Summarizes current research on children's use of audio equipment and argues that records, radio, and tapes play an important role in the personal and social lives of many children. Examines issues and promising approaches in the study of listening in children's lives. (PD)

Even in the 1990s, little research has focused on how local media can more often and more accurately cover the disability community and disability issues. Some positive news coverage arose in the late 1980s because of the disability community's growing status as a minority group striving for equal civil rights. Other positive coverage reflected…

A study of the wartime press suggests that the plan to incarcerate Japanese Americans (under Executive Order 9066) was government-initiated, that the public and the press initially disapproved of such treatment, and that events emanating from the government influenced shifts in press and public opinion that allowed implementation of the plan.…

The review of literature on portrayal of disability in books, television, film, and classroom media emphasizes their reinforcement of stereotypic attitudes long held by the public and concludes that initiation of accurate, nonstereotypic portrayals of the disabled on television is long overdue. (MC)

Describes three techniques for evaluating educational media: questionnaires, continuous reaction measures, and focus group interviews. Purposes of media evaluation are identified as finding out audience reaction and developing effective methods to use media in teaching. (Author/JJD)

Reviews some instructional media research that has been done in developing countries and makes recommendations for its improvement. Twenty-two references are listed. (Author/LLS)

Communications media have long been acknowledged as the site of intense political struggle over issues of access to, control over, and representations in these media. That communications research is likewise the site of struggle between the various paradigms of the discipline is, however, troubling to the neophyte communication scholar. For well…

As the field of media studies progresses it moves with increasing fluency and fluidity among the disciplines, and the patterns of relationship that adhere in these dynamics hint at what the disciplines have to say to each other in general. For media studies to exercise a significant impulse toward holism and interdisciplinary synthesis, a model is…

Anecdotal evidence suggests that college students are unaware of the socially constructed nature of news reports. Students may accept uncritically what they view and read. A narrative analysis of front-page coverage from the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post" of the 1990 Persian Gulf situation reveals how the papers…

Noting that studies of media, culture, and consciousness assert wide-ranging connections among the three, this paper proposes a research program for investigating the media-consciousness-cultural link. Sections I and II provide a brief review of orality-literacy theories and communication theories. Section III proposes five areas of media…

Pointing out that television sets are virtually a universal household fixture in most industrially developed nations, this book presents many categories and specific examples of television's (and sometimes radio's) coverage of ethnic minorities and conflict. Chapters in the book are: (1) Introduction; (2) Background Notes; (3) Mainstream vs.…

Reviewing the historical development of media agenda-setting theory suggests that topics emphasized by the mass news media become the topics people think are most important. The vast majority of agenda-setting studies, however, rely on aggregate measures of media and public agendas, and produce very little support for the original theory as there…

Theories of taste are efforts to understand the processes of signification by which cultural forms take on meaning, and how subjects are inserted into such processes. One of these theories is the notion of "taste cultures," set forth by Herbert Gans in the 1960s and continued by George Lewis into the 1980s. A taste culture is an…

Current issues in educational communications and technology are addressed in this collection of 48 papers, in which research reports predominate. Topics discussed include factors related to the learner, e.g., field dependence/independence, learning strategies, information processing, spatial ability, cognitive style, and cognitive strategies.…

Separate meta-analyses have been completed recently on the effectiveness of computer-based education (CBE) in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and nontraditional postsecondary institutions. Several conclusions can be drawn from these meta-analyses. First, although CBA has not been uniformly successful in all its guises and at all…