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The article provides a longitudinal analysis of media substitution between personal computers (PCs) and mobile phones using Nielsen's PC-Mobile 2-Screen panel data. Topics include the interrelationship between mobile phones and personal computers (PCs), theoretical and methodological contributions to existing research on media substitution, and the time displacement effect on television caused by home computers.

The article examines the socially constructed nature of money and its function as a medium of mass communication. A paper which examines the imagery and symbolism of U.S. paper currency before and after its nationalization in 1861 is presented. The evolution of U.S. national currency from 1861 forward is characterized by three major developments: an increasing standardization, a reduced repertoire of portraits and imagery, and an overall reduction of different types of issues.

This paper examined a historically significant case of how, for the first time in China, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) collectively changed government decision and exerted considerable influence over a multimillion dollar paper company with the help of the media. An examination of media coverage on this issue was executed using media transparency framework (Tsetsura, 2005), and revealed the following findings. First, at the national level, most media hold supportive attitudes toward ENGOs, except for one media outlet that is affiliated with the party media − People's Daily. Second, at the local level, analysis showed that the media provided overly supportive coverage for the company, which can be attributed to potential influence of the company on the local media. The results of this case study once again demonstrated that the lack of media transparency is manifested more often at the local level than at the national. The study offered theoretical and practical implications of the findings and recommendations for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beauty has always had an enduring but troubled and complex relationship with the epidermisâ??its color, tone, texture, and its representations in a multitude of sites and media vehicles. The unstable epidermal surfaces of morphing white, light, fair, olive, dusky, tanned, wheatish brown, dark, and black bodies that populate India's transforming semio-sphere of the last decade bear the forensic traces of competing and colluding signifying forcesâ??racism, individualism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and commodity feminism. This paper's transnational feminist critique of beauty's supple visual economy tracks the polysemic meanings of corporeal lightness and darkness that circulate in India's recently altered public sphere, meanings that are always articulated within and against historical matrices of power relations. The paper's analysis of gender, skin color, and global modernity in multiple connected and disconnected media sitesâ??representational and ethnographicâ??strives to account for power relations without sacrificing notions of audience agency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this investigation is to understand the way in which identity is created in written media. For this purpose we will use the magazine Chilango as our object of study and we will identify in which way its section "Alameda" conceives chilangos and the activities they do in order to conform an identity. In the last three years, Chilango has compounded several aspects of Mexico City's culture such as slang, images, places, social behavior, and even some political criticism. It has also given these cultural practices an irreverent and funny perspective. For this paper, three issues of the magazine have been selected, each corresponding to one of the three first quarters of these year. The research strategies that we will be using are: (1) a textual semiotic analysis of the magazine content and (2) the use of focus groups and interviews. This magazine reflects how its producers conceive life in Mexico City and gives tips on where to go and what to do to make the best of this city. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions are often assumed to be the heart of media entertainment. Relatively little is known, though, about the development of entertainment experience over the life span. This paper reviews the research literature on age differences in entertainment needs and gratifications within the theoretical context of emotional life span development and presents a study designed to extend existing findings. Specific attention is given to the differential roles of gratifications sought and gratifications obtained. On the level of gratifications sought, young adults reported greater interest in thrill and poignant experiences, whereas older adults were more interested in thought-provoking entertainment experiences. However, ratings of film scenes showed that the same types of gratifications obtained predicted positive scene evaluations independent of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the early stages of a project whose central aim is to plot the development of British Communication Studies and examine the various intellectual ideas and influences which have shaped its history. The term 'communication' is used to demarcate the whole area of study, in that it at least marks the boundaries of the accepted consensus as to what the area actually consists of at any one time. Within that area, however, the term has been subject to what Mattelart calls 'semantic scattering' (trans. Emanuel, The Invention of Communication, 1996, p. xiii) and the history of its usages involves reconstructing the attempts made to privilege particular meanings. The project also aims to engage with the idea of writing 'communication' history in a reflexive sense. This is an increasingly important area of the field, and as Nerone indicates, it is an area which reflects the academic diversity of 'communication':Looked at from an Archimedean perspective, communication history displays galloping theoretical incoherence. It is as interdisciplinary and eclectic as any neighbourhood of scholarship anywhere. None of its formations we've looked to have any real promise for establishing coherence. ('The Future of Communication History', Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, no.3, 2006, p. 262.)The project therefore will also offer itself as a case study in how an intellectual activity develops sufficient critical mass to be awarded the status of a branch of knowledge, so codified that it is recognised as sufficiently distinct and prestigious to allow the awarding of degrees. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contextualizes discourses surrounding new media technologies by examining activism around independent media, using as a case study an activist group who since the mid-1990s have advocated for greater citizen access to low power FM (LPFM) radio. The continuing interest in the viability of FM radio demonstrates the need for a nuanced understanding of the uses and impacts of communication technologies. I argue that the significance of new media technologies can be grasped most effectively when considered in a dynamic field that includes older technologies; emerging technologies are often viewed through the lens of patterns of use and interpretation of older technologies, at least initially. I follow the activists' assessments of not only FM radio but emerging digital technologies, including webstreaming, "smart" (or software-defined) radio, and wi-fi networks. In practice, the activists circumspectly negotiate expanding their efforts to encompass community wi-fi networks, while trying to retain the vision, flavor, and organizing strategies from their LPFM campaigns. I trace the tensions they experience as they consider the implications of this shift for their emphasis on a "grassroots mandate", for their policy work versus hands-on technical work, and for their identification with FM radio technology versus the inclusion of computer and wi-fi technology in their conception of their work. By attending to the interplay of old and new technical options, it is possible to better understand the trajectory of technological adoption without relying on deterministic or revolutionary explanatory mechanisms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the relationship between the media channel credibility of news media outlets and their brand equity. Media channel credibility was defined as audiencesÂ’ perceptions of a news channel's believability, as distinct from the believability of the individual journalists and sources, media organizations, or the content of the news itself (Bucy, 2003). The constructs of brand equity (perceived quality, brand awareness, brand association, and brand loyalty) identified by Aaker (1991) were used to create a composite index of brand equity. A survey was self-administered by 225 respondents. The results show statistically significant bivariate correlations between media channel credibility and (a) brand equity, (b) perceived quality, (c) brand association, and (d) brand loyalty. The relationship between media channel credibility and brand awareness was not statistically significant. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the extension of communication accommodation theory into intergroup communication and considers its applications to law enforcement training, practice and policies. The media plays a role in shaping the views of the average person of the police. This became apparent with the popularity of shows such as "Dragnet" and "NYPD Blue." Since 1972, U.S. citizens demonstrated some confidence in and support for law enforcement officers.

This study examines 17 U.S. Supreme Court transcripts in oral arguments that took place in mass communication-related cases from December 8, 2004 to April 22, 2008. Researchers sought to understand differences among Justices in type of prompts given to lawyers at oral argument. In order to accomplish this, we categorized each prompt by a Justice as one of the following types: open-ended (who, what, when, where, why and how questions); disjunctive (question offers alternative possible answers); yes/no questions; leading questions (question itself suggests desired answer); rhetorical questions; and declarations or statements. These categories were derived from literature in interpersonal communication and legal studies. We hypothesized Supreme Court Justices would fall toward the non-question controlling, rather than open-ended inquisitive, end of what one scholar called the "continuum of control." Results are presented to discuss Justices' information-seeking profiles and the implications for broader communication study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online multimedia platforms have allowed news organizations to cover the Iraq War in a more vivid and interactive manner than previous conflicts. This study examined the utilization of multimedia story types by U.S. newspaper Web sites in covering the Iraq War in 2007, and its role in framing aspects of the War. A total of 201 photo galleries, audio slideshows, interactive graphics, and interactive packages were analyzed from the 100 most-visited U.S. newspaper sites. Dominant textual and visual frames were coded for each story, along with framing dimensions including main subject, time and space. The study concluded that human interest framing dominated multimedia coverage, although the extent of such framing differed between multimedia story types. While there were no significant differences in framing along story platform, photo galleries and slideshows constituted a majority of the sample. 72 percent of stories utilized a human interest textual frame, and 81.1 percent of stories featured a human interest visual frame. Multimedia coverage of the war primarily told the stories of individual U.S. stories and their families. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NBC Dateline's popular "To Catch a Predator" series, which purports to expose would-be child molesters, has generated a substantial amount of both praise and controversy. A discourse analysis of the extensive press coverage of the series and related newsworthy events reveals a complex array of issues with two dominant themes emerging. First, the series has been referred to as evidence and proof of the problem of predators trolling the Internet. Discussion of the series has contributed substantially to a broad discourse of fear regarding the safety of children and subsequent calls for legislation to enhance law enforcement powers and increase penalties against sex offenders. And second, the series has become an important locus for self-reflexive discussions within the press regarding normative journalism. Some of the criticisms levied against Dateline's journalistic practices can be understood as a form of "news repair" that aims to strengthen and legitimize the standards of the profession. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists' blogs (j-blogs) are novel journalistic practice emerging in Chinese news industry. This study is the first step in establishing what is going on in Chinese news media in terms of j-blogs and finding out how new technology would change and transform the traditional news industry in Mainland China. Content analysis was conducted to study j-blogs on Chinese newspaper websites and investigate their implications for journalism in China. Topic, format, reader comments, hyperlinks and multimedia such as video, audio and pictures in j-blog posts were analyzed. It was revealed that the most often addressed topics in Chinese j-blogs were lifestyle, politics/government/military, crime/accidents/disasters, and business/economic activity. The most frequently adopted formats in Chinese j-blogs were the straight opinion column, the rumor-mill blog, and reporter's notebook of news tidbits and incidentals. It was shown that the formats of j-blog posts varied by topics. Significant influence of topic and format were found on the number of reader comments in Chinese j-blog posts. The use of hyperlinks and multimedia also differed in j-blogs with different topics and formats. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares Russian national legislation concerning online freedom of expression with the Council of Europe (CoE) legal standards on this issue to discover the extent to which the Russian legislation has been consistent with the CoE vision. The paper first examines the CoE perspective, including the European Court of Human Rights case law and non-binding documents of the other main CoE institutions. Then, it analyses the Russian national legislation and the highest Russian courts' perspectives. The paper compares the CoE and Russian legal visions of key principles to govern online freedom of expression, the new notion of media, editorial responsibility for the readers comments, the right to anonymity and the protection of journalists from surveillance. The paper concludes that the Russian legislation concerning online freedom of expression needs a considerable revision to comply with the CoE standards and suggests that Internet companies and international organisations should drive this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on findings on the media?s role in curbing corruption in the Tanzania. Presenting a historical perspective, the paper argues that, though the liberalization of the media sector has enabled the media in Tanzania to focus more on issues that concern the viewers, listeners and readers, the post-colonial media, particularly Radio Tanzania - Dar es Salaam (RTD) in the 1970s was more successful in the war against corruption than the present media. The study findings established that factors such as media?s limited economic resources, the influence of politicians, the absence of laws to protect both the journalists and sources of information, death threats for refusing to take the money and kill stories related to grand corruption and lack of leaders with moral authority and a political will to hold high-level leaders accountable for their vices undermined the anti-corruption reportage efforts of the current media in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analytical approach for assessing the robustness of local journalism infrastructure and the extent of journalism divides - differences in the availability of journalistic resources across communities. This research grows from calls into the state of local journalism. The goal is to develop an analytical approach that can be largely scaled and feasibly implemented. The approach presented in this paper thus develops indicators that tap into the robustness of local journalism infrastructure at the market level, specifically utilizing the 210 Designated Market Areas (DMAs) in the United States, which enables the exploration of individual communities and their relationship to the robustness of local news media. The results point to the relationship between fundamental economic and demographic characteristics of local media markets and the robustness of the local news media infrastructure within those markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the heightened relevance of international contexts, governments increasingly aim to communicate with foreign audiences to convince them of their policies. These strategies can be regarded as part of a nation's public diplomacy. More specifically, they can be called mediated public diplomacy since it is their main goal to distribute messages through foreign media. This paper analyzes the communication during the European migrant crisis as one of the most salient transnational issues in 2015/16. Herein, the paper compares Germany's and Hungary's mediated public diplomacy, their main topics, frames, and their reliance on information subsidies. Through a comparison with the related coverage in CNN and Al- Jazeera it shows that there is a relationship between the (1) reliance on information subsidies and a (2) correspondence between media agenda and the agenda in the mediated public diplomacy. The media's frame building, however, seems to be unaffected by the application of information subsidies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working from a critical position that media representation is both informed by and reinforcing of dominant cultural messages, this paper undertakes a discourse analysis of the recent coverage in American weekly celebrity magazines of two pregnant entertainers, seeking to provide a descriptive overview of some prevalent themes in the representation of pregnancy. Based on the Foucaultian notion that discourses can "structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking" (Rose, 2005), this analysis assumes that the magazine representation of pregnant celebrities works within a larger system of meaning, both drawing upon and informing the ways in which we conceptualize women, pregnancy and celebrity. The paper considers how representation of the pregnancies of actors Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes functions in relation to issues of female stereotyping. Though analysis suggests that the stars tended to be represented in such a way as to construct a "double bind" for women in terms of their idealized roles as expectant mothers, the analysis is problematized by the issue of celebrity and its associated discourses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the framing of the US intervention in Somalia, 1994. The paper triangulate textual analysis and content analysis to examine how the U.S. media framed the intervention. It compares and contrasts the Clinton's administration frames, the Congressional frames, and media frames. It examines how these frames converge and diverge. The paper concludes that in the post-Cold War World it is difficult to create a common enenmy and marshal public opinion against that enemy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses questions crucial to the “overspecialized” field of communication: “Are the ‘mainstream’ and the critical research reconcilable?” “Has the replacement of the limited-effects paradigm with the concept of powerful effects provided a meeting point for the two approaches?” It juxtaposes two concepts of powerful effects – the “critical” homogenization explicated by the Frankfurt School and the extensively researched “mainstream” agenda setting. Despite identified brides between the two, this paper points to seemingly insurmountable differences. It also addresses the issue of applicability of homogenization and agenda setting to the new media environment, as the reconceptualization of production, dissemination and reception of content might have decreased the validity of the powerful effects generally, and of the distinction between “critical” and “administrative” specifically. It concludes by presenting how the two approaches change due to the new ICTs, how they might adapt, and how they should be researched. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the efforts of foreign media corporations to enter the Chinese media market. The paper is concerned with corporate and business-unit strategy. It uses the work of Michael Porter to categorise the strategies employed by the largest international media corporations. It finds that, with the exception of News Corporation, none of the companies has made a sufficient commitment to be judged to have developed a full-blown corporate strategy. All the others remain in the pre-entry stage. This finding, together with the continuing influence of the Chinese state and the largest national media corporations, suggest that the situation in the media remains very fluid. The major contenders both national and international are briefly reviewed and their current business unit strategies assessed. On the basis of this analysis, a number of possible scenarios for the future of the culture industry in China are considered. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper follows a 'therapeutic discourse' realized in the Israeli media around what the paper conceptualizes as one 'traumatic photograph' (Wigoder, 2001: 18-19), a visual genre based on Barthes’ description of the 'shock photos' (1993: 32-34; 1997: 71-73). The photographic narrative begins with a complication, in which one of the most memorable images of the second Intifada, the bloodstained hands of young Paelestinian, were photographed at police headquarters in Ramallah immediately following the lynching. The narrative's resolution occurred eight months later with this image’s antithetical repetition, in which a photograph of the same person, chained in a detention cell of the Israeli General Security Services with his hands bound, was distributed to all major Israeli newspapers. By examining the visual narrative constructed through various media formats, I propose an analytical framework for an encounter between a viewer who identifies with the victim, an Israeli-Jew in this case, and the images of which the narrative consists. My intention in using this type of analysis is to provide an account of several processes involved in the production and consumption of traumatic and healing photographs in contemporary violent conflict, and specifically for the ways in which visual archives work within national conflicts. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a close analysis of how the Abu Ghraib photographs originally were framed in the American news media, public debate and in popular cultural contexts, this paper addresses the question of how news media images exert power in the shaping of news, politics, and public opinion. Specifically, it takes issue with the scholarly tendency to foreclose any inquiry into the workings of news media images with presuppositions that such images mainly play the passive role of illustrations to dominant news frames and official political discourse, with little or no potential for independent influence on members of the audience. The paper argues instead that the relationship between visuals and news narratives not seldom is a ’high-tension’ one, and that images which contradict or disrupt a dominant discursive frame might have a considerable impact, if not directly on politics and policy making, then more so on popular imagination and historical consciousness. Even if the Abu Ghraib photographs in a short-term perspective had minimal political or policy repercussions, they nevertheless dealt a fatal blow to the United States’ mission in Iraq. Not only were these photographs bound to alienate much of the Arab world, but also, in a long-term perspective, to percolate into the mind of Americans, and to create their own autonomous frame of reference in the sense that the heretofore banned sight of American soldiers in the role of sadistic dominators has become an integral part of our understanding of the US war on terror. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on two main research questions. Firstly, how did the leading national media in Sweden cover the elections for the European Parliament during 1995, 1999 and 2004 with regards to the amount of coverage, dominating aspects and main actors in the news? Secondly, how can differences in the coverage, if any, be explained? The content in the most widely consumed news media in Sweden was studied using quantitative content analyses during the last three weeks of the EU election campaigns. The results in this paper confirm a decline in the number of articles and news features. There is also a significant increase in game-framed election news in all kinds of media. The reduced quantity of news material, and especially its game-orientation, can be explained by the growing media market pressure, commercial competition and audience targeting. On the other hand, structural bias is not a general consequence of low-key interest in the elections and media commercialization, but also depends on the perceived newsworthiness among different political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional Media Market, Linguistic Advantage and Beyond: The TV Drama Co-Productions within the Greater China Media Market Abstract This paper is trying to examine the inner dynamics of the regional media market. Although language and cultural proximity have been seen as the most important factors for the formation of a regional media market. However, through exploring the emergence of TV drama co-production within the greater China media market, the author argues that the formation of a regional media market is a product of historical contingency instead of a natural formation. In terms of the greater China media market, the author points out that there are at least four factors contributing to the inner dynamics within this regional media market, and they are: 1. the geo-politics; 2. the cultural proximity and linguistic advantage; 3. technological inventions and 4. market force. The paper also contends that the centers and peripheries within a regional media market are fluid instead of fixed positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a critical review of the meaning of the public interest, and offers a recommendation for a normative and multi-layered conceptualization that is based on participatory democratic theory. The first section of this paper clarifies what is meant by a multi-layered definition of the public interest. The remaining sections look specifically at the layers of meaning within the public interest standard, especially those layers of process and principle. In comparing various theoretical viewpoints, the author recommends a participatory process as the preferred method for identifying and applying public interest principles. The ultimate goal of the examination is to discover ways to increase public participation in the ongoing dialogue regarding media policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dissertation is concerned with the position of regional journalism in the global information era. Information and communication technologies are having a paradoxical impact on the border Mexico-USA regions: on one hand consolidating the power and influence of the major Mexico and USA Mass Media Groups (creating a group of global influence) and on the other one extending their influence over a new mass media consumers, whose language (Spanish) is an attractive market for both USA and Mexico Mass Media Groups. This paper attempts to explain these forces to establish whether their impact over the Mass Media consumers. So we have to try to identify the preferred attributes of a region in this environment and, using a face to face research among inhabitants of Baja California north border state with USA. The approach in developing this paper has been to conduct a literature review from a variety of disciplines and sources covering economic, politics and new communication theories. We presented a preliminary work in BINACOM last meeting in New Orleans. Now we have finished the research and it is ready to diffuse. The research was made in Facultad de Ciencias Humanas of Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines basic and applied research on media intervention in international conflicts. It explores normative theories and empirical results, identifies strengths and weaknesses, and offers new approaches and a framework for future research. The analysis views international conflict as a process moving through four phases characterized by a particular condition and goal: prevention, management, resolution, and reconciliation. The paper investigates actual and potential media intervention in each phase and offers a proposal for a new framework for analysis based on the integration of conflict theories and the functional theory of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the new millennium, the world is marching into the knowledge society, in which most of the population will be knowledge workers. In contrast to manual workers in an industrial society, every knowledge workers needs to strive to become a specialist with high creativity, outstanding information technology skills, an independent and critical mind, team spirit and a great enthusiasm for learning. To meet the challenge of the new millennium, many countries are undergoing a structural change to transform themselves from industrial societies to a knowledge societies. They are eager to reform their educational systems. This paper takes Hong Kong as a target of investigation. In Hong Kong an educational reform is underway, highlighting the importance of cultivating future knowledge workers. Meanwhile, media education is also getting momentum in Hong Kong. This paper aims at examining how media education can contribute to the nurturing of young leaders and help them become competent knowledge workers in a knowledge society. The analysis is based on the media education projects conducted in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although journalists are often thought to have a significant influence on public opinion, especially since the advent of the media effects studies of cultivation, agenda-setting, and information processing in the 1960s and 1970s, not much has been reported about how journalists generally think about public opinion or the polls regularly used to measure public opinion. Whereas there have been numerous studies of news media coverage of polls and public opinion, there has been almost no reported systematic research on journalists' opinions about public opinion and civic journalism. The purpose of this paper is to present some of the findings from these studies and to compare them across time and place where possible. In doing so, this paper hopes to add to our understanding of what journalists think about public opinion and civic journalism more generally and whether these views have changed much since the early 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses survey data from an impact assessment of an integrated maternal and neonatal public health communication campaign from West Java, Indonesia. The campaign combined a mass media component with both intensive and general community mobilization activities. This paper examines differences in knowledge, preparedness for safe childbirth and behaviors among four groups of women: those unexposed to the campaign (Group1); those exposed only to the mass media component (Group 2); those exposed to the mass media component and general community mobilization activities (Group 3) and those exposed to the mass media component and intensive community mobilization activities (Group 4). Results from multivariate logistic regression models show that exposure in general is associated with increased awareness, advance preparedness for childbirth and improved behaviors. Exposure to a combination of the mass media component and intensive community mobilization activities are clearly associated with a further boost in the indicators under analysis. However, increasing the levels of exposure is not significantly associated with increased use of skilled attendance during childbirth and immediate postpartum care. Also, respondents exposed to the mass media component alone and a combination of the mass media component and general community mobilization activities do not differ significantly for many of the indicators. Overall, the results affirm the importance of integrating mass media and intense community mobilization activities in creating an environment of positive maternal and neonatal health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses that advocacy campaign as a development communication strategy has great potential in addressing institutional and structural obstacles to development initiatives, obstacles that have their roots in unequal power relationship in a community. If understood broadly, advocacy campaigns are applicable beyond engaging the news media to push for policy change, the so-called liberal advocacy campaigns. In the developing world, many NGOs have embraced advocacy as the path to more effective and strategic social change, incurring serious challenges on the authenticity of their advocacy claims. This paper prioritizes its analytical and critical dynamism on this pursuit the authentic voice of the grassroots, and proposes some well-developed participatory campaigns tools that might bring truly participatory and empowering advocacy campaigns in the future. It argues that theories and practices of advocacy have to adapt to the specific power structure with which development communication practitioners find themselves confronting. This paper has some considerable limitations. It mainly explores on the theoretical level the possibilities and problems of using advocacy in development initiatives in Southern countries. The paper itself is an advocacy for serious scholarly consideration on advocacy campaigns in the discipline of communication. Therefore, its targets are more institutional and structural, rather than tangible or case-specific; its discourse conceptual, rather than empirical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates and extends theories of framing research, predominantly recent postulates to conceptualize frames in a context of sociopolitical power. It does so by examining the strengths and shortcomings of the framing literature when it comes to the puzzling challenge of discussing al Jazeera, the 24-hour Arabic satellite news outlet. Framing research has implicit or explicit assumptions concerning the way political power affects the framing process. Framing scholarship as generally established by Western scholars and idiosyncratic to the American media and the American power structure, overlooks the cultural and sociopolitical context of functioning of international media organizations. More important, scholarship on media frames and power do not take into account new technology, the relative freedom from domestic regulation and decentralized flow of information characteristic of Al Jazeera and similar entities. Al Jazeera is deemed to be significantly anti-hegemonic. This paper demonstrates why this thrust can be understood through deficiencies in framing scholarship. In the traditional Western framing research media have been seen as contributing to the sustenance and reinforcement of existing power structure, that is hegemony (Gitlin, 1980). Hegemony has been conceived in terms of the dominance of a national political power structure. I argue that al Jazeera has challenged hegemony, and is considered to have been an anti-hegemonic force in the Arab world - as a satellite channel freed from domestic media regulations and national power structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of how to preserve and promote cultural diversity in Mexico, The United States and Canada has been central in policy debates and regulations within each country. How should governments proceed then to promote and maintain cultural diversity in a region closely integrated not just through economic trade but through the mass media? This paper reviews the current international debate on communication policies related to the promotion of cultural diversity through television. It starts with a discussion about what constitutes diversity in television, and follows with a review about the real impact of former media policies in the achievement of diversity. Using the concepts of source diversity, content diversity and exposure diversity, the paper analyzes the communication policies adopted or proposed in Mexico and compares them with current policies in Canada and the US. The paper concludes that current commercial strategies and goals both at the national and international level do not stimulate cultural diversity in media contents. It questions the utility of policies designed to regulate competition and ownership in the media with the objective of maximizing the number of outlets and emphasizing audience choice between these outlets. Instead, proposals which advocate a more mixed system of mass media with different mandates and different modes of financing are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As studies of the role of media in the life of the family increase in quantity and sophistication, researchers have an opportunity to reflect upon their methodological approaches to understanding the contexts of media consumption, socialization practices and mediation strategies. In particular, we are at a juncture where it is critical for researchers to explore the complex ways in which families respond to being studied in their home environment. This paper reflects upon the author's experiences in two separate research projects that involved working with families with school-age children to learn about media use in the home. It focuses on the points at which the researcher intersects with the family, and the ways in which meaning-making is negotiated between the observer and the observed. Using a social constructionist approach, the paper outlines how different families define the researcher's "role" (student, person, guest, negative agent) and how the role may ultimately shape the research environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

*Top Three student paper, Philosophy of Communication Division This paper provides a critical analysis of medium theory?s explorations of communication technologies and semiotics?s inquiry into the meaning of texts. The two fields have traditionally held oppositional views regarding concepts such as media, interpretation, and content. It is the purpose of this study to bridge these two worlds. Through clarification and synthesis, it will be argued, semioticians will gain a sense of technological effects, as well as the importance of the medium when reading content on that medium. Alternatively, this will give medium theorists a better appreciation regarding the importance of the quest for meaning and the driving need for dynamic interpretation of texts. Finally, it is argued that, at heart, medium theorists are followers of the tenets of semiotics. A bridge linking these two theoretical structures will allow for a more coherent and significantly holistic understanding of the media environment, both in McLuhan?s sense of media as messages and semioticians view of messages framed within the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the literature on the concentration of ownership in American communications and the central question of media diversity. It is a think-piece that analyzes a good deal of the empirical studies on ownership, examines antitrust doctrine, and discusses a lot of the relevant court cases and FCC policy history. Among other things, the paper traces how a long-standing, but vague commitment to diversity on the part of the FCC (understood primarily as a diversity of viewpoints) got invigorated and reformulated by the civil rights movement in the late 1960s. By the early 1970s, diversity was understood as the ownership of media properties (particularly broadcast stations) by racial minorities and the FCC deployed minority preference policies to facilitate that outcome. But the change in equal protection jurisprudence that cast doubt on the constitutionality of minority preferences has also meant that diversity policy in broadcasting and media in general is now looked at with much suspicion by the appellate courts. This change in equal protection analysis (obviously abetted by the Reagan revolution), along with the growth in media and consequent claims regarding ?substitutability? (abetted by the ideology of deregulation), underlay the recent moves to do away with most FCC media ownership restrictions. The paper takes issue with the metaphor of the ?marketplace of ideas? and suggests that we replace it in favor of the metaphor of a ?mixed media system.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wilbur Schramm?s ?Soviet? communist model and J. Herbert Altschull?s ?Marxist? approach have been widely used as general theoretical frameworks to examine press systems in the Marxist world in general and China in particular. Though a growing literature suggested significant changes in Chinese journalism in the past two decades, very few have sent a direct challenge to the two models? theoretical wisdom through the Chinese case. Unsatisfied with this situation, this paper found neither of the two models is sufficient in conceptualizing the Chinese case as a result of Chinese news media?s transitional nature and the two models? inner theoretical flaws as normative press theories. Furthermore, realizing the growing ?conflict? between normative media theories and accelerated post-Cold War global media transformation, this paper suggests a transitional media approach to revisit the traditional normative media approach and calls for a more systematic study of the transitional phenomenon of global media systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political sophistication has been offered as a key component in the make-up of an active political participant. This study expands the standard conceptualization of political sophistication to consider, rather than actual sophistication, the effects of perceived sophistication on political participation. Using an experimental design, this study manipulated 199 participants' perceptions such that each believed that they possessed lower than average political sophistication. Participants were also randomly selected to either be given the option or not be given the option to express discontent with the study, the survey questions, the researchers, politics, or themselves. Additionally, the effects of an "I don't know" survey option on both perceived sophistication and political participation was analyzed. The findings of this paper suggest that perceived sophistication does impact political participation regardless of voters' actual sophistication. Significant effects of the "I don't know" option on perceptions of sophistication were also discovered. The paper considers the implications of these findings for media, scholarship, and political activists. Recommendations for future research for the independent and dependent variables as well as additional study designs to reveal further effects are also offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship of mass media on consumers' partisanship and ideology. The link between real or perceived bias by news organizations and consumers ideological preferences is often assumed, but relatively few empirical tests have been conducted. This paper investigates whether the particular newspaper that citizens read correlates with partisan preferences. Data include survey responses from the 1992 British General Election study. Britain provides a unique environment for such a test as most major newspapers have clearly perceived partisan biases. Respondents' party identification, newspaper readership, and major party evaluations demonstrate that media consumption correlates with partisan and ideological preferences, although news consumers who read papers are more likely to modify their perceptions of party ideology in the direction of press bias. Media consumption correlates with ideological preferences and perceptions of political parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper chronicles 20th century American media coverage of the Middle East. Communication scholars have been at odds with determining just how the region has been portrayed, and their descriptions are not entirely uniform. But many have accused American media of taking sides in the 54-year-old conflict, and argue with their research that objectivity has been present but rare in the nation's mainstream press. The following paper traces those research efforts in an attempt to establish a picture of the patterns and shifting paradigms of American media coverage of the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers new evidence on the beginnings of mass communication study in the U.S., suggesting that the earliest communication programs were short-lived interdisciplinary committees at the University of Chicago which were at the forefront of an emerging field, but died an early death from lack of institutional support. Drawing on archival research and interviews, the paper suggests that the roots of communication study, as separate from professional journalism training and the study of rhetoric, goes further back than previously assumed. The paper seeks to explain why the Chicago programs, which involved famous scholars who are widely credited as pioneers of communication research, are unknown in our discipline’s history, and what that tells us about academic institutions in general, and mass communication research in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based primarily on communication science literature available and taught in the German-speaking world. Firstly, it should be noted that this contribution to the theme of the conference is not finalized but is an ongoing work in progress. By the actual conference date, theoretical deduction will have been complemented by first empirical results on the themes presented here. By then the respective borders referenced in this paper will also have been examined and positioned within the context of their theoretical basis. Editorial departments of newspapers in Switzerland, Germany and the USA will have been analyzed empirically, allowing for comparison. The link to the conference theme of "Communication in Borderlands" is established by presenting two borders. On the one hand, "personal borderlands" are identified as different wishes and requirements of newspaper management and newspaper staff within existing organizations. On the other hand, this paper assesses "disciplinary borderlands"; how these can be made accessible and usable for communication science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noting market panic during the East Asian financial crisis in 1997, this paper examined the likely role of the Western elite press in initiating and aggravating financial panic. Four prestigious newspapers; the WSJ, FT, NYT, and WP were selected to examine media performance. Content analysis of 240 articles showed that the Western press had strong bias toward bad news, focused more on internal factors like corrupted political system than such external problems as structural vulnerability of market, and relied more on U.S. sources and private experts who are not immune from national and special interests each. This paper argues that media' abnormal calling attention to bad news with negative spin, lack of alternative views, and contexts free reporting all contributed to prompt herd-like behavior resulting in market collapses. Similar phenomenon repeated in followed financial crises in Russia, Brazil, and Argentine leads us to concern about the international financial information system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

September 11 2001 was an "extreme event" in terms of news values research. An analysis of peoples communicative activities on this day can reveal how communicative networks and mass media work under extreme conditions. This paper presents findings from a German study in 2002. Results from telephone interviews with 1460 persons show that the diffusion of the news followed patterns known from other extreme events. Special attention was paid to sources of information about the event, the use of these sources over time and to further activities of information on this day. In the second part of the paper a comparison with data from studies in the US show that media have special strengths and weaknesses according to the local time of the events: news spread faster in Germany in the afternoon by means of television than in the US, while interpersonal communication was more important in early morning America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to look at how the television industry in India and abroad, especially in the US, developed from the 1990s. The paper traces the history of Indian television channels' proliferation into the United States. It looks at changes that took place in technical, regulatory and economic spheres that have allowed the medium to migrate. The media has been a catalyst in creating hybrid cultures around the world. The easy access to various media like films, television and the Internet has created dualistic identities that Indians within India and abroad have been trying to negotiate. The easy access to media, which is a direct result of the growing Asian Indian population in the US has been one of the main reasons for some of the psychological and cultural dilemmas within the communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the transformation of contemporary Russian journalism in the natural dichotomy of common trends initiated and set to a great extent from the centre of power in Moscow on the one hand, and specifics pertaining in the regions, on the other. As common trends characterising the post-Soviet society and media we note capitalization, westernization, commercialization and corruption. The specific character was formed by the political and economic conditions pertaining in St. Petersburg as one of 89 subjects of the Russian Federation from the end of the 1990s to the beginning the 2000s. The paper is based on the empirical study on the city media conducted 1998-2001 in St. Petersburg and presented as a licentiate's thesis in spring 2002 at the University of Tampere, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication. The data consists of pilot interviews with eleven experts in 1998, in-depth interviews with thirty journalists in the editorial offices of the eight basic media in 1999 and a survey of eleven experts in 2001. Posing the question how the common trends are converting into the local context the paper describes the forming of the conditions for journalism and its emerging characteristics. On the one hand, the study reveals crucial changes after the decade of reforms, such as the intensive development of informational and advertising services in society and commercialization of media and journalist's labour. On the other hand, the study notes the forces of continuity constituting the past because the media and journalists formerly served rather the interests of the political and economic groups than the interests of public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the spatial and iconic ways that landscape in Southern California is used inscribe, naturalize, and exploit a profitable racial caste system in San Diego County?the very border region that the ICA has chosen as its theme in 2003. This project summarizes five years (1995-2000) of field work and media work by the author among migrant farm-workers?primarily indigenous Mixtecs from Oaxaca and Mayans from Guatemala--in northern San Diego county. Utilizing clips from the award-winning documentary Rancho California (por favor), the paper challenges two fundamental myths. The first is a mythology of commerce and public relations. California promotes its intensive agriculture as breadbasket for the nation and as a key to consumer utopia. Few realize, however, that California intensively tills and farms, not simply crops, but human labor as well. In the post-NAFTA age of globalization,?raced-labor? is, arguably, one of the state?s most important economic products. Rancho California (por favor) document several of the hundreds of farm labor camps that exist in Southern California suburbs; camps that are always slightly, and conveniently, out-of-view. In some cases, scores of families live in makeshift shacks within a few hundred feet of the gated communities that employ them in Carlsbad, La Costa, and Del Mar. In other cases several hundred indigenous Oaxacan boys live and work invisibly in vast produce farms near Fallbrook and Escondido. Rancho California (por favor) documents the organization of these camps; their functions; and the meticulous ways that this human product is cultivated by managed deprivation on the margins. Far from the high-tech start-ups, race-labor has always been California?s most central ?synergy.? This paper and visual presentation also questions a second set of favored academic mythologies. A slate of easy truisms characterize documentary theories of the past 15 years, such as: the problematic representation of the ?other?; the stylizing and constructed nature of documentary ?actuality?; the problem of speaking with any voice voice that is not, in some ways, also autobiographical of reflexive. These celebrated postmodern notions in documentary emanate from models of post-structuralism that have spurred an even more extensive (but no less problematic) orthodoxy in media critical studies: of semiotic openness; of textual rather than political oppositionality; of reception as an unstable shifting and defined by a mulitiplicity of reading positions. And while visible evidence from the arroyos in Rancho California (por favor) demonstrates how power works through public constructions, it does not leave one much confidence in academic notions of multiplicity and openness. The ?signs? of power in this raced landscape, that is, are also literal containers for worker bodies. These ?texts? are also chain-linked barriers for families. The creative, ?counter-practices? of these California campesinos, are also acknowledged parts of many local economies. They are, however, seldom recognized on the ground as acts of symbolic resistance. Tying the immigrant/race-issue to specific, explosive political initiatives?like prop 187, prop 209?that erupt and fade from the headlines, risks ignoring the long, economically productive (but apparently invisible) daily ?habits? of California?s racial formation. Rather than looking at landscape as a place where racism happens, this paper shows how landscape?as enacted by zoning commissions, community associations, and corporations, and as fenced by growers?is also the means by which racism is ?performed? and in some cases, celebrated. ?Performativity,? far from being limited to subject sexuality positions in the way that Judith Butler describes, also characterizes a contested social space that is dramatically physical rather than abstract. II. A/V Needs for Conference: I will bring clips on VHS tape for screening; so will need VCR/remote and slide projector/remote for this panel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easter eggs are secrets, wormholes, jokes and other features hidden in products created using code. While some view Easter eggs, which have long been celebrated by programmers and fans, as amusing diversions which are ultimately frivolous and wasteful, this paper proposes that Easter eggs should be examined as a cultural phenomenon, relevant to today's debates on the concept of authorship in digital media, programming and its relationship to commercial culture, and questions of virtual community. While Easter eggs are not as provocative or influential as other technocratic guerrilla tactics, such as viruses or hacking, this paper positions Easter eggs as a way for both programmers and consumers of the Easter eggs to "make do" (De Certeau, 1984) with the materials which surround them in their daily life, to carve out a space for themselves where there is seemingly no possibility for such a space to exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]