Law Division

To Rate or Not to Rate? A Comparison of Internet Rating Systems with the Television Industry’s Ratings • Chantal Francois Bailliet, Loyola University • The Internet industry created ratings for its content despite a Supreme Court ruling stating the medium merits the same level of First Amendment protection as print. The Internet is looking to regulate itself much like the television industry did when it adopted its ratings. The difficulty lies in that the Internet is very different from television and accordingly, rating its content brings different problems. In the end, there are more effective solutions than ratings.

New Protection for Speech Rights: Media Use of State Anti-SLAPP Legislation • Matthew D. Bunker, University of Alabama, and Paul H. Gates, Jr., Appalachian State University • “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” (“SLAPPs”) have been defined as meritless lawsuits brought to silence opponents through intimidation rather than to vindicate genuine legal rights. As a number of states have created statutory means of countering such lawsuits, called anti-SLAPP statutes, it has become clear that at least some of these statutes can also be used by media defendants to defeat libel and related tort claims. This paper explores this new legal weapon and its use by the press.

The Effects of Desnick V. ABC: Setting Boundaries for Surreptitious Newsgathering • James V. D’Aleo, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • The 1994 decision in Desnick v. American Broadcasting Companies by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals was a shift from the way courts previously decided newsgathering cases. While literally adhering to the rule that the media must follow all generally applicable laws, the Desnick court protected ABC by using the limitations of the torts involved. This paper examines Desnick ‘s effect on newsgathering cases by investigating how later cases used the reasoning found in this case.

Drawing Swords After Feist: Efforts to Legislate the Database Pirate • Victoria Smith Ekstrand, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examines the debate over database piracy after the Supreme Court case, Feist V. Rural Publications, Inc. It concludes that since Feist, appellate courts have struggled to define the constitutional requirement of originality to protect databases as compilations under copyright law and suggests that the adoption of the Altal abstraction test for software programs may offer some guidance to courts required to sort unprotectable ideas and facts of a database from protectable expression.

What Gives You the Right(s)?: Tasini V. New York Times Co. • Cindy J. Elmore, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • There have been only three federal court rulings to interpret -01(c) of the 1976 Copyright Act as it applies to freelancers working for the publishers of collective works. Yet, the most recent decision did not fully address all of the arguments made in the two earlier opinions. This article examines the three opinions and the legal rules established by them, points out questions, omissions and inconsistencies left unresolved, and provides some guidelines for freelancers.

Updating SPJ’s Report on the Journalist’s Privilege: Three Years Later, Is the Privilege Truly Eroding? • Anthony L. Fargo, University of Rhode Island • The Society of Professional Journalists issued a report in 1997 called “The Erosion of the Reporter’s Privilege.” The report said that judicial support for the journalist’s privilege appeared to be wavering, citing recent cases and expert commentary. This study found that appeals and legislation had reversed the effects of many of the decisions cited. However, the report’s finding that the judiciary was becoming more hostile to journalists was supported by judges’ comments in recent cases.

The Journalist’s Privilege for Nonconfidential Information in States Without Shield Laws • Anthony L. Fargo, University of Rhode Island • Figures compiled by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press show that most news media subpoenas seek nonconfidential information. Journalists argue that all subpoenas infringe important First Amendment rights to a free flow of information and an independent press. While courts in most of the nineteen states without shield laws protect confidential sources, however, courts in only two states extend the privilege to nonconfidential information in both civil and criminal proceedings, this study found.

The Public Interest Be Damned: Lower Court Treatment of The Reporters Committee “Central Purpose” Reformulation • Martin E. Halstuk, Penn State University and Charles N. Davis, University of Missouri • This article addresses the U.S. Supreme Court’s “central purpose” formulation in Reporters Committee V. Department of Justice under the federal Freedom of Information Act. By examining all lower federal court opinions interpreting Reporters Committee and by analyzing the effects of the Court’s opinion on the implementation of the EFOIA, the paper finds that the Court’s opinion has greatly narrowed the scope of the FOIA and limited the power of EFOIA to democratize electronic information.

Sex, Professors, and the Internet: First Amendment Problems with the Fourth Circuit’s Ruling in Uroftskv V. Gilmore • Susan Keith, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit erred in several ways when it upheld a Virginia law that said state employees, including professors doing legitimate research, had to have agency approval before accessing sexually explicit material online with state-owned computers. The ruling in Urofskv V. Gilmore was based on faulty interpretations of Pickering and its progeny and neglected to seriously consider cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court recognized individual academic freedom.

Hyperlinks and the First Amendment: Toward a Hierarchy of Protection • Susan Keith, University of North Carolina • This paper seeks to determine whether hyperlinks have been viewed by courts as protected speech and outlines a proposed hierarchy of First Amendment protection for hyperlinks. It argues that courts have explicitly and implicitly recognized that hyperlinks deserve some First Amendment protection, though insufficient protection has been accorded to certain types of hyperlinks. The paper further suggests a four-level model that would give broad protection to unauthorized surface links to non-infringing content, unauthorized deep links, and links to infringing content but award less protection to some third-party hyperlinks, unauthorized inline links, and unauthorized framing hyperlinks.

In Pursuit of Undue Influence: Government Efforts to Justify Regulation of Corporate Political Speech Since Bellotti • Robert L. Kerr, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This study examines government efforts to establish compelling justification for regulating corporate political speech, which received constitutional protection in the 1978 First National Bank of Boston V. Bellotti decision. Courts have since rejected many government efforts to regulate corporate political speech, but have accepted narrowly drawn efforts to prevent quid pro quo corruption and to ensure that wealth amassed through the corporate form in the economic marketplace not be used to unfairly influence the political marketplace.

An “Unholy Alliance”: The Law of Media Ride-Alongs • Karen M. Markin, University of Rhode Island • This paper describes and analyzes legal claims arising from the increasingly common journalistic practice of the media accompanying authorized individuals who are performing official duties. Courts were generally sympathetic to plaintiffs when the media accompanied officials into a home or other traditionally private space. The author concludes that legal support for the ride-along is weak and that the practice is not supported by either the libertarian or social responsibility theories of the press.

Is the Public Interest Meaningless?: Levels of Meaning and Ambiguity in the Public Interest Standard • Philip M. Napoli, Fordham University • In light of recent statements by new FCC Chairman Michael Powell that the public interest standard in communications regulation is essentially meaningless, this paper revisits the long-running debate over the meaning – or lack thereof• of the public interest standard. This paper argues that the question of the meaning of the public interest standard actually contains three separate tiers of the analysis, as the public interest concept can be broken down into three separate levels of meaning: (a) the conceptual level; (b) the operational level; and (c) the applicational level. This paper illustrates that much of the ambiguity and inconsistency associated with the public interest standard resides within the operational and applicational levels. This paper then pinpoints the specific sources of ambiguity and inconsistency and suggests means by which greater definitional specificity and consistency can be brought to the public interest standard.

Copyright or Copy Wrong: An Analysis of University Claims to Faculty Work • Ashley Packard, University of Houston-Clear Lake • Most universities claim to own at least some faculty-created works. This paper explores ownership of faculty-created intellectual property by examining copyright cases that have touched on faculty ownership of their work, the teacher exception to the work for hire doctrine and its relationship to academic freedom, and university copyright policies. It concludes that faculty have little protection for their work other than university copyright policies that may not alter the traditional work for hire arrangement set up by the Copyright Act.

“Burning” News Sources and Media Liability: Cohen V. Cowles Media Co. Ten Years After • Joseph A. Russomanno and Kyu Ho Youm, Arizona State University • Identifying a news source who has been promised anonymity has been typically regarded as improper journalism ethically. Exactly 10 years ago, in Cohen v. Cowles Media Co., the U.S. Supreme Court largely invalidated the practice legally. But what has been the impact of the decision over the past decade? This paper takes a two-pronged approach, examining Cohen’s influence in American courts and newsrooms. The results: while news organizations are being more careful, courts are more accommodating to free press interests.

IS INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER IMMUNITY GROWING?: AN EXAMINATION OF IMMUNITY UNDER – 230 OF THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT AFTER ZERAN • Elizabeth Spainhour, The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • In 1997, the 4th Circuit decided Zeran V. AOL, the first test of Internet Service Provider (ISP) immunity offered by – 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Under – 230, ISPs are not liable for third-party content. This paper examines the 17 cases reported since Zeran that cited – 230 to determine how immunity for ISPs has grown. The paper also addresses the circumstances under which nontraditional ISPs could receive – 230 immunity.

SCHOOL VIOLENCE: GETTING THE RECORDS • Carol Wilcox Stiff, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • When violence involving students erupts at school, journalists generally are faced with obtaining important records to substantiate their stories. To do that, they must cope with privacy laws that protect student records from abuse, state laws that prohibit the release of information about juveniles involved in crime, and the sensitive nature of the records themselves. This research focuses on what scholars have said about the broad area of school violence and three cases in which students were the victims, in California, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. In all these cases, the press was forced to go to court to obtain records and to cope with accompanying delays.

THE CASE AS ARTIFACT: A (RE)READING OF HAZELWOOD V. KUHLMEIER • Andrew H. Utterback, Northern Arizona University • The purpose of the essay is to illustrate the potential critical power of treating case law as “text” or “cultural artifact.” Using Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier, the paper presents a Critical Legal Studies reading of the case from a methodological perspective stemming from Cultural Studies. The thesis of the essay is that Hazelwood V. Kuhlmeier (1) defines Constitutional freedom outside the bounds of the legal and problematizes American identity in the process, (2) illustrates the ideological conflicts inherent between an everyday life of practice and an identity-laden perception of a Constitutional ideal, (3) allows the State to deny the semiotic process and to actively define and produce what is acceptable, and (4) points out a uniquely late twentieth-century tension between individual and social rights which may define a future theoretical direction in free speech theory and practice.

<< 2001 Abstracts

International Communication Division

Advertising And The Construction Of Beauty: The Impact Of Economic Liberalization And Globalization On Advertising Formats In India • Katyayani Balasubramanian and K. Viswanath, National Cancer Institute • no abstract

The Subversion In The Age Of Digital Information • Ivo Belohoubek, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville • Author examines the dynamic relationship between the new digital media and the discourse of contemporary global activism. He proposes that for global activism, characterized by intense communication and a for its particular discourse, shaped by the specific technological setting – the digital network, neither Marxism as an ideology, nor structuralism and semiology as a method, are sufficient explanatory tools. His analysis includes postmodern interpretation of Marshall McLuhan’s and Jean Baudrillard’s Medium theory as well as various inputs from poststructuralism. He concludes that the new media significantly change not only the means of subversive communication, but also an ideology and philosophy of global activism and relate directly to such phenomena, as the mass protests against economic globalization, which we could have witnessed the world over during the last decade.

Readers’ grievance columns as aids in the development of India • David W. Bulla, Indiana University • Citizens of India have a unique opportunity to participate in the development of democracy in their nation by giving feedback to the government and corporations through grievance columns in daily newspapers. These complaint columns – separate from letters to the editor – help make powerful institutions accountable for their actions and inactions. This paper examines public feedback and institutional response in three Indian dailies. Its major finding is that most complaints deal with communication and transportation issues, and that public responsiveness by government and corporations is minimal. It also maintains that grievance columns act as an instrument of a particularly Indian civic journalism since editors get story ideas from the complaints. In essence, readers’ grievances help determine newspapers’ agenda.

Revisiting the “Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media”: A Replication and Expansion of the 1987 Research on How the U.S. News Media Cover World Events • Kuang-Kuo Chang, Michigan State University and Tien-Tsung Lee, Washington State University • This paper is a replication of a significant study in international news coverage published in 1987 by Chang and colleagues which examined the selection criteria of world news events by the U.S. news media. With more recent data, the present study concludes that the once highly significant variable of normative deviance has diminished in its predicting power. U.S. involvement and threats to the U.S. became the two strongest predictors for coverage in both newspapers and TV network broadcasts. Press freedom has emerged as a strong predictor for TV news coverage. Additionally, an eventdriven perspective appears to be more important than context-driven perspective as world news determinants. The findings suggest a swift in how U.S. news media cover international events over time.

‘News aid’, the new aid: a case study of Cambodia • J.L. Clarke, Hong Kong Baptist University • Aid to the news media has recently become an important feature of aid programmes to formerly communist countries. This paper examines criticisms of aid in general and of media aid in particular and surveys the case of Cambodia. It finds that many criticisms are relevant but being dealt with. The underlying problem of whether the aid imposes a Western view of the world remains unresolved because there is little opportunity to experiment with other approaches.

THE DEATH OF DIANA: A MULTI-NATION STUDY OF NEWS VALUES AND PRACTICES • Anne Cooper-Chen, Ohio University • Princess Diana’s death, ranked as the top news story of 1997, presents a perfect case study for comparing various countries’ treatment of news. This study looked at front pages of two newspapers each from Brazil, Finland, Japan, New Zealand and the United States from Sept. 1 (the first day of coverage) to Sept. 7 (the day of the funeral). It found deviance but not geographic proximity to be a universal news value (distant Brazil’s coverage far outstripped nearby Finland’s). It argues that affinity between a nation’s culture and an event’s intrinsic nature can explain coverage.

In search of truth: The TRC and the South African press – a case study • Arnold S. de Beer and Johan Fouche, Potchefstroom University • The demise of apartheid and the first democratic elections in 1994 ushered in a new epoch making era in South African history. This paper deals with one element of these changes in the form of a case study: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s media hearings, and more specifically, the issue of the Afrikaans press and its activities during the apartheid years (1960-1994). The circumstances preceding the media hearings, the hearings and the aftermath are discussed.

Images of the Other: A Cross-Cultural Content Analysis of Coverage of Muslims and Mormons in Bulgarian and United States’ Popular Newspapers, 1996-99. • Maria Deenitchina, Sofia University; Peter Kanev and Byron Scott, University of Missouri-Columbia • This content analysis uses the concept of “otherness” to delineate similarities and differences in media characterizations and stereotypes of Muslims and Mormons in newspapers of two nations. In Bulgaria, newspapers appeared to cover Muslims in a broader, more balanced manner than Mormons. Articles in U.S. newspapers over the same period showed opposite results. Historical, cultural and professional differences may account for the differing patterns of coverage, including audience familiarity/unfamiliarity with the two religions.

Perceptions of Advertising in the Newly Independent States: Kazakstan Students’ Beliefs About Advertising • Jami A. Fullerton and Tom Weir, Oklahoma State University • This study attempts to answer Andrews’ (1991) question, do perceptions of advertising in general vary cross-culturally? Eighty-two students from the former Soviet Union republic of Kazakstan were questioned about their beliefs about advertising. The analysis revealed predominantly negative feelings toward advertising in general. Findings indicate unfamiliarity or general distrust of advertising and uncertainty about the role and potential of advertising to improve the quality of life in the country. A discussion about advertising in Kazakstan’s emerging capitalist economy is also included.

Increasing Circulation? A Comparative News-Flow Study of the Montreal Gazette’s Hard-Copy and On-line Editions • Mike Gasher and Sandra Gabriele, Concordia University • International news-flow research has noted a significant imbalance in the global exchange of news. Drawing on this research tradition, this paper explores the way one daily newspaper, the Montreal Gazette, occupies the geography of the Internet with its on-line news operation. The paper will report on a six-week comparative news-flow study of the Gazette’s hard-copy and on-line editions to determine whether on-line publishing has allowed the Gazette to alter the boundaries of its coverage and its distribution.

Going Global: Choosing the Newspapers We’ll Need to Read in the Digital Age • Richard R. Gross, University of Missouri • Author reviewed surveys of elite newspapers and gathered new data from international journalists regarding which newspapers are regarded as the current “elite.” Respondents were queried regarding criteria for their choices. Respondents were also surveyed regarding the quality of online versions of newspapers and credibility of the medium in the first known survey of its kind. The findings reveal some shifts in newspaper preferences, large differences in criteria from landmark surveys and ambivalence toward online newspapers.

DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BROADCASTING IN POST-COMMUNIST ESTONIA: 1991-1996 • Max V. Grubb, University of Southern Illinois-Carbondale • The world in the last decade experienced the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism in Eastern Europe. This research utilized a case study and historical approach to examine the development of independent broadcast media in post-communist Estonia. The implications drawn from this study are that post-Communist broadcast system transformations are complex, particularly when the developing private broadcast system has to compete with the public system for audiences, advertising revenue, and programming.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A WORLD SYSTEM PERSPECTIVE • Shelton A. Gunaratne, Minnesota State University-Moorhead • The world system theory can provide a refreshingly different perspective of global press freedom. The starting point of assessing press freedom should be the world system, not the “atomistic” nation-state, because one cannot understand the part without knowing the whole, which is more than the sum of the parts. This essay proposes the application of a revised formulation of the world system theory-which presumes a capitalist world-economy dominated by three competing center-clusters each associated with a dependent hinterland of peripheral economic clusters-to examine global press freedom. It proposes a three-tiered typology for measuring press freedom at the world system, state, and individual levels. It suggests that press freedom indices should factor in the power of the center clusters, themselves led by a hegemon cluster, to flood the hinterlands technologically with a barrage of information-communication.

Propaganda in the U.S. and Russian Press: An Analysis of Coverage of the Kursk Submarine Disaster in American and Russian Wire Services • Elaine Hargrove-Simon, University of Minnesota• This paper examines U.S. and Russian coverage of the Kursk submarine disaster from the theoretical perspectives of framing and propaganda. The paper goes on to present a content analysis of Associated Press and ITAR/TASS coverage of the disaster in the weeks following the event. As hypothesized, the U.S. coverage was markedly more negative that the Russian coverage.

GROWING UP IN POST-COMMUNIST POLAND: THE ROLE OF COMMUNICATION IN DEVELOPING POLITICAL ATTITUDES • Edward M. Horowitz, University of Oklahoma • Since the fall of communism researchers have viewed Central and Eastern Europe as a natural laboratory to see how young people develop the political attitudes, knowledge, and behavior to fully participate in democratic society. Corning out of a 40-year communist legacy and with the variability of the current political and socio-economic conditions, there have been concerns that young people would not develop democratic attitudes. In addition, changing mass media conditions have led to an explosion of broadcasting channels, as well as a wide variety of periodicals. A survey of Polish adolescents (N=1480) finds evidence that certain aspects of political socialization are occurring in Poland: adolescents’ political knowledge is high, increasing with age, and influenced by news sources. Intention to vote is similarly high. The role of the media is seen to be an important part of this socialization process. Implications for the future of Poland’s democracy are discussed.

Redefining Local News: How Daily Newspapers Reflect Their Communities’ International Connections • Beverly Horvit, Winthrop University • Because more than 10 percent of those living n the United States were born elsewhere, one might think it easy to show readers how international news affects their lives. This content analysis examines the cover-to-cover content of 10 newspapers from June 29-July 26, 1998, to determine if the content reflects their communities’ global ties. On average, the newspapers ran less than one international-related story a day that offered readers information on their community’s global connections.

Media, Popular Writings and the Rise of Chinese Nationalism in the 1990s • Yu Huang, Hong Kong Baptist University • The media in mainland China today has found itself in a winning position. Whilst still required to deliver to Party authority it has created an illusion of a more liberal and investigative media through altering its style to become increasingly populist, influential and commercially attractive in an expanding market environment. Much of this can be explain by the media and popular journalistic writings’ increasing adoption of a nationalist news frame; an allegiance with the unifying theme of nationalism that has become perhaps the most important officially-endorsed political development in China throughout the 1990s. This study attempts to trace the developments of this phenomenon, from the media’s pro-westernist stance during the 1980s to its anti-westernist position in the 1990s. Through the detailed analysis of the various media-adopted nationalist themes during the 1990s this study identifies (theorizes) a number of different patterns and strategies that have been endorsed by the media to project its news-frame through a nationalist framework.

WHAT IS THE STATE OE THE EMPEROR’S CLOTHES? AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CHINESE NEWS AS THE MOUTHPIECE OF THE PARTY AND GOVERNMENT • John Jirik, The University Of Texas-Austin • This paper investigates the CCTV (China Central Television) English news and determines that this example of the Chinese media cannot be considered a simple policy transmission instrument of the communist party and government. This problematizes the assumption that the Chinese media play a mouthpiece role. The paper draws on original research conducted throughout 1999 in an ethnography of the CCTV English newsroom, coupled with content analysis of output.

Attitudes toward Democracy among Journalism Students in Kazakstan • Stanley Ketterer and Maureen J. Nemecek, Oklahoma State University • Since the country’s independence in 1991, Kazakstan’s journalism has followed a jagged course of reversal from a relatively free atmosphere to a near consolidation of state control of information and the suppression of independent media. In this survey of Kazakstani journalism students, they reported they used traditional media, mainly broadcast, the most. They perceived individual human rights, free and fair elections, rule of law, and free speech and assembly as most important in a democracy. About half as many students strongly agreed that these principles were evident in Kazakstan.

National Interest or Global Perspectives? International News in the Korean Television Networks • Hun Shik Kim, University of Missouri-Columbia • This attitudinal study explores the perceptions of Korean television journalists toward international news and examines their selection criteria. Q factor analysis of 38 Korean broadcasters from television networks produced three factors: Realist Traditionalists, Reform Facilitators and Global Communicators. The results show that Korean journalists are driven by national interest concerns, and tend to select stories that reflect Korea’s close ties with certain countries. Apart from demonstrating an awareness of the imbalanced global news flow, the Korean broadcasters are also strongly opposed to media control by government and corporate advertisers.

Kicking off the New Millennium: News Frame Analysis on Korea and Japan’s Co-Hosting of the World Cup 2002 • Kihan Kim, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Jongmin Park, Pusan National University • On May 31, 1996, the Federation International de Football Association (FIFA) announced that the World Cup 2002 will be co-hosted by Japan and the Republic of Korea. This will be the first World Cup hosted by more than one country and also the first to be held in Asia. Newspaper coverage of World Cup 2002 by Japan’s and Korea’s most prominent newspapers, The Daily Yomiuri and Chosun Ilbo, is analyzed quantitatively to understand their frames. This analysis eventually revealed the fact that both countries’ newspapers showed different frames of news based upon their own “national interest,” even in the absence of significant statistical difference in certain topic areas. Both Japan’s and Korea’s newspapers showed a negative attitude toward their counterpart’s “nationality.” However, each country’s news coverage dealt positively with its counterpart’s “preparation” for the World Cup 2002. In addition, each country’s newspaper highlighted issues that had more influence upon its own country. For example, Korea emphasized economic issues and Japan emphasized Japan’s soccer team, which is a reflection of the current issues and matters of concerns of each country: the economic crisis in Korea and the lack of World Cup experience and the diminishing interest in soccer in Japan.

REVEALING AND REPENTING SOUTH KOREA’S VIETNAM MASSACRE: A FRAME ANALYSIS OF A KOREAN NEWS WEEKLY’S ENGAGEMENT IN PUBLIC DELIBERATION • Nam-Doo Kim, University of Texas-Austin • A Korean weekly Hankyoreh21 ran an apology campaign after it uncovered South Korean army’s civilian killings in Vietnam War. This paper compares between the anti-campaign public discourse and the weekly’s media discourse through frame analysis. Based on a distinction between a core theme and criterion sub-themes, I identified the opposition between core themes of dishonored veterans and victims’ eyes. Specifically, a set of duels between the sub-themes anchored in specific value criteria were found. Further considerations to the symbolic resources employed and their implications are given.

Echoes in Cyberspace: Searching for Civic Minded Participation in the Online Forums of BBC Mundo, Chosun Ilbo, and the New York Times • Maria E. Len-Rios, Jaeyung Park, and Dharma Adhikari, University of Missouri-Columbia • This paper examines whether media-sponsored online discussion forums contribute to civic-minded participation, utilization of personal and community knowledge, and whether participation is related to the structure of the forum and interactivity. Content analysis of The New York Time’s Abuzz (U.S.A.) forum, BBC MUNDO’s “Foros” (U.K.) and the Chosun Ilbo’s Forum Chosun (South Korea) showed that participation is related to the structure of the forum, and that media-sponsored online forums do not appear to contribute to civic-minded participation, or to the utilization of common knowledge.

Supreme Court Obscenity Decisions in Japan and the United States: Cultural Values in the Interpretation of Free Speech • Yuri Obata and Robert Trager, The University of Colorado-Boulder • Although U.S. and Japanese constitutions guarantee freedom speech, obscenity is not protected in either country. However, how the two countries’ courts define “obscenity” and the values the use to decide if sexually explicit material is protected differ markedly. This paper discusses the differences in obscenity decisions between the U.S. and Japan, focusing on the Japanese cultural context, to consider how societal traditions influence, create and become manifest in different interpretations of freedom of expression.

Mirror or Lamp: Ethnic Media Use by Korean Immigrants in the U.S. • Hye K. Pae, George State University • This study uncovers factors influencing adaptation in relation to media use. Korean immigrants showed successful adaptation to the American society in terms of structural conglomeration by penetrating into the White residential area, and at the same time they showed high degree of ethnic attachment. A path analysis indicated that length of residence, host communication competence, and education were important factors influencing Korean immigrants’ adaptation. To the contrary, heavy viewing of Korean videotape and high degree of ethnic attachment served as negative factors in the course of adaptation.

Looking East, Looking West: International News Flow into Turkey via the Daily Press. • Yorgo Pasadeos, University of Alabama • no abstract available

The Use of Inoculation in International Political Campaigns-2000 Presidential Election in Taiwan • (Dennis) Weng-Jeng Peng, National Taiwan University and (Wayne) Wei-Kuo Lin, Chinese Culture University • Inoculation theory posits that through cognitive processing the likelihood of resistance to attitude change can be enhanced by applying inoculation treatments containing threat components that motivate individuals to generate counter arguments. The study employed inoculation strategies with a method of field experiment in an international context to examine the efficacy of inoculation. Major hypotheses of this study were supported by empirical data. People received inoculation pretreatments conferred more resistance to attitude change following exposure to a political attack message. Moreover, people who have higher strength of support for candidates are more resistant to counterattitudianl attacks. The nuances of inoculation theory and applications were further assessed and discussed.

Criss-Crossing Perspectives: Assessing Press Freedom and Press Responsibility in Germany and the United States • Horst Pottker, University of Dortmund and Kenneth Starck, The University of Iowa • This paper presents views of two media scholars—one from Germany, one from the United States—on press freedom and press responsibility. The goal was to make an assessment of their own press systems but also to attempt to learn from the other. The German perspective argues for more press freedom in Germany; the North American perspective maintains the need for more press responsibility in the United States. Authors conclude that insights about one’s own press system can be gained from considering factors in other systems.

The Private and Government Sides of Tanzanian Journalists • Jyotika Ramaprasad, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale • Against the backdrop of the evolution of Tanzania’s political and economic systems from the controlled to the liberal, this paper presents the concomitant evolution of Tanzania’s media from colonial and indigenous government control to private ownership. Using type of ownership (private, party or government) as a classifying variable, the paper then captures Tanzanian journalists’ current demographic, work related, and opinion profile with regard to the importance of their jobs, their journalistic freedom, and private and government media traits. The historical influences on Tanzanian media are apparent particularly in journalists attribution of traits to government and private media: the former will unify and develop the country, the latter will develop an informed citizenry but also be sensationalistic and unethical. Interestingly, the traits ascribed to government and private media were related to ownership of place of employment of the respondents.

Rooted in nations, blossoming in Globalization? A fresh look at the discourse of an alternative news agency in the age of interdependence • Jennifer Rauch, Indiana University – Bloomington• This paper compares, through qualitative methods, the discourse produced by Inter Press Service and the Associated Press on two globalization issues. The IPS mission of balancing international news flows is placed in the context of both interdependency and previous studies of wire service content. The finding of this study that these IPS texts differ meaningfully from the dominant agency’s – is discussed in relation to the larger challenge of informing the North of events in the South.

The Shrinking World of Network News • Daniel Riffe and Arianne Budianto, Ohio University • Analysis of 1970-2000 international news on ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news. Using four constructed weeks per year and the Television News Index and Abstracts, the study coded 24,794 news items. Trend analysis (Spearman’s rho) demonstrated that all three networks exhibited significant trends toward: fewer discrete news items per newscast, decreased international coverage, increases in “soft” and “bad” international news, decreased attention to developing countries, but increases in bad news from those countries.

Who Controls “Crtl + C”: A Study of the Effects of Media Ownership and Media Type in China • Lu Shi and Xueyi Chen, Syracuse University • This project is aimed at examining the influence of media ownership (state-owned media vs. privately-owned media) and media type (traditional media vs.on-line media) on media degree of conformity to official Party ideology in China. A content analysis of four media -the Bejing Youth Daily, 21dnn.com, Phoenix Satellite TV, and sina.com—shows that neither media ownership nor media type had any independent effect on media’s degree of conformity; only the interaction effect between these two variables was found significant. Meanwhile, sina.com, a privately-owned on-line medium, was shown to be significantly more deviant from official Party ideology than the other three media. The distribution of news sources and that of deviant news in relation to news type in all the four media were also investigated. Results suggest that by strategically and selectively using “CtrI+C” citing sources other than the Party’s mouthpiece and covering local news, where state control is more relaxed, sina.com achieved a higher level of deviation. The findings are also discussed within the framework of the symbiotic relation between the state and the business elite in China.

Cyber-Globalization: Media Framing on Short-Term Global Capital • Young Jun Son, Indiana University-Bloomington • Seven prestigious newspapers of four countries were content analyzed focusing on their news frames on short-term global capital flow. The newspapers of the United States and Singapore, in which financial policies are highly free and largely unrestricted, dominantly framed for free flow of speculative capital and great openness in global financial markets. However, the newspapers of Thailand and South Korea, in which financial policies are moderately free and which have both suffered recent economic crises, are more concerned about the control for speculative capital than those of the United States and Singapore.

Not another Chernobyl: Evidence of Russian candor during the sinking of the submarine Kursk • Stacy Spaulding, American University • In the confusion surrounding the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk, many U.S. newspapers were quick to declare a return to Soviet-era standards of secrecy because of conflicting and sometimes false information. But by examining coverage of the accident in three leading U.S. newspapers, this study found evidence that there was more openness than U.S. journalists recognized In particular, Russian sources figured more Prominently than U.S. sources in breaking news stories. Page one stories were also more likely to quote Russian sources than U.S. sources, and named Russian sources were quoted more often than named U.S. Sources, anonymous U.S. sources or anonymous Russian sources. This study examines the implications of these findings, drawing on a comparison to the Chernobyl disaster, and calls for a more nuanced understanding of contemporary Russian communication.

International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy • Joseph D. Straubhaar, University of Texas-Austin and Douglas A. Boyd, University of Kentucky • From the 1920s until 2001 international broadcasting has expanded to include television, not just the traditional form of long-distance electronic communication: mediumwave and shortwave radio. Traditionally done by governments and public corporations, international radio, and especially satellite-delivered television are increasingly commercial ventures, with CNN International and the BBC’s World being the most well known examples. This paper traces the evolution of international electronic communication in light of its present-day role in public diplomacy.

The Global News and the Pictures in Their Heads: A Comparative Analysis of U.S. and Foreign Media Coverage • Zixue Tai and Tsan-Kuo Chang, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • News as a special kind of social product requires something to have taken place in the first place, to be captured by news people and published by the media, and ultimately to be consumed by the audience. Every stage is crucial for the news manufacturing process. This is especially true in international communication. This study examines the triangular relationship among what editors think as important news, what the audience likes, and what the U:S. and foreign media actually cover. The convergence and divergence of opinions from the audiences and the editors found in this study and media performance in coverage of some specific types of stories in the global context have important implications for better understanding of the processes and structure of international communication in society.

Press Freedom in Jamaica: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Government and Media Debates, 1990-2000 • Grace Virtue, Howard University • The Jamaican media industry has undergone profound changes in the past decade with growth in radio, television and print. With an often-fractious socio-political climate and traditions framed by slavery, colonialism and poverty, there is ongoing debate over how the society is being impacted by the media. This study is an attempt to determine how freedom of the press is conceptualized in Jamaica. A qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles and government documents were used for the study.

Coverage of International Elections in the U.S.: A Path Analysis Model of International News Flow • Wayne Wanta, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Guy Golan, University of Florida • A path analysis examined filters that may influence media coverage of international elections in the U.S. Western industrialized nations and U.N. Security Council members formed a core that received more coverage than peripheral nations. International interactions – trade with the U.S. and number of ancestors in the U.S. -transformed some nations into “semi-peripheral” nations, which received more coverage than other countries. Finally, international attributes – e.g., presence of nuclear weapons and gross domestic product – led some peripheral nations to receive coverage.

Cultural Differences in the Responses towards Offensive Advertising: A Comparison of Koreans, Korea-Americans, and Americans • Tae-Il Yoon, University of Missouri-Columbia and Kyoungtae Nam, University of Tennessee-Knoxville • This research reports on a cross-cultural study about the cultural differences in the affective responses toward offensive advertising. The research examined the issue by testing the reactions toward the controversial Benetton ads among three different groups (Korean, Korean-Americans, and Americans). The empirical data demonstrated that there were significantly cultural differences for non-offensive ad as well as for offensive ads. The results suggested that affective responses to advertising might be more culturally bounded than as expected. Its theoretical and managerial implications were discussed.

Four Effects in the Professionalization Process: A Study of Chinese Journalists in the Reform Era • Yong Zhang, University of Minnesota • Analyzing data from a nation-wide survey (n=1 ,649), this paper examines professional orientations of Chinese journalists in the reform era. Four major factors are found to influence the emergence of journalistic professionalism. They are historical experience represented by age cohort, communist party membership, one’s career path and experiences in professional improvement. Among these competing influences, journalists’ experience in professional improvement is found to be the most powerful predictor of accepting the general ideas of professionalism. The results are interpreted in light of the changing political, economic, and cultural milieu in China’s media reforms.

<< 2001 Abstracts

History Divison

The Cold War as front-page news: The Truman Doctrine and the headlines, 1947 • Edward Alwood, Temple University • This paper analyzes how President Harry S Truman’s announcement of the Truman Doctrine translated into headline news at the beginning of the Cold War. It compared Truman’s alarmist rhetoric with newspaper headlines to determine the degree to which coverage of the speech reflected Truman’s characterization of Soviet aggression. Though critics have criticized newspapers during this era for serving as conduits for manipulative politicians, this study found that nearly half of the fourteen newspapers examined used Truman’s secondary theme involving the cost of the program in their headlines rather than the president’s alarmist rhetoric concerning Communist aggression.

Everyone’s Child: The Kathy Fiscus story as a defining event in television news • Terry Anzur, University of Southern California • This article examines the first live television coverage from the scene of a breaking news story to reach an audience of significant size: the 1949 attempted rescue of 3-year-old Kathy Fiscus from an abandoned well near Los Angeles, California. The KTLA-TV telecast is reconstructed through newspaper articles, eyewitness accounts and interviews with surviving participants. This broadcast transformed public perception of commercial television as an essential source of information and defined audience expectations of live TV news.

“Still the Manager… in Letter and Spirit”: Absentee Ownership and the East Oregonian • Jon Arakaki, University of Oregon • This study examines sixty-nine letters written from 1902-1906, between a newspaper owner in Portland, Oregon and his circulation manager in Pendleton Oregon. The letters provide a unique perspective on the business of newspapers: the changing role of a small town newspaper owner to an absentee majority owner who communicated primarily through letters. The narrative in the letters also reflect a newspaper caught in the changing business climate, transforming from small town, frontier newspaper to a product of the modern press.

Fearing witches: Anita Whitney and free speech in the Jazz Age • Diane L. Borden, San Diego State University • Among all the First Amendment cases to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 20th century, only a handful have involved women plaintiffs. At the center of one of the most significant was social activist Anita Whitney, whose conviction for speaking out under California’s anti-communism law was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1927. This paper argues that while communism was the witch that men feared in the early decades of the 20th century, Whitney was the woman they tied to the stake.

The World, The State, and Local Newspapers’ Editorial Reaction to a South Carolina Triple Lynching in 1926 • Kenneth Campbell, University of South Carolina • Press coverage of lynchings during the later half of the 19th century and the early 20th century is a much overlooked topic. This paper examines state and local editorial reaction to how The New York World covered a triple lynching in South Carolina in 1926. Five themes emerge including considerable local resistance to The New York World spotlighting “South Carolina’s shame” while ignoring crime and corruption in its own back yard, as some local papers put it.

Mixing Protest and Accommodation: The Response of Oklahoma’s Black Town Newspaper Editors to Race Relations, 1891-1915 • Mary M. Cronin, Bridgewater State University • Oklahoma’s black editors’ responses to African American settlers’ financial, social, and political conditions demonstrates that they used both vigorous protest and aspects of accommodationist policies. Their editorial philosophies must be evaluated in terms of the context of African American life in the Great Plains. While its true that many of the editors’ publications were booster sheets and there was a strong editorial interest in town site promotion, such promotion was only one factor in the use of both protest and accommodation philosophies. Most of Oklahoma’s black town editors protested vigorously to maintain political and civil rights guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution.

Public School Muckraker of the 1890s: A Reinterpretation of Joseph M. Rice • Doug Cumming, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Joseph M. Rice, a pediatrician and school reformer of the 1890s, wrote a nine-part magazine exposé of the mechanical methods of teaching used in urban school systems in 36 cities. He has been treated by education historians as a pioneer of educational measurement, child-centered pedagogy, or administrative efficiency. This paper argues that he should be reconsidered a precursor of the muckrakers and the first modern education reporter.

The Farmer’s Wife: Creating a Sense of Community Among Kansas Women • Amy J. Devault, Kansas State University • The Farmer’s Wife, published in Kansas from 1891 to 1894, promoted the Farmer’s Alliance, Populism, and woman suffrage. Geared to rural/farm women, the publication worked to change the identity of women, raise consciousness concerning the suffrage movement, and encourage men and women to work for the suffrage cause. This study suggests that suffrage rhetoric became more significant and direct over the three years of publication, leading up to a vote on a state constitution suffrage amendment.

A Heated News Debate: Origins of the Hot News Doctrine • Victoria Smith Ekstrand, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examines the history of the “hot news doctrine” and its roots in the 1918 Supreme Court case, AP v. INS. It argues that the doctrine, which is still good law, is based on outdated copyright principles and was a calculated move by the Associated Press to protect its investments in news.

“Sidewalks and Rooftops Are Black for Blocks Around” D.L. Moody Evangelizes Gilded Age Brooklyn • Bruce Evenson, DePaul University • This paper examines the historic intersection of mass media and mass revival in modern America through the work of D.L. Moody in Brooklyn during the fall of 1875. Moody had a business man’s understanding of the power of publicity and organization in making a sale. With the help of cooperating newspapers, he mounted civic spectacles of unprecedented proportions across Gilded Age America. This makes Moody’s mission to “the city of churches” a case study in the rise of celebrity evangelism in an age of growing “religious indifference.”

Citizen Hearst vs. Citizen Kane: The Battle Fought Behind the Release of One of the Greatest Cinematic Pictures of All Time • Chris Faidley, Drake University • While “Citizen Kane” has been studied at length, Hearst’s reaction to it has not. Historians have asserted that Hearst opposed release of the film, but none have treated the subject to a close, scholarly study. Here, mentions of the film in Reader’s Guide-indexed magazines, theatrical periodicals, and newspapers of the era are located and used to provide a clear picture of Hearst’s attempts to suppress the film and punish its makers—a media tycoon ruthlessly restricting freedom of expression and setting the agenda not only for his own media but for many others.

Reconnecting With the Body Politic: Toward Disconnecting Muckrakers and Public Journalists • Frank E. Fee Jr., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • In the early 1900s, muckrakers unleashed aggressive journalism seeking better government for citizens, and themes inherent in their work and motivation continue to echo in modern journalism. At century’s end, public journalists likewise adopted activist roles to remedy political and social malaise. Although public journalists proclaimed theirs a unique approach to journalism, some scholars link muckraking and public journalism. This paper argues that despite commonalities, the two movements differ in fundamental and largely unexplored ways.

The Jailing of a Journalist: U.S. v. Les Whitten (1973) • Mark Feldstein, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • An examination of the Nixon Administration’s jailing of a journalist who criticized the government. Although U.S. v. Les Whitten was overshadowed by more famous Watergate court decisions; it was an important press victory at a time when First Amendment rights were under siege – and would eventually affect other landmark media cases. By stopping a particularly egregious government attempt to criminalize investigative reporting, it had a little-examined impact that is arguably still being felt today.

Re-Thinking Canadian Journalism History: The Case of the Stunt Girl • Sandra Gabriele, Concordia University • This paper examines how the Canadian stunt girl came to be in the late l9th century. The first part of the paper examines the current literature on English-language journalism in Canada, raising the problems of gender and journalism. Combining articulation theory and feminist historiography as alternate models, the second half of this paper examines these women’s writings in order to discuss the strategies they were using to contain the risks they posed to understandings of journalism and femininity.

Ruth Hale: From “The Better Newspaperman” to Uncredited Collaborator • Susan Henry, California State University, Northridge • Ruth Hale was a journalist, feminist, activist and unacknowledged collaborator with her husband, Heywood Broun, a prolific writer and extraordinarily popular newspaper columnist in the 1920s and 30s. This paper examines Hale’s successful journalism career before her marriage and its sharp decline afterwards, her essential role in the work for which Broun received sole credit and much acclaim, the couple’s problematic marriage, and her fierce fight for a woman’s right to keep her birth name after she married – even as her contribution to Broun’s work was obscured by his byline.

‘London Calling?’ Covert British Propaganda and News Distribution, 1948-1953 • John Jenks, Dominican University • British government propaganda had a substantial presence around the world in the early Cold War, but few historians have examined how Britain’s main propaganda agency, the Information Research Department, tried to influence the world’s news media. I will show in this paper how this agency packaged hard-to-get facts in ways that were consistently negative to the Soviet Union and its friends • downplaying positive interpretations • then offered that pre-packaged reality to journalists.

Tacking Against the Wind: Placing the Recent Debate Over Corporate Speech In a Dialectic Between Civic Virtue and Commercial Energy • Robert L. Kerr, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • The debate between public (the Common good) and private (economic) interests – or as it has been conceptualized by intellectual historians, between Civic virtue and commercial energy – has resonated so enduringly in American political discourse since the colonial era that it represents a dialectic vital to understanding the course of U.S. history. This study asserts that dialectic as a framework for placing the issue of government regulation of corporate speech into historical context.

“All for Each and, Each for All” The Woman’s Press Club of Cincinnati, 1888-1988 • Paulette D. Kilmer, University of Toledo • This paper analyzes the rise and fall of the Woman’s Press Club (WPC) of Cincinnati, a blip on the radar screen of eternity that, like a lot of women’s history, usually is forgotten. Although loyalty to the past doomed the WPC, members’ experiences provide an essential link in understanding women’s history. The WPC illustrates how solidarity both breathes life into a group and, when taken too far, slowly suffocates it.

Fact or Friction: The Research Battle behind Advertising’s Creative Revolution, 1958-1972 • Patricia M. Kinneer, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This study explores the role of advertising research during the Creative Revolution of the sixties – a time when “creatives” ruled the shop and research departments “were washed to sea.” The ebb and flow between the two has remained a constant theme, with the popularity of one agency arm signaling the decline of the other. Insight is offered to advertising researchers and agency management who may face similar issues during today’s “second Creative Revolution”

A Conspiracy of Silence: Mainstream Sportswriters Provide Aid and Comfort to Professional Baseball’s color Line • Chris Lamb, College of Charleston • This paper argues that American sportswriters participated in a conspiracy of silence on the issue of segregation in baseball. By banning blacks from the Baseball Writers Association, using racist stereotypes when referring to black athletes, and remaining silent when others clamored for integration, the nation’s sportswriters provided aid and comfort to the color line. Sportswriters—like all journalists—need to be judged according to their times. But they also should be held accountable for perpetuating society’s sins. From

“True Temperance” to the Talter Advertising messages of Anheuser-Busch in the early years of Prohibition • Margot Opdyke Lamme, University of Alabama • Using the context of Anheuser-Busch’s pre-Prohibition advertising tradition, this paper examines the messages of the Tatler, a monthly sales promotion magazine Anheuser-Busch published for its field agents between 1919 and 1924. The magazine provided consistency between Anheuser-Busch’s advertising messages and those delivered to consumers via Tatler readers. Furthermore, the author concludes that it served as a transition piece, linking pre-Prohibition messages with Prohibition products while cultivating ideas that later contributed to the company’s marketing mix.

McClureÕs: The Significance of 1906-1912 on Willa Cather and Her Artistic Growth • Pamela C. Laucella, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Willa Cather’s journalism has received little scholarly attention, especially works published in McClure’s. While Cather classified her journalistic years as those of experimentation and dismissed works prior to 0 Pioneers! from her canon, she admitted her experiences at McClure’s helped formulate ideas on writing and art. This research strives to place Cather’s works in the historical context of nineteenth and early twentieth century journalism and seeks to elucidate the significance of Cather’s contributions to McClure’s.

Attacking the messenger: The cartoon campaign against Harper’s Weekly in the Election of 1884 • Harlen Makemson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Scholars have asserted that pro-Republican political cartooning was ineffective during the presidential campaign of 1884, but they have not offered convincing evidence. An examination of two pro-Republican comic weeklies – The Judge and Munsey’s Illustrated Weekly – suggests that the problem may have been one of focus. Republican comic weeklies spent almost as much ink discrediting Harper’s Weekly, which had refused to support James Blaine in this campaign, as they did attacking Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland.

The Story of Ruth: The Exodus to Palestine As Told Through the Dispatches of a Jewish-American Journalist • Beverly G. Merrick, New Mexico State University • Ruth Gruber is the journalist who inspired the CBS miniseries Haven, based on a true-life account titled Haven: The Unknown Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees. Gruber also inspired the novel and movie The Exodus, based on another true-life account titled Destination Palestine: The Story of the Haganah Ship Exodus 1947. As a foreign correspondent, Gruber covered stories about displaced populations during post-World War II. She reported on Israel’s early years of development. The research was carried out through a special grant; the paper includes an interview with the aging Gruber.

Suppression of Speech and the Press in the War for Four Freedoms Censorship in Japanese American Assembly Camps During World War II • Takeya Mizuno, Bunkyo University • This article investigates how the United States government conducted censorship of speech and the press in Japanese American “assembly centers” during World War II. Using the archival documents of concerned governmental agencies, this study demonstrates that camp officials strictly prohibited the use of the Japanese language and that they also imposed prior censorship on English-language evacuee newspapers. Within those temporary assembly camps, Japanese American evacuees’ constitutional guarantees of free speech and the press went into void.

Beyond War Stories: Clifford G. Christians’ influence on the teaching of media ethics, 1976-1984 • Lee Anne Peck, Ohio University • Clifford Glenn Christians’ work in the area of media ethics education from 1976 through 1984 has influenced the way media ethics is taught to many college students today. This time period includes, among other accomplishments, Christians’ work on the Hastings Center monograph Teaching Ethics in Journalism Education and his creation in 1983 of the book Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, a textbook that is still used today.

A “Legion of Decency” for 1950s TV? The Catholic Morality Code that didn’t happen • Bob Pondillo, Middle Tennessee University • In the mid- 1930s and lasting over three decades the Catholic Legion of Decency had the power to control the content of American movies. With the coming of 1950’s network television, these same moral guardians sought to extend their powers of censorship to TV. By reviewing key documents, this work considers how close the church came to creating a Catholic Morality Code for TV – a Legion of Decency for television – and explains why it didn’t happen.

Should “A Citizen” Have His Say? A historical argument for the publication of unsigned commentary in “Letters to the Editor” forums • Bill Reader, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee • The paper offers a historical argument for newspapers to relax policies against publishing unsigned commentary from the public in “letters to the editor” columns and call-in forums. “Must sign” policies are a product of the middle to late 20th century; for much of the press’s history, anonymous commentary was published frequently and prominently. The author argues that must sign” policies may be antithetical to editors’ goals to provide open forums for all readers.

HARRY S. ASHMORE: ON THE WAY TO EVERYWHERE • Nathania Sawyer, University of Little Rock Arkansas • Harry S. Ashmore, a legendary figure in journalism circles, is best remembered as a Pulitzer-Prize-winning editor and prolific book author. Yet, little detail has been published about his life and career. This historical research paper explores his youth, education, and early career and provides insight into the life of a man who rose above his traditional Southern roots to become a voice of reason during the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School.

Bee So Near Thereto: A History of Toledo Newspaper Co. v. United States • Thomas A. Schwartz, Ohio State University • In the tradition of many such First Amendment case biographies, this paper tells the story of Toledo Newspaper Co. V. United States, a 1918 United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the right of federal courts summarily to punish press critics of the judiciary, a form of seditious libel law. The precedent, although overturned in 1940, suggested a significant gap between press freedom theory and journalism practice during the Progressive period.

A Woman in a Man’s World: An Analysis of “Annie Laurie” As One of America’s First Sports Writers • Mike Sowell, Oklahoma State University • Winifred Black, who wrote for William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner under the by-line “Annie Laurie,” infiltrated an all-men’s club in 1892 to become the first woman to cover a prize fight for an American newspaper. This article is an analysis of Black’s coverage of sports for the Examiner, and how it compared to the unique brand of journalism known as “sports writing” that was just coming into being in the 1880s and 1890s.

Rising and shining: Benjamin Day and His New York Sun Before 1836 • Susan Thompson, University of Alabama • From his arrival in New York until the publication of the Moon Hoax in 1835, Benjamin Day worked to establish the New York Sun as the first successful penny daily. This paper examines reasons for Day’s success, editorial and ethical differences of Day and co-owner George Wisner, circumstances surrounding Wisner’s departure and those surrounding the perpetration of Richard A. Locke’s famous Moon Hoax, and the phenomenal growth of the Sun in the early years.

Afflicting the Afflicted: How Eight U.S. Newspaper Editorial Pages Responded to the 1942 Japanese Internment • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois University • This paper examines how eight daily newspapers in the U.S. responded on their editorial pages – with editorials and letters to the editor – to the imprisonment of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans in 1942. This study focuses on the period of March through June of 1942. Seven West Coast newspapers are studied: the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco News, the Seattle Post- Intelligencer, and the Seattle Times. The New York Times is also examined.

<< 2001 Abstracts

Cultural and Critical Studies Division

“I’m Not a Feminist… I Only Defend Women as Human Beings”: The Production, Representation and Consumptions of Feminism in a Telenovela, • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, University of Georgia • This study investigates the encounter between feminism and a successful Venezuelan telenovela. It focuses on the meaning(s) associated with the terms feminism and feminist in Venezuela, and how these meanings are both a reflection and a constitutive element of the country’s culture. Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, the representation of feminism in the serial is examined through textual analysis. In addition, the production and consumption of this representation is analyzed through interviews with the head writer and actors, and with audience members. The findings suggest a separation between the telenovela’s empowering message for women and Venezuelans’ understanding of feminism. This split mirrors the paradox that feminism faces worldwide: it is an influential movement that is, nevertheless, widely stigmatized.

http://feminist.identity/in/Web.sites.for.women/ Or, Analyses of Feminist Identity in Web sites of Chick Click, Cybergirl, iVillage and Women.com Networks • Debashis “Deb” Aikat, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Based on concepts related to cultural studies and detailed discourse analyses of top four mainstream women’s Web sites, this study examined the level of discourse regarding feminist identity based on five specific categories: 1. Empowerment, 2. Sexuality, 3. Justice and equality, 4. Action for Social, Political and Economic Change, and 5. Other Pertinent Themes.

The work of being watched: interactive media and the exploitation of self-disclosure • Mark Andrejevic, University of Colorado-Bolder • In the era of new media interactivity, the development of customized marketing and production is increasingly reliant upon the work consumers and viewers perform by being watched. This article explores the role of the “labor of being watched” in rationalizing the process of customized consumption in general and of television viewing in particular. By way of example, this article takes up the case of digital VCR technology, which allows consumers to be “watched” while they are watching TV.

Literacy “Problems” and Skill “Solutions”: Toward Critical Communication Classes • Ralph J. Beliveau, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh • My discussion of education and media is concerned with kinds of literacy and their reproduction. The first part concerns the idea of “skills” in communication. Are “skills” classrooms becoming “deskilled” themselves, as important critical questions are decided from above and removed from the active classroom? Secondly, is there a way of conceiving of literacy that can respond to this problem, a literacy that goes beyond communication “skills” into developing critical reflective practitioners? Examples from a classroom ethnographic study are included.

THE MIDDLE EAST AS WILD WEST: NEWS OF TERRORISM IN ISRAEL THROUGH AN AMERICAN LENS • Dan Berkowitz and Dina Gavrilos, University of Iowa • no abstract

THE WAYWARD CHILD: An Ideological Analysis of Sports Contract Holdout Coverage • Ronald Bishop, Drexel University • Journalists write and talk frequently about the escalating salaries earned by professional athletes. However, special scorn is reserved for those athletes who holdout – for more money, or to renegotiate their contracts. In this ideological analysis, I explore the ideology that emerges from beat coverage by Seattle sportswriters of the 1999 holdout by Joey Galloway, a star receiver for the Seattle Seahawks. From July to November 1999, Galloway and the Seahawks were embroiled in a very public dispute over a contract extension sought by Galloway. My analysis is built on the idea that certain ideologies become dominant, to the exclusion of ideologies which present alternative perspectives. These perspectives are marginalized or suppressed Thus, one way of “seeing the world” holds sway – it achieves hegemony. For sports fans in Seattle, it becomes the preferred reading of Galloway’s conduct. Articles for the analysis were taken from Seattle’s two daily newspapers and cover the entire holdout. The ideology that emerges from these articles revolves around several key ideas: the team is sacred – it is bigger, and has more value, than any of its individual members; the coach is the ultimate authority figure, one whose judgment should never be questioned; a holdout by its very nature threatens the team; and players who do hold out are seen as greedy, selfish, and disloyal, or at the very least, driven solely by pragmatism. It was a news frame created and advanced by team officials. Seattle beat writers painted a picture of Galloway as a spoiled, petulant child who had to be stripped of his individuality and spend some time alone (a “time out?”) before coming back to the team. His holdout was positioned by reporters as a disruption – to the lives and careers of Galloway’s teammates, the progress of the team, and even to the relationship between the team and its fans in Seattle The holdout was set against a backdrop which saw team officials yearning for a simpler time when holdouts did not happen. Findings from the analysis can be used to help reporters improve their coverage of contract negotiations.

Rethinking Representations of Disability on Primetime Television • Christopher Campbell and Sheri L Hoem, University of Idaho • This paper argues that recent portrayals of people with disabilities on primetime fictional television demonstrate, first, reinscriptions of the stereotypical representations that have dominated traditional portrayals of disability in popular culture and, second, more complicated and beneficial representations that contradict the dominant representation. The paper includes “readings” of 1) an X-Files episode that prominently features characters historically associated with freak shows, and 2) three recent primetime dramas that include guest appearances by Marlee Matlin, an Oscar-winning actress who is deaf

“Don’t Want No Short People ‘Round Here”: Disrupting Heterosexual Ideology in the Comic Narratives of Ally McBeal • Brenda Cooper and Edward C. Pease, Utah State University • no abstract

ETHNOGRAPHY IN JOURNALISM: LAUGHABLE PREMISE OR NARRATIVE OF EMPOWERMENT? • Janet M. Cramer and Michael McDevitt, University of New Mexico • The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical theoretical rationale for the use of ethnography as a reporting method. The authors describe the need for ethnographic reporting in light of the functional tendency of the press to preserve the social order at the expense of marginalized groups. By arguing for journalistic autonomy and strong objectivity, the authors describe principles and ethical considerations of ethnography and provide a case study example of ethnographic journalism.

Framing the Militia Movement: A Ten-year Textual and Visual Analysis of Network News • Marie Curkan-Flanagan, University of Southern Florida and Dorothy Bowles, University of Tennessee-Knoxville • This study focuses on the contemporary militia. Using framing analysis as a theory, this study investigates the relationship between network news and the militia movement. Here, frames provide a systematic way of explaining how people use expectations to make sense of reality. Methodologically, this study uses a grounded theory approach. Through textual analysis of verbal and visual texts in three hundred and seven television news stories taken from ABC, CBS, and NBC newscasts from 1989 to 1999, this study found that the major frames used by network reporters and producers included: terrorism, domestic terrorism, war and peace, and government control to frame the militia movement.

Policing the Boundaries of Truth in Journalism: The Case of Alastair Reid • Elizabeth Fakazis, Indiana University • no abstract

Africa.com: The Self-Representation of Sub- Saharan Nations on the World Wide Web • Elfriede Fursich, Boston College and Melinda B. Robins, Emerson College • In a textual analysis of government Web sites of 34 sub-Saharan countries, we evaluate whether African nations can use the Internet to overcome their traditional low profile on the world stage. Our analysis finds that the sites echo the ongoing struggle over the definition and purpose of the nation-state in a globalized era. African countries present a reflected identity mirroring Western interests. We conclude that the potential of the Internet as an equalizing force in the global information flow tends to be exaggerated.

The Newseum and Collective Memory: Narrowed Choices, Limited Voices and Rhetoric of Freedom • Rachel M. Gans, University of Pennsylvania • Using the concepts of collective memory, the public sphere and political economy, this paper critically examines the narrative of the Newseum, the Freedom Forum’s museum of the news. This paper contends that the Newseum presents a narrative that is unresponsive to real criticism of the press, limits visitors’ ability to explore alternative ideas, and does so while invoking collective memory and a rhetoric of freedom.

Arab-Americans in a Nation’s “Imagined Community”: How News Constructed Arab-American Reactions to the Gulf War • Dina Gavrilos, University of Iowa • This study sought to investigate how “alternative” discourses about the Gulf War were presented in the news media at that time through the case of the Arab-American community. The central point of this paper is that although Arab-American concerns were articulated through some news media, these discourses were constructed in ways that ultimately maintained and reinforced the hegemonic notion of America as an “imagined community” deserving of citizens’ sentimental attachments and loyalties.

News Media and Sources in the Framing Process: An Ideological Criticism on the Media Framing of a Political Issue • Sungtae Ha, University of Texas-Austin • In the process of frame contests, sources play the role of frame sponsors representing various positions on an issue because they are the voices that can be heard or read in media texts. The issue of calls for President Clinton’s resignation is a great opportunity to examine the role of sources in a framing process in that many parts of American political power structure as frame sponsors have been involved in the issue. The findings support the assumption that news media routinely reflect the issue frames of the dominant political power groups. In this process, diverse news sources play the role of frame sponsors competitively imposing their voices in the texts. Two points should be noted: first, the degree of political involvement of sources becomes a significant explanatory device for understanding the role of sources in news texts. Second, sources of different political involvements employ different frame devices in terms of the level of contextualization.

Looking the Part: U.S. Anchorwomen as ‘Other’ • Elizabeth Blanks Hindman and Tracy Briggs Jensen, North Dakota State University • This project examines whether U.S. anchorwomen feel pressure over their appearance, the origins of that pressure and the its perceived effects upon the women. In-depth telephone interviews with local news anchorwomen were analyzed using Beauvoir’s theory of “Woman as Other.” The study concluded that, in fact, television anchorwomen perceive themselves, and are treated as, “other” to anchormen. Specifically, there is evidence of “man as the norm; woman as different,” and “woman made, not born.”

On the Road to War: The Use of Transportation as a Rhetorical Device in Martha Gellhorn’s War-torn Travel Journalism • Marcie L. Hinton, Berry College • War Reporter Martha Gellhorn’s non-fiction can best be understood as an original form of travel writing. This study explores how Gellhorn established a relationship with her audience by providing a vivid style of war reporting through her rhetoric of transportation. As a reporter throughout most of the twentieth century’s wars, Gellhorn straddled the line between traditional and contemporary travel writing while enlarging the frontier of cultures and creating a unique form of war-torn travel journalism.

The Buccaneer as Cultural Metaphor: Pirate Mythology in Nineteenth-Century American Periodicals • Janice Hume, University of Georgia • Daring pirates-of-old hold a place of honor in collective public imagination, and the American press has passed along their romantic tales, amplifying and legitimizing them for a mass audience. This study traces the progression of buccaneer legendary in nineteenth century American magazine articles, examining: (1) uses of history and memory, (2) pirate actions, (3) pirate attributes, and (4) deaths of the pirates. Each offers clues into a changing American press and culture.

The Making of an Outlaw Hero: Jesse James, Folklore, and Nineteenth Century Missouri Journalists • Cathy M. Jackson, Norfolk State University • This descriptive study notes the literary and folkloric rise of Jesse James to outlaw hero status; and through the use of social construction of reality theories, places him and newspaper stories as products of the crisis-filled, post-Civil War society in Missouri. A random perusal of Missouri newspapers from 1866-1882 reveal that journalists infused their stories with elements of oral narratives, insuring that James not only would achieve folkloric fame, but would live forever both in print and in history.

Reagan-Era Hollywood • Chris Jordon, Pennsylvania State University • Reagan-era cinema is a period in filmmaking history during which a U.S. president served as a causal agent of intersecting trends in Hollywood’s political economic structure, mode of production, and construction of the success ethic. Concentrations of ownership which occurred under Reaganomics and deregulation promoted a tent-pole strategy of blockbuster production which privileged movies about white hegemony, nuclear family self-sufficiency, and conspicuous consumption associated with mall multiplex culture, suburbia, and the 1980s neoconservative movement.

Voices Between the Tracks: Disk Jockeys, Radio and Popular Music, 1955-60 • Matthew A. Killmeier, University of Iowa • While much of the literature on radio and popular music of the period portrays disk jockeys as having a large degree of freedom, this paper challenges this rendition and argues their autonomy was constrained by a number of institutional and industry pressures. Based upon discourses in industry and lay publications, the author argues disk jockeys were pressured by recording industry largess and station management, which constrained their autonomy and public representation.

International Relations and National Public Discourse: U.S. Press Framing of the Benetton Death Row Campaign • Marwan M. Kraidy and Tamara Goeddertz, University of North Dakota • In this paper we analyze Benetton’s 2000 Death Row advertising campaign as a site of cultural production where ideological differences on capital punishment between the United States and Europe are played out. More specifically, we conduct a textual analysis of news stories and editorials about the campaign in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. We examine the mass-mediated public discourse framing the campaign in the US prestige press. Notably, the discussion will focus on how foreign ideas and national hegemonic frames domesticate ideologies.

Sex noise makes macho magazines both teasing and tedious • Jacqueline Lambiase and Tom Reichert, University of North Texas • Maxim magazine always features scantily dressed women on its covers, using a rhetoric of sublime repetition that is both predictable and erotic. Through content and rhetorical analyses and postmodern theory, this project studies the production and consumption of Maxim by analyzing ifs cover and its construction of an idealized macho culture. With these combined approaches, Maxim may be “looked at” and “looked through,” as a modernist artifact and as a postmodern effect of something else.

Framing Dr Death: How Jack Kevorkian was Characterized in Stories about Physician-Assisted Suicide in Four Michigan Newspapers • Kimberly A. Lauffer, Townson University • This qualitative study examines how one protagonist in the debate over physician-assisted suicide was portrayed as part of a larger study on the framing of the debate. News coverage of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in four Michigan newspapers from January 1996 to June 1999 was analyzed. Overall, coverage of physician-assisted suicide marginalized the issue of physician-assisted suicide and depicted its main mouthpiece, Jack Kevorkian, as a deviant, eccentric zealot who was obsessed with death. Framing theory asserts that such a strategy likely would negatively affect people’s perceptions of Kevorkian and the issue of physician-assisted suicide, making them less likely to support it.

My Grandmother’s Black-Market Birth Control: “Subjugated Knowledges” in the History of Contraceptive Discourse • Jane Marcellus, University of Oregon • This paper explores the historical context for a 1933 brochure advertising contraceptives. Using Foucault’s theory of “subjugated knowledges,” the paper looks at both public discourse about contraception and the discreet, coded one often used by women. Semiotic and text analysis of the 1933 brochure illustrate a clumsy attempt to create a female consumer in a way that addresses public discourse and intuits the existence of private discourse as well.

Media Literacy and the Alternative Media: A Comparison of KAZI and KNLE Alternative Radio Stations in Austin • InCheol Min, University of Texas-Austin • no abstract

Negotiating Gender in USA Today: A Critical Feminist Analysis of Print Coverage of the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup • Robert Newell, The University of Washington • Many feminist media scholars argue that mediated sport plays a crucial role in the social maintenance of a dominant gender order. This study reviews some common strategies for maintaining this order and explores how they are employed in print coverage of the 1999 FIFA Women’s Soccer World Cup. Focusing specifically on how the national newspaper USA Today depicts the female athletes, spectators and organizers of the event, the study reveals an abundance of indicators- most notably the sexualization of the team members- which suggest dominant efforts to marginalize women.

Communicating A Re-discovered Cultural Identity Through the Ethnic Museum: The Japanese American National Museum • Joy Y. Nishie, University of Nevada-Las Vegas • Ethnic groups within the United States often relinquish their identity, willingly or unwillingly, in order to gain acceptance within society. Their contributions are often overlooked in American museums where history is communicated from a distinctly European perspective. This study examines how the Japanese American National Museum, as an ethnic museum, recovers and re-discovers identity for Japanese-Americans through the messages communicated in their exhibits and displays.

Victims No More: Postfeminism, Television and Ally McBeal • Laurie Ouellette, Rutgers University • The television program Ally McBeal has entered public consciousness as a “statement” about postfeminism and women. This paper analyzes Ally McBeal as a symptomatic text that constructs an emergent phase in primetime postfeminism as the terrain of female subjectivity and common sense. Following a feminist cultural studies approach, it traces the “post-victimization” postfeminist discourse that structures the program and analyzes its construction of sexuality, class and contemporary femininity.

Local Culture in Global Media: Excavating Colonial and Material Discourses in the National Geographic • Radhika Parameswaran, Indiana University • In this essay, I analyze two cover stories, “Global Culture” and “A World Together,” in the August 1999 Millennium issue of the National Geographic to interrogate the representational politics of the magazine’s narratives on globalization. My textual analysis draws from the insights of semiotic, feminist, and Marxist critiques of media images and consumer culture. I explore the ambivalence that permeates the Geographic’s stories on global culture by accounting for multiple media texts and historical contexts that filter the magazine’s imagery. Drawing from postcolonial theories, the essay argues that the Geographic magazine’s interpretation of global culture is suffused with images of femininity, masculinity, and race that subtly echo the othering modalities of Euro-American colonial discourses. The essay undermines the Geographic’s articulation of global culture as a phenomenon that addresses Asians as only modern consumers of global commodities by questioning the invisibility of colonial history, labor, and global production in its narratives. In conclusion, I argue that postcolonial theories enable media research to go beyond the limited concepts of “stereotypes” and “multiculturalism”. I challenge discourses that cast postcolonial theory as an inaccessible, esoteric body of knowledge that is irrelevant for the “real” world of journalistic practices by outlining the pedagogical possibilities of this essay, and discuss the commodification of social issues in the media.

(Mis)Representing the Public: Images of Popular Intelligence in the Journalistic Reaction Story • Peter Parisi, Hunter College • Rhetorical analysis of major-press reaction stories, most concerning the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, reveals a pattern of systematic misrepresentation of the quality of popular thought. The predominant public view that private sexual conduct is irrelevant to a leader’s performance, was repeatedly downplayed • interpreted as cynicism, venality or narrow self-interest. Journalists insisted on the public maintaining a naive faith the honesty and morality of its leaders and the idea of “character” as private behavior.

The “Nature” of Advertising: How Ad Messages Serve Capital by Creating Nature • Elli Lester Roushanzamir, University of Georgia • Mass communication research seldom asks questions regarding how advertising constructs a version of the natural and incorporates that into the system of corporate persuasive messages. This project initiates an exploration into how advertising messages contribute to a dimunition of the relevance of nature and environmentalism. It will be argued that advertising constructs the “natural” in two primary ways: as a curiosity to visit and as an accessory to collect. With the literatures of cultural geography and travel and tourism forming a backdrop, and grounded in critical media studies, with evidence drawn from print (magazine) advertising, the research will show that nature forms a ubiquitous framework for evoking open responses that are capable of maintaining and advancing the integrity of the ad’s preferred meaning across a wide variety of social blocs.

Shaping Social Discourse through Strategic Information and News Narrative: A Case Study of Two Anti-Hate Education Campaigns • Meg Spratt, University of Washington • no abstract

Colonialism and Censorship: The Case of Tsui Hark’s Dangerous Encounter -1st Kind • See Kam Tan and Annette Aw, Nanyang Technological University • This paper examines censorship with respect to colonialism. It specifically seeks to understand the operation of such prohibitive powers, their vigilance and failure, through a disursive analysis of Tsui Hark’s feature, Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind (1980). Three interrelated questions guide the analysis: Is censorship all-powerful? How is censorship dealt with at the site of production? Can censorship engender an creative impetus of its own, beyond its initial debilitating capacity?

An Historical Inquiry on Collective Media Ownership: The Formation of the Iowa Co-Operative Publishing Company • James F. Tracy, University of Iowa • This paper is an historical examination of the creation and development of the Iowa Co-Operative Publishing Company in Dubuque, Iowa in 1935. The company published the Dubuque Leader labor newspaper and was one of the very few incorporated under state law as a cooperative owned by working class individuals. The participatory nature of the company contributed to the LeaderÕs role as a powerful and independent editorial voice and political force for Dubuque’s working class.

The Normative-Economic Justification for Public Discourse: Letters to the Editor as a “Wide Open” Forum • Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Cardiff University • This paper investigates how editors speak about the letters section • perhaps the newspaper feature that best encapsulates ideals of public participation. The paper shows that editors celebrate the section’s democratic potential. But the letters section is also seen as a “customer service” feature that boosts newspapers’ financial success. The co-existence of the two models gives rise a “normative-economic justification” for public discourse, which captures the idea that what is good for democracy is also good for business.

The journalist as a spy: Hidden cameras, surveillance, and democracy • Silvio Waisbord, Rutgers University • This paper analyzes the place of hidden-camera reporting within contemporary journalism. The use of hidden camera in television investigative journalism needs to be understood in the context of the incorporation of surveillance technologies in journalism and in society at large. Whereas the expansion of surveillance technologies has raised various concerns, journalism defends their use based on the principles of facticity, veracity, and transparency. The analysis examines the criticisms of hidden-camera reporting and the epistemological principles that underlie undercover television journalism. Journalism’s effort to offer “unmediated reality” seems a losing proposition. It is grounded in weak foundations and inevitably subjected to suspicion. It is ingenuous, at best, to assume that visual technology resolve this complicated matter and further assist in accomplishing the goals of transparency and accountability.

“American Life Is Rich in Lunacy”: The Unsettling Social Commentary of “The Beverly Hillbillies” • Jan Whitt, University of Colorado • Relying upon characteristics from Old Southwestern humor (1830-60) and “Li’l Abner” (1934-77), this study suggests ways in which “The Beverly Hillbillies” functioned as surprisingly deft and often doubled-edged social commentary. Creator Paul Henning might well have agreed with cartoonist Al Capp when Capp said that he found humor “wherever there is lunacy, and American life is rich in lunacy everywhere you look.”

<< 2001 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology Division

Message Credibility and Congruence in First- and Third-Person Estimations • Julie Andsager, Washington State University and H. Allen White, Murray State University • This experiment explores how message characteristics such as perceived credibility and congruence with the reader’s attitude influence third-person and first-person perceptions. One of two versions of a persuasive message on abortion rights was presented to 158 subjects, who estimated the effect on their attitudes, most people’s and pro-choice and pro-life others. Message congruence did not directly affect attitudes, but related to credibility, which had a positive first-person effect. Social distance did not relate to estimations.

A Comparison of Target Publics’ and Expert Coders’ Perceptions of Alcoholic Beverage Advertising: A Receiver-Oriented Content Analysis • Erica Weintrub Austin, Petra Guerra, Stacey Hust, Amber Caral-Reaume Miller, and Bruce Pinkleton, Washington State University • Media scholars often warn against inferring effects by examining media content, because meaning exists within the receiver rather than in the message itself. Only to the extent receivers and experts perceive messages similarly can exposure-based studies assert that effects are attributable to particular content analyzed separately by experts. Accordingly, this study examined the extent to which traditional content analysis performed by trained experts concurred with the meaning in messages as reported by typical recipients of those messages. Results from a traditional content analysis of 73 print alcohol ads using two sets of expert coders were compared with results from a receiver-oriented content analysis, which used members of the target public as coders. College students (n =520) comprised the target public for the analysis of a random sample of 40 ads. Z scores indicated that receivers and coders largely agreed on manifest content but disagreed frequently – often dramatically – on latent content. More sensitive t -tests indicated significant differences existed on every content characteristic evaluated.

Media Literacy: A Review and Critical Assessment of its Diverse Literature • Stefne Lenzmeier Broz, Ohio State University • This paper attempts to unify the varied research in media literacy in order to make sense of this growing yet fragmentary movement and to organize the widely varied literature by the focus, objectives, and depth of the initiative. A critical assessment of the literature, theoretical links, and application to health messages are provided and will point to opportunities and challenges that can be met through healthy skepticism and a healthy dose of theory.

Counteracting the Biasing Effect of Unrepresentative Exemplification on News Readers’ Issue Perception • Hao-Chieh Chang, Chinese University of Hong Kong • Use of unrepresentative exemplification has been shown to mislead news recipients’ perceptions of majority/minority position featured in the base-rate information. This study examined the effects of vivid presentation and causal information in counteracting the biasing influence of unrepresentative exemplification. Results showed that 1) the vivid presentation of base-rate information increased recall of such information., 2) the presence of causal information increased the utilization of base rate information, 3) the observed effects sustained both in the issue of high relevance and low relevance to news readers.

Applying the Health Belief Model to Promote Healthy Lifestyles via Television in Poland • Fiona Chew, Syracuse University, Sushma Palmer, Center for Communications, Health and the Environment, Zofia Slonska, National Institute of Cardiology and Kalyani Subbiah, Syracuse • This study applied the framework of the health belief model (HBM) to examine the impact of a preventive health TV program series on health knowledge and behavior. Using data from a post-test control field experiment with 151 viewers and 146 nonviewers in Poland, hierarchical regression analysis showed stronger support for the HBM factors of efficacy, susceptibility, seriousness and salience in their contribution towards health behavior among TV viewers compared to nonviewers. Cues to action variables (including TV viewing) and health knowledge boosted efficacy among viewers. Without the advantage of receiving health information from the TV series, nonviewers relied on their basic disease fears on one hand, and interest in good health on the other to take steps towards becoming healthier. A preventive health TV series can increase health knowledge and enhance health beliefs which in turn contribute to healthy lifestyles.

A Communication “Mr. Fit?” Living with No Significant Difference • Fiona Chew, Syracuse University, Sushma Palmer, Center for Communications, Health and the Environment, and Kalyani Subbiah, Syracuse • This methodological report addresses internal validity problems including contamination and randomization. It profiles an empirical study and examines the methodological soundness of decisions made. Focusing on the science of research is as important as focusing on the theoretical constructs guiding research.

Racial Cues and Political Ideology: An Examination of Associative Priming • David Domke, University of Washington • This research theorizes that the presence or absence in political conversation of racial cues – that is, references by elites and news media to images commonly understood as tied to particular racial or ethnic groups – may substantially influence whether citizens’ racial cognitions contribute to their political judgments. In particular, such symbolic cues in discourse may activate an important linkage between an individual’s racial perceptions and political ideology, which some scholars suggest have become closely intertwined in the U.S. political environment. With this in mind, an experiment was conducted in which the news discourse about crime was systematically altered – as including racial cues or not – within controlled political information environments to examine how individuals process, interpret, and use issue information in forming political judgments. The findings suggest that racial cues not only “trigger” the association between racial perceptions and political ideology, but in turn may prompt individuals to become more ideologically distinct in their political evaluations.

The primes of our times?: An examination of the “power” of visual images • David Domke, David Perlmutter and Meg Spratt, University of Washington • Claims by political and news elites about the influence of visual images are far more common than actual evidence of such effects. This research attempts to gain insight into the “power” of visual images, specifically those that accompany lexical-verbal messages in the press. We argue that the widely held notion that vivid images often drive public opinion is overly simplistic; in contrast, we posit that images most often interact with individuals’ existing understandings of the world to shape information processing and judgments. With this in mind, we conducted an experiment in which news coverage was systematically altered – as including a famous photograph widely attributed great influence, or not – within otherwise constant information environments. Findings suggest that visual news images (a) influence people’s information processing in ways that can be understood only by taking into account individuals’ predispositions and values, and (b) at the same appear to have a particular ability to “trigger” considerations that spread through one’s mental framework to other evaluations.

Back To The Qualitative Drawing Board: Uses and Gratifications, Rap Music, and African American Teenagers • Tim Edwards, University of Arkansas • This study examined the uses and gratifications of rap music among African American teenagers using qualitative data. Results suggest that some African American teenagers listen to rap music for the beat as well as the lyrics. Teenagers involved in this study feel that rap artists speak directly to them, providing morality tales which can be useful in their (teenagers) own lives.

Ventriloquist or Dummy? A Model of How Sources Set the Investigative Agenda • Mark Feldstein, University of North Carolina • This conceptual paper proposes a new model of how sources set the investigative agenda. While the relationship between sources and beat reporters has been studied before, little work has been done about investigative reporters, who are ostensibly independent agenda-setters. However, the author’s “Dummy Model” posits that muckrakers are in fact often captives of their sources, deliberately concealing their hidden agendas from the public. This model suggests that investigative reporters may not really be an independent check on societal wrongdoing.

Emotional Television Viewing and Minority Perceptions of Television News: How Mexican Americans Process and Evaluate Television News about Mexican Americans • Yuki Fujioka, Georgia State University • This experiment examined the effects of emotional TV viewing on minority viewers processing and evaluation of TV news stories. Fifty-one Mexican American subjects viewed 12 emotional television news stories featuring Mexican Americans. They completed a cued recall test and evaluated recalled news stories. The study found a main effect of arousal, but not of valence, on viewers’ attention and memory. Negative messages were evaluated more negatively when they were arousing than when they were non-arousing.

INVOLVEMENT AND SELECTIVE ATTENTION TO POLITICAL NEWS • Joseph Graf and Sean Aday, George Washington University • Selective attention is a key concept in communication research despite equivocal supporting evidence. This paper advances selective attention research by (1) introducing unobtrusive measures of attention to on-line content, (2) finding consistent support for the selective attention hypothesis using these measures, and (3) finding support for the hypothesized interaction between involvement and selective attention. This hypothesis proposes that selective attention will increase as a subject’s involvement in an issue increases.

GLOBAL TRIADIZATION: A theoretical framework for global communication research • Shelton A. Gunaratne, Minnesota State University • A macro theory that recognizes the world’s three competing center-clusters and their respective hinterlands offers a realistic framework for global communication research. This study has used recent data on world trade, computers, Internet hosts and high-tech exports to map the triadization of the world in the Information Age. The original dependency theory and world-system theory perspectives emphasized the hierarchical linking of national societies to the capitalist world-economy in a center-periphery structure. The proposed global-triadization formulation looks at the center-periphery structure in terms of a capitalist world-economy dominated by three competing center economic clusters, each of which has a dependent hinterland comprising peripheral economic clusters. These clusters may not necessarily be geographically contiguous. Strong-weak relationships may exist within each center-cluster, as well as within each periphery-cluster, with one center-cluster occupying a hegemonic role. The rudimentary Information-Society Power Index, constructed for this study, can guide the researcher to test an abundance of hypotheses on the pattern of global communication and information flow with particular attention to source, message, channel, and receiver.

Presidential Agenda Setting: The Weekly Radio Addresses and Foreign Policy • Beverly Horvit, Winthrop University • This paper examines how presidents influence the media agenda with weekly radio addresses and if their ability is enhanced when discussing foreign policy or when the nation faces a military crisis. The radio addresses by Presidents Reagan and Clinton, as well as coverage in the New York Times, were examined for 1983 and 1993. Reagan was more successful than Clinton at attracting news coverage, and neither used the radio addresses to discuss a military crisis.

Cyber House Rules: A Path Model Examining How Convenience and Reliance on the Web Predict Online Credibility • Thomas Johnson, University of Southern Illinois, and Barbara Kaye, Valdosta State University • This study surveyed politically interested Web users online during the 2000 campaign to examine whether they view Internet sources as credible and whether reliance on the Web, reliance on traditional sources, Web, convenience, political and demographic variables predict credibility of online media. A greater percentage of respondents judged online media credible in 2000 than in the 1996 presidential campaign. Reliance on traditional media proved the best predictor of online credibility followed by political trust and convenience.

Interpersonal Discussion as a Moderator of News Framing Effects on Political Issue Interpretation • Heejo Keum, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although numerous studies have examined the effects of news frames on the individuals’ interpretation of political issues, there has been no work looking at the role of interpersonal discussion in framing effects. Using an experimental manipulation, this study analyzes the interpersonal discussion as a moderator of news framing effects. The findings indicate that framing effects on issue interpretation are stronger among individuals having low level of interpersonal discussion than among people with high level of discussion.

THINK ABOUT IT THIS WAY: The attribute agenda-setting function of the press and the public’s evaluation of a local issue • Sei-Hill Kim, Dietram Scheufule, and James Shanahan, Cornell University • This study tested attribute agenda-setting function of the media, an extended version of agenda-setting hypothesis, which hypothesizes correspondence between the prominent issue attributes in the media and the agenda of attributes among audience members. Our opinion survey on a local issue, combined with content analysis of a local newspaper, revealed that mass media, by covering certain aspects of an issue prominently, can influence how salient these aspects are among audience members. We also found an important outcome of attribute agenda-setting, attribute priming effects. Our data analyses indicated that the issue attributes salient in the media were functioning significant dimensions of issue evaluation among audience members. We conclude that the media, by emphasizing certain attributes of an issue, tell us “how to think about” the issue as well as “what to think about.” We also discuss several conceptual and operational considerations for the attribute agenda-setting hypothesis.

Use of Online News Sites: Development of Habit and Automatic Procedural Processing • Maria Len-Rios and Clyde Bentley, University of Missouri • The “newspaper habit” is a U.S. cultural symbol, yet researchers of online media use are not sure how habits will develop and function online. This paper presents a theoretical perspective to examine habit and offers data from two surveys. Findings suggest that habit for online news may be more difficult to foster because habit appears less time-bound online, thus lessening the context stability for habit development.

The Learned Helplessness Effect of In effective Recommendation in Threat Messages • Yulian Li, University of Minnesota • no abstract

Political Advertising and The “Transaction Process” Model of Campaign Agenda Setting in The 2000 New York Senatorial Election • Joon-Soo Lim, University of Florida • no abstract

Online Use Activity and User Gratification-Expectations • Carolyn Lin, Cleveland State University • As a hybrid communication medium, the Internet optimizes communication channel functions in addition to serving as a rudimentary interactive encyclopedia of information content. The present study explores the relations between online access patterns for the most widely utilized online search categories and their use gratification-expectations. Data from a probability sample of Internet users suggests that entertainment, surveillance and habituality are the three most expected gratifications for online use. Few differences in usage patterns between novice and more experienced users were found.

Building a Health Promotion Agenda in Local Newspapers: Community Structural Pluralism and News about Breast Cancer • Beverly Martinson and Douglas Blanks Hindman, North Dakota State University • This study is an analysis of a four year, National Cancer Institute-funded study devoted to promoting mammography screening in a Northern Great Plains state. This study describes the agenda building techniques used by local volunteer health organizations that were part of the campaign. Findings show that community volunteers were more effective in obtaining coverage in smaller, less structurally pluralistic communities and in communities with weekly newspapers.

Mental Maps of Fear and Connectedness to the Communication Infrastructure: The Case of Son Los Angeles • Sorin Matei, Sandra Ball-Rokeach, and Jack Linchuan Qui, University of Southern California • Using Geographic information systems techniques fear of urban space is studied as an effect of people’s connections to their residential area “communication infrastructure.” Spatial-statistical analyses reveal that fear perceptions of Los Angeles urban space are associated with presence of non-White and non-Asian minorities. Respondents more strongly connected both to television and interpersonal communication channels are relatively more fearful of minorities than those who are less strongly connected to them.

Reflecting and connecting: Testing a Communication Mediation Model of Civic Participation • Jack M. McLeod, Jessica Zubric, Heejo Keum, Sameer Deshpande, Jaeho Cho, Susan E Stein, and Mark Heather, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study tests a Communication Mediation model of civic participation that specifies the influence of three communication variables: informational use (newspapers, television news, Internet search), discussion of local issues, and the reflective integration (reflecting) as an information processing strategy. Evidence is from a probability sample telephone survey of 357 adults in a local community. All three communication processes mediate the effects of demographic and social-psychological variables on three forms of civic participation. Media effects on civic participation are mainly indirect through their influence on factual knowledge, cognitive complexity (connecting), and beliefs that average citizens can and should make a difference in acting on the local urban growth issue.

Latency to Respond to an Internet Survey as a Predictor of Bias Toward Socially Desirable Outcomes in Political Attitude and Behavior, and Media Use Questions • John Newhagen, University of Maryland • This study compares outcomes of survey questions with socially desirable outcomes to latency to respond data. The efficacy of the latency measure is examined by categorizing respondents’ answers to the question “Did you vote in the last presidential election?” Three categories were created, based on the idea that it takes more cognitive ~ and therefore more time, to lie than it does to tell the truth. They are “real voters,” “liars,” and those who said they did not vote. Results show that “real voters” had the highest political self efficacy, followed by “liars,” and those who said they did not vote. “Liars” reported using about the same amount of news media than “real voters” or those who said they did not vote, but took longer to do so. This suggests they may be over reporting media use. Latency, used as a measure of mental effort, also is compared to questions used in social desirability scales intended to lead respondents to answers that “fake good” outcomes. Those data show those misreporting their behavior on the voting question may also took longer to answer the social desirability questions, even though they might not have been lured into the “fake good” response. Overall the latency data bring self report to a full range of political attitude and behavior, and other questions with pro-social outcomes into question. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for political polling, where sample stratification to identify “likely voters” based on demographic information may only tangentially address the issue of respondent veracity. It further looks at the implications of the possibility that -a significant number of respondents may systematically over report certain kinds of media use and political participation.

MEYROWITZ, MCLUHAN, MEDIUM THEORY AND ME: Why medium theory needs to be taught alongside techniques for new communication technologies • Ronda Oosterhoff, Calvin College • At the 2000 ICA convention, a panel discussed nominees for a communications canon. Fully one-third of these were examples of medium theory, yet the only living author of the three medium theorists listed argues that this branch of thought is misunderstood and under-addressed (1996). This paper includes a brief overview of medium theory and its key theorists and an analysis of a month-long focus on medium theory in a communications class at a midwestern college. The paper concludes incorporates survey results into recommendations for teaching medium theory in the college classroom.

Effects of Negative Political Decision-Making • Bruce Pinkleton, Nam-Hyun Um, and Erica Weintraub Austin • A total of 236 students participated in an experiment testing the effects of positive, negative and negative-comparative political advertising on key variables in the political decision-making process. Results showed that the more negative the advertising stimuli, the less useful participants found the ads. In addition, the more negative the stimuli, the more negativity participants reported toward political campaigns and the less efficacy they reported toward political participation. Comparative advertising stimuli, however, produced lower levels of cynicism, particularly when compared to negative advertising, which produced higher levels of cynicism. No effects on apathy were found. In terms of candidate evaluations and voting intention, the targeted candidate’s evaluations and voting intentions fell in response to the sponsor’s use of negative advertising. In the most negative advertising condition, the sponsor’s evaluations and voting intentions also fell, revealing a backlash effect. The findings suggest that negative advertising influences citizens’ candidate evaluations and voting intentions. While such advertising is perceived as negative and contributes to citizens’ disgust with campaigns, however, this strategy does not automatically increase citizens’ cynicism or apathy.

Educational, Entertaining, Integral or Irrelevant? Toward a Deeper Understanding of Mediated Environmental Communication • Wendy Worrall Redal and Joseph G. Champ, University of Colorado-Boulder • no abstract

FAITH-BASED INITIATIVE? Religion, Mass Media, and Political Participation in America • Dietam Scheufele, Matthew Nisbet, Eunjung Lee, Dominique Broossard, and Mark Chong, Cornell University • Recently, there has been a renewed focus on religious institutions and networks as important catalysts for political participation. All of these approaches share the assumption that religious networks promote among their members the essential components of political participation: motivation, recruitment, and ability. Using survey data from the 2000 National Election Survey, we examine the processes that link religious and secular networks, mass and interpersonal communication, and various indicators of democratic citizenship, including political participation. Our results show that the role of religious networks is limited, compared to more secular networks, which provide an ideal setting for citizens to gain and exchange information, increase feelings of efficacy, and most importantly engage in various forms of participation.

The Interplay of News Frames and Elite Cues: Conditional Influences on the Activation of Mental Models • Dhavan Shah, Jessica Zubric, Heejo Keum, Cory Armstrong, Michael Boyle, and Lauren Guggenheim, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although numerous studies have examined the attitudinal and behavioral effects of news frames (i.e., organizing devices used to construct press accounts), little research has considered the possible interplay of such frames with elite cues (i.e., labels and terms used to identify issue domains and policy debates). Further, relatively few studies have examined framing and cueing effects on cognitive network variables such as common-sense mental models or lay theories regarding social phenomena. Using a 2X2 experimental manipulation concerning urban growth embedded within a broader survey, this study tested the interactive effects of news frames and elite cues on the activation of mental models concerning this issue. To do so, the experiment framed the problem of urban growth at the individual and the societal level and alternately embedded the cues of “urban sprawl” and “suburban development” in the news stories, all the while keeping other substantive features of a radio report constant. The findings indicate that frames and cues do interact to activate more or less complex cognitive models, with combination of individual frame/sprawl cue and societal frame/development cue generating the most complex lay theories about urban growth. Possible implications on learning and political behavior are given, as well as directions for future research.

Interactivity and Media Power: Will Online Delivery Erode the Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting Functions? • Dan Shaver, Michigan State University • Online news delivery differs from traditional delivery Systems in several significant ways, including the degree of audience/producer interactivity. This paper proposes a taxonomy for quantifying audience involvement within an individual medium. It then examines the impact of online delivery and interactivity on medium content compared to traditional newspaper products. It concludes that online audience influence appears likely to reduce the information worker’s degree of independent control over content, eroding the basis for social control.

U.S. and South Korean Television News Coverage of North Korea: Before and After the 2000 Korean Summit Meeting • Ju Yong Ha and Byong Ryul Shin, University of Southern Illinois • no abstract

The Role of Advertising in the Formation of Ideal Drinking Scenarios Among Underage Youth • Leslie B. Snyder and Mark A. Hamilton, University of Connecticut • no abstract

HOW INDIVIDUALS EXPLAIN SOCIAL PROBLEMS: THE INFLUENCES OF MEDIA USE • Mira Sotirovic, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This study examines the role of media use in individuals’ explanations of crime and welfare. Attribution theory and the information processing approach to media effects provide a theoretical framework for this research. Media effects on explanations of social problems are enhanced by individuals’ patterns of information processing. The study also shows that individualistic explanations of crime and welfare are related to support for the death penalty and to opposition toward welfare programs.

Titillation, Frustration, or just plain Orientation? Teasing out the “Tease Effect” of Slow Downloading • Shyam Sundar, Sriram Kalyanaraman, Penn State University, and Carson Wagner, University of Colorado • Prior research has shown that the slow-downloading version of a sexual image is more physiological arousing than the fast-loading version of the same image. It is not clear however whether this is due to titillation, frustration, or orienting response. This paper explores these three theoretical mechanisms for explaining the so-called “Tease effect” with two experimental studies. Results suggest that content arousability is critically important in inferring effects of download speed upon arousal and excitation transfer.

Innovativeness and Perceptions of Faculty innovation Champions on the Diffusion of World Wide Web Course Features • Patrick J. Sutherland, Bethany College and Ohio University • This study examined perceptions of faculty and administrators involved in courses with Web features diffusing at journalism and mass communication programs. This research considered the role of the innovation, champion and whether they found interpersonal communication to be most effective in explaining features to others. Innovativeness characteristics of administrators and faculty were measured. Two national surveys were conducted. Innovation champions scored higher on innovativeness and intrapersonal communication was most effective in explaining Web course features.

IMPLICIT ATTITUDES AND ANTI-DRUG PSAs: AUTOMATIC PROCESSES AND UNREASONED ACTION • Carson B Wagner, University of Colorado-Boulder • Historically, anti-drug PSA research has focused on explicit drug-related attitudes, but dual process models suggest that automatically-activated implicit attitudes may be more important for predicting behavior. Two within-participants experiments were run to test the relative ability of PSAs to change explicit (N = 13) and implicit (N = 26) attitudes. Results suggest anti-drug ads are better at changing explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes are harder to change than theory suggests. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.

How does political commentary shape perceptions of political candidates? A quasi-experimental investigation of the 2000 Vice-Presidential Debate • Fang Wan and Patrick Meirick, University of Minnesota • no abstract

Going Negative on the Internet: How Presidential Candidates Used the World Wide Web During The 2000 Presidential Campaign • Robert Wicks, Souley Buobacar, and Kayla Johnson, University of Arkansas • This study examines the issues and topics that dominated the 2000 presidential campaign on Internet homepages of George W. Bush and Al Gore. It also investigated the extent to which the two major party candidates used negativity as strategy to strengthen their position and to weaken support for the opposing candidate. The content analysis of the presidential web sites performed reveals that much like contemporary political television advertising, web sites were rife with attacks on one’s opponent. Nearly three quarters of the information posted was negative in nature. About one quarter of the messages posed focused on education and social security.

“You’re No Jack Kennedy!” The Influence of Post-Debate Commentary on Candidate Evaluations • Jennifer Williams and Christina Fiebich, University of Minnesota • This paper presents the results of a natural experiment conducted during a vice-presidential debate that occurred during the 2000 Election Campaign. It examines the effect of post-debate commentary on the criteria that subjects use when evaluating candidates. Subjects were assigned to one of four conditions, “debate only,” “debate-plus CBS commentary,” “debate-plus ABC commentary” and “debate-plus NBC commentary.” After watching the debate, subjects completed a questionnaire which contained both close-ended and open-ended responses. This particular paper presents the results of an analysis conducted on the open-ended responses. The findings demonstrate that while post-debate commentaries influenced the criteria subjects used in their evaluations of the candidates at the categorical level (e.g., issue, trait or performance), they did not influence the specific issue, trait and performance dimensions (e.g., abortion, charisma, articulate). Additionally, although the findings regarding framing effects were only partially supported, the results provide important insight into the weight that subjects assigned to each category when comparing the two vice-presidential nominees.

Acculturation, Cultivation, and Daytime TV Talk Shows • Hyung-Jin Woo and Joseph R. Dominick, University of Georgia • This study is to explore how acculturation and cultivation effects of daytime TV talk shows affect international students’ attitudes and perceptions toward human relationships among primary groups in the U.S. Because daytime TV talk shows overrepresent vulgar, somewhat bizarre, and deviant behaviors about everyday life, heavy exposure to these shows may affect international students in distorted way. Furthermore, depending on different acculturation level with host society of international students, negative stereotypes toward American and American society of international students may be pronounced. The results of this study indicate that lack of information (language & experience) with host country should result in media orientations different from those who are more acculturated into the host society and should, in turn, affect cultivation in a unique manner.

Reassessing the Impact of Recession News: A Time-Series Analysis of Economic Communication in Japan, 1988-1999 • H. Denis Wu, Louisiana State University, Michael McCraken, University of Missouri, and Shinichi Saito, Tokyo Women’s Christian University • This study investigated three critical variables in economic communication the state of the economy, recession coverage, and consumer confidence. These time-series were found to be cointegrated with one another during the time period. The economic condition that affected how the three variables interacted in the last U.S. recession did not generate a similar effect on the Japanese counterpart. The newspapers’ coverage of recession in Japan followed the economy and the public’s sentiment at different lags. The Japanese’s confidence level was influenced by the economic indicator but not by the recession coverage regardless of the economic condition. The study also discovered no substantial media effect and discussed several factors that might have contributed to the phenomenon.

Teens as the Vulnerable Surfers: The Third-Person Perception and Commercial Web Sites Censorship • Seounmi Youn, North Dakota, Fan Wang and Ron Faber, University of Minnesota • The third-person perception states that when confronted with negatively perceived message, people tend to overestimate the message’s effect on others compared to one’s-self. It is also suggested that this perceptual bias motivate people to take action against such message. To explore this possible relationship, this study examined the perceived effects on self and others •other adults and teenagers • for commercial web sites. The results found the perceptual disparity between the estimated impacts on self and others for commercial web sites and further demonstrated that this third-person perception explains pro-censorship attitudes toward these web sites, even after controlling for potential confounding variables.

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