Contributes to scholarship on media diversity and the free market. Examines dimensions of media diversity. Argues that market forces have led to unprecedented levels of concentration, resulting in less diversity of access and diversity of choice. Shows that the range of opinions available to consumer-citizens is being limited by current…

Finds that women are underrepresented in all five television networks' promotional announcements (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and UPN), and that stereotypical portrayals of women in these announcements varied due to the television network's target audience: announcements on networks seeking a younger male audience contained more stereotypical female…

Contributes to scholarship on values and ideologies in the media by analyzing five years of ABC's "Person of the Week" segments to identify prominent types of people and values endorsed by mainstream news media. Finds that individuals most frequently selected for ABC's honor lived in the United States; worked in politics and…

Finds that news organizations chose expert sources to interpret the news during the Persian Gulf War according to how well their specialized knowledge conformed with television's "operational bias," or an emphasis on players, policies, and predictions of what will happen next. Argues that these processes undermine the ideals of balance…

Uses a manipulated news report on the family farmers' plight to create differing versions--selective exemplification featured only stories of failing farms, representative exemplification featured stories of failing and successful farms proportional to their actual occurrence. Questions readers about their own views after reading. Finds accuracy…

Contributes scholarship on journalism, democracy, and pluralism, offering a content analysis of 291 news stories from tabloid and traditional news-magazine programs to examine their news sourcing and reporting. Finds striking differences between tabloid and traditional news-magazine sourcing patterns, and provides some support for concerns about…

Contributes to scholarship on attitudes toward the media's role in society by investigating public attitudes toward the use of investigative reporting. Finds that a large majority (84%) still approve of investigative reporting in general, while approval for specific investigative reporting techniques remains low (about one-third). (SR)

Describes a study in which undergraduate students were divided into groups and were told that a public service announcement (PSA) about organ donation had succeeded in persuading other people, had failed to persuade others, or were given no information. Finds that subjects tended to explain third-person reactions to the PSA in ways that placed…

Offers a content analysis of U.S. magazine advertisements aimed at general audiences, finding that Latinos are highly underrepresented in magazine advertising. Shows that, although Latinos represent 10.5% of the U.S. population, they were present in just 4.7% of ads, and only 2.2% contained a Latino model in major role. (SR)

Finds that (1) each of three groups of variables (political, media schemas, and media use orientations) can predict the magnitude of third-person effects; (2) none individually has great predictive power; (3) the mechanisms by which different variables influence the magnitude of third-person effects vary; and (4) overall connections between…

Presents a content analysis of Chinese newspapers before and after the Tiananmen Square protest. Shows that top leaders manipulated symbols given to the media and that these symbols rigorously highlighted the dominant ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and isolated participants of the 1989 Student Movement to legitimize the military…

Examines whether news media were biased in coverage of the candidates during the 1996 United States Presidential campaign, and whether the quantity of positive and negative news coverage of the candidates was related to the public's preference. Finds balanced media coverage of the two principle candidates (Clinton and Dole) and a powerful…

Explores the possible relationship among issue involvement, argument strength, and the third-person effect. Finds that undergraduate students tend to believe that "others" will be more affected than themselves by a persuasive message that contains weak argumentation but that "others" will be less affected than themselves by a…

Finds that tone of coverage was different for different media themes with coverage of media performance being the most negative. Notes that how the press covered the media changed as the campaign progressed; coverage became more positive after the primaries. Finds that newspapers tended to cover different media themes than the networks, and…

Explores perceptions of media bias by manipulating expectations of bias and news topic. Explains that university students read dummy newspaper articles and then responded to a survey. Concludes that readers were more likely to designate material opposing their own views as biased. (PM)