to 1994. ARIMA time-series analysis is used in an attempt to assess which factors drive the environmental issue agenda: the public, the press, or the president. Most important problem survey results from multiple organizations are aggregated into a series of 96 monthly time points to measure the public agenda. The media agenda is developed from a content analysis of the frequency of coverage of the environment issue in The New York Times. The presidential agenda is developed from a similar analysis of the Public Papers of the Presidents. The three univariate time series are identified, estimated, and diagnosed. The white-noise component of each series is subsequently employed in a bivariate cross-correlation analysis to address the research questions. Results indicate that the presidential agenda was significantly negatively correlated with the press agenda. No significant agenda setting relationship was detected involving the public.

Mediating the Media: Frames, Attribution of Responsibility, and Individual Media Use • Ben Kilpatrick, Robert Wayne Leweke, University of North Carolina • Following the research of Shanto Iyengar, this study examines how episodic and thematic framing in television and print media relate to public attribution of responsibility for poverty, racial inequality and violent crime. In the methodological tradition of Agenda Setting, it couples computer-assisted content analysis with survey data. It extends the analysis in the uses and gratifications tradition by including media use style as an independent variable. The study finds limited but significant results.

The Role of Involvement and A Conceptual Model for Optimal Health Communication Strategies • Yungwook Kim, University of Florida • This study is the incipient stage for formulating a respondent-oriented conceptual model for optimal health communication strategies. As the prevailing theory in involvement research, the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) is discussed. Also weaknesses of the ELM and other perspectives for involvement research are investigated. As moderators of the health communication process, involvement is divided into enduring and situational involvement. Based on the review of the literature, a new health communication model and optimal strategies are proposed. The new model has two dimensions (enduring involvement and situational involvement) and four strategies: an affect-evoking, an information-oriented, a cue-emphasizing, and a balanced argument strategy. For the empirical research, a 2 x 2 experiment with 143 undergraduate students was conducted. Generally, the moderating effects of both enduring involvement and situational involvement are supported. Regardless of some deviations from the proposed model, optimal strategies fit into the designated involvement level. Compared to the ELM, this proposed model accounts for all cases of involvement and also explains the inconsistent cases of enduring and situational involvement. As for the health behavior, this proposed model has more explanatory power than the ELM.

Cognitive-Affective and Behavior-Affective Dimensions: A Comparative Analysis of Participatory and Diffusion Approaches in the Destigmatization of Leprosy: A Case Study in Gwalior, India • Pradeep K. Krishnatray, and Srinivas R. Melkote, Bowling Green State • This was an experimental study designed to determine the relative effectiveness of diffusion and participatory strategies in (health campaigns) and the effect of caste on the dependent variables of knowledge, perception of risk, and behavioral involvement that were conceptualized as contributing to leprosy destigmatization in Madhya Pradesh state, India. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) procedure found significant difference between the communication treatments on the dependent variables. The discriminant analysis procedure was used to locate the source of difference. This procedure identified two significant discriminant functions: cognitive affective and behavior-affective dimensions. The participatory treatment showed higher knowledge and lower perception of risk on the cognitive-affective dimension, and higher behavioral involvement on the behavior-affective dimension, but the diffusion treatment showed only lower self-perception of risk on the behavior-affective dimension. The study concluded that participatory strategies promoting dialogue, interaction and incorporating people’s knowledge and action component result in increased knowledge, lower perception of risk, higher behavioral involvement, and hence, destigmatization.

Exploring Potential Predictors of Personal Computer Adoption • Carolyn A. Lin, Cleveland State University • Today’s personal computers are equipped with the capability to function as a communication medium when used in a multimedia networking environment. The larger issue concerning the adoption of computer technology, then, is ultimately more a cultural than an economic one. This study visits that question by examining personal computer adoption rate and its relation to likely adoption factors, media use patterns, technology ownership and social locators. It also tests the validity of five adopter categories, based upon Roger’s (1995) work on diffusion of innovations, within the present study time frame. Even though the study only provided an exploratory examination of the different components in the proposed model, the findings did offer a reasonable level of support for the theoretical framework outlined. It also succeeded to a moderate degree in verifying a theoretical adoption rate model.

The Process of Political Thinking Examining Predictors of Conceptual Knowledge During the 1996 Presidential Campaign • Jack M. McLeod, Dietram A. Scheufele, William P. Eveland, Jr., Patricia Moy, Edward M. Horowitz, Seungchan Yang, Gi-woong Yun, Eileen Gilligan, Mengbai Zhong, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper extends current research in the area of political knowledge by incorporating different types of knowledge into one framework. More specifically, it examines the role of newspaper use, motivations, and information processing as they relate to what we label «political thinking». Our analyses are based on a telephone survey of 307 adults in XXXXXXX, XX and its contiguous cities, townships, and villages during the 1996 campaign. Measures for the dimensions of political thinking are obtained by coding tape-recorded responses to open-ended questions. Multiple regression and structural equation are used to examine predictors of knowledge and the process of political thinking.

Fearing the Mean World: Exploring the Victim-Offender Relationship’s Influence on Fear of Violent Crime • James McQuivey, Syracuse University • Current cultivation research is expanded to include a distinction among different types of violent crime and their potential cultivation impact. It is theorized that there are cognitive reasons for a difference in how mean people feel the world is when exposed to crime-filled media content. It is hypothesized that the crime type people are most significantly impacted by is stranger-perpetrated violent crime which is more likely to arouse fear than acquaintance-perpetrated crime.

The Same Old Pie? The Constancy Hypothesis Revisited • Xabier Meilan-Pita, PROEL, Haoming Denis Wu, North Carolina • The constancy hypothesis, which purports that the percentage of income spent on mass communications remains fixed over time, does not hold true with data collected from 1959 to 1993. This hypothesis, first operationalized by McCombs, was supported with data garnered in the period 1929-1968. The boom of expenditures on audiovisual media and new technologies in the last decade, with a faster growth rate than the economy, is the major factor that breaks the assumed pattern of media consumption. In addition, at the personal level of media use, this study finds no significant relationship between traditional media use and new media use Ñ indicating that people’s time and money allocated to various media is not constant either.

Changing Epistemological Foundations in Journalism and Their Implications for Environmental News • Rick Clifton Moore, Boise State University • In recent years the social sciences have witnessed a shift away from positivism and toward postmodernism. There is some evidence to suggest that pressures will grow for the press to make such a move also. In this paper the author examines the rationale for such a change and examines the consequences therein. Special attention is paid to the consequences that might lie ahead for environmental journalism if a postmodernism perspective is wholly adopted.

Affirmative Action and Racial Identity in the O.J. Simpson Case • Kimberly A. Neuendorf, David Atkin, Leo Jeffres, Alicia Williams, Theresa Loszak, Cleveland State University • In a continuing project designed to explore the role of racial identity in determining reactions to racially-charged, highly salient obstrusive events, a structural equation model is developed around the construct of perceive innocence of O.J. Simpson. We built a robust, multifaceted framework that acknowledges the power of attitudes, regardless of racial identity, in provoking such reactions. The study identifies factors that media the impact of (a) race and (b) media exposure patterns on perceptions of the guilt or innocence of O.J. Simpson attitudes toward Affirmative Action, the perceived reality of television, and perceptions of a mean world. We have shuffled the race card with a slim deck of alternative factors, eliminating race as a strong, direct causal agent. And, we have identified a number of ways in which media exposure serves as an important, yet indirect, predictor of attitudes toward the O.J. Simpson case.

What Makes an Active Citizen? Do the Media Play a Role? • Ekaterina Ognianova, Esther Thorson, Andrew Mendelson, University of Missouri-Columbia, Lewis Friedland, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study explores the question of whether people’s civic participation makes them seek knowledge from the media or their knowledge makes them involved in civic affairs. These two alternative models were tested via path analyses from data collected in surveys of four cities throughout the US, all of which were sites of civic journalism projects in the last few years. The study sought to establish the direction of the association between exposure to and awareness of the civic journalism projects and variables that have been implicated in the likelihood that a citizen will participate in the democratic process, such as concern for community issues, knowledge of these issues, belonging to civic networks and voting. The data consistently support a model of media stimulation: exposure to and awareness of the civic journalism projects led to concern for community issues and knowledge, which in turn led to belonging to civic networks and voting.

Citizens’ Policy Reasoning and Media Influences: The Health Care Reform Case • Zhongdang Pan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Gerald M. Kosicki, The Ohio State University • This study examines the case of the health care reform debate to test the ideas of citizens’ policy reasoning and media influences in the reasoning process. It follows the line of research that attempts to integrate the theoretical work on news discourse and the cognitive research on how citizens process and incorporate media representations into their cognition to derive their policy preferences. By analyzing the 1993 and 1994 NES panel and cross-sectional survey data, this study shows that citizens’ policy reasoning can be modeled as a causal chain reflecting a logical deductive process. Information-oriented news media use is found.

<< 1997 Abstracts

Communication Technology and Policy Division

Organizations in Cyberspace: An Information Content Analysis of Academic, Government, and Commercial World Wide Web Pages on the Internet • Debashis Aikat, University of North Carolina • The power of the Internet, was unleashed in the 1990s by a special application, the World Wide Web, so called for its global reach of retrieving and accessing information on the Internet. The present study explores the information content in three main types of World Wide Web (WWW) pages Academic, Government, and Commercial. Based on a content analysis of a representative random sample of 1,140 WWW sites, the results of the study indicate: — Among Academic WWW pages, 51.57 percent comprised those of Public Institutions and 48.42 percent were of Private Institutions indicating that the WWW was used widely by both Public and Private educational institutions. • The largest part of Government WWW pages were Federal (55.30 percent), followed by Local (22.48 percent) and State (22.22 percent). — Among Commercial WWW pages, 68.9 percent comprised Manufacturing Firms and followed by Retail Sales (31.10 percent).

Understanding Internet Adoption Dynamics • David J. Atkin, Leo W. Jeffres, Kimberly Neuendorf, Cleveland State University • Much has been written about the emerging information society, where labor-intensive smokestack industries gradually give way to a computer-literate workforce equipped with online communication channels. The present study profiles Internet adopters in terms of social locators, media use habits, and their orientation toward adopting new technologies. The relative success of communication needs in discriminating between Internet adopters and nonadopters implies a new set of attitudinal variables to supplement demographics and technology adoption measures. Implications of study findings are discussed.

Television on the Web, 1996: Local Television Stations’ Use of the World Wide Web • Benjamin J. Bates, L. Todd Chambers, Margot Emery, Melanie Jones, Steven McClung, Jowon Park, University of Tennessee • This study examines the use of the World Wide Web by local television broadcast stations in the U.S. A census of television stations on the Web as of October 1996 was compiled, and the content of those sites downloaded. Based on a content analysis of the stations’ home pages, the study finds improvements in the use of the Web and Web features, although the use of audio and video features remains very low, and there is not much non-promotional content feature.

What Gratifications Are Sought from Computers? An Expansive View of the Applicability of the Uses and Gratifications Theory to Personal Computers • Lisa A. Beinhoff, Emporia State University • In order to investigate how well the uses and gratifications theory can be applied to personal computers, this study will: historically trace some of the issues that define what a personal computer is, identify uses and gratifications, verify whether the categories of uses and gratification factors identified in this study support the findings of other recent uses and gratification studies which have involved personal computers, and test the strength of the uses and gratifications theory.

Multimethod Aesthetic Approach to User-Derived Internet Interface Designs • Melissa Camacho, David Weinstock, Michigan State University • Technology alone will not facilitate an underserved community’s free entry into the global Internet discourse. The method detailed in this paper suggests a means to discern Internet interface metaphors within underserved communities that can bridge cultural barriers to joining the Internet discourse. It further suggests an application of Iser’s Aesthetic Response Theory as a means of creating community-derived Internet user interfaces for these communities.

Does Liberalization Lead to Greater Competition? The Case of Indian Telecommunications • Kalyani Chadha, University of Maryland • Theorists have long asserted that liberalization or the removal of barriers to market entry engenders the growth of competition. This paper examines the tenability of this claim by tracing the impact of recent liberalizing policy initiatives on India’s telecom sector. Here it finds that despite such initiatives, a purely competitive policy regime has failed to emerge due to certain political and economic factors prevalent within the Indian context. And drawing on the empirical evidence uncovered it suggests the need to re-examine the asserted linkage between liberalization and competition.

Funding Alternatives for Electronic Access to Government Information • David Danner and Paul W. Taylor, University of Washington • The allocation and recovery of costs related to electronic public access to government information represent important and controversial public policy issues. Policy makers must carefully balance the goal of widespread public access by electronic means with the need to sustain the infrastructure that makes such access possible. The paper argues that policies with the stated objective of promoting low- or no- cost electronic access, but which do not allow for adequate cost recovery, will retard the development of robust electronic public access systems. Based on a case study in Washington State, the paper discusses the need to distinguish between the content and delivery of government-held information, to allow agencies to charge user fees as a cost-recovery alternative, and to employ safeguards which ensure that such fees do not inhibit the goals of public access.

Bystanders at the Revolution: A Profile of Non-Users of Computer-Mediated Communication in Hong Kong Universities • Charles Elliott, Hong Kong Baptist University • This research attempts to understand non-use of computer-mediated communication among faculty members in Hong Kong universities. Survey research was used to profile characteristics of 134 faculty members from three universities. A comparison of user and non-user characteristics indicated no significant differences on the basis of gender or user’s first language but age and faculty were important in distinguishing non-users. In explaining reasons for non-use, respondents noted they lacked equipment, know-how, or motivation to use CMC.

Applying Research on the Uses and Effects of Hypermedia to the Study of the World Wide Web • William P. Eveland, Jr.and Sharon Dunwoody, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper identifies the origins of the World Wide Web to be in hypermedia systems that were conceptualized during the World War II era and first developed decades before the Web. The paper then reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the uses and effects of hypermedia published in cognitive psychology, computer and library information sciences, and educational technology. The implications of this theory and research for the future study of the Web are then considered and new questions identified.

Duopoly Market Structure as Public Policy: Lessons from the Cellular Telephone Industry • Hugh S. Fullerton, American University in Bulgaria • No Abstract available.

Online Newsgathering Trends, 1994-96 • Bruce Garrison, University of Miami • This paper focuses on online newsgathering at U. S. daily newspapers during 1994 to 1996. Findings of three national surveys of newspapers with daily circulations of at least 20,000 are reported. Overall use has increased over the three-year period. Significant growth during the period has been in use of the World Wide Web as a news reporting resource. Other resources gaining use included America Online, DataTimes, PACER, CompuServe, and Westlaw. While the number of newspapers using online services increased, their individual levels of use also grew.

Conceptualizing Objectivity Online: Using the Web to Teach Media Literacy Skills • Dustin Harp, Amy Reynolds, Stephen D. Reese, Texas • Because of a slipping of public confidence in media institutions, the merger of media conglomerates and the blurring of boundaries between entertainment and news, it is more important than ever that the public posses media literacy skills. This paper outlines one component of a media literacy web site project designed for use in high school classrooms. The site bridges theoretical and practical discussions about journalistic objectivity in an effort to create a more media-savvy public.

Flying Freely But in a Cage: An Empirical Study of Using Internet for the Democratic Development in China • Edgar Shaohua Huang, Indiana • This paper examined the impact of Internet technology on the grassroots-level democratic development in China with a combined method of web observation and qualitative content analysis. It concludes that the Internet does not carry an inherently democratizing force that is irresistible; the Internet, however, has created a virtual classroom that is otherwise unavailable for Chinese people to start to learn what democracy means to them through their daily exchanges of ideas and information.

The Gratifications of Pager Use: Fashion, Sociability and Entertainment • Louis Leung, Ran Wei, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • The results from a proportionate stratified sample survey of 883 college students show that fashion and status was the strongest intrinsic motive for using the pager followed by sociability and instrumental factors such as entertainment, information-seeking and utility. Fashion & status was an unique motive because its function is linked to the process of social integration. The fewer messages respondents sent, the more likely they felt that the purpose in having a pager was to make a fashion or status statement.

The Relations Between Psychological Gratification Factors and Internet Use • Carolyn A. Lin, Cleveland State University • One of the most interesting recent social developments involves the potential impact of communication technology on our society via the Internet. At this initial stage of the Internet communication era, a crucial concern involves the question of what may prompt the general public to venture into the cybermedia world and who this public may be. The present study explores that question by examining the social locator, socio-environmental and psychological gratification factors that may predict Internet use.

The Wayward Bureaucracy: Government Assessment of FCC Organization and Performance • Philip M. Napoli, Boston University • No Abstract available.

Gathering of Strangers in Cyberspace: Public Opinion on the Internet • Alice Chan Plummer, Michigan State University • As a communication technology, bridging interpersonal and mass communication, the Internet holds considerable potential for the formation and dissemination of public opinion. Among other implications, the Internet offers a virtual space for the gathering of strangers to exchange opinion. Based on a review of existing literature on public opinion, as well as theories and research in traditional mass media and emerging information technologies, this paper provides a conceptual analysis of the Internet’s public opinion potential.

Conflict and Resolution at the FCC: Computer Industry Opposition to the Proposed National HDTV Standard • Peter B. Seel, Colorado State University • This paper reviews the history of computer industry opposition to the FCC’s proposed standard for advanced television in the United States. At the eleventh hour in the decade-long standardization process, the Computer Industry Coalition for Advanced Television Service (CICATS) mounted a successful challenge to the FCC’s proposed plan. Using the Krasnow, Longley and Terry broadcast policy making model, this study examines the dynamics of the CICATS campaign to have the standard changed, and illustrates the need to revise the existing model to include unregulated industry elements that are influencing FCC broadcast policy making in an era of convergent media.

Does Web Advertising Work? Memory for Print vs. Online Media • S. Shyam Sundar, Sunetra Narayan, Rafael Obregon, Charu Uppal, Pennsylvania State University • Is memory for an advertisement related to the medium in which the ad was viewed? A between-subjects experiment (N = 48) was designed to answer this question. One-half of the subjects was exposed to a print newspaper front-page with two news stories and one advertisement whereas the other half was exposed to the online version of the same content. Results showed that print subjects remembered significantly more ad material than online subjects.

Internet Connectivity: Addiction and Dependency Study • Steve Thompson, Pennsylvania State University • If Internet addiction/dependency is the new substance abuse of the 90s, what are some of its measurable effects? An on-line website survey administered to 120 respondents who claimed Internet addiction resulted in subjects (N=32) being evaluated for personal disruptions. The study looked at factors involved in separating persons addicted from those persons dependent, and then evaluated what this might mean for a global society newly affected by unlimited access to this new communication medium

The Internet: Is the Medium the Message? • Mark W. Tremayne, University of Texas at Austin • The unique features of each medium can change the nature of messages sent by journalists. Does the Internet have unique features and can those features now be measured. This study examines these questions, and provides a comparison of Internet news sites started by newspaper, magazine, television and radio companies. The study found that these sites are making use of interactivity and nonlinear story-telling. Further, newspaper and television sites are taking different approaches to this new medium.

The Impact of Telecommunications on Rural Community Development: An Agenda for Research • Gwen H. Wolford, C. Ann Hollifield, The Ohio State University • Rural American communities are investing heavily in new telecommunications technologies in the expectation that these investments will lead to future social and economic growth and stability. That these expectations are well founded is not clear. This study uses a systematic propositional inventory to analyze the existing literature on telecommunications and U.S. rural development to determine what is known about the socioeconomic impact of telecommunications on rural American communities. The study found that while case studies and discussions of telecommunications and rural development abound, there has been little comparative empirical research that has measured the actual social or economic impact telecommunications implementation has had on rural communities.

<< 1997 Abstracts

Advertising Division

Applying Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy to Strategic Market Planning: Implications for the Role of Communications in Building and Maintaining Brand Equity • Saravudh Anantachart, Florida • This article links the integrated marketing communications (IMC) concept to the planning process in marketing. As the integration of messages and media, IMC strategy is applied to an established strategic market planning model, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)’s growth-share matrix. Alternative portfolio strategies are identified from the product portfolio analysis. The view may also be thought as the on-going process of building and maintaining consumer brand equity. Conceptual findings are expected to help marketers think more strategically as they plan IMC programs for their products and services.

Frequency Levels and Activity Level Portrayals of the Mature Market: A Content Analysis of Magazine Advertising • Cecelia Baldwin, Girard Burke, San Jose State University • Social gerontology theories, semiotic theory related to advertising, activity studies in gerontology, and research of the mature market in advertising provided the framework for this study of the frequency of the mature market and of activity level portrayals of the mature market in national, high circulation magazines. The hypothesis that no increase in activity level would occur in the fifteen year time period was examined and upheld, as independent t-tests showed no significant change in activity level between 1980 and 1995.

Offering a Creative Track in the Advertising Major: A Case History • Beth Barnes and Carla Lloyd, Syracuse University • Many undergraduate advertising programs struggle with the question of how best to deal with students interested in a career on the creative side of the advertising industry, particularly since these students may have different curricular needs than students preparing for managerial careers. This paper describes an accredited undergraduate advertising program’s experience in phasing in a two-track major, with different course requirements for creative and management students.

Preparing Campaigns Students for Groupwork • Fred Beard, University of Oklahoma • Most educators who teach the advertising campaigns course require students to work as groups. A review of the cooperative learning and group dynamics literatures suggests that unless students are systematically prepared for groupwork, instructional goals will be difficult to achieve. This paper describes how pre-training activities in group skills can be adapted to prepare students for the demands of groupwork, provides a theoretical and pedagogical framework for their use, and reports the results of an assessment of the outcomes.

Sociocultural Influences on Advertising Seen From Gender-Role Portrayals: A Content Analysis of Chinese and U.S. Television Commercials From 1996 • Hong Cheng, Bradley University • Seeing advertising as a social actor and cultural artifact, this paper content analyzed gender roles portrayed in a total of 667 Chinese and U.S. television commercials from 1996. Results show that advertising in both countries portrayed more men in occupational roles and more women in non-occupational ones, and depicted men in recreational activities more frequently and women decoratively more often. Chinese advertising was found reinforcing even more stereotypes than its U.S. counterpart. Other major differences included the styles of dresses worn by female models and the number of models portrayed. Gender-role portrayals were also found related to product categories advertised.

Developing Integrated Marketing Communications Message Delivery Strategies: Challenges and Opportunities Associated with the Brand Contact Concept • Denise E. DeLorme, University of Central Florida, Glen J. Nowak, University of Georgia • The emergence and evolution of integrated marketing communications has facilitated conceptual and operational changes in many advertising functions. In the case of advertising media planning, IMC has brought forth the «brand contact» concept to media planning. This broader, more consumer-oriented approach to media planning has generated much practitioner interest, thanks in part to its decreased reliance on measured and traditional media. While the brand contact perspective appears to have much potential, there have been few, if any, critical examinations of its applicability and value. This paper addresses this void by overviewing the brand contact concept, identifying and discussing the major challenges and opportunities associated with its use, and putting forth recommendations for more effectively utilizing brand contacts for integrated marketing communications. Overall, the brand contact approach brings forth many opportunities that can increase advertising effectiveness and efficiency, but significant operational barriers may limit wider use and application.

Comparative Analysis of Advertising Information in U.S. and Mexico Editions of a Mens Magazine • Louis K. Falk, Florida International University Robert W. Jones, Independent Media Consultant Dawn E. Foster, Precision Response Corporation Sharaf Rehman, Islamic Information Services • The information content of Mexican and the U.S. advertisements is assessed to determine the relative levels of information content. This study undertakes an examination of a year’s worth of the international and domestic editions of Playboy magazine. Using a 14 point information cue criteria it was found that Mexican magazine advertisements are more informative than those of the U.S. Additional findings indicate that information cues are markedly different with respect to frequency within the advertisements of the two countries.

A New Federalism: National and State Cooperation in the Regulating of Green Advertising . . . and Beyond • Thomas Gould, University of North Carolina • The purpose of this paper is to outline the boundaries of a New Federalism, describe how its dynamics may function, and suggest how it will be applied in the future relations in the area of advertising regulations between the national and state governments. To accomplish this, the author will examine how the national and state commercial speech regulators developed a new relationship between 1987 and 1992 in the area of the regulating of green advertising.

Teaching Advertising Copywriting in a PC World: Changes and Developments in University Programs • Thomas Gould, University of North Carolina • Teaching advertising copywriting has changed in the past 10 years. New methods are developed; new information becomes available; new criteria are set. Today, an advertising educator is likely to talk less about teaching «copywriting» and more about teaching «concepts.» This is the best times and the worst of times to be teaching advertising copywriting. This paper examines how advertising curricula have changed in recent years. Specifically, how have the trade schools influenced these changes?

Calvin Klein’s Kiddie Porn Campaign, What’s the Fuss? A Q-sort of Student Attitudes Toward Objectionable Advertising • Robert L. Gustafson, Mark N. Popovich, Ball State University, Johan C. Yssel, The University of Southern Mississippi • The 1995 CK Jeans’ campaign created an unprecedented furor among parents, media companies and advertising practitioners over Calvin Klein’s portrayal of child-like models in sexually provocative settings. In addition to consumer and media boycotts, the Federal Bureau of Investigation explored possible violations of child pornography laws. This study employs a Q-sort methodology and personal interviews to investigate how college students, a segment of the CK Jeans’ target audience, view the CK Jeans’ campaign in comparison to other recent objectionable advertising campaigns. It also questions the ethicality of using shock techniques and sexual themes in advertising.

The Current Constitutional Landscape for Commercial Speech: Implications for Color and Imagery in Tobacco Advertising • R. Michael Hoefges, Florida • Recently enacted Food and Drug Administration regulations ban color and imagery in most tobacco advertising. Reducing underage use of tobacco is a laudable goal, but restricting advertising raises serious First Amendment concerns. The U.S. Supreme Court, in recent decisions, invigorated constitutional protection for advertising. The tobacco regulations raise issues not fully addressed by the Court’s current commercial speech jurisprudence. This paper explores these issues and the potential constitutional fate of the controversial tobacco advertising regulations.

Gender Response to Sexual Appeals in Ads Featuring Male Models • Lisa Hynd, Patricia Stout, Joan Schleuder, University of Texas • This study investigates how gender (male/female) and level of male nudity (low, medium, and high) in print advertisements influence viewers’ attitude towards the ad, attitude towards the brand, purchase intentions and tension, pleasure, and arousal levels. Results indicate that gender significantly affects each of these variables across all levels of male nudity, while level of male nudity affects Aad, Abr, PI, and pleasure but not tension and arousal independent of gender.

My Brother’s Keeper?: Publisher Liability and the Regulations of the Fair Housing Act on Discriminatory Housing Advertising • Robert Meeds, University of Missouri • Recent court interpretations and legal actions involving publisher liability for discriminatory housing advertising under the Fair Housing Act (FHA) are discussed with respect to the Central Hudson four part criteria for governmental regulation of commercial speech. Implications for newspapers and other advertising publishers are drawn and recommendations aimed at improving publishers’ levels of compliance with FHA regulations are made.

Campaign Up In Flames: Negative Advertising Backfires and Damages a Young Democrat • Maggie Jones Patterson, Anitra Budd, Kristin R. Veatch, Duquesne University • Dan Cohen, Pittsburgh City Councilman, challenged 15-year-incumbent Congressman Bill Coyne in the spring 1996 Democratic primary election. After successfully fund-raising with a positive campaign based on economic development and a pledge to be a more aggressive voice for the district, Cohen hired a crew of Washington consultants who advised him to toss out his positive themes and instead attack the Congressman in a blistering series of television, radio, and direct mail advertisements. The negative campaign backfired, Cohen’s support dwindled, and his own campaign treasurer publicly denounced him. The campaign serves as a case study here to examine how the rise of consultants and the diminishment of political parties have affected political advertising and whether the democratic process has been enhanced or hindered.

Effects of Alignment Advertisements: Brand Ads Containing Mention of Social Issues • Toni Schmidt, Jacqueline C. Hitchon, University of Wisconsin – Madison • Product ads are increasingly incorporating social issues in their messages. This study explores the effects of these hybrid messages, alignment ads, on viewers. Based on a literature review regarding the impact of congruency of information in a brand message and the evaluation of media channels, a pretest and two experiments test whether alignment ads are evaluated differently than brand ads. Findings indicate that placing an issue in an ad offers important advantages for advertisers, and that the congruency of the issue with the product further affects these results. Congruent issue information elicited more positive message evaluations than incongruent issue information.

Censorship of Political Advertising: A Third-Person Effect • Dhavan V. Shah, Ronald J. Faber, Seounmi HanYoun, and Hernando Rojas, University of Minnesota • No Abstract available.

Warning Signs on the Information Highway: An Assessment of Privacy Concerns of On-Line Consumers • Kim Bartel Sheehan and Mariea Grubbs Hoy, The University of Tennessee-Knoxville • As consumer usage of the Internet increases, advertisers are finding the Internet a valuable tool to gather information about on-line users. These users, however, are becoming aware of some of these practices and polls indicate that consumer concern with new technology is increasing. This study uses an electronic mail survey to investigate on-line user concerns. Results indicate that privacy concerns in an on-line environment are somewhat different from privacy concerns in other marketing contexts. For example, the findings of the study indicate that the traditional, two-dimensional model of privacy (control of collection and usage of information) may explain only part of what causes consumer concern. Consumer concern on-line may be effected by at five different factors: control of collection, control of usage, familiarity with entity, compensation, and type of information.

Get Hooked on Collecting A Qualitative Exploration of the Relationship Between the Hallmark Brand and Hallmark Collectors • Jan Slater, Syracuse University • More and more brands are becoming collectible, and more and more manufacturers are building lines of collectible merchandise. One of the most prominent brands to move into this category in the last twenty years is Hallmark Cards. Hallmark has become the leader in collectible Christmas ornaments and manage a collector’s club with more than 275,000 members. This study explores this relationship between the brand and the collector. Via this collecting activity, Hallmark has enhanced brand loyalty, while creating an emotional tie between the collector and the brand, as well as the ornaments collected.

Animation and Priming Effects in Online Advertising • S. Shyam Sundar, George Otto, Lisa Pisciotta, Karen Schlag, Pennsylvania State University • This study investigates effects of animated versus still presentation of online advertising in primed versus unprimed conditions within the context of the World Wide Web. All subjects (N = 41) in a factorial between-subjects experiment were asked to view online news and advertising material on a website. They were then tested for their memory of the ad, asked to provide an evaluation of the ad content and report their general level of emotional arousal. Analyses revealed significant relationships between priming and ad memory, animation and subjective evaluations of ad material, and interaction effects between priming and animation on the arousal measure.

Messages of Individualism in French, Spanish, and American Television Advertising • Ronald E. Taylor, University of Tennessee, Joyce Wolburg, Marquette University • Individualism is a central value in French, Spanish, and American cultures. However, what it means to be an individual and how this is expressed varies among cultures. This study explores the ways that television advertising reflects individualism in French, Spanish, and American cultures and identifies six main advertising message strategies across the three cultures.

Protecting the Children: A Comparative Analysis Of French and American Advertising Self-Regulation • Ronald E. Taylor, Anne Cunningham, University of Tennessee • This paper compares advertising self-regulations designed to protect children in the United States and France. The findings suggest that French children enjoy greater protection, and the authors question whether American children should not be entitled to the same level of protection.

Emerging Lifestyles in China and Consequences for Perception of Advertising, Buying Behavior and Preferences for Consumption: An Exploratory Study • Ran Wei, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • This study segments consumers in China into five groups based on six empirically-tested lifestyles: Traditionalists, Status-quo, Modern, Transitioners and Generation Xers. Marked by old age, poor education and poverty, Traditionalists lead an old-fashioned life and resist to change. Demographically similar to Traditionalists, the Status-quo segment, however, has not reached a stage where life goes around established routines. Ill-educated with low income, Transitioners are much younger and open to change. The Modem segment is the most affluent, well-educated, pursing a fashionable and materialistic life. Generation Xers, born after the Cultural Revolution, are best-educated; they show disrespect for routines and tradition and worry little about money.

A Study of the Underrepresentation of Women in Advertising Agency Creative Departments • Larry Weisberg and Brett Robbs, University of Colorado • A survey conducted by the authors indicates that although women make up 60% of account service departments, they remain vastly underrepresented in creative departments. Interviews were conducted to determine if there were aspects of the job or the creative culture that might account for this. A number of factors were identified. The two with the greatest impact were the conflict between professional and family roles and the sexism found in certain aspects of the culture.

An Investigation of Three Cultural Values in American Advertising: The Role of the Individual, The Depiction of Time, and the Configuration of Space • Joyce M. Wolburg, Marquette University and Ronald E. Taylor, University of Tennessee • Interest in the study of cultural values in advertising has continued to increase in the last two decades; however, previous studies have not fully explored the complexity of these values. Using a document analysis approach, this study explicates the ways in which three core values in American culture appear in network primetime television advertising. A number of main message strategies and contextual categories are described, which provide a better understanding for use in international advertising and offer insight into creative strategy for domestic advertising.

Clutter and Serial Order Redefined and Retested • Xinshu Zhao, University of Minnesota/University of North Carolina • Due to the deficiencies in the concepts of clutter and serial order as they have been traditionally defined, the author argues that the position effects may be better defined in terms of two components, i.e., proaction from preceding ads and retroaction from succeeding ads. The traditionally defined clutter and serial order effects can be seen as results of interaction between proaction and retroaction. The author also argues for a need to distinguish pod clutter from program clutter. Further, a holistic theory of position effects on memory and liking is proposed. The redefined concepts and the holistic theory were applied in a naturalistic quasiexperiment. More than 1,000 randomly selected residents of Orange County, North Carolina were interviewed via telephone after the 1992-1994 Super Bowl games. The results suggest that preceding ads have negative effects on brand recall, brand recognition, and advertisement liking; and succeeding ads have a negative effect on brand recognition.

The Effect of Brand Placement Type and a Disclaimer on Memory for Brand Placements in Movies • Mary R. Zimmer, University of Georgia, Denise E. DeLorme, University of Central Florida • An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of placement type and a disclaimer on recall, recognition, and attitude toward brand placements in movies. Results showed: l) a positive effect on memory for placements that were verbal, in the foreground, that used humor, or that involved character usage; 2) that a disclaimer heightened recall and recognition in some instances; and 3) that participants had positive attitudes toward placements but negative attitudes toward disclaimers. Brand placement appears to be an effective form of marketing communication but requiring disclaimers is not recommended.

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