Argues that member interaction provides a contextual frame through which intersubjective interpretations of media texts emerge. Details the interactional resources that facilitate the reflexive co-accomplishment of context and text by one specific interpretive community. Provides an empirical answer to exactly how one interpretive community frames…

Responds to contentions that accommodation media ethnographies are incapable of addressing matters of ideology or significant social-historical variables. Explores the theoretical sources to which many accommodation ethnographers turn, sources which suggest that the theoretical bases of accommodation approaches make provisions for studying…

Suggests that contemporary rhetorical theory and research can use important insights into the nature of mass media language that representation and commodity theories cannot incorporate. Suggests that, by recognizing the rhetorical aspects of media language, scholars can legitimize the research and the dialogue that are required for the…

Reviews the global political environment, major global news providers, and technologies of global news production. Argues for a multinational comparative mapping of international news representation in the 1990s. Outlines a major international venture to update and elaborate the 1979 UNESCO/IAMCR study of foreign news in the media of 29 countries,…

Sketches contours of the postmodern movement and implications for a research agenda in mass media and international communication. Analyzes the furor over Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" to illustrate the difficulties that result from Western interpretations of events whose origins are distant culturally. Offers a number of…

Argues that racial ideology structures news coverage of race. Illustrates how two manifestations of racial ideology, namely racial hierarchy and temporal distancing, operate in news articles to help create racialized criteria for being an "American." (SR)

Examines some problems and difficulties encountered in international comparative research programs in mass communications: comparability of units of analysis; lack of consensus manifested in dichotomization into "conventional" and "critical" approaches; and suitability of exported models, theories, concepts, and methods to Third World conditions.…

States the importance of media definitions of ethnic majorities. Discusses media discourses concerning settled ethnic minorities, race relations and the news, ethnic minority media, contract labor, migrants and refugees, indigenous land-based groups, and ethnic minority presence in mainstream media. Draws examples from the United States, Eastern…

Argues that, in the case of Poland, media history is best seen as a series of expansions and retractions of press freedom. Advocates a new press culture, both on the part of journalists and their audiences, in addition to the establishment of freer press laws and financially sound institutions. (SR)

Presents the background, rationale, and implementation prospects for an international system of monitoring media coverage of global problems such as peace and war, human rights, and the environment. Outlines the monitoring project carried out in January 1995 concerning the representation and portrayal of women in news media. (SR)

Discusses media-related changes in Russia, Poland, and Hungary since the 1980s. Reviews current media theories in the United States for their ability to guide research into media processes in these three countries. Finds that much media research has paid insufficient attention to economic forces, international relations, the state, political…