A study investigated the viewing behavior of a sample of public television supporters, specifically examining the relationship of their social characteristics to viewing and to knowledge about Africa as presented in the series "The Africans." Subjects, 120 District of Columbia adults drawn from the membership lists of a local public TV…

Focusing on how television viewing fits into a general model of consumer consumption patterns, a study examined (1) the extent to which the viewing of certain television content can be considered a "norm" of society, (2) similarities and differences between the norms for adults and those for children, and (3) some of the antecedents of…

The purpose of a mass media study was to (l) identify mass media types (patterns of exposure to mass media content) among seventh graders, high school juniors, and adults in a given geographic area; (2) show similarities and differences in the mass media types isolated for these three age groups; (3) pinpoint demographic variables most strongly…

A study by James E. Grunig and his students at the University of Maryland tested a refined version of Grunig's situational theory of communication behavior (1968) by surveying the attitudes of the public regarding Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). In preparation for the study, 20 years of research conducted by Grunig and his students was…

Economic change in China is coming about through wide-ranging economic reforms, is taking place at an unprecedented pace, and is affecting the lives of many of the inhabitants of the world's most populous nation. However, the attempts to reform the political process have been slow, like the attempts to reform the Chinese press. The Chinese press…

This paper makes a critical exploration into the core epistemological assumptions of mainstream television effects research and explains why the mainstream study of the cognitive impact of television on children suffers from two reductionist tendencies, i.e., television is understood by most researchers to be solely a technical medium, and most…

To document the effects of television public service announcements (PSAs) in a community setting, a public service campaign was designed and implemented to stimulate awareness of and behavioral response to problems of hypertension among urban Mexican Americans in Houston. Three pretested Spanish language PSAs were designed to motivate the audience…

The Portuguese press is now guaranteed free access to official sources of information, professional confidentiality, freedom of publication and of competition, and the independence of the professional journalist; yet its ability to influence public opinion is limited by a traditional expectation of governmental repression and by present financial…

Current research on adolescence provides plenty of facts about delinquency, unemployment, and illegitimacy, yet tells us little or nothing about the inner life of adolescents. In an attempt to provide more information, the research reported on here describes the "periods" of adolescence as they are structured in the various…

Recognizing that students spend more time before the television set than in school, this monograph evaluates television as a potential resource in the teaching of English. The nine articles in the collection (1) discuss the effect of massive television viewing on children in and out of the classroom; (2) examine the students' need to apply…

Students in a children and television course wrote their "television autobiographies" (that is, their relationship with TV). Forty-three students at a mid-size upstate New York college participated. The autobiographies corroborated the results of previous quantitative and qualitative research, but added a personal, more in-depth look at the…

To see whether the subject matter of magazines of general circulation and the subject matter of public concern coincide, a study examined the volume of coverage of United States-Soviet relations, communism, and issues of nuclear warfare between the two nations in twentieth century popular magazines. The "Reader's Guide to Periodical…

If one counts both the mid-term and presidential elections, the United States has had the lowest voter turnout of any democracy in the world. In the 1986 election, only 16.6% of the eligible 18-24 year olds voted, and although final census surveys for that year are not yet published, it is unlikely that the turnout for that age group would have…

Teaching students how to be intelligent newspaper readers and television watchers is one of the most useful and interesting ways to help them bridge their current and future lives and to understand the role of the news media in a democratic society. Understanding of the media is a prerequisite to effective citizen participation in politics and…

Recent trends in television programming, in which women characters are portrayed more frequently than in the past in what had been traditionally male occupations, present new opportunities to examine the relationship of television use to the occupational desires of male and, particularly, female adolescents. A study examined this relationship in…