The acquisition of knowledge is concomitant to the writing process and, as such, is a key factor in composition pedagogy. Writing is not just a skill with which the student presents or analyzes knowledge, rather, writing is essential to the very existence of certain kinds of knowledge. Much of writing instruction, however, consists mainly of genre…

"Channel One" is a 12-minute daily TV news program designed specifically to be broadcast to high schools. A study examined critically the content of "Channel One" commercials to determine the values, themes, formats, and appeals used to pitch products to students, with special emphasis placed on the values used and promoted in…

Writing teachers should employ a pragmatic-eclectic approach to help freshman students become acquainted with as many writing models as possible. To privilege one model over the many others is to ignore the student's need for self- and world-discovery. The composition classroom has become the current center of critical reading and thinking skills,…

This study examined the influence of the affective nature of television news on satisfaction with an individual's own life as well as on an individual's outlook regarding good fortune and misfortune. Subjects, 30 male and 30 female undergraduates at Indiana University, viewed a variety of news stories and completed two questionnaires, one rating…

Focusing on the impact of advertisers' persuasive selling messages on consumers, this paper discusses topics relating to the theory of psychological type congruence. Based on an examination of persuasion theory and relevant psychological concepts, including recent cognitive stability and personality and needs theory and the older concept of…

Content area writers need a method of operating that integrates the ways of science but without using the proofs used by specialists. Two concepts from the New Rhetoric--S. Toulmin's "warrants" and C. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca's "universal audience"--might enable English professors to serve a regulative or balancing…

To address the issues of drunk driving and failure to use car restraints among teens and young adults, a 21-month-long media campaign has been developed especially for the 15- to 24-year-old audience to compare the effectiveness of paid advertisements and public service announcements. A formative research approach to message design will be used to…

Noting that attention, or increased mental effort, has long been recognized as an important variable in the processing of mass communication messages, this paper examines both methodological and theoretical issues associated with the measurement of attention, particularly to the news and public affairs content in the news media. After a brief…

Examining responses to print alcohol advertisements, a study questioned whether alcohol advertisers distinguish between "hard" and "soft" liquors (e.g. wine coolers and liqueurs). Subjects, 102 junior and senior high school students in a major metropolitan area, were asked to examine one set of three ads--either hard liquor ads…

In July 1984, British Channel 4 began televising Case on Camera, a series based on genuine arbitration of civil cases carried out by a retired judge, recorded as it happened, and edited into half hour programs. Because of the Independent Broadcasting Authority's concern for the rights to privacy, a systematic study of public reaction to the series…

This paper describes a study which compared an actual television schedule with an "abstract" schedule in order to determine what the forces are that forge a television schedule and how these forces interact. The report is presented in six sections: (1) a statement of the problem; (2) a discussion of the notion of the abstract schedule…

This paper identifies and examines a textual practice of female address in music video, and considers its appeal among a social audience of female adolescents. Textual strategies that inflect, appropriate, or bypass the prevailing male adolescence discourse on the American music video channel, MTV, are presented from the standpoint of their…

This paper begins with a review of the literature that addresses the broad concerns of youth and media, with particular focus on children and adolescents, then moves on to explain the purpose of this specific study, i.e., to determine the nature of Nigerian young people's access to/use of television and to the competing media of radio and…

A phenomenon which tends to transform the function and methods of traditional television consumption is the gradual reduction of its "mass" dimensions, which tend to disappear for an increasing share of the audience. This reduction of the mass dimension ranges from fragmentation of the audience to its segmentation, and, in the most…

The race between Mary Decker and Zola Budd, a head to head confrontation in the 1985 Olympic Games, is examined within the broader context of the transformation taking place in sports as a result of the combined efforts of television and the economic forces of sponsorship. Athletics is going through this process of transformation both economically…