For South African media and its audiences, as well as news researchers, the democratization developments in South Africa since April 1994 also offer new opportunities in the field of news flow studies. To answer the question "How are South African mass media portraying Africa and the rest of the world in the post-apartheid era through the…

To examine the role that items on the list of "What Literate Americans Know" (developed by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.) plays in the nation's literacy, a study conducted an electronic search of "The New York Times" to establish the frequency of occurrence for a sample from the list. A random sample of 424 terms (9% of the total list) was…

Civil rights issues of disabled people are gradually gaining attention from the news media. Deaf persons made that clear in 1988 during the "Deaf President Now" movement at Gallaudet University. A study looked at "Washington Post" and "New York Times" coverage of deaf persons from 1986 to 1990 to quantify the coverage…

To examine how United States network news personalizes coverage of international terrorism, a study conducted a content analysis of videotaped reports relating to the TWA airliner hijacking of June 1985. Videotapes of the TWA hostage incident from "ABC World News Tonight,""CBS Evening News," and "NBC Nightly News"…

A teacher has found a historical study of a newspaper's doublespeak to be consistently effective when it is used in an American studies classroom as a teaching model. As the Ku Klux Klan evolved in the 1920s, so did the Pekin, Illinois, "Daily Times's" deceptive coverage of the Klan. Doublespeak in news reports and editorials was used to…

A study examined the "oral" vocabulary used by newspapers over a 100-year period. Approximately 8,000 sentences containing about 200,000 words were chosen at random from the front pages of "The New York Times" and "The Los Angeles Times" for the period 1890-1989. Specific vocabularies were constructed for…

This paper provides a selected review of political candidate campaign advertising studies from the political science, mass communication, advertising, and political communication literature. The paper examines the literature in terms of research pertaining to (1) candidate advertising content (commercials for male versus female candidates and for…

Efforts to discover what variables affect news media content have taken many approaches during the past 35 years. These approaches have emphasized psychological factors, sociological factors, cultural and social forces, and economic factors. Evidence exists that all these forces play a role in determining what becomes news. To examine how these…

A study explored whether the pictorial coverage of African-Americans in three national magazines (Life, Newsweek, and Time) has increased over time, whether the content categories of those pictures has changed, and whether the picture percentage for African-Americans has approached their percentage of the population (11%). Content analysis of…

In order to identify the scope or limits of the practice of development journalism, a study examined the content of the Forum page in the "Straits Times" of Singapore during relatively free (1979-1980) and restricted (1986-1987) press periods. The study had two major objectives: (1) to study the nature of the Forum page (a readers'…

A content analysis was conducted of the 12 prime-time television programs most preferred by children and adolescents to determine verbal statements about sexual issues. On average, 29% of interactions on an individual episode referred to sexual issues. Results are discussed concerning adolescents' uses of this input. (SLD)

This study assessed the educational and informational television programming provided by four major networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. Assessed were 29 children's television programs during the 1995-1996 season. Programs were videotaped from 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., a time frame when children are most likely to be in the viewing audience. A content…

This paper explores the educational role of newspapers in increasing participation in the presidential nomination process. Democratic caucus coverage in 9 daily Missouri newspapers (out of 44 dailies in the state) was examined for the inclusion of concrete, participatory information about the 1992 caucus. Newspapers published over a 5-day period…

The oldest of the mass communication technologies, books, needs to be examined in mass communication research. Accordingly a study analyzed the structure and format of the "New York Times Book Review" to identify its dual roles: evaluating books and providing information crucial to book marketing. Also explored was how the text of the…

Utilizing both content analysis of 139 editorials appearing in 19 United States daily newspapers and the results of a survey of 146 newspaper editors, a study asked three questions: (1) To what extent is hunger covered in the news and editorial columns of U.S. daily newspapers? (2) How is hunger defined as a problem in terms of its causes in those…