The concept of knowledge gap (the discrepancy in the amount of information acquired by different groups of people reached by mass communication) can be critically examined to consider its theoretical and practical implications in the context of using communication to bring about changes in society. Some causes of knowledge gap include differences…

This two-volume report of a planning study conducted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting presents an assessment of the opportunities and risks associated with public broadcasting's involvement in teletext and videotext. Volume 1 contains a strategic assessment that offers analysis, recommendations, and conclusions regarding the market for…

A 10-minute videotape program that reviews library skills was evaluated with 8 fifth and sixth grade classes in the St. Louis area to determine both the effectiveness of the program itself and the method of formative program evaluation. The program used videotaped slides to present program ideas. Questions focused on whether students who viewed…

To explore the relative roles played by news views and public relations efforts in determining amount of news coverage, a study assessed the independent roles of public relations efforts, research productivity, and school prestige in securing science news coverage for American medical schools. Data consisted of archival and survey data obtained…

Research indicates that the media play a role in shaping the information that voters have about election options. Knowledge of those options has been related to actual vote, but has not been shown to be strongly related to uncertainty. Uncertainty, however, does seem to motivate voters to engage in communication activities, some of which may…

A four-month investigation was conducted of media coverage of two controversies involving government officials in Detroit, Michigan. Data were gathered from three sources: journalists involved in covering the stories, people involved in the stories, and the printed stories. Using public documents, the history of one of the controversies was…

In this field experiment, first and second grade children were given the opportunity to listen to radio instruction coordinated with a television cartoon. The experimenters measured to what extent children watched the cartoon, listened to the radio instruction, and learned vocabulary words taught via radio. (Author)

In 1956, the Press Research Centre was established in Cracow, Poland by a group of journalists and publishers, for the purpose of instituting press research that would have practical applications. The aims of the Centre were to conduct studies on the history of the Polish press, the contemporary press, press readership, and editorial techniques.…

This study sought evidence that the switch to electronic news gathering (ENG) by local television stations has changed news selection or news presentation. A content analysis was performed during five days of newscasts at three network-operated Los Angeles television stations that were in various stages of converting to total ENG. Although the…

A 1977 national survey of 216 television stations that use electronic news gathering (ENG) and of 224 stations that still use only film for camera reporting showed little difference in the types of news the two kinds of operations covered, although stations using ENG shot more stories than did those still using only film. The persons making…

Two hundred college students participated in a comparison of film and videotape television content. After viewing a three-minute dance segment on either film or videotape, students in the experimental groups completed a set of 15 bipolar adjective scales relating to organizational and aesthetic components and made judgments of the technical…

On 9 September 1976, the Aspen Institute Program on Communications and Society, the League of Women Voters, and the Post/Newsweek Broadcast Stations sponsored a public meeting in New York. The subject of the meeting was politics and television; the participants were leading political advertisers, journalists, and researchers. This monograph…

Intended for use by both producers and evaluators of textbooks and other print instructional materials, this review of the literature focuses on the effectiveness of illustrations for motivation and for learning, and such typographical variables as readibality, legibility, standard typographical conventions, and format and layout. Areas examined…

Algeria and Tunisia, where newspapers in both French and Arabic have large circulations, were used as case studies to test ideas about elite journalism. It was hypothesized that if French language newspapers appealed to the intelligentsia and opinion leaders, then their content should be serious and responsible; and that, by contrast, the Arabic…

A study collected data from 763 door-to-door interviews to test hypotheses about the uses and gratifications associated with newspaper readerships. In the interviews, respondents were identified demographically, asked about their newspaper reading behaviors, and asked to reply to a series of uses and gratifications statements on why they read…