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…

Shows that the criteria people use to judge television news credibility are different than those used to judge newspapers. Demonstrates that one source of this difference is that newspapers and television are evaluated from different levels of analysis. (RS)

Uses psychological theories about how people process information to examine the influence of variance in question wording on public support for the Reagan defense build-up. Concludes that source cues influence the public but that such influence is overwhelmed when the public is simultaneously exposed to relevant policy information. (TB)

Uses Ross Perot's campaign for president in 1992 as a case study in how two key political institutions--the conventional political press and the party system--mediate the effects of political communication. Finds that reporters allocated positive and negative coverage to Perot according to the same rules that they normally follow. (TB)

Contributes to scholarship on mass media's role in generating public confidence. Discusses the current crisis of confidence, confidence as "faith-together," varied routes by which media confer status, and ways both journalistic expose and public debate can generate cynicism and undercut public confidence. Sketches three types of civil…

Observing that most adults' present conceptions of the computer have been shaped by media images, a content analysis was conducted of 169 articles on computers published in six popular magazines from the 1940s through 1969. The articles were coded in terms of their themes and topics, and the specific terms used to refer to computers in each…

Concludes that the New York press was not responsible for Canada's anti-Northern attitude following the Civil War. (RB)

A study examined whether the Ghanaian press sets the public agenda in Ghana, and whether Ghanaian elites show a greater agenda-setting effect than non-elites. An analysis of 1,585 subjects was conducted. Respondents were interviewed by teachers and students in teachers' training colleges. The construct of elitism was determined by measuring six…

A study was conducted to explore attitudes toward the credibility of individual media and news media in general. The first phase of the study was a series of focused group discussions, while the second involved a national representative sampling of 1,469 adults interviewed by telephone, 875 of whom were then surveyed by mail. Credibility scores…

Results of the 1985 American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) survey--to determine public attitudes toward media credibility--are reported in this paper. Discussion is categorized according to the 12 issues explored: (1) the believability of media when news reports conflict; (2) geographic scope of topics; (3) reliability of reporting and…

Psychographic analysis--combining demographic and attitudinal characteristics into groups and looking at variations in those characteristics--is useful in newspaper research to expand theories of media publics. One effective segmentation strategy (used at Minnesota Opionion Research Incorporated--MORI) is to divide the population into four groups,…

A phone survey of 450 Ohioans was completed over the three-week period before a state-wide election on November 8, 1983, to examine three types of orientation to newspapers and television. The types were frequency of media use focusing on state and local politics, frequency of media use for news in general, and the presence or absence of primary…

Results of interviews with children on their likes and dislikes in television programing. (CH)

Most of the research on motivations and media use has assumed that there is some general motivation that directs habitual media behavior. Recent work on motivations, however, suggests that it may be valuable to distinguish between general needs and more specific needs, both of which may direct media behavior. For example, regular media use might…

A survey of 379 adults was used to assess the extent to which television news credibility scores were a function of researcher operationalizations of the concept. Underlying this effort were published reports suggesting that single item measures of television news credibility were either biased or inadequate indicators of a more complex…