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This study reviewed the impact of newspaper and newsmagazine coverage of AIDS from 1987 through 1991 on public beliefs concerning the likelihood of HIV transmission via toilets, sneezing, and insects. Fan's ideodynamic model was applied to an analysis of coverage in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Time magazine, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and the United Press International newswire. The trend line formed was then compared to public opinion polls concerning each of the HIV transmission routes. A significant relationship was found, and when Granger causality tests were applied, prediction was unidirectional - from news content to public opinion and not from opinion to content. Implications for theories of media effect were noted.

Three major factors can affect media coverage of radical protests: news values, bias, and ideology. Researchers studied the coverage of anarchist protests in Minneapolis in 1986 to 1988. The majority of the anarchists' protests involved public demonstrations. Discussion of the anarchists' philosophy was often absent in mainstream media coverage. Instead, these stories focused on actions with a short explanation not on emotional attachment to the issues as seen in alternative press coverage.

Relationships between economic power and political influence have long been of interest to scholars in several disciplines. Despite an extensive literature and rich theorizing on the topic, however, we still know little about how economic producers attempt public policy influence and the extent to which they may be successful. In this chapter, the authors argue that a communication perspective on the public policy process sheds new light on relationships between business organizations and political influence. Drawing from the political science, agenda-setting, framing, and issues management literatures, three interrelated communication processes that bear heavily on public policy formation are elaborated--issue selection, issue framing, and issue management. The literatures are critically reviewed and then integrated in a series of 36 propositions regarding what we think we know about the communication strategies and tactics business actors employ in the policy process and the conditions in which such approaches may yield favorable outcomes. A framework for future communication research studies is presented in the form of a business model of political influence. The model highlights complex communicative aspects of policy making and a multifaceted concept of influence in public policy formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the impact of self-efficacy on diet and cancer risk reduction campaigns. Development of a segmentation scheme to improve the efficiency of public health campaigns; Importance of self-efficacy on public health interventions; Discussion on the application of self-efficacy dimensions in community intervention.