This paper discusses the implications of James D. Thompson's generalized model of the organization model for organizational- and institutional-level analysis of the newspaper. The paper focuses on the following points of consideration and how they apply to newspapers: (1) organizations are open systems operating under norms of rationality; (2) the…

A study assessed the value of obtaining newspaper readership and attitudinal characteristics from both spouses in a household, in order to examine the influence that one spouse's media behavior may have on the other. A mailed questionnaire received 142 joint spouse responses in a small midwestern city. Results indicated that knowing one spouse's…

Network television news has often been accused of inciting and prolonging incidents of public violence, whether riots or terrorism, and in South Africa this type of thinking has led to increasingly stringent restrictions on both domestic and foreign media covering the violent unrest there. A study determined a chronology of events and analyzed the…

A study compared information made available to the media by the White House with information provided to the public by the media to examine the extent to which the White House information agenda influenced the media's agenda. Content analysis was used to compare information disseminated by the White House between June 1 and June 28, 1986 with news…

A study examined readership and consumer patterns for subscribers of a new upscale home and garden magazine, in order to construct a demographic profile of the typical subscriber and to determine the magazine content preferred by these subscribers, as well as the lifestyle maintained by these individuals. Subjects, 603 randomly selected…

Historically, legislation or judicial review successfully controlled threats to personal privacy by information technology. Wiretapping legislation, for example, developed along with sophisticated telephone equipment. Today, however, the law is unable to respond quickly enough to the constantly changing situations and behaviors created by massive…

A study compared the decision making process of large and small advertising agencies to determine if the size of the agency, in terms of gross annual billing, had any effect on adherence to the rules set forth in the American Association of Advertising's Standards of Practice. Forty agency employees, 20 from agencies with billings less than $2.5…

Editorials in four prestigious American papers and two Filipino dailies addressing the 1986 election and revolution in the Philippines were compared for differences. Four hypotheses were tested: (1) that in treatment of the Philippines, editorials in the U.S. national prestige press would place more emphasis than do those in the Filipino…

An exploratory study examined the perceptions of creative directors and broadcast production managers in advertising agencies regarding the perceived effects of the 15-second commercial upon creative formats and production techniques. A sample of 600 randomly selected advertising executives and managers were surveyed using a 55-item mailed…

A study examined the relationship between newspaper coverage of issues and public concern about them at the neighborhood and community-wide levels in an urban area. It was hypothesized that (1) newspaper coverage of issues would be more strongly related to concern about perceived community than neighborhood issues, (2) newspaper coverage would…

This study focused on the cognitive conflicts experienced by young children in using software programs that provided them with tools to create and/or combine individual graphic elements into larger structures. Six 5-year-old children, none with prior computer experience, were observed using three programs--Kids at Work, Picture Perfect, and…

Developing a theme drawn from speculative writing of the nineteenth century--that technology, like biological species, undergoes a process of evolution--this paper explores the thesis that if technology divides from its human creators and perfects itself until it gains the capacity for self replication, it cannot return to its creator. Using…

The idea that mass communication effects may decrease diversity among people or societies exposed to it arises constantly. However, discussions of mass media effects do not highlight differences between mass communications that "affect" people uniformly and messages that members of audiences "respond to" in similar ways. A…

A study examined how the diversity of media sources affected the structure of social issue cognitions. Interviews with 239 adults produced data concerning (1) the need for cognition, (2) issue domain salience, (3) source reliance, (4) source diversity, (5) source exposure, (6) issue domain differentiation, and (7) domain integration. Support was…

To investigate whether "USA Today" emphasizes "good news" over "bad news," a study was conducted using 10 randomly selected adults in State College, Pennsylvania, over an 11-week period in 1985. Subjects were asked to rate 248 stories over 45 pages of main news columns in 10 issues on a scale ranging from 1 (very…