This study examines textual analysis methodology as applied to mass communication studies. It focuses particularly on the theoretical basis of textual analysis, the analytical process, and congruent theoretical perspectives. Although the term "textual analysis" is often used generically, this study differentiates textual analysis as…

In addition to investigative and interpretative reporting, journalists might adopt a new approach to the news--preventive journalism. Preventive journalism would concentrate on news and information that could be used to prevent crises and conditions upon which the mass media thrive. In one area, public health, preventive journalism could be used…

Argues that editor William Allen White was striving to set a social and political agenda that would advance business values and bring prosperity to his home state, Kansas. (FL)

Points to characteristics that differentiate the college press from commercial media, mentions trends in past research on college publications, and discusses three areas in which there is a need for further research: readership, reader preference, and content trends. (GT)

A study investigated how much attention mass communication scholars writing in "Journalism Quarterly" give to each of the mass communication industries, to what extent the various media segments are studied, and how data from diverse industry segments are used. All 1,135 articles from both the main and Research in Brief sections of…

Developing a theme drawn from speculative writing of the nineteenth century--that technology, like biological species, undergoes a process of evolution--this paper explores the thesis that if technology divides from its human creators and perfects itself until it gains the capacity for self replication, it cannot return to its creator. Using…

Explains that the concept of message discrimination was originally developed as a means of determining actual units of content that individuals extract from encounters with mass media and describes the relationship between message discrimination and the two related concepts of systematic information availability and knowledge. (DF)

Notes that the courts have specific sanctions under the "Federal Rules of Civil Procedure" to ensure discovery in libel and invasion of privacy cases. Examines media-related cases in which courts have used these sanctions and relates them to nonmedia cases. (FL)

Explores how discrimination based on differences in skin complexion and physical characteristics among African Americans is conveyed by the mass media. Shows that blacks in advertisements have lighter complexions and more caucasian features than those in editorial photographs, and that the females have lighter complexions than their male…

Investigates the use of the term "family" by Earvin "Magic" Johnson, his peers, and the media in their rhetorical efforts to defend Johnson after his announcement that he had human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Discusses the power of key words such as "family" to influence attitudes in the American culture. (RS)

Although Eleanor Roosevelt's career as a magazine journalist has been all but forgotten, it was an important part of her public activity while she was First Lady from 1933 to 1945. In contrast to ideas then current, Mrs. Roosevelt insisted on her right to earn money from her magazine work while in the White House. There is also evidence that her…

Reports news analysis material presented on a radio foreign affairs program between 1975 and 1979. Compares this report's findings with propositions generated by gatekeeper studies of international newsflow. Discusses how results do not sustain the argument that news offers an unchanging and unchangeable "world at one with itself." (JD)

Through an analysis of the products of the radical press, this paper presents the rhetorical outlines of a cultural history of the 1930s. Following an overview of the "reportage" of the radical press, the paper focuses on that medium's rhetoric, specifically its conscious and unconscious use of religious symbolism. Among the publications…

The debate between objective and new journalism centers upon the question of which approach factually depicts reality. Both genres, however, are part of one fact/fiction matrix in which all narrative forms since John Locke have been based upon factuality. The difference between the genres is that new journalism relies upon the sensory data of…

Newly discovered transcriptions of 87 of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's women-only press conferences held from 1933 to 1945 make possible an examination of the objectives, topics, and value of these conferences. By holding the conferences, Mrs. Roosevelt attributed to women an important function in the political communication process, and at the…