Colonial printers were more or less forced to take sides during the Revolutionary era. As they did so, their social status changed from that akin to mechanics to that of spokespersons of a social movement. From this time on, the gradual separation of editor from printer formed a social basis for defining a journalist's tasks as editorial, not…

A study examined the shift of the United States public's primary news source from newspapers to radio and then to television between 1937 and 1987 to determine the validity of the generally accepted explanation that people have shifted media (displacement). Two alternative processes were discovered that could also account for this phenomenon: (1)…

This document describes a demonstration project in film education, employment training, and research which included an education and employment training program offered to 26 economically disadvantaged youths ranging in age from 14 to 19. For nine months, these students met for four hours each working day to work both on individual personal films,…

Hong Kong's Department of Information Services has been producing and systematically airing public service announcements (known as announcements in the public interest, or APIs) on a variety of selected themes such as cleaning up Hong Kong, road safety, crime, drugs, and health issues for over 20 years. The television announcements are shown every…

Draws from the authors' own experiences in working with youth in an after-school media literacy club to examine the notion that it is possible to arrive at an understanding of how adolescents make meaning of popular culture texts by observing them in action. Teases out some meaning-making strategies that one adolescent used in strategically…

Examines the local reception of global Spanish-language soap operas, or telenovelas. Explores how young people talked about Mexican telenovelas in daily life. Concludes that the telenovela, within certain limits, reflected some of the national, ethnic, gender, and class tensions that defined the viewers' identities as working-class, Mexican…

Analyzes the creation of the new media policy in Poland formed at the 1989 "round table" negotiations between the Polish leadership and Solidarity, a Polish trade union. Discusses the issues of censorship, access to newsprint and to the airwaves (primarily to television), and the legalization of underground publications. (KEH)

Examines the methods of conventional instructional media research to gauge its sufficiency; gives examples of complex media effects; identifies three emerging media application models; and offers an alternative values framework for guiding research on the effects of modern interactive technologies in complex learning environments. (Contains 52…

This paper investigates metaphor in the language of economics, in particular, the way the vicissitudes of the Hong Kong financial markets are reported in the press. It analyzes the content from an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) perspective, probing for the significance in the negotiation of meaning in the subject area. Text samples were…

The ability to record sound is power over sound. Musicians, producers, recording engineers, and the popular music audience often refer to the sound of a recording as something distinct from the music it contains. Popular music is primarily mediated via electronics, via sound, and not by means of written notes. The ability to preserve or modify…

This paper discusses the implications of James D. Thompson's generalized model of the organization model for organizational- and institutional-level analysis of the newspaper. The paper focuses on the following points of consideration and how they apply to newspapers: (1) organizations are open systems operating under norms of rationality; (2) the…

This study focused on the cognitive conflicts experienced by young children in using software programs that provided them with tools to create and/or combine individual graphic elements into larger structures. Six 5-year-old children, none with prior computer experience, were observed using three programs--Kids at Work, Picture Perfect, and…

Fantasy theme analysis (as propounded by Ernest Bormann) has tremendous potential as a tool for investigation of popular music as a rhetorical transaction--specifically, popular music as mimetic discourse. The early tradition of the rhetoric of music focuses on music as a persuasive medium, deriving rhetorical value from the way discourse affects…

Several forces are allowing, for the first time in the history of television, the creation of prime time texts with lesbian characters. Chief among these forces are the relatively marginalized position of broadcast television brought on by increasing cable penetration and home video ownership, liberalized censorship guidelines on the part of the…

Evaluates the effectiveness of using motion/sound, slide/sound, and story boards in teaching a specific motor skill. Performance tests indicated that learners using motion film performed significantly better than those using either slides or workbooks, and required significantly less time. Thirteen references are listed. (Author/MER)