A study conducted analyses of metro and regional daily newspaper penetration in 87 Minnesota counties and examined readership for metro and regional daily newspapers and small-town weekly and semiweekly papers in 28 communities. Among conclusions reached was that in outlying communities, education was associated more with reading the metro paper…

Presents a model to examine how social influence processes affect individuals' attitudes toward communication media and media use behavior, integrating two research areas: media use patterns as the outcome of objectively rational choices and social information processing theory. Asserts (in a synthesis) that media characteristics and attitudes are…

States that the system of local political journalism has become fragile and that steps should be taken to remediate the situation, such as developing tax incentives that invite television news, distributed in nonbroadcast form, to enter the arena of local political information. (DF)

Examined adolescent use of popular music, identifying types of music preferences. Concluded that a relationship exists between amount of peer orientation and type of music preferences and that the motivations for listening were more physical and emotional than cerebral (that is, listening to lyrics). (PD)

Examines the impact of format (advertisement vs. news articles and releases) and source (commercial vs. noncommercial groups) on reactions to advocacy messages. (PD)

Identifies four groups of readers (heavy, sporadic, scanner, and apathetic) and classifies them on the basis of individual, environmental, and stimulus factors. Emphasizes the importance of environmental factors (time, peer influence, parental reading habits, etc.) in explaining differences in adolescent newspaper readership. (PD)

Explores agenda-setting implications of indexing news content by topic instead of by salience cues. Suggests significant differences in news topic exposure on equivalently concentrated patterns of readership in two versions of a newspaper. Readers evaluated the indexed newspaper negatively, but a reader core liked the indexing. (NKA)

Examined the origin of music content on radio stations in the Windsor, Ontario, area. Concluded that American recordings and radio broadcasts are strongly preferred by canadian youth despite government policies. (PD)

Discusses Jamaican music, especially "reggae," in terms of national identity, autonomy, and public policy. Reports a survey that shows that the majority of Jamaican youth identify with "reggae" and find music vital to their existence, but that the upper classes prefer foreign over local music. (PD)

Discusses how the tradition of studying the word-of-mouth diffusion of news was established in 1945 and came to mature during the 1960s after the Kennedy assassination. Notes that the pace of this research slowed substantially in the 1970s and has all but stopped in recent years. Outlines six broad generalizations resulting from studies conducted…

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)

Discusses the question of the influence of mass media and interpersonal communication on the growth of partisan independence among American preadults and concludes that preadults become increasingly independent as they get older. (DF)

Found that (1) neighborhood leaders' agendas and definitions of issues compared highly with those of residents, especially the most educated residents, while (2) neighborhood papers' agendas and definitions were much less related to those of residents. (PD)

Reviews literature on efforts to personalize mass communication by disguising the size of intended audiences, targeting messages, and contriving intimacy in content. Argues that distinctions between interpersonal and mass communications have become blurred into what might be called "pseudo-community." Finds that technological development…

Results indicate that each of the nine media studied (newspapers, magazines, commercial and public television, books, radio, friends, recorded music, film) has a clear, socially defined image, suggesting a two-stage model of media channel utilization--normative expectations followed by individual decisions. (PD)