An ethnographic study explored the critical evaluations of audience members who viewed an ethnographic performance adapted, directed, and performed by a doctoral student in the Speech Communication Department on the campus of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. The performance was a one-person show consisting of a series of personal…

This report summarizes the findings of a research project involving a consortium of American art museums that joined forced to understand themselves better from the perspective of their visitors. The project had three objectives: (1) to identify staff expectations and impressions of public expectations about art museums; (2) to evaluate public…

A qualitative study examined how teenagers react to and interpret certain popular media messages. In addition it explored the relationship between content containing various sexual messages and teenagers' responses to those messages, with particular attention to the critical abilities this audience exhibits. Fifty male and female teenagers aged…

A study examined the impact of remote control devices, videocassette recorders, and cable television on inheritance effects (the tendency for viewers to continue watching a channel at the conclusion of a program). Inheritance effects were measured by calculating the correlation between program share and lead-in program share for all primetime…

A study examined the uses and functions of broadcast sports programming as compared with in-person attendance of sporting events by focusing on the motivations, behavior, and attitudes of audiences toward such activities. Subjects, 219 students from a major western university, completed a survey instrument. Findings indicated that: (1) sports…

This paper discusses how "The Ladies' Home Journal" was used by its editor, Edward Bok, in his crusade for food and drug regulation in the United States between the years 1890 and 1906, and whether these efforts were influential in bringing about the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The first section describes "The Ladies' Home…

The "Main Street Mississippi Meets the Third World" project was designed to demonstrate that hometown newspapers can provide relevant news stories about developing countries without leaving the local community. Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and the "American" were the selected site and newspaper. The project involved working with…

Becoming involved in the arts is a process that involves movement through several stages, from disinterest to active attendance at and enthusiasm for performing arts events. Since target consumers at any time will differ in their placement on this continuum, marketing programs to expand arts audiences must first identify where each target segment…

Clarifying for both the playgoer and the playmaker the concept of theater as an institution for game-playing, this book analyzes the identifiable urges common to all theatergoers and deals with their immediate emotional experiences. Directing its discussion primarily to playwrights and directors and only secondarily to actors and scenic artists,…

Teen television, which in large part is made up of moral dilemmas, is often a topic of adolescent discussion. Discussions among adolescent friends are viewed as playing an essential role in moral reasoning development, making it important to investigate television's potential to stimulate these discussions. A study investigated adolescent girls'…

Outlines a theoretically driven approach to identifying strategic audiences for nonformal environmental education and communication efforts. Offers a rationale for determining message content for site-based interpretive programs. Contains 18 references. (DDR)

Examines the role of orality in multiple-audience analysis and adaptation. Finds that interaction is the central means of analyzing and adapting discourse to multiple audiences, fulfilling rhetorical and social goals, and building and sustaining a corporate culture. Suggests that orality is more potent than literacy in composing behavior and…

Explores the consequences of using "masculine" versus "feminine" strategies in political commercials for female candidates. Reports that the "aggressive" strategy worked better than the "non-aggressive" strategy, and that the "career" strategy worked better than the "family" strategy. (MM)

Explores a view of audience behavior that lies between the extremes of a passive audience expected to be influenced by communication messages and an active audience expected to make rational decisions about what media content to accept and reject. (RS)

Compares and contrasts two studies representing diametrical approaches (Romanticism versus Realism) toward the issue of agency and media effects: P. Willis's "Common Culture" and W. A. Gamson's "Talking Politics." Argues that both studies find that people make their own uses of media. (SR)