Attempts to advance the content analysis debate by combining and responding to the major arguments from both modernists and postmodernists, foundationalists and antifoundationalists. Begins with a general justification of the artifact as the site of cultural study and moves on to a specific defense of content analysis as a preferred method for…

Examines existence and placement of main ideas in non-fiction best-sellers. Concludes that writers of popular non-fiction use main ideas and place these ideas in prominent positions. Offers support for teaching main idea in reading classes. (RS)

Traces the roots of the popular culture "commodity confessional" by examining the first five years of the magazine "True Story." Finds the stories fulfilled three functions for the women readers: (1) providing therapeutic messages; (2) providing didactic instruction on proper behavior and modern ways; and (3) serving as interrogative texts which…

Analyzing the setting of six recent "blockbuster" films, this study outlines numerous instances of the Western's influence on several contemporary science fiction films, "Star Wars,""Battlestar Galactica,""Star Trek: The Motion Picture,""The Black Hole,""The Empire Strikes Back," and…

"Star Trek II" is a treatment of the penultimate stages of the monomyth in which the hero descends into the underworld and is reborn. This psychological sense of rebirth is evoked in modern audiences by the film. In particular, the doppelganger (psychic double) motif, so often associated in film, literature, and myth with the…

Noting that launching a new magazine in a competitive market is both complicated and costly, a study analyzed four "Teddy Bear" magazines and their market to determine the viability of launching a new Teddy Bear magazine. The market includes "Bear Tracks,""The Teddy Tribune,""Teddy Bear and Friends," and,…

A study examined whether "Sports Illustrated" offers a biased view of the sports world by focusing primarily on the eastern teams. The units of analysis were articles about Major League baseball appearing in the "Sports Illustrated" issues from late April to early October in the years 1975 to 1984. The teams were divided into…

To examine the role that items on the list of "What Literate Americans Know" (developed by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.) plays in the nation's literacy, a study conducted an electronic search of "The New York Times" to establish the frequency of occurrence for a sample from the list. A random sample of 424 terms (9% of the total list) was…

To examine how the contents of Korean television serial dramas have changed and to determine trends of their portrayals of male and female characters' lifestyles, a study analyzed Korean television dramas of 1977 and 1987. A sample of three channels' video--22 daily and 14 weekly episodes of 18 different television dramas during weekday prime time…

Contrasts the development of daytime serial dramas on television with prime time series in terms of production costs, content, and format. (JMF)

This thesis presents the history of "Southern Magazine," the only widely circulated general interest magazine in the South, published from 1986-1989, after which, experiencing money problems, the magazine was bought out by a competitor and ceased publication. The seven chapters of the thesis are as follows: (1) Introduction; (2) Climate…

The ABC television network's "Monday Night Football" (MNF) series is a very successful example of the symbiotic relationship between advertising, television, and sports. Assuming that the athletic contests are packaged as slick entertainment to draw both fans and nonfans to the real programing--the commercials--a study was organized to examine…

Frame analysis of 85 cartoons from "The New Yorker" magazine was used to discover the significant keys, or metacommunicative characterizers, of cartoon humor. It was hypothesized that these keys/characterizers function to cue the readers so that they frame the message of the cartoon in a way that permits a humorous interpretation of the cartoon's…

This paper discusses the history and effect of popular culture generally and of the adolescent formula novel specifically. Seven primary characteristics of art as popular culture are that the work is accessible, easy to understand, conventional in form, not shocking in content, expressive of common and appropriate values, relative to some element…

A content analysis was performed on 30 stepparenting articles published during the years 1961-1982 in five major parenting magazines. No significant shifts in the number, content, and type of stepparenting articles appearing in the magazines were found. The popular literature dealing with stepparenting may be dependent on professional research for…