A study was conducted to examine the relationships among communication, social class, and ethnic heritage. Eleven of thirteen ethnic groups in a Midwestern metropolitan area who had been studied in 1976 were surveyed again in late 1980 and early 1981. Groups surveyed were Irish, Greek, Czech, Italian, Lebanese, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish,…

This paper argues that the United States Supreme Court's 1978 "FCC v. Pacifica Foundation" decision, in which the Court held that broadcasters must refrain from transmitting unseemly language at a time of day when children are most likely to be in the audience, has created a perilous dilemma for broadcasters: how to accommodate a child's…

Television's role within the familial setting is the subject of a research program being conducted at the Universities of Hartford, Texas, and Utah, proceeding on the premise that television functions within a variety of environmental influences, all of which act in varying combinations to produce a wide range of effects within viewers. The…

The fairness doctrine was established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promote public debate over the media and to ensure that opposing viewpoints be heard on issues of public importance. To change the image of women as portrayed in the mass media, the National Organization for Women (NOW) focused on television because of the…

Two methods of structuring textual material, information mapping and programmed instruction, were compared on the basis of their ability to facilitate recall and subsequent retrieval of information. Both methods produced very significant gain scores, although no differential effects occurred. Retrieval of information from the text, a task…

Twenty five urban centers, 70 Indian tribes, and 60 public television stations responded to questionnaires in an attempt to collect information useful to the process of making programmatic decisions about future goals and activities of the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium (NAPBC). The Tribal and Urban Center questionnaires were…

A PROCEDURE WAS DEVELOPED WHEREBY EDUCATIONAL SPECIALISTS COULD PREPARE THE SPECIFICATIONS FOR MEDIA IN WHICH VARIOUS SEQUENCES OF INSTRUCTION WOULD BE PROGRAMED AND DEVELOPED. PROCEDURES WERE DEVELOPED AND TRIED FOR A SET OF BEHAVIORAL OBJECTIVES FOR AN EXPERIMENTAL CURRICULUM IN SCIENCE INSTRUCTION. IT WAS POSSIBLE TO ILLUSTRATE AND IMPLEMENT…

Data from similar questionnaires were used to compare the high school yearbook programs that produced All-American ratings in the 1969 and 1979 National Scholastic Press Association competitions. Responses for the two survey periods suggested that many aspects of the programs' successful yearbooks have remained unchanged during the past decade,…

This set of three papers is an account of the Finnish approach to mass media education and to the research orientation which instigated it. "From Mass Media to Mass Consciousness; Current Thinking in Scandinavia" provides a research orientation, presents several examples of research projects, and lists central theoretical assumptions that underlie…

A public affairs information acquisition model postulated 26 causal lines among the background variables parental status, educational attainment, income, social/political participation, five communication sources, and public affairs information status. Since this sequential model had 35 possible paths among the variables but hypothesized that only…

A sample of 1,048 seventh through twelfth grade students in Richmond, Virginia, was surveyed to determine whether they read the local morning newspaper, what features or types of news interested them, and what exposure they had to other daily newspapers and to television. Survey results are as follows: nine out of ten students were exposed to…

The news gathering behaviors of 24 mass media science writers were examined at individual (occupational) and organizational levels through personal interviews, observation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and content analysis of the stories produced. Data indicated that organizational constraints…

AS THE EDUCATOR FACES DECISIONS ABOUT NEW TECHNOLOGY, HE NEEDS PRACTICAL RESEARCH ON WHICH TO BASE HIS DECISIONS. A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO RESEARCH, RATHER THAN A PIECEMEAL ONE, IS HIGHLY DESIRABLE. SUCH AN APPROACH COULD EMPLOY SIMULATION TECHNIQUES, WHICH DIFFER FROM CONTEXTUAL ONES PRIMARILY IN SCOPE AND CONTROL, AND WHICH CAN DEAL WITH A WIDE…

A study was conducted to determine the relationships between three variables related to the assimilation process of immigrants to the United States-familiarity with English, degree of identification with the new culture, and degree of attachment to the homeland--and three variables related to media needs--the need for information, the need to…

Twelve different conversion plans were delineated and evaluated in the performance of this study effort. An indepth technical, financial, and cost/benefit analysis was included. One plan was determined to be distinctively more cost-effective than any of the other plans because it provided a technically feasible system that assured the maximum…