Assesses the status of the movie theater business during the past seven years, which has seen major changes in production, distribution, types of theaters, seating capacity, and the general media landscape. (NKA)

Responds to six articles in the same issue on images in retrospect. Deals collectively rather than individually with ideas that underlie the work of the respective authors and attempts to provide a critical interpretation guided by the maxim "always historicize!" (SR)

Reports an analysis of thirty-nine magazines which joined together to stimulate national debate on the Equal Rights Amendment and identifies those magazines which gave the most "pro" ERA coverage. (MH)

Discusses how the use of unregulated mass media to convey the health risks of smoking is severely limited by the tobacco industry's power, via advertising dollars, to minimize the coverage of the negative health aspects of smoking in the editorial content of these media. (JD)

Introduces a symposium in this journal issue: "Technology through a Retrospective Eye: Imaging Practices between the World Wars and Beyond." Notes that each article of the symposium keys into a central moment of expansion of imaging practice and focuses on the debates that accompanied that expansion. (SR)

Discusses the formation of the Committee on Mass Communication and Political Behavior by the Social Science Research Council in 1974. Describes the committee's proposal to alleviate the need for broad-gaged coordinated studies covering the entire process and range of the media-political spectrum. (MH)

Argues that the inclusion of viewer interpretation variables in experimental design and analysis procedures can greatly increase the methodology's ability to explain variance. Focuses attention on the between-group differences, while an analysis of how individual participants interpret the cues in the stimulus material focused attention on the…

Discusses the importance of Raymond Williams' contribution to the field of communications by examining his work, illustrative of a process of inductive cultural analysis derived from the tradition of close reading of literary texts, then applied over a much wider cultural and social range. (MS)

Suggests that traditional forms of communication such as folk plays, ballads, and rituals can be effectively used for social development in poorer countries. (MH)

Offers a "guard dog" metaphor for the functioning of the mass media, suggesting that media perform as a sentry for groups having sufficient power and influence to create and control their own security systems. Delineates this perspective from others, and suggests several hypotheses that may be derived for testing the utility of the guard dog…

Contends that recent studies indicate that the representation of women in advertising continues to conform to traditional stereotypes including the stereotype of "the liberated woman". (MH)

Argues that the major studies supporting the Principle of Relative Constancy in consumption of mass communication products were statistically defective. Presents updated tests of data suggesting that the principle is actually of doubtful predictive value. (MS)

Updates important studies of women and blacks in mass media advertising and concludes that, in general, negative stereotyping still exists. (MH)