Sections of the newspaper "USA Today" were compared with corresponding sections of four major newspapers--the "New York Times," the "Wall Street Journal," the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner," and the "Los Angeles Times"--to determine what editorial components made "USA Today" different and…

A study was conducted to determine who, within a target user group, used and benefitted from a videotex system. The subjects were large-scale farmers who agreed to have videotex terminals installed in their homes to receive a wide range of informational and commercial transaction services provided by a bank holding company. At the end of an…

Despite a tradition of government secrecy, Canada recently adopted freedom of information legislation. Reflecting greater public and media interest in the issue of public access to information and government secrecy, Bill C-34, the Access to Information Act, received royal assent in 1982, as did a privacy act, enacted to protect the complementary…

The Farmers' Alliance was organized in Texas in 1877, and soon spread through the South and Midwest. Farmers formed cooperatives to combat the crop-lien system that bound them to furnishing merchants and to oppose differential railroad rates that hampered the shipment of their crops. As it grew, the alliance began to demand other land,…

Preliminary data from a study-in-progress support the view that public information campaigns may have greater efficacy than shown by previous research. To evaluate the public impact of the Advertising Council's "Take a Bite Out of Crime" campaign, which was aimed at promoting greater citizen involvement in crime prevention activities,…

To determine the extent to which Chinese mass media reflected official policy concerning U.S.-Sino relations during the six year period after the 1979 normalization of relations, a study examined Chinese newspapers and evaluated their treatment of U.S. actions. News stories, editorials, columns, and features in the Foreign Broadcasting Information…

The current Australian scene is a good example of how American culture as portrayed in the mass media is reflected by a receptor national culture. Australia, sharing a similar history and a common language with the United States, has virtually no resistance to American culture. Some differences in national characteristics, such as the Australian…

Prior research has shown that the media play an agenda-setting role in political campaigns. A theoretical model was developed to investigate intrapersonal agenda's relationship with certain contingent factors. To test the model a study of the intrapersonal agenda (personally perceived salience of public issues) was then conducted as part of the…

With the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos from his 20-year rule of the Philippines, the news media regained its freedom and its voice, and now faces a new set of problems: low circulation, questionable ethical standards of reporters and their lack of experience, and ominous indications from the Corazon Aquino government that the administration might…

A study examined the role of the mass media in the symbolization process (a process which was necessary to distract attention from the political and economic problems of the European Community and to enhance support of the powerless parliament) during the European election campaign of 1984 and whether symbolization strengthened the motivation for…

Communication researchers should ask more explicit questions concerning the processes by which mediated messages can create, modify, or reinforce beliefs about social actors and social environments. There are four general categories into which to divide variables concerning processing strategies for mediated social information: source…

A response to Richard E. Clark's conclusion that media research needs to stop emphasizing descriptive research and focus on prescriptive research designs and questions, this paper reiterates the distinctions between disciplines and applied fields of study, and suggests that these distinctions should be evident in the descriptive/prescriptive…

In Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, The United States Supreme Court ruled that school administrators "need not tolerate" student speech deemed inconsistent with a school's educational mission. To study the effects of the ruling, a 36-question survey was mailed to a random sample of just under 1,600 American public high school English/Journalism…

To examine factors which influenced the media's agenda-building process during a primary election period in Mississippi, a study explored candidates' personal attributes, campaign resourcefulness, and media connectedness as important agenda-building variables. Candidates for Mississippi's United States House of Representatives seats in 1982 and…