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Based upon the philosophical position of contextualism, the common-sense idea of powerful, uniform, and universal media effects is largely untenable. Instead, researchers can more profitably view such effects as resulting from synthesized stimuli, of which media content is only one component. Thus, these phenomena should be called media-related effects, rather than media effects. Contextualism also implies a pluralism of both method and theory. In this regard both standardized and unstandardized indicators of the relationships among variables are needed to assess the importance of evidence concerning a media-related effect. More specifically, the routine reporting and interpretation of unstandardized indicators in nonexperimental research potentially could allow researchers to make a much stronger case for the theoretical or practical importance of effects than is possible at present. (Five notes and 28 references are attached.) (RAE)

A study examined the possible impact of exposure and attention to news on the differentiation--i.e., variation--in an individual's attitudes toward different foreign countries. It hypothesized that increased exposure or attention to news about countries would covary with increased differentiation in such attitudes. It also hypothesized that knowledge about countries would act as a mediator variable that would largely account for any association between exposure and attitudinal variability. The hypotheses were examined with survey data from Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Subjects, 374 adult residents of Tuscaloosa County, were interviewed by telephone during middle and late November 1984. Partial correlation analyses suggested that regular readership of cosmopolitan newspapers and newsmagazines may increase differentiation in a person's attitudes toward six countries: Great Britain, India, Japan, Mexico, the Soviet Union, and Venezuela. As predicted, the introduction of a control for knowledge about these countries reduced the association below the criterion for statistical significance. Analysis of the association of demographic control variables with differentiation suggested that factors other than knowledge also may affect the variability of a person's attitudes about countries. (Three tables of data are included, and 5 detailed notes and 26 references are attached.) (Author/RAE)

Examining the impact of news on people's knowledge about and favorableness of opinion toward six foreign countries, a study conducted telephone interviews with 374 adult residents in Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, during November 1984. The nations selected for study included three developed countries (Britain, the Soviet Union, and Japan) and three developing countries (Mexico, India, and Venezuela). Knowledge about the countries was measured by asking respondents to identify the capital and estimate the population and income per person for each country. Respondents were also given the name of each country's political leader and were asked to name that leader's country. Favorableness of opinion was assessed by asking respondents to rate each country on a scale of zero to 100, with zero representing an extremely unfavorable opinion. News orientation variables included traditional exposure items and measures of attention to news. Results indicated that individuals acquire knowledge about the characteristics of developing and developed countries from news in cosmopolitan print media, and from attention to news. Furthermore, data showed that an individual's attention to news about developed countries may contribute to more favorable impressions of them. Results provided evidence consistent with both the optimistic view (media enhances audiences' understanding of nations) and the pessimistic view (audiences acquire negative attitudes from news about developing countries) of news impact on audience knowledge. (Seven tables of data are included, and three pages of footnotes and 35 references are appended.) (MM)

A study examined the influence of news about single nations on U.S. residents' inferences about groups of foreign countries. Subjects, 150 students in introductory psychology, writing, and mass communications courses at a U.S. state university, were randomly assigned to treatment groups. Participants answered questions concerning a group of developed or developing nations. The experimental group also read an unrepresentative news story concerning one of the nations. Participants were then asked to answer a series of questions. Results indicated that unrepresentative news does influence the accuracy of audience inferences about groups of foreign countries. Those who read an unrepresentative news story about a single European or South American nation made less accurate judgments about an average characteristic of all countries in either region than did control participants who read no story. The results also gave no evidence that a person's general orientation toward world affairs mediates the impact of news upon the accuracy of judgment about groups of countries. References and tables are appended. (DF)

Political communication researchers recently have emphasized conditional relationships as crucial to specifying and understanding the effects of the mass media. In many cases, however, researchers will not predict which variables will modify the form or existence of media effects. They therefore will not include measures of the conditional variables in research designs. The presence of heteroscedasticity, or unequal precision of prediction at different levels of an independent variable, suggests the likelihood of an overlooked conditional relationship. This paper examines the possibilities for the use of statistical tests of variation in mass communication research. Research situations that employ both discrete and continuous independent variables are covered, and the visual examination of scatterplots as an alternative to performing variability tests is examined. Problems with the variation tests available on commonly used computer packages is addressed. A number of recently developed, apparently dependable variability tests also are presented. A research example involving two-way, linear interactions is provided. Additional concerns with unequal variability are also discussed. Three figures and a four-page list of references are included. (Author/PN)

The idea that mass communication effects may decrease diversity among people or societies exposed to it arises constantly. However, discussions of mass media effects do not highlight differences between mass communications that "affect" people uniformly and messages that members of audiences "respond to" in similar ways. A number of modern theories concerning the effects of mass communication explicitly predict, or at least imply, homogenizing effects. The "mainstreaming" concept hypothesizes that television "cultivates" in heavy viewers an image of the world similar to that shown on the screen. A refinement of the global cultivation hypothesis, "resonance," is said to occur in instances where specific issues have particular salience to people's everyday reality (or even perceived reality) and the combination resonates and amplifies cultivation. In most instances, resonance increases differences between or among social groups. Even though theoretical ideas concerning the influence of mass communication upon stereotyping, public opinion and culture imply uniform audience responses, the literature contains almost no examples of methods designed to test hypotheses about the uniformity of individual responses. People within a society will not necessarily be more homogeneous following the introduction of some form of media content, even if the content contributes to uniformity among the individuals exposed to it. (Four pages of references are provided, and tables and graphs are included.) (NKA)