While a person's "interest" is recognized as important in seeking information about science, few studies have investigated what people mean when they say they are interested in a science story or have investigated the effects of that interest on memory for science information. Two studies tested several hypotheses on two components of…

Because local television news appears to be resilient to audience erosion, programmers may find it beneficial to develop strategies that are accommodating to the interests of audience segments. This also suggests that advertisers may communicate more effectively with consumers sorted according to benefit orientation. After telephone interviews…

Social advertisers--those responsible for public and nonprofit advertising and marketing--must employ many of the major psychological motivations used by commercial advertisers to stimulate desire and action on the part of target audiences. For example, commercial advertisers create psychological stimuli to facilitate motivation of the fulfillment…

The results of research on the amount of information retained by television viewers from weather broadcasts suggest that audiences retain little information on weather conditions even though they are interested in it, and that more information is retained when the report is presented via the spoken word than with extensive use of visuals. An…

The purpose of this paper is to examine how recent demand for greater realism in portrayals of Irish life in the television and film industries serves to authenticate existing stereotypes and romantic images which characterize "Irishness" in the popular imagination rather than refute or undermine them. Discussions of a political thriller…

Fantasy theme analysis (as propounded by Ernest Bormann) has tremendous potential as a tool for investigation of popular music as a rhetorical transaction--specifically, popular music as mimetic discourse. The early tradition of the rhetoric of music focuses on music as a persuasive medium, deriving rhetorical value from the way discourse affects…

A study investigated the extent to which cable television diverts audiences from local television news programs, and whether such diversion decreases community involvement and political participation. Of a random sample of 300 adults selected for interviewing from a northern California county telephone directory, 53% reported having cable…

This paper examines the government's authority to regulate indecent broadcasts, beginning with a historical overview of the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) involvement with broadcast indecency and its application in case law. First Amendment considerations are discussed and some suggestions are made regarding how the Commission should…

Developed for use with collaborative writing activities in conjunction with the Center for Educational Computing in English (CECE) Talk Program, this student guide provides sample activities for collaborative writing as well as detailed examples of the activities. The examples begin with a short exchange between people using the talk program to…

In recent years, television spot advertising has become an important part of political campaigns because it allows candidates to select the most favorable content, medium, time, and audience available to them. In the 1984 United States Senate campaign in Michigan, both the incumbent, Democrat Carl Levin, and the challenger, Republican Jack Lousma,…

The Grips Theatre, founded in 1969 by Volker Ludwig, performs plays intended to provoke clearheaded imaginative thinking on the part of the children, adolescents, and adults who see their productions. Grips does this by creating and producing original plays that retain the idealistic moment of hope that social relations and people themselves can…

This assessment of the possible impact of the cable television industry upon public television relies primarily on audience demographic characteristics as a convenient summary indicator and, in many instances, the only kind of evidence available for review. Primary sources of information used were the national Nielsen ratings; mail surveys of…

A study was conducted to determine the socioeconomic status (SES) of listeners of all-news radio. Subjects, 102 females and 98 males in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, responded to a 12-statement questionnaire in a telephone survey. Although previous studies suggested that listeners of low SES regarded radio primarily as a source of…

The failure of 17 newspaper markets between 1957 and 1975 raises the question of whether the 1982 entrance of "USA Today" into the newspaper market demonstrated fiscal prudence. A 20-month advertising content analysis was conducted to assess advertising trends in "USA Today." These data were compared with industry statistics…

Much current composition theory depends on the notion that writers represent reality--a situational context, an author, and an audience--in the text itself, and that readers construct their own representations of that text. Business writers, on the other hand, often direct their compositions to specific audiences, the members of which have…