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This article presents an analysis of front-page photographs portraying violence from 21 years of The New York Times. The study shows how non-U.S.. agents of violence are portrayed as more brutal than U.S. agents, thus indicating that violent imagery is associated with in-group and out-group status stratification.

Historical events provide evidences that literacy plays an important role in determining the social class to which an individual should belong. In general, people who have access to education belong to a higher class than illiterate people. A study of history also provide proof that white males who were involved in the medical profession gained social power and wielded enormous social authority over bodies. Similarly, the textual class also gained social power through their writings. However, it requires less effort for them to defend their textual position influence in the society.

An election campaign serves ritual functions for the American political system, beyond its manifest functions of determining which persons and interests will govern the country. The campaign ritual is analyzed in terms of Durkheim's concept of the totem, including its regeneration and sacrifice. The dirty campaign is a sacrificial feast that establishes conditions for a proper mating between the candidate and the electorate. Voters declare their fidelity to the totem victor and receive a sacrificial promise in return.

The role of bodily routines and practices as an essential component in the study of literacy is considered. The author examines an unusual but not unknown practice by physicians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of binding fine or rare texts in human skin, typically skin taken from their own patients. This embodied literacy practice is related to the transformation of medical practice from an oral to a textual discipline. Connections are made to Nazism and medieval public anatomies.

This paper analyzes American flag symbolism in public debate about the Supreme Court's flagburning decisions in 1989 and 1990, and in related flag events. The connotated flag is systematically represented by champions of flag protection laws as a sacrificial body contrasted both to the bodiless text and the profane body of flagburning. What is at stake in the flagburning debate is a cultural fight between the body and the text, and a notion of the sanctifying drama of the American holy family.

Examines the history of literacy, identifying four current models of literacy. Argues that literacy does not merely coexist or interact with oral skills but includes them--that the definition of literacy consists in written and oral practices organized around texts in a particular culture. (PD)

Investigates distinctions between the theories of Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, and Marx by considering some unresolved problems in how Innis conceptualizes both the historical process and the impact of media on social organization. Argues that certain fundamental notions in Innis' work inaccurately analyze key features of the historical interaction of media with social organization. (JD)

Examines the workings of the existing system of computer data bases for technical and scientific information in the United States and raises questions about developing a public national information network. (JMF)

Discusses the development of electronic technology in the newspaper industry, including the use of computers in print production, and satellites for teletext and videotext transmission. Highlights the impact of these innovations on readers' habits and in terms of government regulation and freedom of the press. (JMF)

Explores the concept of computer literacy: in comparison with the early history of written literacy and in relation to what contemporary practitioners--users from education and industry--report about their computing experiences. Discusses implications for education and society. (PD)