Contributes to scholarship on the sociology of news making. Concludes that the relationship between journalists and news sources was shaped by the preferred meanings of a community's interpretive groups, including journalists and their news organizations. Uses examples from interviews with journalists and news sources to illustrate and…

Delineates three meanings of technology assumed in popular and academic discourse: technology-as-instrumentality, technology-as-industrialization, and technology-as-novelty. Examines the deployment of these definitions by the Clinton administration as it promulgates and defends its policies regarding the Internet. Reflects on the significance of…

Reconstructs the social networks linking early personal computing pioneers in order to identify the social and political representations and images that defined these social networks. Describes the linkage between technical development and cultural representations, particularly those of the user, in the case of personal computers. (SR)

Examines the ownership and policies of the dominant firms in the Canadian film market to explain Canada's dependence on imported films. Demonstrates how the economic relations existing between Canadian and U.S. film industries limit the profitability of films made in Canada. (JMF)

Discusses a number of new books that signal a revival of interest in the role of propaganda as a tool of mass persuasion. Relates the political uses of this revival to modern concerns about public opinion and advertising. (JD)

Argues that social structures, in the form of shared attitudes, values, beliefs, and identities, can emerge out of the spatially constrained nature of social interaction and influence. Discusses the processes that differentiate social space from both subjective psychological space and objective physical reality. (SR)

Presents results of experimental tests of Dynamic Social Impact Theory (DSIT) in which participants engaged in discussions over electronic mail. Finds support for the emergence of four group phenomena predicted by DSIT. Shows how, rewarded for being in the majority, individuals' choices resulted in the emergence of four forms of group level…

Examines the work and the life of German public opinion expert Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. Shows that the attitudes and analytic tools she forged during her youth and brought to bear in her work as a Nazi Collaborator and apologist shaped her later thinking, including her articulation of the "spiral of silence" model of mass communication…

Contributes to scholarship on social studies of computer mediated communication phenomena, technological change, and sociopsychological analysis of nationhood. Investigates the Argentine mailing list (a national virtual community of Argentines living abroad). Argues that a mutual-shaping perspective best captures the complexity, unpredictability,…

Examines the interaction between the cultural definers of "brain death" and the policymakers who have formulated and enacted statutes in several states. Considers the medicolegal and philosophical-ethical approaches affecting the policy decisions. (JMF)

Examines the interactions between the physical and social aspects of the telephone. (JMF)

Describes Social Representation Theory (SRT), an important and controversial development in European social constructivism. Argues that, although SRT and Dynamic Social Impact Theory (DSIT) come from different research traditions, they are complementary. Maintains that DSIT goes further in providing a clear mechanism for how dialog creates…

Maintains that to study communication is to make arguments about the economic logic and cultural forms of social development. Discusses why the study of communication as a social force has converged at many points on an encompassing critique of contemporary capitalism. Maintains that the literature of social history will be of prime relevance in…

Analyzes newspaper accounts of the sociopolitical opposition encountered by the head of a state government agency forced to publicly apologize after attempting to control the external communication of an agency staff member with a reputation for organizational dissent. Discusses academic and applied implications of these findings for the emerging…

Proposes two theories which constitute an interactive and dynamical system from which public opinion may emerge and become organized: (1) a dynamic theory of cognitive impact specifying processes for resolving inconsistency within an individual's attitudinal structure; and (2) a cognitive-social theory of the structural organization of attitudes…