A study investigated whether the amount of "soft news" coverage for the three major American broadcast television networks increased during the period from 1972 to 1987. A total of 558 broadcasts were analyzed. Each news story was coded and placed into one of four categories concerning its timeliness and whether it was "hard"…

A study explored the function of issues management in the decisionmaking process of policy makers and strategic planners as it is practiced in contemporary organizations. A sample of 56 professionals participated in a mail survey. Their accounts of how issues management operated in their organizations were evaluated with the use of descriptive…

Building from scholarly works on persuasion and compliance-gaining, a study investigated magazine query letters that attempt to persuade an editor to buy the article offered, examining what message elements make them successful. Forty magazine editors provided copies of 100 recently accepted magazine query letters, which were compared with 50…

A study examined how school newspapers in residential schools for deaf persons acted as a mode of transmission for the issues of the deaf community itself and to the outside world. It investigated the content and format of these newspapers (known collectively as "Little Papers") in four geographic locations in the United States, in an…

A study determined the relationship between basal illustrations and contextual meaning. Five basals were analyzed to determine the percentage of illustration miscues appearing in each story. The basals chosen were from Silver Burdett and Ginn, Houghton Mifflin, Scott Foresman, Holt Rinehart and Winston, and D.C. Heath and Company. Results…

The place to begin curricular change (in response to changing demography and cultural diversity) is with establishing general learning goals that the changes will be designed to address. The first criteria for any curricular decisions for a basic speech communication course should be: change must provide an opportunity for learning that is…

A study analyzed the readability of seven central Florida newspapers (one of which is a college newspaper) and "USA Today.""Rightwriter," a grammar checker and readability computer program, was used to evaluate front page articles for each of the eight newspapers. The readability formulas invoked in the readability program…

This study examined the letters that 438 children aged 2 through 12 wrote to "Santa Claus" in care of a local newspaper in 1992. The letters were scored for: (1) number of toys requested; (2) non-toy requests; (3) specific requests for others; (4) intangible requests (i.e., world peace); (5) total toy price; and (6) number of toys…

A study examined the interactions of siblings in television families in three popular sitcoms of the 1950s--"Father Knows Best,""Leave it To Beaver," and "Ozzie and Harriet." Nine episodes of each sitcom were videotaped, and the behaviors were coded using a system developed to code sibling behavior in 1980s sitcoms.…

To test the findings of a 1981 study, which concluded that the Supreme Court of Chief Justice Warren Burger has attempted to reverse the liberal policies of the court presided over by Earl Warren by adopting a policy of ignoring precedent, a second study duplicated the earlier study's general research design, except that it focused on freedom of…

Intended for any consumer who wishes to be informed and on guard against the persuasive tactics of the media, this book presents a method for analyzing and understanding the basic pattern of persuasion in commercial advertisements. The first chapter explains why it is important and useful to develop this critical skill. The next five chapters…

Observing that most adults' present conceptions of the computer have been shaped by media images, a content analysis was conducted of 169 articles on computers published in six popular magazines from the 1940s through 1969. The articles were coded in terms of their themes and topics, and the specific terms used to refer to computers in each…

Supports the hypothesis that as the sciences have grown in recent decades, becoming more diverse and pluralistic, the mass media have reported a broader range of controversies involving science. (RB)

Concludes that the New York press was not responsible for Canada's anti-Northern attitude following the Civil War. (RB)

Analyzes ten of the most publicized and widely used textbooks in the technical writing field for reading level, organization, completeness in covering the subject and providing sufficient models, and price. (RB)