Reconsiders the usual typologies of diagram presentations, questioning accepted taxonomies. Examines diagrammatic structures, revealing some hardened categories. Suggests that new discoveries can be made if questions are raised about how information is framed. (SR)

Describes a researcher's efforts to study how electronic communities function. Offers guidelines for citing electronic mail in investigations of electronic interactions. (RS)

Examines the roles of convention, conflict, and conversation in the formation of audience constructs. Finds that writers' textual choices to address or invoke audiences are based more on institutional conventions than on either disciplinary conventions or on situational conditions and constraints. (SR)

Examines gender differences in how 800 organizationally experienced and work-oriented women and men rated the importance of 8 characteristics of effective work teams. Finds that women rated the importance of (1) team members' job knowledge; (2) competent, respected, and fair leadership; and (3) team members' liking, trusting and helping each other…

Discusses the methodological issues of the role of "critique" and the role of an author's announced or apparent political commitments in ethnography. Compares and contrasts the views of John Fiske and Donal Carbaugh (whose articles appear in the same issue of this journal) on these issues. (PRA)

Asserts that suspension by the Federal Communications Commission of the Fairness Doctrine (which required broadcasters to air controversy and air it fairly) has not led to greater amounts of controversial programing. Argues that cancellation of the rule may in fact have limited the airing of controversy. (SG)

Investigates whether variations in five audience characteristics (size, status, familiarity, similarity, and behavior) are related to audience anxiety. Supports the contention that the effect of situational factors are greatly tempered by an individual's predisposition to respond anxiously. Discusses instructional implications of these findings.…

Examines the types of arguments used in newspaper editorials about presidential debates. Advances three claims about argumentative criteria employed in declaring winners: editorials contain the same flaws media critics find in the debates themselves; the press uses debate criteria which it admits are flawed; and ineffectual argumentative criteria…

Identifies upward maintenance tactics reportedly used by subordinates in maintaining an acceptable relational state with their supervisor. Concludes that in high quality supervisory relationships, upward maintenance tactics may be multifunctional, simultaneously preserving relational stability and the capacity for negotiation and change. (SR)

Focuses on the phenomenon of intentional embarrassment as a strategy for attaining goals. Finds that embarrassment is used as a deliberate strategy and that the goal attempted, as well as the tactic employed, were predictors of success in achieving goals, although no interaction effect was found. (NH)

Considers how some forms of communication accommodate distance between sender and receiver. Formulates concepts and axioms that serve as principles for the general communication context, distance or proximate. Discusses how these concepts matter to theoretical models and the teaching of communications. (HB)

Gives examples of how qualitative methodologies have been employed to study media reception in the present. Identifies some forms of evidence that can creatively fill the gaps in knowledge about media reception in the past. Argues that the field must develop databases documenting media reception, which may broaden the scope of audience research in…

Addresses some of the fundamental assumptions of an information processing approach to mass media effects and the contributions it brings to mass communication. Traces the conceptual and methodological innovations of an information processing perspective as they have been applied to the study of television since the 1980s. (SR)

Challenges the increasingly comfortable relationship between cultural studies and communication, in which cultural studies has compromised itself by remaking itself within the image of communication studies. Advocates a cultural studies built on the concept of articulation. (SR)

Looks at arguments about the lineage of the field of mass communication, identifying and discussing three major discernable positions. (SR)