Law Division

International Cyber Jurisdiction: Toward The Formulation Of Common Laws? • Dharma Adhikari, Missouri-Columbia • This paper briefly overviews the existing key debates on international Internet jurisdiction, discusses how the U.S., and the European Union — the dominant users of the World Wide Web — are treating this subject, analyses key international treaties legislating the web, and reviews some relevant jurisdictional cases. It is argued that despite cultural, political, historical and legal differences, countries are gradually coming together to formulate common laws to address the jurisdictional issues posed by the Internet. Greater representation of the global community in future cyber regulation efforts is called for.

“More Speech, Not Enforced Silence:” Online Hate Speech, Brandeisian Ideals and Social Marketing • Genelle Belmas, Cal State-Long Beach • Online hate speech is not a new nor small phenomenon, and it poses some of the most difficult and painful questions this medium faces today. This paper examines current case law and provides a social marketing alternative to hate speech legislation to address concerns about the impact of online hate. A new organization is proposed that would have as a mandate the goal of providing “more speech” to combat the potential effects of hateful communication.

Protecting a Delicate Balance: Facts, Ideas, and Expression in Compilation Copyright Cases • Matthew D. Bunker, Reese Phifer and Bethany White, Alabama • The fact/expression and idea/expression dichotomies are two of copyright law’s most important doctrines for preserving a vibrant public domain and protecting free expression interests. Recently, those doctrines have been interpreted narrowly in important federal court decisions dealing with the protection of compilations of information. This paper analyzes these cases and suggests changes in the interpretation of the law.

A Short-Sighted Victory: Why Declaring Richard Jewell a Public Figure is Wrong and Harms Journalism • Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, Penn State • A Georgia appellate court ruled in 2001 that Richard Jewell, the one-time suspect in the 1996 bombing in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, was a public figure for purposes of his libel suit against the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. While journalists celebrated the court’s classification, this paper argues that such jubilation is misguided because, in the long term, it may mean that sources will be unwilling to speak to the news media for fear of losing private-figure status.

Reporters’ Sources As Trade Secrets: Whose Source Is It Anyway? • Clay Calvery and Robert D. Richards, Penn State • Should a news organization be able to possess sources used by its reporters as exclusive trade secrets, thereby depriving other news organizations of the opportunity to contact them? This novel issue, carrying profound First Amendment affects for newsgathering and free flow of information, is raised in the case of Paperloop.com v. Gow now wending its way through the state court system in California. That case and the questions its raises are explored in this paper.

Public Access to GIS Information: Legal Issues Concerning the Technology • Rene Que Chen and Charles Davis, Missouri-Columbia • GIS technology is being widely applied by governments and governmental agencies in land use, urban planning, environmental protection, real estate, taxation, census and many other areas in government administration. A large amount of public information is stored and processed, or starts to be stored and processed in GIS. As a technology that has the ability to handle enormously large amount of information, compile information from different datasets and present the final results in graphics, GIS changes the balance among different social interests that the courts have been striking for in their decisions on journalistic and public access to public records.

Unmasking Jane and John Doe: Online Anonymity and the First Amendment • Victoria Smith Ekstrand, North Carolina • Online anonymity is not a new problem, but its introduction to the courts is still relatively recent. This paper examines seven recent court decisions in which plaintiffs have attempted to unmask online Jane and John Does. Although this study does not provide generalizable conclusions, it does reveal that the guidelines courts are establishing for revealing anonymous online users are loosely borrowed from the law on reporter’s privilege.

Shielding Private Lives From Prying Eyes: How the Supreme Court Has Crafted a Constitutional Right to Privacy That Can Trump Public Access to Government Information • Martin E. Halstuk, Penn State • The Supreme Court in Bartnicki v. Vopper held in 2001 that a Pennsylvania radio station was not liable for broadcasting a secretly taped cell-phone conversation between two public figures. Although the Court ruled in favor of the broadcaster, the Court also recognized that the First Amendment may protect nondisclosure of private facts. Although Bartnicki represents a free press victory, it also threatens public access to government information in the future because constitutional information privacy can be raised as a bar to block disclosure under state open-records laws and the Freedom of Information Act.

Personally-identifiable Information in Federal Agency Databases: The Derivative Use Analysis in FOIA Privacy Exemption Cases • Michael Hoefges, Tennessee, Martin E. Halstuk, Penn State, and Bill F. Chamberlin, Florida • The U.S. government maintains a tremendous amount of personally-identifiable information, much in electronic databases. Requestors like journalists and marketers seek this information for things like investigative reporting and targeted solicitations – called “derivative uses.” Derivative uses of personally-identifiable information implicate privacy concerns although limits on access to public records can have negative public policy implications. This paper explores the escalating conflict between personal privacy and derivative uses of personally-identifiable information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Virtual Children: Is the First Amendment Slip-Sliding Away? • Sharron M. Hope, Purdue • Two bedrock American values, the First Amendment and protecting children, directly conflict in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. This case challenges the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996, in which images that appear to be minors engaged in sexual conduct, including those created exclusively by computer, are considered child porn and thus illegal. The author argues that this definition criminalizes thoughts that, though repugnant, should be protected by the First Amendment.

A Long Journey Toward Intellectual Property Protection: A Study of Taiwan’s Copyright Law Reform • Hsiao-Yin Josephine Hsueh, Missouri-Columbia • In the 1980s and 1990s, Taiwan went through a series of reform to improve its protection for copyright. The findings of this study show that although the modern copyright statute dates back to as early as the late Qing Dynasty (in 1910), the concept of copyright did not exist in the minds of the general public until recently. After more than a decade of efforts, Taiwan’s copyright protection has made improvements. Currently, the level of copyright protection in Taiwan almost meets the standard of such international copyright treaties as the Berne Convention.

Law Enforcement Records Custodians’ Decision-Making Behaviors in Response to Florida’s Public Records Law • Michele Bush Kimball, South Alabama • Access to government information is being thwarted in law enforcement agencies across the country. This study explores the decision-making behaviors of law enforcement records custodians in Florida using qualitative and legal research methodologies. The data was also used to develop a grounded theory that can be used to predict and explain records custodians’ use of subjective behaviors when responding to requests for information.

Redefining Internet Service Providers: Toward a New Legal Framework for Internet Regulation • Seung Eun Lee, Florida • This paper explores the legal status of ISPs with the question of whether we have one legal definition, agreed to by the FCC, the courts, and Congress, that is consistent with what ISPs do today. This study found out that the courts’ interpretation of section 230 of the Communication Decency Act are consistent. In reviewing the recent cases, the study found out that the section 230 immunity for liability in third party posting now expands, generally covering all civil liability claims originating from third-party content.

Exit Polls and Other Bad Habits: An Analysis of First Amendment Considerations Concerning Policy Recommendations to Control or Prohibit Media Election Forecasts • Niels Marslev, Arizona State • Following the media debacle on Election Night 2000, the National Commission on Federal Election Reform recommended that exit polling and early projections be discouraged or restricted. Existing jurisprudence, however, is rather unclear. This paper analyzes the cautious recommendations of the Commission primarily in light of First Amendment considerations. The author agrees with the recommendations, but also concludes that new restrictions, if challenged, would present the Supreme Court with a welcome opportunity to clarify ambiguous areas of media law.

Trademarks and the First Amendment: The Anatomy of a Conflict • Retha J. Martin, Tennessee • In our commercialized culture, trademarks have become a key element of public discourse and communications. They are also the lifeblood of the powerful corporations that own them. This paper asserts that developments in trademark protection (in particular, the enactment of the Trademark Dilution Act of 1995) have created a legal environment in which the rights of trademark owners are valued over First Amendment rights of free speech.

Localism Reconsidered: The Lessons of Docket 80-90 and the Future of Low Power FM • Gregory D. Newton, Ohio • Maximizing the diversity of available programming serves the public interest and the First Amendment interest in a robust marketplace of ideas. Although local content is only one aspect of diversity, it is of special concern because of its connection to the political structure and the public dialogue essential to democratic process. This paper compares the results of Docket 80-90 to the recent LPFM rulemaking, to assess the potential localism value of those stations.

Copyright Term Extensions, the Public Domain and Intertextuality Intertwined • Ashley Packard, Houston-Clear Lake • This fall, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act’s twenty-year prospective and retrospective term extensions. This paper considers whether the petitioners have raised a legitimate First Amendment issue, and if so, what a First Amendment argument for protecting the public domain might be. It describes the CTEA, considers whether First Amendment analysis is warranted, sketches the public domain, and examines the public domain’s intertextual relationship to freedom of expression.

Operationalizing the Law of Jurisdiction: Where in the World Can I Be Sued for Operating a World Wide Web Page? • Amanda Reid, Florida • A court may decide the rights of a person, known as “personal jurisdiction,” when a defendant engages in deliberate activities thereby creating a substantial connection with another state. This notion is explained, examined, and discussed by looking at federal courts of appeals cases where the defendant had Internet- based contacts with another state. Suggestions are made for how the well-respected test of “purposeful availment” for personal jurisdiction could be operationalized for Web based contacts.

Theories Rejected: The Framing of the Freedom of Expression Section of the South African Constitution • Thomas A. Schwartz, Ohio State • This paper analyzes the political birth of the freedom of expression section of the South African Constitution by comparing the freedom of expression platforms of the seven political parties that participated in the 1994 Constitutional Assembly with each other and with the freedom of expression section of the ultimate Constitution. The paper finds that the section, as a compromise of the rivaling ideologies, reflects little about the special experience of South Africa.

Individual Privacy Versus Public Access: An Analysis of the Six Factors Courts Use to Balance These Two Competing Social Interests • Joey Senat, Oklahoma State University • This research identified and examined six factors that federal and state courts use to balance personal privacy against public access to government-held information. It also identified a number of problems with the way courts resolve this conflict and makes a number of recommendations that, if accepted by legislators and courts, would better protect informational privacy while emphasizing the fullest responsible disclosure of government information.

Online-Privacy: A Comparative Study of Privacy Practices on European and American Web Sites • Bastiaan Vanacker, Minnesota • This paper presents a background, comparison and discussion of the legal frameworks that have been adopted in the United States and in Europe regarding informational privacy in general and on line data protection in particular. The paper also contains a research component in which privacy policies of American and European Web sites are compared in order to answer the question whether or not different legal frameworks have given way to different on line privacy practices.

“An Evil Act”: The Battle to Define Communication in Texas v. Johnson • David J. Vergobbi, Utah • This essay analyzed U.S. Senate debate over the proposed Flag Protection Amendment to reveal how political opponents legally and morally defined “speech” based on the Texas v. Johnson case. It found that by altering our legal definition of communication to favor the community over the individual, the amendment would remove not only First Amendment protection for symbolic expression, but also remove the individual citizen’s legal ability to discern for him/herself whether communication even occurred.

Legal Considerations When Consumer Opinion Websites Parody Companies or Brands • Tae-Li Yoon, Missouri-Columbia • As the Internet has become a “modern symbol of the classical market of ideas,” consumer opinion sites that parody companies or brands become popular in the cyberspace. This article examines various legal issues and law cases that might be applicable to parody sites in the light of copyright laws, trademark laws, libel laws, and service provider liability. Looking at a possibility that parody sites can lie in the tension between free speech rights, intellectual property interests, and libel issues, this article discusses how parody sites can enjoy First Amendment freedoms by avoiding legal pitfalls.

<< 2002 Abstracts

International Communication Division

MARKHAM/OPEN COMPETITION
The Tower of Digital Babble: Excursions in the Discourse of Digital Division • Toby J. Arquette, Purdue University • This study addresses “digital division” across 172 nations. From a meta-analysis of the different discursive frameworks, a synthesized analytic framework, the Information Intelligence Quotient (IIQ2), is proposed to as a tool for assessing the state of a target community’s information and communication system development. Descriptive statistical analyses comparing the effects of the composite and disaggregated indices are reported. The results provide descriptive evidence that regardless of discursive framework, there is a digital divide.

The Image Of International Trade Relations: A Content Analysts Of Japanese, Us, And Dutch Economic Print News • Florann A. Arts, Amsterdam • Content analysis data from the US, Netherlands, and Japan show that Japanese international trade coverage has a stronger tendency to negativity than US and Dutch coverage. The US coverage was found to be most harmony oriented of the three countries. The results also suggest that elite country involvement and ethnocentricity are more important than conflict as predictors of the amount of attention dedicated to a trade relation.

Pop Culture’s Invasion of the Middle East (1999-2002) • Megan Louise Beall, Georgia State University • How does the United States package and export popular culture to the Middle East? What are the lasting effects of this exported “culture” phenomenon? Is pop culture changing the fundamental fabric of everyday life in the Middle East? The impact of popular culture on the Middle East is unfolding changing the way business are run and effecting the economy, but in the end pop culture has not changed the fundamental values of the Islamic society.

Attitudes toward Foreign Leaders, Nations, and Terrorism: As Predicted by Media Use and Perceived Threat • Christopher E. Beaudoin, Indiana University-Bloomington • The current study explores the role that the mass media play in predicting attitudes toward foreign toward foreign nations and leaders and toward more specific attitudes toward the combat of international terrorism. Two models are tested: 1) a direct effects model; and 2) a model based upon the health belief model that posits that perceived threat of terrorism will play a mediating role between mass media use and attitudes toward Middle East nations and leaders and toward the combat of international terrorism.

A Sober New Political Identity In Europe: Media Constructions Of Scotland Though The Prism Of The Scottish Parliament • Dougie Bicket, SUNY Geneseo • This paper analyzes emerging conceptions of Scottish external relations through the mediated prism of the election campaign for the new Scottish parliament in 1999. The study identifies four dominant media packages that frame press coverage. All but one of these packages is heavily linked to the UR Labour Party, which dominated the media campaign and emphasized OR dominance over Scotland.

Remnants Of The Cold War: U. S. Policy Influences On New York Times’ Coverage Of Nicaragua’s Elections In 1990, 1996, And 2001 • Greg Bikowski, Ohio University • This research examined articles in the New York Times that covered Nicaragua’s last three elections to determine if U. S. policy was reflected. A content analysis examined articles for the source of the story, angle, and labeling. Overall, this research found a tendency for the Times to use U. S. officials as the main source of the story, a story angle central to U. S. interests, and labels that linked Ortega to revolution and communism.

Analysis of the Cold War Propaganda Techniques in a Post Cold War Documentary “Red Files: Russian Propaganda Machine” • Ramune Braziunaite, Bowling Green State University • The paper analyzes one post-Cold War documentary video, “Red Files: Soviet Propaganda Machine,” produced and directed by Elizabeth Dobson in 1999 and argues that through various manipulative communication techniques this documentary continues the tradition of dichotomizing the world using the Cold War frames almost ten years after the fall of Communism. The analysis focuses on fallacies, omissions, distortions, and suggestions as the major characteristics of this video as an example of propaganda.

The Role of Journalism in 19th Century National Movements in Estonia and Finland • Janis Cakars, Indiana University • This paper examines the role of the press in the formation of national identity in 19th century Estonia and Finland. It illuminates not only the similarities and differences between these two cases, but addresses the interaction between them. The study employs a comparative approach that is meant to test and inform theories of national identity development. It finds the comparison of these little-known cases useful for enriching such theory, but calls for further research “from below” in order to more fully understand the complex relationship between media and changing identities.

Public Broadcasting Systems Demise Within the Dominant Private System Model: The Netherlands Case • Tony R. DeMars, Sam Houston State • In many countries, the electronic media in the 1990s were being reinvented, not because of a desire within established systems to change or decline, but because of challenges made by new technologies. This paper demonstrates that even a country like The Netherlands with a firmly established public system can have its system challenged and perhaps lost when confronted with broadcasting based on advertising, competition and ratings.

Exploring International Public Communication Strategies: A Cross-Cultural Case Study of Anti-tobacco Efforts in Six Countries • Sameer Deshpande, Michelle R. Nelson, Narayan Devanathan, Ronald Yaros, Hye-Jin Pack, Ratanasuda Punnahitanond, Susan E. Stein and Alexandra M. Vilela, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper reports results of a cross-cultural case study of communication strategies employed by governments and other organizations in 2000-01 to reduce tobacco consumption in six countries. An analysis of the prevalence of tobacco consumption, anti-tobacco regulations and communication campaigns revealed that there are currently more differences than similarities across national cultures. Findings are discussed according to the viability for a standardized or localized strategy to global communications efforts.

Post-Communist Broadcast Media: A Case Study Of Estonia’s 1994 Broadcast Law • Max V. Grubb, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale • The collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism in Eastern Europe initiated a third wave of democratization. One challenge confronting these countries was the development and enactment of legislation that would create independent democratic broadcast systems. This study examines the development and enactment of broadcast legislation in post-communist Estonia. The law enacted exacerbated tensions between public and private broadcasters, and inhibited the development and growth of private broadcasting in Estonia.

Newspaper Framing of the “Attacks on America”: An International Comparison • Alexander Halavais, Julia Usu, Kara Kerwin, Diana Pletz, Jennifer Diaz and Shirley Xavier, State University of New York at Buffalo • This study provides an interpretation of how cultural contexts affected news reports of the attacks of September of 2001. Examining articles from six newspapers in four countries during the two weeks following the events, we found four axes along which coverage was framed. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to content analysis, we are able to both indicate evidence of such differences in content and describe how this affected the character of coverage.

Bridging Latin America’s Digital Divide: Government Policies and Internet Access • Eliza Tanner Hawkins with Kirk A. Hawkins, Brigham Young University • Latin American governments have sought to increase access to information technologies in a variety of ways. This cross-sectional time-series analysis of nineteen countries between 1990 and 2000 examines government policies and Internet usage. It finds that Internet use is strongly associated with a country’s wealth and the telecommunications infrastructure. The government policies with the strongest influence on increasing access are changes to the tariff structure, such as creating flat-price dialing schemes, and full market liberalization.

Patterns of Cultural Orientations and Conflict Resolution in Three Cultural Groups • Zhou He and Jonathon J.H. Zhu, City University of Hong Kong; Shiyong Peng, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman and Xueyi Chen, Syracuse University • This study examined the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict resolution at the individual level through a probability survey of 524 managerial subjects in cross-cultural settings in China, including a group of American and a group of French, in Sino-American, Sino-French and solely Chinese enterprises in China. Based on the assumption that differences in cultural orientations lead to differences in conflict resolution styles, this study explores and compares the patterns in the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict resolution styles in culturally different groups.

Perceptions of Brazilian Journalists About Media Roles and Foreign Influences • Heloiza G. Herscovitz, Florida International University • This paper is based on a self-administered survey with 402 journalists working for 13 leading news organizations and personal interviews with renowned journalists of Sao Paulo- Brazil’s main media hub. Findings indicate that respondents hold a pluralistic view regarding media roles. They also believe they are influenced by the American model of journalism and dismissed the traditional French influence that pervaded Brazilian journalism in the past.

Press Freedom In Hong Kong: A Post- 1997 Perspective • Tianbo Huang, Juyan Zhang and Yi Lu, Missouri • Through a content analysis with an interrupted series design, three newspapers in Hong Kong, Ming Pao, Sing Tao Jih Pao and Hong Kong Economic Journal, were found to have become more favorable to the Chinese government immediately before the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997. However, some newspapers appeared to have resumed their critical stances toward China several years after the hand-over.

From The Inside Out: How Institutional Entrepreneurs Transformed Mexico’s Newsrooms • Sallie Hughes, Miami • This paper examines the transformation of Mexican newsroom culture that drove the transformation of images of subjects and rulers into citizens and politicians. It explains the emergence and dispersion of a new style of journalism in Mexico based on a civic orientation that encouraged citizen knowledge and participation in politics during MexicoÕs gradual transition to an electoral democracy. It argues that oppositional values and alternative ideas about journalism changed the identities of institutional entrepreneurs in the Mexican press.

Individual Perceptions of International Correspondents in the Middle East: An Obstacle to Fair News? • Dina Ibrahim, Texas at Austin • This paper examines the issues foreign correspondents have cited in various surveys and interviews as obstacles to fair reporting in the Middle East over the past 30 years. It is a historical reflective analysis of the individual influences of journalists perceptions on media content, and how these perceptions may affect stories filed from the Middle East. The author also briefly assesses how organizational pressures of the news production process can impact news from the Middle East.

Glocalizing a Dam Conflict: Thai Rath, Matichon and Pak Mun Dam • Suda Ishida, Iowa • This research places Thai media into the center of glocalization process. It examines how two Thai-language daily newspapers reported about a 12-year environmental conflict over a World Bank-sponsored hydropower dam project in northeast Thailand. Through comparative critical discourse analysis of the Pak Mun dam coverage, the research addresses four primary areas: 1) the media attention to the conflict, 2) the source dependency, 3) the dominant news frames, and 4) the press’ role in localizing and globalizing this environmental conflict.

Media Use and Credibility of International News in Kazakhstan: Perceptions of the Attacks in the U.S., the Attacks in Afghanistan and the Raising of the Kursk • Stan Ketterer and Maureen Nemecek, Oklahoma State University • Historically, citizens of Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic, are highly interested in international news. Journalism students rely most on television news and find it most credible, but it depends on the story and its source. They relied most on Russian TV regarding the attacks in the U.S. and Afghanistan. Conversely, they relied most on radio, likely BBC, for coverage of the Kursk. Cable television, CNN for the attacks and BBC for the Kursk, was second.

Cultural Differences in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Use: A Comparison of Korea and the United States • Heeman Kim, Temple University • This paper investigates the influence of cultural factors on the use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). It first examines whether traditional communication predisposition, such as independent and interdependent self-construal, is extended to online interaction. It then addresses whether different CMC preferences relating to communication predisposition in Korea and the U.S. can be identified. It concludes that while Korean respondents showed a significant interdependent self-construal online, American respondents did not show a significant independent self-construal.

Assessing the Hierarchy of Influences Theory of Content: Coverage of the Cultural Revolution in China by Time and Newsweek, 1966-69 • Guoli Li and Anne Cooper-Chen, Ohio University • This paper examines press performance under atypical conditions to assess the generalizability of the Shoemaker and Reese (1996) Hierarchy of Influences theory of media content. It studied the two leading U.S. weekly news magazines’ reporting of a culturally, politically, geographically, and ideologically distant story. The overarching first level ideology, was assumed to operate, while the influence of the other four levels (extramedia, organizational, media routines and individual) was documented; the model was found to be robust but somewhat culture bound.

Spy or Scapegoat: A News Framing Study of the New York TimesÕ Coverage of the Wen Ho Lee Case • Jia Lin and Junhao Hong, State University of New York at Buffalo • Through both traditional and computer-based content analysis of the New York Times’ coverage of the Wen Ho Lee case, this article explores how the U.S. mainstream media frame their coverage of news events, especially foreign news events. Based on the findings, this study suggests that a dominant ideology is often behind the news coverage. In addition, the research also finds that U.S. media’s biased coverage of the Wen Ho Lee case is more toward China than to Wen Ho Lee.

European vs. U.S. Newspaper Framing of the Middle Eastern Conflict Pre and Post Sept. 11: A Case Study • Mia Moody-Hall, Texas at Austin • This study looked at how European and U.S. newspapers framed the Middle Eastern conflict pre- and post- Sept. 11. Common themes included, “taking sides” and “foreign policy gone wrong. “Negative adjectives were used more frequently to describe Arabs/Palestinians than Israelis; however the adjectives used to describe killings by the groups were similar. Further, Sept. 11 did not appear to influence either county’s coverage, and there were no significant differences in how the countries framed the conflict.

Culture or Ignorance? Communication For HIV/AIDS Prevention in Kenya • Nancy Muturi, Iowa • This study addresses the discrepancy between awareness and behavior change in reproductive health from a communications perspectives, drawing its theoretical framework from Grunig’s model of Excellence in Communication that emphasizes strategic communication through two-way symmetrical communication. The study examines social-cultural factors that influence people’s decision-making in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in Africa. Data were gathered qualitatively using focus groups and in-depth interviews among rural men and women in Kenya.

A Case for a Paradigm Shift and a New Theory in Development Communication Scholarship • Samuel Chege Mwangi, South Carolina • This paper argues that theories currently driving development communication scholarship do not reflect issues and concerns in developing countries and calls for a paradigm shift and a new theory to guide the field.

A Profile of Ugandan Journalists of Ugandan Journalists in the New Millennium • Peter G. Mwesige, Indiana University • Based on a survey of 101 journalists, this study provides the first comprehensive attitudinal portrait of Ugandan news workers at an exciting time in Uganda’s democratization process. The study examines the demographics, background, job conditions, and education of news people in Uganda; their role perceptions; professional attitudes, beliefs and values; and the major constraints to journalistic freedoms in Uganda.

The Media and Foreign Policy: A Comparative Analysis of The New York Times’ Coverage of Zaire • Peter G. Mwesige, Indiana University • Several studies have concluded that American media coverage of foreign countries and international events is congruent with prevailing U.S. government foreign policy. This study analyzes The New York Times coverage of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in two different periods in order to establish whether trends in the paperÕs coverage were related to shifts in U.S. foreign policy toward this African country.

The End of Ideology and the Redefinition of Public Service Broadcasting in Italy: RAI, 1990-2001 • Cinzia Padovani, Colorado at Boulder • In my paper I analyze the recent history of the Italian public service broadcaster, RAI. Based on a review of primary sources (various documents and interviews), I claim that the end of party affiliation, that has characterized the last ten years of the broadcaster’s history, has coincided with the loss of RAI’s identity as a public service. As a result, programs on RAI have become increasingly similar to the ones on commercial television.

Internet Power and Social Context: A World System Approach to Web Privacy Concerns • Rivka Ribak, University of Haifa, Israel and Joseph Turow, Pennsylvania • This paper argues that contemporary perspectives on the Internet and the family fail to recognize the multi-leveled negotiations about the web’s meaning that take place in many societies and cause the web to be defined simultaneously in terms of local cultures and world markets. It proposes that a “world system” perspective can disentangle these cross-pressures by situating a societyÕs cultural and technological practices within broad political and economic parameters.

Nicaragua 2001: Media Struggles in Partisanship, Polarization and Politics • Rick Rockwell, American University and Noreene Janus, Academy for Educational Development • This paper reviews the evolution of the media in Nicaragua during 2001, an election year. The focus here is on La Prensa, the top circulation newspaper, and Canal 2, the leading television network. Both outlets attempted a change from partisanship in this election. The paper outlines the commonalities between the media outlets as a way of further discussing media systems in transition from post-Communist or authoritarian systems toward a democratic ideal.

International News Flow and the U.S. News Media: A Model Proposed from a Critical Review of the Literature • Takuya Sakurai, Akron • This paper reviews international news flow and coverage studies with two aims: (1) to synthesize various factors influencing international news flow; and (2) to characterize the process of selecting international news in the U.S. news media. Dividing those factors into two patterns, deviance-oriented and relevance-oriented perspectives, this review of the literature proposes a model of international news selection by the U.S. news media.

Covering the Dead: U.S. and Chinese Magazine Reportage of the Crackdown on the Tiananmen Square Movement • Yu Shi, Iowa • Based within the historical context of the Tiananmen Square movement in Beijing 1989, the study first attempts to delineate journalists’ narratives of the crackdown on the movement, and then to explain why they interpreted the event the way they did by putting the narratives into the different discursive contexts of what it means to be a journalist, which are constructed differently by U.S. and Chinese journalists as members of different interpretive communities.

Investigative Reporting and Agenda Building in Political Transition • Jae C. Shim, Missouri, Charles T. Salmon, Michigan State University and Kyung S. Lee, Korea University • This study examines a typical case of investigative reporting in South Korea and analyzes how it is linked with the agenda-building process for the nationÕs democratization. By integrating theoretical frameworks from agenda-building and investigative reporting, we will describe how the coverage of police brutality became a national issue in South Korea and led to the peopleÕs uprising for national democratic reform in 1987, just one year before the Seoul Olympic Games.

The Possibility of Adoption of the Actual Malice Rule in Foreign Countries: From the Fourth Estate Perspective • Taegyu Son, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that there is a right to criticize public officials guaranteed by the First Amendment by establishing the actual malice standard. Many in Australia, Canada, and England have argued that the malice standard should be applied to defamation cases in their respective countries. The courts have rejected adoption of it.

Toward a Critical Genealogy of Communication, Development, and Social Change • Sujatha Sosale, Georgia State University • This paper attempts to step outside the frameworks within which “communication and development” has been debated for the better part of the last five decades or so and understand how this concept has been produced and elevated to the status of a “master signifier.” I suggest an alternative framework located at the intersection of critical cultural studies and poststructuralism that will help trace the historical trajectory of communication and development for social change as a discourse.

Democracy or Farce: Discourse about the 2000 US Presidential Election In Chinese Newspaper Commentaries and Internet Forum Comments • Weiqun Su, Minnesota • The purpose of research was to identify media discourses about the US 2000 presidential election in Chinese newspapers and the Internet forum. Three discourses were identified in newspaper commentaries and Internet forum comments: Election as news; Hopelessly flawed democracy; and democracy as a model system. Findings show that while the Chinese print media strictly convey Party ideology, the Internet allows some degree of departures from the Party line and seems to be nourishing dissident views.

Upholding Haitian Democracy or Vying for Public Support: The Framing of U.S. Intervention in Haiti, 1994 • Mustafa Taha, United Arab Emirates • This paper examines the framing of US. intervention in Haiti in 1994. It uses the framing theory to analyze the Clinton administration’s justification for the intervention. To put the White House frames in perspective, the paper juxtaposes of official frames against opposing frames that Republican Congressional leaders and media provided. To achieve this task, the paper relies on the Cable News Network (CNN) and the New York Times as representatives of media organizations.

Globalization and Communication: A Media-centric Framework • Brad Thompson, Pennsylvania State • This paper will explore the historical developments and transformations in communications methods and technologies to understand their role and effects in shaping the basic elements of societies.

Global Internet Diffusion: A Cross-National Study • Arun Vishwanath, Indiana University Bloomington • Extant research linking diffusion and culture is limited. This empirical study builds on propositions presented by Miatland (1998) and examines five hypotheses linking Hofstede’s (1980, 1991) cultural variables to the rate of diffusion of the Internet globally. The study found significant support for three hypotheses linking higher levels of individuality or individualistic behavior, lower power distance or decentralized societal structures and higher tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty to the rate of diffusion of the Internet.

“They Killed the Messenger”- An Analysis of Media and Framing of News in Mozambique • Muriel Visser, Florida State University • This paper examines whether and how media ownership influences news framing. A combined case study approach and content analysis is used to examine the profile of four newspapers in Mozambique and the manner in which the murder of a renowned Mozambican journalist, Carlos Cardoso, is portrayed in the Mozambican press. The discussion on framing is conducted in the light of current thinking about globalization and the role of local media.

Financial Journalism In Market Economies And Globalization: Implications For Journalism Education • Nailene Chou Wiest, University of Hong Kong • Financial Journalism, once practiced in the backwater of the newsrooms, has grown rapidly over the past 20 years, thanks to economic liberalization in many countries and globalization of the international capital. It has played a crucial mediating role in transmitting abstract economic and financial messages to the public. This paper will discuss the “market-enhancing” function of financial journalism in developing countries, the proposed regulation of financial journalists and the education of the practitioners.

U.S. Foreign Correspondents in the 21st Century: Issues and Implications • H. Denis Wu and John Maxwell Hamilton, Louisiana State University • This paper reports the findings yielded from a survey of U.S. foreign correspondents conducted in 2001. More foreign nationals are found to work for U.S. media. Europe remains to be the most common base for foreign correspondents. Most foreign correspondents can speak three languages: French, Spanish, and German. The impact of the Internet has also been observed: reporters have to file and update more often. Issues and implications of the changed demographics and work condition are discussed.

Is the Web a Cross-Cultural Medium? A Cross-Cultural Study of Web Portal Motivation in the United States and South Korea • Doyle Yoon, Fritz Cropp and Glen Cameron, Missouri • Attempts were made in this study to find motivation in using Web portals in the United States and South Korea. The analysis revealed five factors or motivation in using Web portals: familiarity, communicating / socialization, personalization, purchasing, and searching. Differences between five factors were examined in terms of Internet use in two countries. This paper addresses the implications by examining differences between data collected in the United States and South Korea.

Girls versus Women: Body Image Processing Among Korean Females • Tae-II Yoon and Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia and Myoung-chun Lee, Chung Ang University, Seoul, Korea • Research on body image has neglected a number of factors that seem likely to influence individuals’ eating disorders. This study simultaneously examines the links among age, cultural factors, individuals’ intrinsic factors, media exposure, body image processing, and indicators of eating orders. Survey results from a sample of Korean middle school girls and college women confirmed the mediating role of body image processing on eating disorder indicators.

Framing Environmental Destruction on U.S. Army Camps in South Korea • Haejin Yun, Michigan State University • This study aims at examining the South Korean news media agenda on the U.S. army-related environmental destruction issue over the last 12 years, and the “us vs. them” meta-frame which the South Korean news media employed in reporting this bilateral conflict. Two U.S. army-related environmental incidents were found to be trigger events that related the U.S. army-related environmental destruction issue to the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) revision issue.

Propaganda vs. the Market Economy: A Study of the Conglomeration of China’s Newspaper Industry • Ernest Y. Zhang and Brian S. Brooks, Missouri-Columbia • The conglomeration of China’s newspaper industry started in January 1996 with the establishment of the Guangzbou Daily Press Group (GDPG), China’s first newspaper conglomerate. Before that, almost none of the 2,180 Chinese newspapers were run in the style of Western newspaper conglomerates or chains. Because of when it was published, the famous book Four Theories of the Press by Fred Siebert et al. could not accurately define today’s Chinese press system.

From Human to Technology; From Political Propaganda to Image Management: An Ellulian Perspective on Paradigmatic Transition of China’s Propaganda Since Latter 1990s • Juyan Zhang and Glen T. Cameron, Missouri • In this study, Ellul Jacques’ theories of propaganda an technological society are applied to the ongoing media conglomeratization, booming media technology and the growing sociological propaganda in China. Results show that China’s propaganda is under a paradigmatic shift from depending on human organization to the dominance of media technology. Furthermore, the expanding sociological propaganda has complemented political propaganda to integrate the various propaganda dimensions. The study also demonstrates that international image management by the state has become a new dimension of China’s propaganda.

<< 2002 Abstracts

History Division

The Poor Man’s Guardian: Radicalism as a Precursor to Marxism • Eugenie P. Almeida, Fayetteville State University • In this paper, the five year publication of the Poor Man’s Guardian, a radical and illegal newspaper of the 1830’s, is described. Excerpts from the newspaper are used to illustrate four points: (1) the Poor Man’s Guardian’s general strategy of establishing reader identification with its chosen audience; (2) the strategies by which it differentiated itself from the establishment press and other competing unstamped newspapers; (3) its attempts to foster “working class” consciousness in its readership.

Price Competition Editorial Vigor and Community-Ism: Edwin Aldrich and the Promotion of McNary Dam • Jon Arakaki, Oregon • This paper examines the editorial promotion of the Umatilla Rapids Project (later, McNary Dam) by East Oregonian editor/publisher Edwin Aldrich from 1929-1933. The dam, situated on the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington State, is one in a series of large federal projects that transformed the economic, physical, and political nature of the Pacific Northwest. An examination of Aldrich’s arguments is provided to determine if the rhetorical patterns correspond with historical events.

Not A Hoax: New Evidence in The New York Journal’s Rescue of Evangelina Cisneros • W. Joseph Campbell, American • This paper offers new evidence about the New York Journal’s rescue in 1897 of Evangelina Cossio y Cisneros, a nineteen-year-old Cuban jailed in Havana during the rebellion against Spanish colonial rule. For the Journal, the rescue represented a triumph over Spain’s harsh efforts to quell the insurrection, which in 1898 gave rise to the Spanish-American War.

Ridicule and Reason: Editorial Analysis of a Nearby Black Weekly’s Fight to Avenge a Southern Lynching • Kenneth Campbell, South Carolina • This research examines what both the black press and the white press said in editorials in response to the 1926 triple lynching in Aiken, S.C. The paper finds that the black press responded with both reasoned editorials and ridicule of the concept of white superiority, and that on some issues it was in agreement with the white press.

The Black Press and Coverage of the Negro Leagues before And After Integration: When To Stop the Cheering? • Brian Carroll, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The signing of Jackie Robinson cleaved baseball history into eras “before” and “after.” The cleaving is reflected in black press coverage, which rapidly and comprehensively shifted to the major leagues with Robinson’s arrival in Brooklyn. This paper analyzes that fundamental shift in coverage by examining the multidimensional relationship the press had with the Negro leagues, including its officials, team owners, and fans.

Letting the Marketplace Decide: Children’s Television in the 1980s • Naeemah Clark, Kent State University • Mark Fowler chaired the Federal Communications Commission from 1981 and 1987. Fowler, a Reagan appointee, led the FCC under the philosophy “Let the Marketplace Decide.” This philosophy meant that broadcasters had the freedom to program their stations in ways to get the largest audience and increase profits. This article uses primary sources such as oral history and television schedules and various secondary sources to address what Fowler’s philosophy meant to educational children’s television and its advocates during his reign.

Democratic Morality and the Freedom Academy Debate: The Dialectic Over Propaganda Use in America, 1954-1968 • Stacey Cone, Iowa • Debate in government during three administrations over the “Freedom Academy” — a proposed propaganda training institution — has been an important but undocumented aspect of media history. This paper describes and analyzes how and why enthusiasts of the bill sought to institutionalize propaganda through the Freedom Academy, and how and why their critics labored to prevent it. The Freedom Academy story is an intellectual history tracing the idea of propaganda in America.

Building Resentment: How the Alabama Press Prepared the Ground for New York Times v. Sullivan • Doug Cumming, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), which gave the American press vital protections against libel suits from public officials, was the Supreme Court’s reaction to the extreme punishment that an Alabama judge and jury laid upon the Times. This paper looks at the way the Alabama press helped build resentment against the kind of attention the Times was bringing to racial tensions in the late fifties and in 1960, when the Sullivan suit was brought.

Class Awareness in the Formation of British Journalists, 1886 To the Present • Anthony Delano, London College of Printing • Preparation for journalism in Britain has been retarded by class awareness. Position of journalists at the beginning of the twentieth century contained seeds of present-day considerations of status, occupational hegemony and organizational preference. Rival outlooks continue to dominate the controversy over whether journalism can best be taught in the classroom or learned in the newsroom. Questionable contention that for journalism to be effective its product needs to be delivered by people of the same background as those who receive it attracts some support from scholars.

The Fracturing of FM: Coverage of the 1944-1945 Frequency Allocation Debate • Christaan Eayrs, Bowling Green State University • A 1945 FCC decision to shift the operating frequencies for FM radio ended a contentious battle that raged for nearly a year. While scholars have discussed the social, political, and economic factors that influenced the decision, this paper’s analysis of the coverage in Broadcasting from 1944 to 1945 illustrates the highly technical focus of the proceedings. The FCC’s wish to center discussion on technical grounds through the exclusion of other issues framed both the nature and subsequent coverage of the debate.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back: Coverage of Women Journalists in Editor & Publisher, 1978 to 1988 • Cindy Elmore, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The 1970s were full of turmoil and change for women and the press. Women students were filling journalism schools, women journalists were filing complaints of sex discrimination, and women were securing “firsts” all over the journalism profession. So by the late 1970s, the momentum was strong for the continued advancement of women and women’s issues in the media. This study examined the coverage of women journalists during the decade following the settlement of The New York Times sex discrimination case in Editor & Publisher magazine.

The Adventures of Cuff, Massa Grub, and Dinah Snowball: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Frederick Douglass’ Hometown Newspapers, 1847 • Frank E. Fee Jr., North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This research examines the content of three daily newspapers published in Rochester, New York, the city where anti-slavery orator Frederick Douglass began publishing The North Star in December 1847. The purpose of the study of each daily in the last four months of 1847 was to identify the ways these mainstream papers referred to race, ethnicity, and gender on the eve of Douglass taking up residency in the community.

William Brennan’s Century: How a Justice Changed His Mind About Obscenity • John M. Harris, Western Washington University • William J. Brennan, Jr., was considered one of the finest Justices to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court in the twentieth century — some say he was the best. His imprint is especially evident in cases concerning freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yet in 1957, during his first term on the Court, Brennan declared in Roth v. U.S. that obscenity wasn’t protected by the Constitution.

An Old Familiar Story of Using “New” Technology • Louise W. Hermanson, South Alabama • This paper provides an overview of how thousands of youngsters began using new printing technology to put out their own publications from 1866 to 1890. It outlines the variety in size, shape, philosophy and content of the publications and looks at how the young editors and publishers organized themselves into local, state, regional and national organizations to critique each other’s works and improve the reputation of publishing.

Adjusting Frames/Choosing Sides: British Journalists and the Cold War, 1944-1950 • John Jenks, Dominican University • Major diplomatic revolutions have wide-ranging effects on journalism, as was the case in Britain’s shift in relations with the Soviet Union — from alliance to hostility — in the mid-1940s. Left-wing journalists whose views had been acceptable during the wartime alliance now found themselves suspect and out in the cold. Some were fired, some quit, and some defected, while conservative and moderate journalists who had willingly reported from a pro-Soviet conceptual frame in the interest of allied unity shifted their vision and began reporting other facts.

Overcoming Asymmetric Information: The Rise of Chicago as a Center of Information, 1850-1865 • Richard Junger, Western Michigan University • Urban and mass communications historians have concentrated on the role of boosters when describing the press of nineteenth-century American frontier cities such as Chicago. Unfortunately, boosters specialized in asymmetric or unequal information, deliberately misleading perspective settlers, investors, out-of-town journalists and others about the prospects and even reality of their settlements. This paper seeks to redress the prevailing image that antebellum Chicagoans only provided booster-type asymmetric information.

Human Sexuality and the U.S. Newspaper Editor Coverage of the “Kinsey Reports” in Six Newspapers, 1948 and 1953 • Susan Keith, Arizona State University • Coverage of Alfred C. Kinsey’s research into human sexuality changed markedly in six U.S. daily newspapers between the 1948 publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and the 1953 publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Three factors appear to have been responsible for the change. First, the frank treatment of the male book by magazines opened the way for newspapers to discuss the female report frankly. Second, editors benefited from hindsight.

Literature to Form a More Perfect Union: An Examination of the Anti-Saloon League of America’s Early Messages and Methods Through a Framework of Public Relations History • Margot Opdycke Lamme, Florida • The Anti-Saloon League of America (ASLA) was a church-based social reform movement whose work for National Prohibition became nationally prominent during the 1910s and through the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Although scholars have examined its work as a political pressure group and in the broader context of the Progressive Movement, the League’s communications have not been studied to determine whether they reflected what Robert Wiebe called the Movement’s increasing use of “moral suasion to excellent effect.”

Journalism’s Role in Society: Ethics Codes Framework of Responsibility • Jane S. McConnell, Minnesota State University • Journalism ethics codes written during the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century reveal a dramatic evolution in the concept of press responsibility. At the turn of the century ethics codes provided little more than directives concerning reporters’ personal behavior. Within a decade the focus had moved to the importance of the newspaper as a business. In 1922 the South Dakota press association became the first to produce a code of ethics that distinctly articulated journalism’s societal role.

“The Whole Affair is to Put Us on the Defensive”: Know-Nothingism, Rutherford B. Hayes, and The Weekly Press of Northwest Ohio • Michael T. McGill, Jr., Bowling Green State University • During presidential campaigning in late 1876, Republican and Democratic political organizers, candidates, and supporters waged a bitter battle within the columns of the American press. This paper analyzes one of the many political accusations utilized by Democrats through the Democratic press: that Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes had direct associations with an American anti-foreigner organization.

Suppression of an Enemy Language During World War II Prohibition of the Japanese Language in Japanese American Assembly Camps • Takeya Mizuno, Bunkyo University • This article investigates in detail how the United States government prohibited the use of the Japanese “enemy” language at Japanese American “assembly centers” during World War II. Drawing on the archival documents of governmental agencies concerned, this study demonstrates that assembly camp officials strictly barred the evacuees’ from using their native language and thereby curtailed their First Amendment rights of speech and self-expression.

“Only a Brave Man Would Have Dared to Put It in a Book” Using More Communications Theory to Teach and Frame Media History • Alf Pratte, Brigham Young University • This survey suggests strategies to exploit theory in media history. In addition to nationalist, romantic, developmental, cultural, progressive and consensus interpretations, it encourages “grand theories” such as advertising, economic, feminist, functional, frontier, mass society, propaganda, social roles and technological determinism to frame presentations, raise questions and provoke interest and ways of knowing inside and outside the classroom.

Conjunction Junction, What Was Your Function? The Use of Schoolhouse Rock to Quiet Critics of Children’s Television • David S. Silverman, Missouri-Columbia • This paper examines the debate surrounding advertising and the purpose of children’s television in the early 1970s, focusing upon the “series-as-commercial” Schoolhouse Rock. Through examination of both the governmental-records, as well as the recollections of those involved in the production of Schoolhouse Rock, I found a duality in the motives of the those responsible for airing Schoolhouse Rock, ultimately questioning the educational value of what was deemed a “win-win” situation for children’s educational television.

The New York Times Perpetuates a Madman Stereotype of Charles Guiteau: A Qualitative Content Analysis • Don Sneed, Florida International University and Elizabeth Sneed, Boyd Anderson High School, Florida • This study deals with press performance by The New York Times before and during the trial of President James A. Garfield’s assassin, Charles J. Guiteau. The study focuses on how The New York Times – in news stories, headlines and editorials – covered the event during this emotionally charged time in American history.

Murrow Squares Off Against McCarthy: Not Many Brickbats or Bouquets • Brian Thornton, Northern Illinois University • The legend portrays the struggle between two men as the equivalent of a televised heavyweight title match. The fight took place March 9, 1954. Surprisingly, it has been reported that the smaller man, a former high school cheerleader named Egbert, won by a knockout. One historian said the stakes were nothing less than the future of democracy in the United States of America. The victor, Edward R. Murrow, was a highly respected broadcast reporter.

Darkness and Light: Shifting Visual Depictions of Cuba in a Time of Crisis • Christopher A. Vaughan, Rutgers University • Seldom has the United States witnessed so sharp a turnabout in the dominant images used to portray a foreign entity as Cuba’s iconic fall from fair-skinned maiden to racialized caricature in the pictorial world of 1898. Illustrative of the significance of images of race and gender in the construction of an imperial order resonant with popular prejudices, Cuba’s passage from attractive white womanhood to darkened and infantilized object of rejection had many authors, but the links between political power and popular iconography were not entirely diffuse.

Repositioning Radio: NBC & the “Kitchen Radio Campaign” of 1953 • Glenda C. Williams, Alabama • The “Kitchen Radio Campaign” was a major Christmas promotion campaign designed to rebuild the daily “Housewife” audience. Using clever jingles set to Christmas carols, the spots urged families to buy a radio for Mom to use while she did her chores. Using letters, memos, and scripts from the NBC archives at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, this paper examines NBC’s Kitchen Radio Campaign and its attempt to reposition radio’s place in the American culture.

<< 2002 Abstracts

Cultural and Critical Studies Division

Change Your Life!: Confession And Conversion In Telemundo’s Cambia Tu Vida • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Georgia • In recent years no television genre has generated more discussion and public outcry in the United States than talk shows. The talk show genre also creates strong feelings in the academic world. Scholarly literature shows polarization between those who believe that the shows are damaging and scholars who argue that talk shows can be empowering for under represented societal sectors. These discussions, however, have not included talk shows broadcast in the Spanish-speaking networks Telemundo and Univision.

Global/National, Visual, And the Subjects of State-Run Television in India • Sanjay Asthana, Institute for Global Studies • This paper examines themes of globalization and nation on state-run television in India during the fiftieth independence anniversary in 1997. Representations of nation get complicated as commercial and corporate interests, such as celebration of capital in the name of globalization, begin to frame images of nation. A broader definition of nation will be outlined to explain the discourse of nation in the globalization context on state-run television in India.

The Grocer and the Chief: A Parable of Alterity or Otherness Discourse in the Modernization Paradigm of Development Communication Studies • Umara Bah, Morgan State University • This paper employs a proposed alterity framework of analysis to argue that the Grocer and the Chief — the genesis of the model on which the modernization paradigm of development communication is based exemplifies alterity or otherness discourse, one that misrepresents the Other and reflects and valorizes the Self. The paper concludes that precisely because of this discourse, the paradigm is viable, contrary to assertions by many scholars that it has passed away.

Ghost-Hunting as Transcendent Storytelling: Narrative Tradition and Innovation on the Internet • Warren Bareiss, Austin College • This paper examines ghost-hunting websites as a form of ritual. Ghosthunting rhetoric uses traditional narrative motifs to challenge day-to-day notions of reality. Also, ghost hunters use communication technology as an enabling factor through which reality is deconstructed and left “open.” This process results in a new mapping of communal space, re-signifying certain places as sites of paranormal activity, while elevating storytellers to the status of quasi-scientific experts.

If A Problem Cannot Be Solved, Enlarge It: An Ideological Critique Of The Other In Pearl Harbor And September 11 New York Times Coverage • Bonnie Brennen and Margaret Duffy, Missouri • This study uses the theoretical approach of cultural materialism and compares the rhetorical strategies used to frame Japanese Americans in the first four months following Pearl Harbor with those used to describe Muslim and Arab-Americans following September 11. It suggests that strategies used to frame these groups as the Other, encourage the emergence of a specific ideological vision in the news coverage.

Political Drama and News Narratives: Presidential Summits on Chinese and U.S. National Television • Tsan-Kuo Chang, Minnesota-Twin Cities • Presidential summit carries an imprint of personal involvement, public expectations and potential cross-national consequences. Against the backdrop of news as narratives, the purpose of this comparative study is to determine, within Edward Said’s perspective of “communities of interpretation,” the form and content of two presidential summits — Chinese President Jiang’s U.S. visit in 1997 and President Clinton’s China visit in 1998 — on the “ABC World News Report” and “China Central Television Network News.”

Media, Sexuality, And Identity Among “New Ethnic” Youth In A Midwestern Community • Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Iowa • This paper posits that adolescence, as experienced by girls of immigrant diaspora groups, is complicated by issues of race, culture and nation that intersect with discourses of sex and gender. In this study, a series of focus groups were conducted with South Asian American girls in order to uncover the role of media in their sexual identity constructions. The focus group data revealed radical rearticulations of sexual identity from an “interstitial” audience position that involved oppositional readings of various media texts.

Joseph Conrad’s Hearts of Darkness and The New York Times Narrative of HIV/AIDS in Africa: A Continuum of “Ideologeme of Imperial Contagion,” or A co – incidence? • Chinedu Eke, Penn State University • I critically argue in this paper based on the evidence of published materials that the style of reporting done by The New York Times on the issue of HIV/AIDS in Africa between 1985 and 1990 reflected an ongoing literary style in the West in general that can be attributed to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Within this construct, the centuries-old process of cross-cultural transmission of disease appears as the most recent site of struggle between nations of the West and those of the Third World.

Community Property: Digital Music and the Competing Economic Imperatives of Transmission and Ritual Modes of Communication • Mark Giese, Houston • Using the evolution of the digital music-sharing phenomenon as a springboard, this article explores the economic imperatives inherent in two different but not mutually exclusive theoretic constructs of communication advanced by James Carey. The first construct is the transmission mode of communication, which theorizes that communication is the transmission of information from one point to another. The second, and more novel construct is the ritual mode of communication that theorizes forms of communication whose primary purpose is to strengthen communal bonds by sharing communication/communal experiences rather than the transmission of instrumental information.

Complicating Communication: Revisiting And Revising Production/Consumption • James Hamilton and Tonya Couch, Georgia • This essay addresses the core assumption made in communication research of the division of the communication process into producers and consumers. It argues that the uncritical acceptance of “producers” and “consumers” as empirical, decontextualized descriptions of roles in a linear relationship disables efforts to theorize and explore more nuanced and ultimately more incisive accounts of communication in society.

Writing in the Wind: Recreating Oral Culture in an Online Community • Chuck Hays, Iowa • This study examines storytelling within a Usenet newsgroup for Harley-Davidson enthusiasts, arguing that the functions served by the posting of extensively detailed stories about membersÕ travels in this text-based group replicate the functions of storytelling within an oral culture: the inculcation and regulation of proper behavior in group members.

From Civil Rights to Environmental Rights: Constructions of Race, Community, and Identity In Three African-American Newspapers’ Coverage of the Environmental Justice Movement • Teresa Heinz, Indiana University • Environmental racism refers to the placement of health-threatening structures such as landfills in areas where the poor and ethnic minorities live. These issues are frequently ignored by the mainstream, largely white and middle-class, environmental movement. In response, environmental justice activists position disadvantaged communities against dominant socio-political groups. To examine how the environmental justice movement emphasizes community, identity, and race in its activism, this paper examines the coverage of environmental justice in three predominantly African-American newspapers.

Inequality of Resources: The Crisis of Media Conglomeration and the Case for Reform • Brian Houston, Oklahoma • When the media is owned and operated by corporate conglomerates the public is deprived of a diversity of viewpoints, and individual journalists feel pressured to conform to a corporate line. Attempts to reform the current trend in the American media originate most often from two theoretical camps: libertarianism and public journalism. This paper finds that neither of these approaches poses a satisfactory response to media conglomeration, and offers Ronald Dworkin’s “equality of resources” as a model of economic reform capable of rectifying the current situation.

Reframing Frame Analysis: Gaps and Opportunities in Framing Research • Sonora Jha-Nambiar, Louisiana State University • This paper examines how research into framing in the media remains largely one-sided by attributing the construction of the frame to the media. Current research views the audience merely through the lens of media effects and audience interpretation, thus limiting the growth of this valuable theory. By re-exploring Erving Goffman’s work and how it relates to the narrative element of stories and schema theory, this essay suggests links that would broaden the theoretical understanding of framing.

The Site of Coverage: The Impact of Internet-Mounted Social Movement Protests on JournalistÕs Coverage Decisions • Sonora Jha-Nambiar, Louisiana State University • Situated within the critical paradigm, this study uses quantitative and qualitative techniques to examine (a) the use of the Internet as a journalistic tool and (b) the impact of such use on journalists’ decisions in their coverage of social movement protests. This study analyzes these dynamics through in the context of the recent anti-globalization protests in U.S. cities and abroad, which are generally regarded as major success-stories in reference to the role of the Internet in their organization and propagation.

Race and Class in 1980s Hollywood • Chris Jordan, Penn State University • The strikingly different budgets and creative latitudes afforded Sylvester Stallone and Spike Lee illustrates how 1980s Hollywood’s agenda of reducing risk while maintaining volume resulted in a “bifurcated” industry that has since only become more polarized. Biracial buddy blockbusters such as “Rocky III” that trivialized race and class frictions proliferated at the most visible and lucrative level of moviemaking during the 1980s while low-budget specialty works such as “Do the Right Thing” (1989) that provoked reflection struggled to achieve minimal public visibility.

Goddess Worship: Commodifed Feminism and Spirituality on NIKEgoddess.com • Tara M. Kachgal, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • NIKEgoddess.com was textually analyzed to examine whether the website’s discursive strategies constitute a form of commodity feminism. Findings concur with analyses of earlier Nike marketing messages in that the potentially disruptive ideological challenges posed by feminism are constrained by a focus on individual consumption; self-objectification and heterosexuality; immediate gratification; and apoliticism. NIKEgoddess.com differs in its infusion of spiritual themes, which, it is argued, further defuses the feminist traces and, also, constitutes a form of commodity spirituality.

Listeners on Wheels: Automotive Radio, Mobility, and Suburbia • Matthew A. Killmeier, Iowa • This essay develops a cultural historical approach to the development of automotive radio and its widespread application in 1950s America. Drawing upon the theoretical conceptualization of mobile privatization and flow, the essay interprets automotive radio, changes in the political economy of 1950s radio, and suburban growth as mutually constitutive (Williams 1974). Furthermore, it argues shifts in quotidian forms of living in terms of mobility are bound up with mobile media and mobile content.

“Mourning in America”: Ritual, Redemption, and Recovery in News Narrative after September 11th • Carolyn Kitch, Temple University • This paper analyzes the construction of “the story of September 11th” in American newsmagazines. Drawing on anthropological as well as narrative theory, it argues that news coverage contained the elements of a funeral ritual, providing a forum for national mourning and creating a cohesive story in which vulnerability and fear became heroism and patriotic pride. It further contends that journalism plays a central role in American civil religion and in the articulation of national identity.

Nervous Women and Noble Savages: The Romanticized Other in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Patent Medicine Advertising • Jane Marcellus, Oregon • This paper compares images of women and Native Americans in nineteenth-century patent medicine advertising. Combining historical research and textual analysis, I explore the context in which these ads flourished. I argue that these two groups were exoticized and romanticized in ways that were similar to each other but different from other groups-not surprising since their lives became increasingly restricted during the course of the nineteenth century.

UPS Strike Coverage and the Future of Labor in the Corporate News • Christopher R. Martin, Northern Iowa • The United Parcel Service strike of August 1997 is now commonly cited as labor’s greatest success of the 1990s, where 185,000 Teamster workers brought the nation’s largest parcel delivery service to a standstill and won most of their demands, despite the fact that millions of consumers were touched by inconveniences. The strike was one of the top stories of 1997, with 77 USA Today reports, 139 New York Times stories, and 70 network news packages (ABC, CBS, NBC) during July-August 1997. This case study is based on a critical analysis of those reports.

But Where Are The Clothes? The Pornographic Stereotype in Mainstream American Fashion Advertising • Debra Merskin, Oregon • NO ABSTRACT

Representing Micro Radio: Newspaper Coverage of the Micro Radio Issue 1998-2000 • Andy Opel • Florida State University • This study examines newspaper coverage of the struggle over micro radio (low power FM) for the three years 1998-2000. This was a period of increased action for the micro radio issue, with activity taking place at the grassroots, institutional, academic and governmental levels. The newspaper coverage reveals a pattern of cultural acceptance for the activistsÕ discourse and the evolution of the cognitive space created by an emerging media reform movement.

Grappling with Gendered Modernity: The Spectacle of Miss World in the News • Radhika E. Parameswaran, Indiana • Hailed as a symbol of India’s enthusiasm for globalization, the 1996 Miss World beauty contest that was held in the city of Bangalore soon became the subject of intense controversy when right-wing political parties, feminist activists, and farmer’s groups launched public protests. Examining the intersections among discourses of gender, class mobility, tradition and modernity that were woven into Indian mediaÕs news narratives on Miss World, this paper brings to the foreground the ordering and framing practices of the Times of India, one of the nationÕs most reputable newspapers.

Viva Women: Dialogue between the lived Experience of Past Struggle and Present Hopes • Bongsoo Park • Minnesota • I argue that popular culture provides a site of struggle between a dominant and competing ideology by exposing — consciously or unconsciously — contradictions and ambiguities of Korean womanhood. Popular culture also embodies repressed ambitions that are far ahead of the social structure’s capacity to realize the dreams of feminism or reform. This paper looked at how symbolic fulfillment of repressed wish is realized in an example of popular culture, a television show, viva Women, in Korea.

Giving Labor the Business? Business and Labor Reporting from 1980-2000 • David J. Park and Larry M. Wright, Wisconsin-Madison • Academic research suggests there has been an increase in business and economic reporting at the expense of labor reporting. This paper examines the literature’s conclusions through a database content analysis of headlines from The New York Times, Washington Post, United Press International (UPI) and Associated Press (AP) during a twenty-year period. The results confirm a dramatic increase in business reporting and suggest labor reporting has experienced a subtle decrease.

Hands-on Communication: The Rituals Limitations of Web Publishing in the Alternative Zine Community • Jennifer Rauch, Indiana University • The Internet seems to promise independent producers of idiosyncratic and ephemeral “zines” an irresistible alternative to the medium of print. But this study finds that zine editors resisted migrating to the Web and that those publishing online remain ambivalent toward this technology. It argues, based on interviews, that interactivity is a mental and social characteristic of ritual communication. For these self-publishers, paper and xerography work better to achieve participation in an alternative cultural community.

Western Media Reporting of the Bombings of U.S. Embassies In East Africa: Coverage in The New York Times, A Case Study • Elizabeth Lester Roushanzamir, Georgia-Athens and Melinda B. Robins, Emerson College • This textual analysis of media coverage of the 1998 bombings of two US. embassies in East Africa questions the meaning of international news discourse within the present period of capital consolidation. It explores how the news stands for a hegemonic political economic order, and how tropes for Us and Other promote both stereotypes and products.

Natural Famine or Political Famine? Ideological Coverage of the North Korea Disaster in the New York Times and the Washington Post, 1995-2001 • Hoon Shim and Won-sik Hong, Texas at Austin • This study examined how the coverage of the New York Times and the Washington Post ideologically depicted the North Korea famine in 1995. Grounded in political economic theory, this study hypothesized that a natural disaster in a communist nation antagonistic toward the U.S. would be covered in a highly political way and focus on securing capitalistic ideology. Using content and textual analysis, the study investigated the famine coverage through three perspectives — representation, portrayal and ideological discourse.

“Deviance” & Discourse: How Readers Respond to One Man’s Editorial A Framing Analysis of E-Mails following the September 11th Attacks • Laura K. Smith, Texas at Austin • Following the September 11th attacks, critics came under fire for voicing concerns about U.S. foreign policy. In this paper, the author analyzes e-mail responses to one manÕs editorial – comparing the discourse of those who read his opinions in alternative news websites versus the mainstream media. Relying on rhetorical and media framing theory, this qualitative study finds, whether or incensed or supportive, e-mailers take similar rhetorical approaches in their response to critical views.

Buying Love: Sex on Television, Consumption, and Advanced Capitalism • Laramie Taylor, Michigan • Traditionally, Marxists have seen capitalist ideology as promoting monogamous, marital sexual relations in order to maintain a stable work force. Findings from a number of quantitative content analyses and critical viewings of a number of portrayals of sex on television reveal a system of messages that instead promotes individual sexual self-indulgence. It is speculated that this self-indulgence may generalize beyond the sexual to economic domains, serving to promote increased consumption, thereby serving the demands of advanced capitalism.

Shifting Identities, Creating New Paradigms: Analyzing the Narratives of Women Online Journalists • Shayla Thiel, Iowa • This study illustrates how in the shift from traditional journalism to online journalism, women online journalists’ identities have shifted and become renegotiated as women locate themselves both organizationally and culturally within this new journalistic paradigm. Using narrative analysis, this paper demonstrates how various patterns have emerged from the womenÕs stories and suggests that identity negotiation as a gendered process may shape and color the emerging field of online journalism in profound ways.

Rebel Mystic: An Aesthetic and Philosophical Exploration of Roots Reggae and Dub • James Tracy, Iowa • This paper examines some of the sociocultural dynamics and philosophical bearings of roots reggae and dub’s development in Jamaica in the 1970s through the interpretive analysis of musical and discursive form and insights of the music’s most seminal creators and innovators. This is an initial foray toward a more complex theorization of the 20th century’s authentic “rebel music” and its deeper meaning and representation the music suggests for the global postcolonial human social condition.

The Commander of Bodies: A Semiotic Analysis of Media Discourse about The Korean Female Body • Tae-Il Yoon, Missouri-Columbia • Looking at a controversy about Lee Young-Ja, a Korean female comedian who had dramatically lost weight in a suspicious manner, this study investigates how media discourse constructs the female human body by using a method of semiotic analysis within the constructivist framework. The result of the syntagmatic analysis suggested that a female body could be constructed as heroin, villain, and victim according to media framing.

She’s Gotta Have It But He Already Got It: Spike Lee and the Residual Masquerading as the Emergent • Bill Yousman, Massachusetts-Amherst • She’s Gotta Have It (1986) is analyzed through a close reading of how language, images, and sounds create a text that is structured by binary oppositions. These oppositions reinforce particular ideological positions on gender relations, sexuality, and feminism. Popular discourse revolved around a discussion of the radical or innovative aspects of the film, framing it as ideologically emergent. This paper suggests that frequent moments of patriarchal residualism overwhelm whatever progressive value the film might possess.

Transferring Media Professionalism: Transculturation, Semicolonialism, and Journalism Education in China, 1910s-1930s • Yong Zhang, Minnesota • Media professionalism was introduced from the United States into China through journalism education in the Republican period from the 1910s to the 1930s. While other third world countries imported the ideology of media professionalism through formal apparatuses of colonial administration, China’s introduction was largely through private non-official channels since it lacked a formalized institutional infrastructure under its unique semicolonial condition.

<< 2002 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology Division

Television and our Children: A Meta-Analysis of Television’s Impact on Special Populations • Robert Abelman, Carolyn A. Lin and David J. Atkin, Cleveland State University • NO ABSTRACT

Perceived Credibility and Attitudinal Distance in Estimating Third-Person Effect and Affect • Julie L. Andsager, Washington State University and H. Allen White, Murray State University • Messages deemed undesirable often produce a third-person effect, while the converse first-person effect is true for desirable messages. We sought to examine the message content-receiver interpretation interaction of evaluating a persuasive message using the construct of perceived credibility. Credibility was unrelated to the degree of estimated effect on self and others, but it was significantly related to perceived positive/negative affect. Attitudinal social distance was an important predictor of third-person effects, though credibility mitigated its impact.

Evaluation of American Legacy Foundation/Washington State Department of Health Media Literacy Pilot Study • Erica Weintraub Austin, Bruce E. Pinkleton, Stacey J.T. Hust and Marilyn Cogen, Washington State University • A pretest/posttest experiment with a control group was used to evaluate a pilot test of a media literacy curriculum implemented during summer 2001 in the state of Washington. It was expected media literacy training would reduce youthÕs beliefs and behaviors relevant to tobacco use and would increase the extent they would participate in advocacy activities. The results indicate media literacy is a promising avenue for tobacco prevention efforts.

Beyond the Cognitive Mediation Model: Diversion, Interaction and Action Motives Trump the Surveillance Motive • Christopher E. Beaudoin, Indiana University-Bloomington and Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia • With data from a 2000 telephone survey of a Midwestern community, the current study retests and reevaluates the cognitive mediation model (Eveland, 2001). In a first step, it expands testing of the model to a different community and measures media use in terms of reliance on five news media for political information. Two well-fitting structural equation models offer strong support for the cognitive mediation model in this context.

Second Level Agenda Seffing and Political Discourse: A Longitudinal Analysis of Campaign Reform in 1999 • Shannon L. Bichard, Texas Tech University • This study investigates second level agenda setting for the campaign reform issue in 1999. Content analysis was used to obtain the agendas of the media, public, and Congress. Cross-correlations were then established using ARIMA time series models to examine relationships. Results suggest that the public agenda as well as congressional framing attributes have a compelling affect on the media. These findings support the need for an expanded approach to agenda setting research.

How Television Shapes Our View of the World: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach • Samuel D. Bradley, Indiana University • Research known as cultivation analysis has shown that heavy television viewers make social judgments more aligned with the reality shown on TV than the actual world to a greater degree than light TV viewers. Several studies have shown that certain cognitive processes can mediate this effect. A cognitive neuroscience perspective is used here to try to outline brain structures involved in the cultivation effect and account for the mediating effects.

Saying “May Cause Internal Bleeding” with a Smile: A Multi-Year Analysis and Comparison of Prescription Drug Advertising • Samuel D. Bradley, Yongkuk, Leah M. Haverhals, Annie Lang, Indiana University • Since restrictions were eased for broadcast prescription drug advertisements in 1997, there has been a dramatic spending increase on direct-to-consumer advertising. This paper addresses direct-to-consumer advertising by conducting two content analyses of 120 hours of television programming in 2000 and 2002, providing a description of frequency, production features, and emotional tone of information presented in health advertising. The results will be used to construct the stimuli for future experiments investigating how consumers process such information.

Are Computers And Traditional Media Functionally Equivalent? • Xiaomei Cai, Delaware • This study examined the time displacement effects of computers on traditional media in light of the functional equivalence principle. Subjects were asked to give up using computers (except for schoolwork) and television respectively for a day. The results showed that giving up computer use did not increase time allotted to other media. On the contrary, giving up viewing television increased time spent with other traditional media, but not with computers. The implication for the functional equivalence principle was discussed.

Effects of Salience Dimensions of Informational Utility on Selective Exposure to Online News • Silvia Knobloch, Dresden University of Technology, Francesca Dillman Carpentier and Dolf Zillmann, Alabama • Informational Utility is conceptualized as consisting of three dimensions: magnitude of a threat or opportunity, likelihood of the materialization of the threat or opportunity, and proximity in time of the occurrence of the threat or opportunity. It is hypothesized that readers will selectively expose themselves increasingly more to stories high in these three dimensions as opposed to stories low in these dimensions. To test this proposal, respondents chose to read selections from an experimental Internet-style online newspaper.

Analyzing the Effect of “Impactive” Visual Stimuli on Ad and Product Perceptions Using a Computerized Experiment • Fiona Chew and Maya Chandrasekaran, Syracuse University • Three “impactive” visual stimuli proposed as eliciting eye fixations or orienting responses were constructed, tested and analyzed for basic advertising and product perceptions among 85 young adults. A computer program was developed to set up the experimental materials for display on computer terminals in a computer laboratory. Specifically it rotated the treatment and control conditions as well as the order of the visuals, logged the time subjects spent on each visual, displayed the questions and registered the responses.

The Deep Audit as an Epistemology for the Watchdog: Computer-Assisted Analysis and Investigative Journalism • Ira Chinoy and John E. Newhagen, Maryland • Computer assisted data analysis, sometimes called computer-assisted reporting, has emerged as an innovative form of investigative journalism during the past 35 years, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Its legitimacy has been validated by prizes and awards, but it has failed to become fully integrated into the journalistic routine. That fact is evidenced both by the ambiguous location that practitioners of computer analysis occupy on newsroom organizational charts.

Processing Anti-Drug Public Service Announcements The Role of Perceived Self-Relevance • T. Makana Chock, Mija Shin, Yongkuk Chung, Suengwhan Lee and Annie Lang, Indiana University • This study applied the Limited Capacity Model of media processing to investigate the role of reported self-relevance of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) in the processing of the information contained in those messages. The impact of the arousing content and production pacing of anti-drug and tobacco PSAs on adolescent and college age viewersÕ perceived self-relevance was examined. The impact of self-relevance upon the attention given to a PSA and subsequent memory of that message was also assessed.

A Life Cycle Model of Media Development: The Internet as Case Study • Nava Cohen-Avigdor and Sam Lehmun-Wilzig, Bar-Ilan University, Israel • Based on several earlier, preliminary theories and models of the life cycle development of mass media (taken from such fields as mass media history, technology diffusion, and even marketing), this paper puts forward an overarching, universally applicable, interactive, life cycle model involving five stages: 0- technical invention; 1- market penetration/growth; 2- maturation; 3- defensive resistance; 4a- adaptation/change, or 4b- obsolescence/disappearance. The Internet is employed as a case study to amplify the modelÕs various factors and elements.

A “Mix of Attributes” Approach to the Study of Media Effects and New Communication Technologies • William P. Eveland, The Ohio State University • The purpose of this paper is to discuss the media effects approach broadly, point out the limitations the traditional approach imposes on the field, and to discuss a “mix of attributes” approach with a focus on the study of “new” technologies for the dissemination of news that would better serve to advance both theory and empirical research not only in the area of new media technologies, but also for more traditional media effects research.

Influence of Story Structure and Reader Partisanship on Perceived Story Bias and News Organization Credibility • Frederick Fico, John D. Richardson and Steven Edwards • A 3 (story structure) x 3 (partisanship), full-factorial experiment was conducted to illuminate the joint effects on four dependent variables: perceived story bias, perceived story quality, news organization credibility and persuasiveness. Participants’ prior opinion on each of three issues (capital punishment, flat income tax rate and drinking age) was measured as pro, con, or neutral. Mock newspaper stories were systematically manipulated to be balanced or imbalanced. Imbalanced stories favored either the pro or the con side on each issue.

Effects of Text and Animated Graphics in Television News Stories on Viewer Evaluations, Arousal, Attention, and Memory • Julia R. Fox, Yongkuk Chung, Seungwhan Lee, Nancy Schwartz, Leah Haverhals, Zheng Wang, Annie Lang, Indiana University and Deborah Potter, NewsLab • This study examines effects of text and animated graphics in television news stories. Text and animated graphics aided recognition for stories participants rated harder to understand, but made no difference for easier stories. Delayed cued recall was best for stories with animated graphics and worst for stories with no graphics. Participants paid less attention to text graphics than to animated graphics or the no-graphics condition. Arousal and evaluations of the news stories are also examined.

Is Psychopathology The Key To Understanding Why Some Children’s Behavior Becomes “Aggressive” When They Are Exposed To Violent Television Programming? • Tom Grimes, Kathy Nichols, Eric Vernberg, Lori Bergen, Kansas State University • Children who have no diagnosed psychopathology did not behave aggressively after seeing a series of violent movie excerpts. On the other hand, children with the most common undiagnosed form of psychopathology — Disruptive Behavior Disorders — behaved aggressively after exposure. This paper explains why there is a difference in behavior between the two groups and suggests that normal children are probably not harmed by violent TV programming in terms of viewing induced psychopathologies.

Theory Of Communication Outlets And Free Expression: A Humanocentric Exploration • Shelton A. Gunaratne, Minnesota State University • This essay combines the yin-yang complements of Chinese philosophy and the dialectic of Western philosophy to derive a humanocentric theory of communication outlets and free expression. It argues that the system of communication-outlets in most nation-states is situated between the extremes of libertarianism and authoritarianism. The meeting or clash of these two complements or antinomies at a particular point of time and space results in creating various shades of social responsibility.

The Intermediary Role of News Media in the 2000 Presidential Campaigns: A Mediator, Moderator, or Political Agent? • Sungtae Ha, Texas at Austin • This study examines the intermediary role of news media between the candidates and the public in the agenda-setting process in the context of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. Do the media really control the whole process of agenda setting defining the campaign agendas? Special attention is paid to the media’s role at the two different levels of agenda setting: issues and attributes. The New York Times played the role of both the moderator and political agent rather than a mediator.

Fear of Isolation and the Climate of Opinion: Moderating the Spiral of Silence? • Andrew F. Hayes and Carroll J. Glynn, The Ohio State University; James Shanahan and Dietram Scheufele, Cornell University; Patricia Moy, David Domke, and Keith Stamm, Washington • According to spiral of silence theory, silence spirals can develop when fear of social isolation drives members of a minority to silence their own opinion expression. In a secondary analysis of several existing published studies, we tested a prediction directly derived from spiral of silence theory that fear of social isolation and support for one’s opinions would interact in predicting opinion expression. But never did we find an interaction between fear of isolation and perceived support for one’s opinion.

Framing Effects in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Media Environments: The Cases of the on Taiwan Controversy and the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Dispute • Huiping Huang, National Taiwan Normal University • This study examined the nature of issues and the media environments the issues created in the operation of framing effects. It conducted media content analyses and audience survey to compare media frames and audience frames in different media environments. The cases under study were the On Taiwan controversy and the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant dispute in Taiwan. Results showed that, the media environments the two cases created differed on the dimension of frame homogeneity and heterogeneity.

Cosmopoliteness, Cultivation and Media Use • Leo W. Jeffres, Cheryl Campanella Bracken, Kimberly Neuendorf, and Jennifer Kopfman, Cleveland State University • The constructs of “cosmopoliteness,” cultivation, and media use were examined in a general population CATI survey of a metropolitan area in October and November of 2001. Eight dimensions of cosmopoliteness were identified, and they were in general found to be strongly and positively related to non-broadcast media use (e.g., newspaper readership) but not strongly related to broadcast media exposure. Cosmopoliteness dimensions were found to relate to cultivated views of the world as a “mean and scary place,” although such relationships were diminished somewhat after controls for social categories.

Motivations to Form Opinions Based on Reference Group or Generalized Others’ Opinions • Irkwon Jeong and Carroll J. Glynn, The Ohio State • This paper explores motivational reasons for forming oneÕs own opinion based on the opinions of certain group opinions. Specifically, this study examines the importance of these motivations in determining whether or not individuals rely more on reference group opinions or on the opinions of “generalized others” when forming their own opinions. In addition, we explore the determinants of these motivations. Data were collected using a nation wide telephone survey (n= 596).

Download Speed and Physiological Arousal: The Role of Motion, Suspense, and Content Characteristics • Sriram Kalyanaraman and S. Shyam Sundar, Penn State University • Prior research has shown that download speed of Web images affects users’ physiological arousal. Using a three-condition experiment (N= 39) that exposed participants to either a fast, slow-blur (GIF), or slow-frame (JPEG) version of a high-arousal, non-sexual image, this study investigates (1) the role of image characteristics (particularly content arousability) in determining which speed (fast or slow?) is more arousing; and (2) whether motion and/or suspense effects mediate the relationship between speed and arousal.

Entertainment Television Use and Life Satisfaction: Constructed Reality and the Social Comparison Effects of Drama and Sitcom • Heejo Keum and Jaeho Cho, Wisconsin-Madison • This research explores the influence of different types of televised entertainment programming on peopleÕs judgment of life satisfaction. This paper attempts to connect content-based assertions of the cultivation theory with the social comparison arguments positing that audiences compare their real lives with television’s constructed social reality and this comparison results in viewers’ life satisfaction or dissatisfaction. To explore this possibility, we combined content analysis and survey research.

Priming Effects Revisited: Use and Disuse of Contextual Primes in Dynamic News Environments • Young Mie Kim, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This study reexamines priming effects in the case of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As an alternative approach to traditional priming research, this study suggests an attitude structure model of priming based on an associative network model to assess peopleÕs use and disuse of the contextual prime (i.e., the air war) in dynamic news environments. With a short-term quasi-experimental approach considering the air war as a prime stimulus, the path analysis of the attitude structure model suggests robust evidences of the short-term accessibility effects of priming.

Theoretical Applications to Florida Law Enforcement Records Custodians’ Decision-Making Behaviors • Michele Bush Kimball, South Alabama • The goal of this study was to understand how and why records custodians grant or deny access to government information. Four theories, two legal and two social science, were applied to data collected through legal and qualitative research methods to evaluate whether those theories were relevant. Those theories were used to help explain records custodians behavior and to provide recommendations for changing the way custodians respond to FloridaÕs Public Records Law.

Identifying Dimensions of Media Salience: A Factor Analysis of Media Coverage during the 2000 Presidential Election • Spiro Kiousis, Iowa State • Media salience — the key independent variable in agenda-setting research — has traditionally been explicated as a singular construct. Nevertheless, scholars have defined it and measured it using a number of different conceptualizations and empirical indicators. To address this limitation in research, this study builds a conceptual model of media salience suggesting it is a multidimensional construct consisting of three core elements: attention, prominence, and valence.

A Structural Equation Model of the Uses and Gratifications Theory: Ritualized and Instrumental Internet Usage • Hanjun Ko, Florida • In this study, the uses and gratifications theory was applied to investigate whether motivations for using the Internet could explain one of the key aspects of Internet usage: visiting certain types of Web sites. The proposed latent variable path model identified some of the causal relationships between the motivational factors and the types of Web sites visited by Internet users.

The Impact of Website Campaigning on Traditional News Media and PublicÕs Information Processing • Gyotae Ku, Michael Pfau and Lynda Lee Kaid, Oklahoma • The present study was designed to examine the impact of website campaigning as new media on the traditional news media agenda and the public opinion during the 2000 presidential election campaigning. Based on an intermedia agenda-setting approach, this study demonstrated the direction of influence among three media in terms of the flow of information. Further, an agenda-setting impact of website campaigning on the public were also identified.

Agenda Setting, Media Framing, News Priming And Status Conferral: A Theoretical Synthesis • Dominic Lasorsa, Texas at Austin • Among mass communication theories that relate to the effects of news coverage on public opinion are agenda setting, media framing, news priming, second-level agenda setting and status conferral. In an effort to clarify the extent to which these five theories are alike and different, consideration is given to their independent and dependent variables, and to the psychological processes that intervene between exposure and effect.

Constructing Theory for Complex Systems • Dominic Lasorsa, Texas at Austin • A strategy is proposed for building theory relating four or more variables. The approach extends to such complex systems-strategies promoted by Hage, Lazarsfeld and Tankard. The paper discusses reasons for exploring multivariate relationships, forms for expressing four-variable theoretical statements, ways to visualize multivariate relationships, ordering multiple variables in time, analyzing causal paths among multiple variables; specifying non-linear relationships and non-additive effects, and useful modifications to the linear, curvilinear and power relationships.

Reconsidering the Effects of News Media Use on Political Learning: Individual and Socio-Structural Implications in Newspaper Reading and Television Watching • Eunjung Lee, Cornell University • This study argued that the effects of news media use on political learning should be assessed by accounting for individual media use patterns (attention vs. exposure) and the sociostructural factors that are embedded in the act of media use as well. The results showed that the effects of news media use are reflecting socio-structural constraints imposed on the acts of newspaper reading and television watching. Especially, the findings shed new light on television’s informational effect.

Its an Arousing, Fast Paced Kind of World: The Effects of Age and Sensation Seeking on the Information Processing of Substance Abuse PSAs • Seungwhan Lee, Yongkuk Chung, Mija Shin, and Annie Lang, Indiana University • This paper investigates how Sensation Seeking and production features alter how adolescents and college students process PSAs. Subjects viewed 30 public service announcements which varied in terms of arousing content and production pacing. Dependent variables included physiological responses, recognition, sensation seeking, and substance use. Results show that high sensation seekers prefer all messages, remember more, and exhibit lower arousal compared to low sensation seekers. Adolescents are more aroused and remember more information.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Internet as a Survey Tool: Compare Results across Telephone and Internet Surveys • Jack C. C. Li, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan • This study compared the results from a random digit dialing telephone interview to those from a paralleling Web-based survey, and evaluated the viability of using the Internet as a survey tool for the study of Internet user behavior from a cost-benefit perspective. The traditional telephone survey suffered from a very low response rate and the cost per interview was extremely high compared to the Web-based survey.

Media Influences On Normative Expectations Of Citizen Efficacy And Effects On Political Participation • Michael R. McCluskey, Sameer Deshpande, Hye Lim Yoo, Dhavan V. Shah and Doug M. McLeod, Wisconsin-Madison • The mass media may encourage a sense that citizens both can and should be able to influence politics and public policy and engage in self-governance, yet this normative value of political efficacy (the “should” evaluation) has been subsumed by a research emphasis on peopleÕs evaluation of their actual effectiveness (the “can” evaluation). Using data from an RDD community survey, this research demonstrates that normative efficacy is conceptually different from evaluative efficacy.

Advertising Agenda Setting and Its Electoral Consequences in the 2000 Presidential Campaign • Young Min • This study investigates the agenda setting function of political ads and its electoral consequences in the 2000 presidential campaign. Overall, it appears that candidate ads had significant effects on the voters’ perception of issue importance, and which issue was most prominent in oneÕs minds substantially influenced her or his candidate evaluation and vote choice. Specifically, the public was more susceptive to the issue emphases in positive ads than to those in negative ads, while partisan voters’ issue priorities reflected the composite ad agenda, rather than their own partisan agenda.

Framing Science: The Stem Cell Controversy in an Age of Press-Politics • Matthew C. Nisbet, Dominique Brossard and Adrianne Kroepsch, Cornell University • Applying the theories of agenda-building, frame-building, and previous work related to the shared negotiations between sources and journalists in constructing news dramas, this paper examines the role of the mass media in the development of the stem cell controversy. How does a scientific issue gain, maintain, or lose political and media attention? What forces combine to emphasize certain dimensions of an issue over others?

An Effective Approach to Conducting a Media-Use Survey in a School-Based Environment • Carol J. Pardun, Kelly L. L’Engle and Jane D. Brown, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper describes a protocol that was effective in collecting media-use pattern data from young adolescents. Using a 34-page mailed survey, extensive media-use pattern data were gathered from 3,255 7th and 8th graders after students were recruited in schools and parents mailed back consent forms. The sample included responses from a large number of African-American teens (1,330), a sub-group that has been particularly difficult for mass communication researchers to access in the past.

Of Leaders, Laggards and Losers: An Examination of Postcommunist Models of Media Transition • Maria Raicheva, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • This exploratory study aims to examine how viable the existing models of Postcommunist media transition are. As a starting point, the study tries to provide a general definition of transition. Then, it addresses critically the prevailing discussions of the transitional model in mass communication science as well as its alternatives. The final part of this study presents an evaluation of the models of transition and offers suggestions with regard to their utility.

This Just In …. How National TV News Handled the Breaking “Live” Coverage of Sept. 11th • Amy Reynolds, Indiana University and Brooke Barnett, Elon University • This article proposes an adapted theoretical model to explain how content produced in a breaking news situation on television changes journalistic practice and tests this model through a content analysis of national breaking news coverage of the September 11th attacks. The way that these journalists covered the attacks is one example of a model by which scholars can study how the common practice of carrying breaking news live has affected and transformed broadcast news.

Third-Person Perceptions Of Fear During The War On Terrorism: Perceptions Of Online News Users • Michael B. Salwen, Paul D. Driscoll, Bruce Garrison, Rasha Abdulla, Kristin Campbell, and Denise Casey, Miami • This study examined public fear in the aftermath of the U.S.-led War on Terrorism. A representative national telephone survey of 619 respondents confirmed that the third-person effect manifests itself with affective media influence. Non-Web users estimated significantly greater fear effects on those who read online news about the War on Terrorism than Web users. It is possible that non-Web users have ideas, based on stereotypes, about the amount, content and context of news reports available online that explain the findings.

Simplifying The Measurement of Cognitive Complexity • Mike Schmierbach, Cory L. Armstrong and Mark Heather, Wisconsin-Madison • Measurement of cognitive complexity has been methodologically varied, as have the relationships of measures to other variables. This paper presents a closed-ended method of measuring complexity using attitudinal measures from a random telephone survey (n = 657). Complexity is positively related to media use, interpersonal discussion, reflection and political participation. These results parallel findings using an open-ended measure from a previous survey. The authors argue for exploration of cognitive complexity and propose that measures similar to the one employed in this paper may be useful for such research.

The “Trap” Effect Of Television And Its Competitors: The Function Of Audience Interest For The Impact Of Political Information • Klaus Schoenbach and Edmund Lauf, University of Amsterdam • The “trap” effect is the alleged ability of television (1) to disseminate political information to those who are not interested in politics and (2) to influence them more strongly than other channels of information, such as newspapers, can. These ideas are tested in twelve European countries for the campaign of the European elections in 1999: Was television really more powerful than newspapers among the many citizens that did not care about that election?

Interaction Between Personal Frame and Issue Frame: Testing the Interaction Assumption of Framing effects Literature • Mihye Seo and Thomas E. Nelson, Ohio State University • The present study shows how individual audience members will vary in the• responsiveness to frames, depending on their own political perspectives, which we term “personal frames.” Indeed, we found that, absent a harmonious personal frame, issue framing hardly made a difference in peopleÕs opinions. This finding is important in terms of testing an oft-stated assumption of framing effects – framing is an interactive process between communicator and audience, as well as for illuminating the framing effect process.

The Effect of Cognitive Load on Perceived Reality • Michael A. Shapiro, Feng Shen and Laura Weisbein, Cornell University • Two models of judgments about perceived reality are compared. One claims people accept narratives as real and then consider whether a narrative might be unreal. A second maintains that when a message has many reality enhancing cues, anything that interferes with processing those cues makes the story seem less real. But, if a message has many cues the message is unreal, then failing to process those cues makes the story seem more real. This study suggests that limiting thought has different effects on different topics.

Deviance as The Nature of News: A Concept Explication and Its Implications for International News Coverage • Jae C. Shim, Wisconsin-Madison • This study investigates how Korean newspapers cover international events, especially those occurring in the First and Third worlds. It also examines whether Shoemaker, Chang, and Brendlinger’s deviant model of newsworthiness applied to the new industrialized countries like South Korea and tests these hypotheses: 1) The more deviant the international news is, the more Korean newspapers cover it prominently, 2) the more socially significant the international news is, the more Korean newspapers cover it prominently.

Advertising Appeals and Culture: The Difference Between Culturally Congruent and Culturally Deviant Individuals in Korea • Sung Wook Shim, Florida • The purpose of this study is to determine how culturally relevant stimuli presented within an advertisement may be perceived by those who are culturally congruent and those who are culturally deviant among young Korean consumers. As expected, Korean culturally congruent subjects had a higher mean effectiveness score than Korean culturally deviant subjects, when presented with culturally relevant ad stimuli (collectivistic appeal). However, collectivistic appeals did not score higher on effectiveness in the entire sample of Korean youth.

Playing on the Internet • Stanley T. Wearden, Joseph M. Harper and Deborah L. Davis, Kent State University • In 1999, Wearden and Harper revisited Stephenson’s Play Theory, trying to put it in context with Uses and Gratifications Theory and Media Systems Dependency Theory. They developed indicators to measure motivations for play on the Internet and on Television. This study follows up on that work, looking exclusively at Internet play. It uses the same indicators in a confirmatory factor analysis, which extracts the same dimensions of Internet play as found in the Wearden and Harper study, although in different order and with some slightly different loadings.

Political Discussion Networks and Civic Participation: Reexamining the Effects of Interpersonal and Mass Communication • So-Hyang Yoon, Hernando Rojas, Seungahn Nah, Dhavan V. Shah and Douglas M. McLeod, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper examines factors related to political participation in the context of the Communication Mediation Model. Specifically, the analysis uses the size and heterogeneity of interpersonal discussion networks, the frequency of political talk, community and value orientations, and public affairs media use to predict political participation. Hypotheses were tested using data collected from 657 respondents to a random digit dialing survey conducted in a Midwestern County with more than 400,000 inhabitants.

Consonance And Disparity; Intervention And Negativity: News Topic Dynamics And Effects Of Media Events • Juyan Zhang and Glen T. Cameron, Missouri-Columbia • Through a content analysis, the research examined consonance and disparity of news topics in major U.S. press coverage of China. The newspapers were found to share a similar pattern in selecting negative topics, but were disparate in balancing different topic categories. Their coverage of China also appeared to have been affected by three important events in Sino-U.S. relations. The research improved measurement of topic category dynamics from nominal and ordinal scales to ratio scale.

<< 2002 Abstracts