bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Latest from the Canadian Revolution: Early War Correspondence in the New York Herald, 1837–1838
Authors: Bjork Ulf Jonas
Published: December 2011

In December 1837, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett announced to his readers that he had decided to dispatch special correspondents to report on armed uprisings in Canada. His decision constitutes one of the earliest uses of war correspondents by the American press, and it was part of a developing practice to draw on contributors specifically engaged to furnish newspapers with reports from afar. While other papers also sent correspondents to cover the Canadian conflict, the Herald stood out because of the structure and organization of its news gathering efforts.
The Effectiveness of Locator Maps in Increasing Reader Understanding of the Geography of Foreign News
Authors: Griffin Jeffrey L. , Stevenson Robert L.
Published: December 2011

This study tested the influence of two techniques of providing contextual geographical information in foreign news stories - the traditional method of weaving it into the text and the increasingly common method of including a map with the story. Results of the experiment indicated that newspaper readers' understanding of the geographical context of a foreign event can be increased either by building geographical information into the text or by including a map, but the most effective technique is the redundant one of providing geographical information both in the text and via a map.
Voter Learning in the 1992 Presidential Election: Did the “Nontraditional” Media and Debates Matter?
Authors: Weaver David , Drew Dan
Published: December 2011

This study is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 504 adult Indiana residents from 21 October to 2 November 1992. Through hierarchical multiple regression analyses it seeks to test whether more exposure and attention to “nontraditional” news media (such as television “talk shows” and the morning TV network shows) predicted more knowledge of the issue positions of the candidates, a greater likelihood of voting, or more interest in the campaign. Statistical controls for demographics, traditional news media exposure and attention, and presidential debate exposure are introduced. This study also examines whether more exposure and attention to the traditional news media of radio, television, and newspapers, as well as exposure to the televised presidential debates, is associated with more campaign interest and knowledge after controlling for various demographics.
Tracing Sources of Information Pollution: A Survey and Experimental Test of Print Media's Labeling Policy for Feature Advertising
Authors: Cameron Glen T. , Curtin Patricia A.
Published: December 2011

This study explores feature advertising, or single advertisements designed to look like editorial copy. A national survey of editors and ad managers at newspapers and magazines found that print media typically have an unwritten policy to label feature ads as advertisements. An information processing experiment was performed to test the efficacy of such labeling. Experimental results suggest that feature ads borrow from the editorial credibility of a publication and that the current labeling policy does not adequately address the problem.
Popular Propaganda: The Food Administration in World War I
Authors: Ponder Stephen
Published: December 2011

The U.S. Food Administration, whose nationwide campaigns for food conservation between 1917 and 1919 at times rivaled the intrusiveness of the better-known Committee on Public Information, was regarded as a worthy, even inspirational use of government propaganda in a noble cause by its volunteers, who included journalists, reformers, and suffragists, as well as publicists and advertising experts. This study suggests a more complex legacy of wartime persuasion from this period than the traditional framework of government manipulation and journalistic resistance.
The Rise and Fall of the World Economic Herald, 1980–1989
Authors: Shen Jinguo
Published: December 2011

This study of the Chinese newspaper, the World Economic Herald, explores the establishment of this independent newspaper in a socialist country and the role of the newspaper and its staff in fighting press control and promoting economic and political reform in China.
Job Satisfaction among Newsworkers: The Influence of Professionalism, Perceptions of Organizational Structure, and Social Attributes
Authors: Pollard George
Published: December 2011

Organizations stress routinized activities that contribute to profitability. Professionalism stresses ethical performance that contributes to social responsibility. When the organization prevails, autonomy, authority, and control, the hallmarks of professionalism, weaken. This leads to a decrease in the intrinsic meaning of work and, ultimately, less job satisfaction. Using a stratified random national sample, these assumptions were explored among Canadian newsworkers. More professionalism, a less formal and smaller organization, media sector, and several social attributes lead to more job satisfaction. Newspaper workers were most satisfied due to a combination of intrinsic factors, such as autonomy, authority, and control of work, and extrinsic factors, such as job security and income.
Does the Watchdog Bite? Newspaper AD Watch Articles and Political Attack ADS
Authors: O'Sullivan Patrick B. , Geiger Seth
Published: December 2011

This study tested the influence of newspaper “ad watch” articles that monitor accuracy of televised political attack ads. Respondents read ad watch articles that either confirmed or disconfirmed ads, watched the ads, and evaluated candidates. Results indicate that attack ads that are confirmed boost the attacking candidate's evaluations while ads that are disconfirmed boomerang to hurt the attacking candidate's evaluations. It appears that newspaper ad watch articles can mediate the impact of television attack ads on candidate evaluations.
London's “Quality” Newspapers: Newspaper Ownership and Reporting Patterns
Authors: Fradgley Kimberley E. , Niebauer Walter E.
Published: December 2011

Departing from the usual philosophical analyses of European media, this study applied empirical methods to examine the relationship between the type of newspaper ownership and news reporting patterns of London's four major “quality” newspapers. Examination of front-page articles from composite weeks in three years showed that independently owned dailies covered stories that required more reportorial effort than did dailies owned by conglomerates. The independent dailies also had more staff-bylined articles, used more enterprise news sources, and covered more stories that involved conflict.
Setting the Community Agenda
Authors: Brewer Marcus , McCombs Maxwell
Published: December 2011

A Texas daily newspaper proposed eight public issues affecting children for the community agenda in a full-page editorial at the beginning of the year. Content analysis of the newspaper for the subsequent year detailed the follow through in the news columns. Comparison of the city budgets in the year before and year after this editorial campaign showed major increases in funding for children's programs.
A Content Analysis of Three Mass Communication Research Traditions: Social Science, Interpretive Studies, and Critical Analysis
Authors: Fink Edward J. , Gantz Walter
Published: December 2011

This study assessed the extent to which researchers conform to the assumptions associated with the social scientific, interpretive, and critical traditions of inquiry. For each tradition, a set of ten variables was examined: ontology, epistemology, nature of the research question, theory, hypotheses, sampling, data collection, verification, data analysis, and generalization. Content analyses of 245 journal articles indicate that researchers conform highly to expectations associated with ontology, epistemology, data collection, and data analysis, but less so with the remaining variables. These data suggest that scholars are strongly guided by the expectations associated with these traditions. Occasional deviations suggest some convergence of attributes.
Modeling Format and Source Effects of an Advocacy Message
Authors: Straughan Dulcie , Bleske Glen L. , Zhao Xinshu
Published: December 2011

When a company wants to spread its ideas, it faces key choices of format and source. It may choose to buy advertising space or to work with media reporters to generate news coverage. The source may be a corporate official, such as the CEO, or it may be an outside, noncommercial authority. The experiment reported in this study suggests that news stories may be more effective than ads. A CEO appears more persuasive than an outside authority because the CEO can generate more interest among the audience. Persuasion, in turn, may lead to behavioral changes.
How Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Influences the Marketing Orientation of U.S. Daily Newspapers
Authors: Beam Randal A.
Published: December 2011

The use of readership research to shape editorial content is becoming increasingly common at U.S. daily newspapers. This practice reflects a “marketing concept” of journalism, which emphasizes tailoring a product to customers' wants and needs. Data from seventy-eight daily newspapers suggest that as uncertainty about the organization's environment increases—specifically, uncertainty about how to serve readers—an organization will strengthen its marketing orientation. The data also suggest that environmental uncertainty is generally not affected by structural characteristics of the community in which the newspaper publishes. That is, there is little evidence that changes in or characteristics of the newspaper's “real” environment strongly influence the degree of uncertainty that editors have about their newspaper's environment.
The Effects of Public Ownership and Newspaper Competition on the Financial Performance of Newspaper Corporations: A Replication and Extension
Authors: Lacy Stephen , Shaver Mary Alice , Cyr Charles St.
Published: December 2011

This study supports the conclusions of a 1993 study by Blankenburg and Ozanich that the degree of public ownership affects the financial performance of media groups. High levels of stock ownership outside the media group result in increased returns to stockholders. The current study included competition as an independent variable and found that groups had lower operating margins and spent a greater percentage of revenues on expenses when a higher percentage of newspapers faced newspaper competition. Overall, the impact of public ownership was slightly greater than that of competition.
Women's Pages or People's Pages: The Production of News for Women in the Washington Post in the 1950S
Authors: Yang Mei-Ling
Published: December 2011

The current debate over whether special newspaper sections for women should be revived is not without a history. The study examines the women's pages of the Washington Post in the 1950s that were edited by Marie Sauer. Although the Post is credited with initiating the change from traditional women's pages toward today's unisex lifestyle sections in 1969, it turned down a similar proposal by Sauer in 1952. Focusing on the Post's internal decision process to maintain sexual segregation of news, this study analyzes how women's pages were shaped by factors such as advertising, professional values, and gender beliefs.
Mass Media Audiences in a Changing Media Environment
Authors: Stempel Guido H. , Hargrove Thomas
Published: December 2011

A national survey of 1,006 respondents found that 70.3% used local TV news as their primary source of news, followed by network TV news, newspapers, and radio news in that order. Use of talk radio, TV magazines, and grocery store tabloids was far less. A factor analysis showed five factors — TV news, radio, print media, computer media, and tabloids.
Diversity in the News: A Conceptual and Methodological Framework
Authors: Voakes Paul S. , Kapfer Jack , Kurpius David , Chern David Shano-Yeon
Published: December 2011

Content diversity, a journalistic tenet that addresses the concept of the marketplace of ideas, is a fundamental dimension of news diversity. This content analysis of newspaper articles measures the difference between diversity of ideas (content) and diversity of sources, two constructs that others have assumed are highly correlated. The findings indicate that the difference is substantial. Although content diversity may sometimes accompany source diversity, it is fallacious to assume that one ensures the other.
The Ideology of Success in Major American Farm Magazines, 1934–1991
Authors: Walter Gerry
Published: December 2011

During the past century, the farm press used farm magazine stories about successful farmers to offer readers models of responses to industrialization and technological change in U.S. agriculture. This analysis of “success” stories in three major American farm magazines from 1934 through 1991 shows they have consistently featured farmers with larger than average farms and portrayed them in a way that promotes conventional, commercial agrarian values of production, efficiency, and expansion. The stories also have used agrarian imagery to further advertiser interests and marginalize more traditional conceptions of farming success.
A Disappearing Enemy: The Image of the United States in Soviet Political Cartoons
Authors: Becker Jonathan A.
Published: December 2011

This article examines changes in the depiction of the United States in Soviet political cartoons from April 1985 through August 1990. It seeks to demonstrate that both qualitative and quantitative changes in the image of the United States were integrally related to changes in U.S./Soviet relations. Changes in the Soviet press were more a product of policy choices of the party and government than of press freedom associated with the policy of glasnost.
Effects of Victim Exemplification in Television News on Viewer Perception of Social Issues
Authors: Aust Charles F. , Zillmann Dolf
Published: December 2011

Two broadcast news stories were manipulated to show victimization (food poisoning, handgun violence) in one of three versions: without victim exemplification, with exemplification by unemotional victims, and with exemplification by highly emotional victims. Male and female respondents, whose empathic sensitivity had been predetermined, recorded their own perceptions of each issue addressed: its severity as a national problem, the likelihood of it becoming a local problem, and the likelihood that they themselves might be placed at risk. They also indicated their reaction to each news story. Emotional victim exemplification fostered perceptions of greater problem severity than unemotional and no victim exemplification. Additionally, emotional victim exemplification, compared with no exemplification, fostered perceptions of increased victimization risk to self, whereas unemotional victim exemplification failed to do so. Empathic sensitivity did not interact with exemplar emotionality, but produced a main effect. Highly empathic persons perceived the severity of danger and risk to themselves as greater than did less empathic persons. Respondent gender similarly produced a main effect without interacting with exemplar emotionality. Female respondents assessed all dangers and risks as higher than did their male counterparts. Finally, exposure to emotional exemplification, but not unemotional exemplification, fostered reports of greater distress reactions than did exposure to the news stories without exemplification. Women reported greater distress than did men, and highly empathic persons reported greater distress than did less empathic persons.
Role of Imagery in Recall of Deviant News
Authors: David Prabu
Published: December 2011

The purpose of this paper is to examine why a deviant news story such as “Man bites dog” is more memorable than “Dog bites man.” Distinctiveness and imagery present two competing theoretical positions to explain the advantage that deviant news events have over nondeviant events. While the distinctiveness hypothesis is based on schema incongruence, the imagery hypothesis is based on Paivio's dual coding theory. Findings from two experiments support the imagery hypothesis, which suggests that imagery-evoking potential of deviant news is a better predictor of recall than schema incongruity. The advantage in recall for deviant news almost disappeared for high deviance/low imagery news events. Further, path analysis from both experiments indicates that there is no direct path between deviance and recall, but only an indirect path through imagery. In sum, this paper highlights the importance of imagery in news language and its potential impact on memory and learning.
Skin Tones and Physical Features of Blacks in Magazine Advertisements
Authors: Keenan Kevin L.
Published: December 2011

This study explores how discrimination based on differences in skin complexion and physical characteristics among African-Americans is conveyed by the mass media. A content analysis of advertisements and editorial photographs appearing in black and mainstream magazines from 1989 through 1994 shows that blacks in advertisements have lighter complexions and more caucasian features than those in editorial photographs. Black females in advertisements are lighter than their male counterparts.
Race as a Variable in Agenda Setting
Authors: Miller Randy E. , Wanta Wayne
Published: December 2011

A two-site survey examined potential differences between races in the agenda-setting process. The findings suggest that whites and minority groups did not have different issue agendas, nor did the groups differ on the magnitude of agenda-setting effects. In addition, the minorities in the site that had a small minority population (Eugene, Oregon) did not “acculturate” themselves into the mostly white community more than in the site with a high minority population (Tampa, Florida). Minorities in the site with a large minority population did demonstrate more concern with issues that received little or no coverage, perhaps an indication that they had been exposed to these issues through other available media produced specifically for minorities. Race, then, played a limited role in the agenda-setting process.
Individual, Organizational, and Societal Influences on Media Role Perceptions: A Comparative Study of Journalists in China, Taiwan, and the United States
Authors: Zhu Jian-Hua , Weaver David , Lo Ven-Hwei , Chen Chongshan , Wu Wei
Published: December 2011

This article reports a secondary analysis comparing media role perceptions among journalists in China, Taiwan, and the United States, based on three recent nationwide surveys in these societies. By comparing the goodness-of-fit of a series of loglinear models, we have found that the societal factor has the strongest impact on journalists' views about media roles, the organizational factor has a significant but weak impact, and the individual factor has virtually no impact. Within the societal factor, we have further contrasted two competing models: political determinism vs. cultural determinism. The study provides clear-cut evidence in favor of the former.
Anonymous Attribution During two Periods of Military Conflict: Using Logistic Regression to Study Veiled Sources in American Newspapers
Authors: Denham Bryan E.
Published: December 2011

In this study, nearly 9,000 news paragraphs concerning the military conflicts in Bosnia and Somalia were coded for a series of variables. The use of anonymous attribution varied significantly in Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post content. In addition to providing valuable information about the use of sources, the study also contributes to communication methodology by using logistic regression analysis to test the effects of four predictor variables on an ordinal-level response variable. Scholars who examine source attribution in Western newspapers are encouraged to use the method in future analyses.
Changes in News Use on the Front Pages of the American Daily Newspaper. 1986–1993
Authors: Bridges Janet A. , Bridges Lamar W.
Published: December 2011

This replication of a 1986 study of front-page newspaper content indicates that although less front-page material is devoted to five of seven news attributes, the change has been limited. Overall reflection of attributes such as proximity, timeliness, prominence, impact, magnitude, conflict, and oddity in 1993 was similar to that of 1986. However, in news profiles of front pages, while hard news remained the dominant characterizing factor, newspapers following an interpreternews pattern focused less on local news, despite trends toward reader-friendly newspaper writing and news selection.
Effect of Source Attribution on Perception of Online News Stories
Authors: Sundar S. Shyam
Published: December 2011

Are quoted sources in online news as psychologically meaningful us those in printed and broadcast news? A within-subjects experiment was designed to answer this question. On a web site, forty-eight subjects read three online news stories with quotes and three stories without source attribution. They rated stories with quotes significantly higher in credibility and quality than identical stories without quotes. However, quotes did not seem to affect their ratings of liking for - and representativeness (newsworthiness) of- online news.
Pervasive Public Figure Status and Local or Topical Fame in Light of Evolving Media Audiences
Authors: Bunker Matthew D. , Tobin Charles D.
Published: December 2011

The U.S. Supreme Court's doctrinal development of “public figure” status in defamation law has been a continuing source of difficulty for legal scholars. This paper explores this development, with particular attention to public figures who may have achieved notoriety among less than a national audience. The authors examine existing doctrine, and develop the thesis that trends in media and audience fragmentation warrant extensions of current doctrine based on these significant developments.
Factors Influencing the Adoption of Multimedia Cable Technology
Authors: Lin Carolyn A. , Jeffres Leo W.
Published: December 2011

The continuing convergence of communication technologies is prompting a reconceptualization of media channels and their content, involving traditional mass media and point-to-point communication content delivered via wired or wireless channels. One of the more widely touted multimedia video technologies involves the provision of several hundred voice, data, and video channels via an interactive coaxial cable system. The present study explores audience intentions to experiment with or adopt such a multimedia cable technology service.
ABC's “Person of the Week”: American Values in Television News
Authors: Larson Stephanie Greco , Bailey Martha
Published: December 2011

This study analyzed five years of “ABC World News Tonight's ‘Person of the Week’” segments to identify prominent types of people and values endorsed by mainstream news media. Individuals most frequently selected for ABC's honor lived in the United States; worked in politics and entertainment; and were white, male, and famous. American values such as individualism, heroism, and unselfishness were more commonly portrayed than were populism, capitalism, and patriotism. Women who were chosen were less famous and more likely to be in social services and to have caretaker roles than were their male counterparts. Blacks were more likely than whites to come from humble backgrounds and to be the first in their fields and involved with social issues. Selflessness, especially when exhibited by women, was a frequently celebrated value.
Digital Imaging Skills and the Hiring and Training of Photojournalists
Authors: Russial John , Wanta Wayne
Published: December 2011

This paper, based on a national survey, examines the importance newspaper photo editors place on digital imaging and traditional photography competencies, and it looks at the implications for the training and hiring of journalists. It concludes that the shift from chemical to digital processing has led to a relative lack of concern among photo editors about the need for chemical darkroom skills. Many journalism programs, however, continue to focus on those skills. It finds that new technical skills, such as the use of digital cameras and the web, are growing in importance as are skills that reflect convergence of photo jobs with others within the newsroom, such as design and graphics. But photo editors say the key skill that reflects cross-media convergence - video - is unimportant now and only slightly more important for the near future.
Communication and Age in Childhood Political Socialization: An Interactive Model of Political Development
Authors: Eveland William P. , McLeod Jack M. , Horowitz Edward M.
Published: December 2011

The proposed interactive model of political development predicts that the socialization effects of communication will be moderated by age, such that younger children will be influenced less than older children by the same communication source. Using data collected from a sample of 290 children from San Jose, California, in grades five through twelve, this model was tested using political knowledge as the socialization criterion. The data provided strong support for the model, and the implications for future socialization research were discussed.1
Cheesecake and Beefcake: No Matter How You Slice it, Sexual Explicitness in Advertising Continues to Increase
Authors: Reichert Tom , Lambiase Jacqueline , Morgan Susan , Carstarphen Meta , Zavoina Susan
Published: December 2011

Previous research revealed that sexually oriented appeals in American advertising had become increasingly explicit through the mid-1980s. This study updates earlier research by assessing images of women and men in magazine ads in 1983 and 1993. Results show that both genders were portrayed more explicitly and through more sexually intimate contact in 1993. Women were three times more likely than men to be portrayed explicitly, but for the first time, images of men were shown to be more explicit in the 1990s, albeit in smaller numbers than women. Portrayals of women and men were most explicit in women's and men's magazines.
Television Portrayals and African-American Stereotypes: Examination of Television Effects when Direct Contact is Lacking
Authors: Fujioka Yuki
Published: December 2011

A self-administered survey questionnaire distributed to Japanese international (n = 83) and White (n = 166) students measured stereotypes of African Americans and vicarious contact (television) variables. Results supported process-oriented learning models of behavior, but not a cumulative effect model of cultivation. The study demonstrated that the media could affect one's impression of other races and further suggested that effects of mass media are more significant when direct information is limited. Implications of an influential role of television in stereotype formation were also discussed.
Girls, Media, and the Negotiation of Sexuality: A Study of Race, Class, and Gender in Adolescent Peer Groups
Authors: Durham Meenakshi Gigi
Published: December 2011

This study examines how peer group activity and social context affect adolescent girls' interactions with mass media.1 The study consisted of a five-month field observation of middle-school girls from varying race and class backgrounds. The data analysis showed that the peer context was one in which gender identity was consolidated via reference to mediated standards of femininity and sexuality, though these standards differed according to race and class factors. It is concluded that the peer group is of crucial significance: interventions such as media literacy efforts cannot be effective unless they are sensitive to peer group functioning around issues of race, class, and culture.
Sourcing and Reporting in News Magazine Programs: 60 Minutes versus Hard Copy
Authors: Grabe Maria Elizabeth , Zhou Shuhua , Barnett Brooke
Published: December 2011

A number of studies consistently point at the disproportionate focus on elite news sources such as men in government and business while women, minorities, and working-class people are shown to be underrepresented as sources in the news. At the same time research reveals that soundbites from sources are shrinking while reporters are taking up increasingly more news airtime. In a society that rests on democratic ideals about the mass media's facilitation of a pluralistic public debate, these findings provoke concern. Virtually all studies on sourcing focus on newspapers and nightly television newscasts. This content analysis of 291 news stories focuses on tabloid and traditional news magazine programs. The findings of this study provide some support for the concerns about whose voices are heard in the news. Moreover, striking differences between tabloid and traditional news magazine sourcing patterns are revealed.
Time: The “Silent” Cultural Value in American Television Advertising
Authors: Wolburg Joyce M.
Published: December 2011

The depiction of time as a cultural value has received rather limited attention in the advertising literature, despite its presence in ads either explicitly or implicitly. This study attempts to fill that void by offering a framework for analyzing the many ways that time is depicted in television advertising. The key time elements noted are Limited Time, Marking Time, More Time, Oriented Time, and Sequenced Time. While the framework emerged from a sample of ads in the United States, it can alert advertisers to important differences in time concepts within other cultures and among different ethnic groups.
Corporate World Wide Web Pages: Serving the News Media and Other Publics
Authors: Esrock Stuart L. , Leichty Greg B.
Published: December 2011

Against the backdrop of the rapid growth of the Internet, this research study investigates the intersection between corporate World Wide Web pages and the publics they serve. Content analysis revealed that, while the typical corporate Web page is used to service news media, customers, and the financial community, it is not being used to its fullest potential to communicate simultaneously with other audiences. Through a cluster analysis procedure, the researchers found about one-third of corporate Web sites are assertively used to communicate with a multiplicity of audiences in a variety of information formats.
How Newspapers Framed Breast Implants in the 1990s
Authors: Powers Angela , Andsager Julie L.
Published: December 2011

This study analyzed how newspapers framed the silicone breast implant controversy from 1992 through 1996 to determine if some of the most influential newspapers in the United States provided women and the public with a fair and balanced account. The paper also addressed whether or not Dow Corning's public relations campaign impacted newspaper coverage. Results indicated that early coverage of the controversy focused on the health risks of silicone breast implants while later coverage focused on the financial situations of the implant manufacturers. The most-interviewed sources were the spokespersons for the implant manufacturers, while the least-interviewed sources were the women with implants. The findings suggested that reporting patterns were influenced by the public relations efforts of the implant manufacturer.
Growing Community
Authors: Block Karen , Gibbs Lisa , Staiger Petra K. , Gold Lisa , Johnson Britt , Macfarlane Susie , Long Caroline , Townsend Mardie
Published: December 2011

This article presents results from a mixed-method evaluation of a structured cooking and gardening program in Australian primary schools, focusing on program impacts on the social and learning environment of the school. In particular, we address the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program objective of providing a pleasurable experience that has a positive impact on student engagement, social connections, and confidence within and beyond the school gates. Primary evidence for the research question came from qualitative data collected from students, parents, teachers, volunteers, school principals, and specialist staff through interviews, focus groups, and participant observations. This was supported by analyses of quantitative data on child quality of life, cooperative behaviors, teacher perceptions of the school environment, and school-level educational outcome and absenteeism data. Results showed that some of the program attributes valued most highly by study participants included increased student engagement and confidence, opportunities for experiential and integrated learning, teamwork, building social skills, and connections and links between schools and their communities. In this analysis, quantitative findings failed to support findings from the primary analysis. Limitations as well as benefits of a mixed-methods approach to evaluation of complex community interventions are discussed.
The Family in a Sequence of Political Activation: Why Civic Interventions Can Succeed
Authors: McDevitt Michael , Chaffee Steven H.
Published: December 2011

We invite theorists and architects of interventions to consider the stimulation of family political communication as a powerful strategy for the mobilization of civic involvement. Family-based interaction constitutes a valuable resource for activation efforts, but to appreciate this potential requires a conceptualization of political involvement as a micro-social process. The family constitutes a social system that tends to maintain homeostatic balance in various domains of social interaction, including civic competence. An intervention such as a school curriculum or a media campaign can heighten the political interest of the family member initially reached by the intervention, which creates tension if other family members perceive a need to increase their own civic competence. Strides toward citizenship occur when the family system adjusts to re-establish equilibrium in response to exogenous influences that create tension. This framework situates the family as a mediating institution in relationship to societal agents that periodically heighten the flow of political information. The family is responsive to increased political stimulation and generative of motivation that leads to voting and other forms of participation outside the home. Our functional model of family political communication contrasts with a tendency toward reductionist thinking in which campaign effects are evaluated in isolation to each other, and in the absence of social context. We conclude with an intervention strategy that incorporates family interaction to amplify the impact of political stimulation originating from media, schools, and elections.
Guilty and Threatening: Visual Bias in Television News Crime Stories
Authors: Barnett Brooke
Published: December 2011

This experiment investigates the effects of television crime news portrayals of the accused on evaluations of that person. Forty subjects watched television crime news stories, which contained either visual (dressed in an orange suit, wearing handcuffs and being restrained by a police officer) or aural (mention of a prior record) bias. Results show that subjects who saw the visual bias evaluated the accused as more threatening, dangerous and guilty than those who did not see the bias. Those who heard about a prior record evaluated the accused as more threatening and guilty, but not as more dangerous than those who did not hear about the record. These impressions of guilt remained after a two-week delay. Findings illustrate how common TV news portrayals of a person accused of a crime can prejudice the general public. Also, accidental viewing of a criminal defendant in prison clothes or being restrained can affect snap judgments about that person during the trial. Implications for journalists and the legal system are discussed.
Television Station Ownership in the United States: A Comprehensive Study (1940–2005)
Authors: Howard Herbert H.
Published: December 2011

Multiple-station, or group, ownership is a long established characteristic of broadcasting in the United States. It exists whenever a single organization owns more than one station or one medium. Through the efficiencies of operation of multiple outlets, or economies of scale, group media companies usually enjoy financial benefits that are not available to single medium operators. Thus, a long-term trend toward consolidation has prevailed throughout the history of the radio broadcasting industry. Television owners quickly adopted the practice, which has expanded steadily, as regulations have permitted ever since. The three forms of multiple ownership — Group ownership, Duopoly ownership, and Cross-media ownership are analyzed in this study. Particularly, this study provides (1) a statistical-historical account of the development of multiple-station ownership in the TV industry from 1940 to 2005; and (2) a historical account and analysis of the government's regulatory actions on media ownership during the same period. This study explores thus, the ownership consolidation and industry regulation that continue to be significant issues for the media industries with on-going implications.
Consolidation and News Content: How Broadcast Ownership Policy Impacts Local Television News and the Public Interests
Authors: Smith Laura K.
Published: December 2011

In 1999, the Federal Communications Commission changed the Local Television Ownership Rule, allowing a single company to own two television stations in the same media market. The new rules led to the creation of dozens of “duopolies” nationwide. This longitudinal case study analyzed the newscasts of one of the nation's first duopolies. The author sought to discover what kind of long-term impact ownership consolidation had on newscasts in Jacksonville, Florida. Using a quasi-experimental research design, the newscast content of two stations was compared when they were separately owned. After consolidation, content produced by the duopoly was compared with pre-consolidation newscasts. Sixty newscasts and 1,048 stories were analyzed to answer the question: Do the combined resources of two television stations translate into higher quality local coverage? Results were mixed.

The study empirically measured diversity and localism - two factors critical in the examination of broadcasting in the public interest. Diversity was operationally defined as range of topics, topic of “lead” stories, and range of voices. Results show the duopoly significantly increased its coverage of local government, politics, construction and growth but decreased its coverage of public safety and non-dominant groups. A shift away from crime coverage was seen for lead stories. There was no significant increase in the number of local sources or the diversity of sources (women and minorities) appearing in news coverage.

Localism was operationally defined as the amount of locally produced news, the geographic focus of coverage, the number of local reporters featured, and the amount of locally-produced enterprise reporting. Results show the number of stories and time dedicated to local news increased significantly after the duopoly was created. Allocation of reporters to news coverage did not increase. While the number of enterprise stories decreased, the amount of time dedicated to enterprise stories increased - a finding which has methodological implications for future researchers.

Results indicate that economies of scale achieved through local television consolidation may translate to higher quality coverage in some content areas but not others. The findings contribute empirical evidence to the long-standing debate between public interest versus free market theorists. Implications for policy-makers are examined.
Newspaper Competition and Public Spheres in New Hampshire in the Early Revolutionary Period
Authors: Daley Patrick
Published: December 2011

This monograph is a case study of newspaper competition in New Hampshire between the province's official newspaper and an upstart Whig challenger in the period marked by contention over the Stamp Act (1765-1766) and over the tight oligarchical reign of the Wentworth family. The case study is grounded in the civic republican tradition articulated by Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood as well as the revisionist scholarship since the 1960s that takes the role of the “little people” seriously. It maintains that the competition between the two newspapers contributed to, and opened up, the public spaces in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to a wider compass than might have been predicted if one follows the standard Habermasian argument for the develop of a bourgeois public sphere. In part, these more diverse public spheres grew out of a staple of ritualized communication in the form of effigy demonstration reports and stamp master resignation speeches at both the local and intercolonial levels. The paper traces the provenance of these reports to the rough music of the colonists' English ancestors so beautifully articulated by E.P. Thompson. The Whig challenger also championed a rollicking and irreverent, rhetorical epistolary form that involved status reversals and mocked deference in a highly amusing, yet serious, manner.
Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Cultural Politics of Fair/Light/White Beauty in India
Authors: Parameswaran Radhika , Cardoza Kavitha
Published: December 2011

The recent commercial boom in women's skin-lightening or “fairness” cosmetics in India is part of the larger context of escalating lifestyle consumerism in Asia's emerging market nations. This monograph examines the cultural politics of gender, nation, beauty and skin color in the persuasive narratives of Indian magazine advertisements and television commercials for fairness cosmetics and personal care products. We situate advertising's compact stories of ideal femininity within the sociology of colorism's transnational links to hierarchies of race, gender, caste, ethnicity and class and the rapid economic growth in the skin-lightening cosmetics sector in India over the past decade. Deconstructing advertising's visual and linguistic fields of meaning, our analysis dissects the rhetorical themes of bodily and personal transformation, modern and traditional science, and heterosexual romance that operate together to inflate the currency of light-skinned beauty. In conclusion, we outline recent challenges to the hegemony of colorism in India and suggest directions for future research that can build on this monograph's scrutiny of advertising's regulatory regimes of beauty.
Who Speaks for Indigenous Peoples? Tribal Journalists, Rhetorical Sovereignty, and Freedom of Expression
Authors: Kemper Kevin R.
Published: December 2011

This study asks whether tribal journalists appeal to peoplehood or nationhood for authority for their exercise of rhetorical sovereignty and freedom of expression. Freedoms of expression and information, in the context of indigenous tribes in the United States, belong to anyone who practices rhetorical sovereignty of those peoples by communicating what is in the best interests of those peoples. Then, to support that thesis, the study uses rhetorical critiques of writings and historical examples about free expression by tribal journalists and communicators to discuss this issue in a way that helps us understand that freedoms of press and information in their varying forms essential for the survival and prosperity of indigenous peoples, that rhetorical sovereignty is a theoretical framework that helps us to understand how freedom of press or expression comes from the hearts of the tribes, and that tribal journalists are examples of some of the best practices of rhetorical sovereignty and freedoms of press and information for the good of their people. Some of the examples include Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) and William Apess (Pequot) from the early nineteenth century, and Mark Trahant (Shoshone-Bannock) and Tom Arviso Jr. (Navajo) from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Osteoarthritis After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction
Authors: Shelbourne K. Donald , Freeman Heather , Gray Tinker
Published: December 2011

Context: Several factors have been associated with the development of osteoarthritis after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction, yet little attention has been given to the association between range of motion (ROM) and osteoarthritis after ACL reconstruction. Several studies have shown a link between ROM loss and a higher incidence of osteoarthritis.

Evidence Acquisition: A search was performed with PubMed (MEDLINE) for English-language level I-IV studies involving the long-term evaluation of ROM and osteoarthritis after ACL reconstruction. Keywords were osteoarthritis, anterior cruciate ligament, and range of motion.

Results: Six studies considered whether ROM was a factor in association with osteoarthritis after ACL reconstruction: In 3 of these studies, an association was found between loss of knee motion and the development of osteoarthritis, while the other 3 studies failed to identify a significant association. Two studies identified an association between ROM loss and decreased subjective outcomes after ACL reconstruction.

Conclusions: Previous studies have shown an association between loss of knee ROM and osteoarthritic changes on radiographs in the long term after ACL reconstruction. Loss of ROM and osteoarthritis are also associated with lower subjective scores. Other factors related to osteoarthritis, such as meniscal and articular cartilage status, cannot be modified, but through implementation of a directed rehabilitation program before and after ACL surgery, the achievement of full symmetric ROM can be promoted. More emphasis needs to be placed on careful and precise examination of knee ROM, as well as rehabilitation to achieve and maintain full symmetric ROM in the long term after ACL reconstruction.
MeInfoText 2.0: gene methylation and cancer relation extraction from biomedical literature
Authors: Fang Yu-Ching , Lai Po-Ting , Dai Hong-Jie , Hsu Wen-Lian
Published: December 2011

Background

DNA methylation is regarded as a potential biomarker in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The relations between aberrant gene methylation and cancer development have been identified by a number of recent scientific studies. In a previous work, we used co-occurrences to mine those associations and compiled the MeInfoText 1.0 database. To reduce the amount of manual curation and improve the accuracy of relation extraction, we have now developed MeInfoText 2.0, which uses a machine learning-based approach to extract gene methylation-cancer relations.

Description

Two maximum entropy models are trained to predict if aberrant gene methylation is related to any type of cancer mentioned in the literature. After evaluation based on 10-fold cross-validation, the average precision/recall rates of the two models are 94.7/90.1 and 91.8/90% respectively. MeInfoText 2.0 provides the gene methylation profiles of different types of human cancer. The extracted relations with maximum probability, evidence sentences, and specific gene information are also retrievable. The database is available at http://bws.iis.sinica.edu.tw:8081/MeInfoText2/.

Conclusion

The previous version, MeInfoText, was developed by using association rules, whereas MeInfoText 2.0 is based on a new framework that combines machine learning, dictionary lookup and pattern matching for epigenetics information extraction. The results of experiments show that MeInfoText 2.0 outperforms existing tools in many respects. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that uses a hybrid approach to extract gene methylation-cancer relations. It is also the first attempt to develop a gene methylation and cancer relation corpus.