The Politics and Mass Media section of the proceedings contains the following eight papers: "Politics and the War on Drugs: Patterns of News Coverage" (Lisa Brockmeier); "The Challenge of Bearing Witness in Political Reporting: Making the Public Conversational Partners" (Karon Reinboth Speckman); "The Concrete-Avoidance Model: Media, Public Opinion, and the Gulf War" (Karon Reinboth Speckman); "Voters' Reasoning Processes and Media Influences during the Persian Gulf War" (Zhongdang Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki); "Voices of Dissent during the Gulf War: Did the Media Regard the Anti-War Movement as a Legitimate Challenger?" (Suzanne R. Yows); "Constructing News Narratives: ABC and CNN Cover the Gulf War" (Bethami A. Dobkin); "Effects of a One-Week Change in Media Habits on Knowledge and Judgments about Presidential Primary Candidates: A Field Experiment" (M. A. Ferguson and others); and "Election-Year Usefulness of Newspapers and Other Information Sources for Alabama Legislators" (Daniel Riffe). (RS)