In their recent article, "Materiality and Genre in the Study of Discourse Communities," Devitt, Bawarshi, and Reiff maintain that genre analysis can enable outsiders to a discourse community "to connect what community members know and do with what they say and how they say it--their language practices" (542). Genre analysis,…

Rural education radio not only provides agricultural instruction but also allows peasants to talk as much as instructors, creating the conditions for constant interchange between the lowest and highest strata of the nation. (DE)

A course was designed around three major questions: (1) what is the relationship between rhetoric and its context; (2) how does the message construct a particular reality for the audience and the rhetor; and (3) what does the rhetorical artifact suggest about the rhetor? Feminist criticism is used as one of the three methods that focus on the…

A study investigated evangelist Billy Graham's numerical success in using "the invitation" and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association's (BGEA) follow-up plan to preserve the beneficial effects of Christian commitment and to minimize commitment attrition. Statistics on audience response gathered throughout Graham's ministry attest to…

This paper is concerned with the application of market research techniques to segment large populations into homogeneous units in order to improve the reach, utilization, and effectiveness of health programs. The paper identifies seven distinctive patterns of health attitudes, social influences, and behaviors using cluster analytic techniques in a…

A study examined text-based scientific concepts and described how those concepts were elaborated in three high school biology textbooks. The three textbooks were aimed at different student audiences: non-college bound students, special education students, and high school students at all levels. A concept analysis was established for each text, and…

Debate educators have been concerned about the disadvantages of tournament debating. While student debaters have learned critical thinking, research, writing, public speaking, and other skills, some former participants feel the experience left them too argumentative generally. Some scholars favor moving away from formal debating contests. A…

By applying Kenneth Burke's concepts of Order, the Secret, and the Kill to the newspaper-audience-advertiser relationship, the narrow imagery that depicts that relationship only in economic terms can be counteracted. Burke's maps of hierarchy, mystery, and transcendence in human action allow the depiction of a complex meshing of patterns,…

Successful makers of "persuasive films"--i.e., films which attempt to incorporate the viewers' attitudes in the message in order to influence them--were surveyed for this study to determine the procedures used in the planning and production of educational films. This survey replicated a 1981 study by Simonson, but included several follow up…

The "new" anti-racists of the 1980s in contemporary Britain consider racism, particularly against blacks, as both a structural and a white problem. Anti-racist activists, whose attitude is a mirror-image of the political left's general concern about the media--where blacks are in the minority--regard the media, especially television, as…

A review of research conducted in Egypt to assess the impact of videocassette recorders (VCRs) on society and on other communication media indicates that the use of VCRs--a new phenomenon in mass communication in that country--has been accelerating over the past five years as more people have been gradually exposed to the advantages of unlimited…

This analysis of government regulation of America's broadcast service provides: (1) a historical view of radio and television regulation, including the doctrines of scarcity and public trustee and other areas affected by deregulation in particular; (2) an analysis of the argument for deregulation; and (3) an assessment of the First Amendment, the…

How did Oliver North, who appeared to be a criminal and a liar, become an American hero? First the context must be considered. The Iran-Contra Affair was extremely complex with actors ranging from Eugene Hasenfus to President Ronald Reagan and settings ranging from Nicaragua to Israel to Iran. This complexity extended to the televised hearings…

This study considers the ways in which the television set appeared and figured in representations of domestic space in middle class women's home magazines from 1948 to 1955. The effect of television on the home from the housewife's perspective is described as two-fold: something which called for a careful rearrangement of the home and the…

Edward R. Murrow is considered by many to be the first serious practitioner of broadcast journalism. In the 1950s he pioneered in developing the television documentary form with the "See It Now" series. A second series, "Person to Person," played a large part in popularizing the televised celebrity interview. Characterizations…