Shaping the future: Mergers,acquisitions, and the U.S. publishing,communications, and mass media industries, 1990–1995

Between 1990 and 1995, a substantive reconfiguration took place within the publishing, communications, and mass media industries in the United States. These changes were triggered primarily by five pivotal developments: (1) the direct impact of strategic planning theories and practices on a relatively small number of U.S. and foreign media executives; (2) a dramatic technological convergence within the entire communications industry; (3) a quest to gain hegemony over the creation, production, and distribution of electronic and print information and entertainment products and services in the United States and the global marketplace; (4) a sharp increase in media usage and expenditures in the United States; and (5) the impending passage of a massive, revolutionary telecommunications bill. This legislation (the Telecommunications Act of 1996) changed drastically the ground rules created by the Communications Act of 1934, lifted restrictions on the ownership of media properties, allowed media companies to enter formerly forbidden markets, and reduced or eliminated governmental controls over the burgeoning communications business. The deeply etched lines separating “newspapers” from “books” and “magazines”, or “television” from “telephone”, “radio”, “film”, and “video” became hazy, and, in some instances, disappeared. Media scholars and industry experts realized that the communications landscape had to be viewed as a totally interconnected industry, albeit a rather diverse one.     

Narrowmobilization and Tea Party Activism: A Study of Right-Leaning Alternative Media

Past research concerning the theoretical framework of Resistance Performance (RP) has been based on observations of liberal organizations and activists. In the following essay, we engage in a qualitative content analysis of alternative media utilized by conservative “Tea Party” activists to build on the concept of RP. Overall, we discovered that the dominant theme found in much of the content focuses on “purity,” which is considerably different from past RP research that found broad themes of “human rights,” “democracy,” “be the media,” and “principles of unity” embedded within liberal alternative media content. We conclude that the theme of “purity” gives rise to narrowmobilization, which constructs very focused protest communities within right-leaning politics.     

Interdisciplinarity as diversity in citation patterns among journals: Rao-Stirling diversity,relative variety,and the Gini coefficient

Questions of definition and measurement continue to constrain a consensus on the measurement of interdisciplinarity. Using Rao-Stirling (RS) Diversity sometimes produces anomalous results. We argue that these unexpected outcomes can be related to the use of “dual-concept diversity” which combines “variety” and “balance” in the definitions (ex ante). We propose to modify RS Diversity into a new indicator (DIV) which operationalizes “variety,” “balance,” and “disparity” independently and then combines them ex post. “Balance” can be measured using the Gini coefficient. We apply DIV to the aggregated citation patterns of 11,487 journals covered by the Journal Citation Reports 2016 of the Science Citation Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index as an empirical domain and, in more detail, to the citation patterns of 85 journals assigned to the Web-of-Science category “information science & library science” in both the cited and citing directions. We compare the results of the indicators and show that DIV provides improved results in terms of distinguishing between interdisciplinary knowledge integration (citing references) versus knowledge diffusion (cited impact). The new diversity indicator and RS diversity measure different features. A routine for the measurement of the various operationalization of diversity (in any data matrix) is made available online.     

The effect of responsibility attributions on message source evaluation

Concepts from Heider's “Attribution of Responsibility” theory were used to investigate the process of message source evaluation. The results of a role‐playing experiment indicate that: (1) When a message source's previous behavior has had favorable consequences for a receiver, the source will be rated more “safe,” “qualified,” and “dynamic” to the extent that responsibility for those consequences are attributed to the source; and (2) when the source's previous behavior has had unfavorable consequences for the receiver, the source will be judged less “safe” but more “qualified” and “dynamic” to the extent that responsibility for those consequences are attributed to the source.     

Predatory and exploitative behaviour in academic publishing: An assessment

The issue of “predatory” publishing continues to affect many scholars around the world who publish. When one reads the fairly vast literature surrounding “predatory” publishing, there is an erroneous tendency to continue pivoting around Jeffrey Beall's blacklists of “predatory” open access (OA) journals and publishers. However, to be “predatory” involves much more than defining a handful of select behaviours, and it is becoming increasingly important to start defining, or curtailing, the lexicon to avoid referring to any journal or publisher that might display one of the following qualities (exploitative, deceptive, excessive, unscrupulous, abusive, advantageous, manipulative, profit-seeking, or others) as synonymously meaning “predatory”. This paper focuses mainly on the oft-interchangeable terms “predatory” and “exploitation”, and explores the morality of predatory and exploitative actions by applying a deontological ethics approach which implies that certain actions are wrong even if they achieve good consequences, with the understanding that because a predatory entity aims to exploit others, these actions would be considered morally wrong from a deontologist's perspective. In articulating our argument, we attempt to expand the conversation around this important topic, with the hope that it might bring additional clarity to the issue of what might constitute a “predatory” journal or publisher.     

Job satisfaction among Greek academic librarians

This study, which investigated job satisfaction among academic librarians in Greece, used the Employee Satisfaction Inventory (ESI). The instrument assessed six dimensions of job satisfaction: “working conditions,” “pay,” “promotion,” “job itself,” “supervision,” and “organization as a whole.” Greek academic librarians were most satisfied with “job itself,” “supervision,” and “working conditions” and less satisfied with “pay” and “promotion.” Prior working experience contributed negatively to the prediction of satisfaction with “working conditions,” “supervision,” and “organization as a whole,” whereas participation in decision-making positively influenced “job itself” and “organization as a whole.” These findings are in accordance with prior studies and can be particularly useful for providing a comparative and comprehensive understanding of job satisfaction in the library profession.     

The effect of variation of rate on the recall by radio listeners of “straight” newscasts∗

A comparative analysis of the theories of Kenneth Burke and Alfred North Whitehead provides a different perspective of persuasion. The areas of comparison are: (1) the composition of the rhetorical situation and the function of the rhetor; (2) the modules: “identification” and “transmutation” and (3) the paradigms: “consubstantiality” and “concrescence.” Other perceptions of the rhetorical situation, the axiological latitude and functions of the rhetor, and the interrelations between the rhetor and the audience might, thereby, be gained.     

乡村文化再生产的秩序重构

乡村文化的传承与变迁,本质上是一种具有鲜明“自组织”特性的乡村文化“再生产”过程。然而在社会大变革、文化大变迁以及城市化、现代化的多重“挤压”下,乡村文化“再生产”秩序受到不同程度的破坏,文化“自组织”能力也日渐式微。“安康新民风建设引领乡村公共文化服务创新发展”制度设计与实践探索,就是要通过主动干预,建构起乡村文化“再生产”的新秩序,推动乡村文化繁荣与发展。现代公共文化服务体系建设与优秀传统文化传承发展两大国家战略,无疑是介入乡村文化“再生产”秩序的重要“他组织”力量,为乡村特别是集中连片贫困地区重构乡村文化“再生产”秩序提供了路径探索和经验借鉴。     

Research dynamics: Measuring the continuity and popularity of research topics

Dynamic development is an intrinsic characteristic of research topics. To study this, this paper proposes two sets of topic attributes to examine topic dynamic characteristics: topic continuity and topic popularity. Topic continuity comprises six attributes: steady, concentrating, diluting, sporadic, transforming, and emerging topics; topic popularity comprises three attributes: rising, declining, and fluctuating topics. These attributes are applied to a data set on library and information science publications during the past 11 years (2001–2011). Results show that topics on “web information retrieval”, “citation and bibliometrics”, “system and technology”, and “health science” have the highest average popularity; topics on “h-index”, “online communities”, “data preservation”, “social media”, and “web analysis” are increasingly becoming popular in library and information science.     

科举制视角下的《旧唐书》“经籍”“艺文”观考辨

“艺文”的语义具有时代性。在自汉以后的长期使用中,“艺文”的概括性意义发生了语义偏移,从汉时的偏指于“艺”变为唐时的偏指于“文”。该用法在唐初至于五代的高频使用中进一步固化。“艺文”一词由偏指于“艺”到偏指于“文”的这一变化,导致了在重新尊崇经学、批判浮华文风、改革进士科的唐末五代文化政策背景下,《旧唐书》编纂者弃“艺文”而用“经籍”命名其志书。     

A National Survey on the Professional Role Conceptions of Journalists in Kenya

The professional role conceptions of journalists have for many years remained a central strand in journalism studies. The present research investigates the professional role conceptions that Kenyan journalists perceive to be the most important in their work. Similarly, the professional role they consider the most important is further analyzed in relation to demographics (age, gender, education, contract type, media type, and media ownership). Findings from a national survey of 504 Kenyan journalists indicate that “providing citizens with information” is the most important role (61.3 percent), followed by “advocate for social change” (51.7 percent). The other major roles include to “support official policies” (46.9 percent), “motivate people to participate in civic activities” (45.6 percent), and “act as watchdog of government” (35.3 percent). The most important role—providing citizens with information—is backed across all demographics with a strong mean of 4.4 on a five-point scale ranging from 1 (“not important at all”) to 5 (“extremely important”). However, the difference of means across all the analyzed demographics are not statistically significant.     

JOURNALISM EMBRACING ADVERTISING AS TRADITIONAL JOURNALISM DISCOURSE BECOMES MARGINAL

The border between journalism and marketing communication is diminishing and media such as television and magazines are especially vulnerable to the colonisation of traditional journalistic genres by promotional information. From the point of view of audience perception, grouping certain media channels or discourses into “journalistic” and others into “promotional” or “mixed” would provide a certain level of predictability, as well as a basis for their judgement of information. However, we argue here that category confusion takes place even inside sub-sectors of niche magazines. The objective of this international comparative research is to analyse the editorial ideologies and discursive practices concerning the hybridisation of media discourse in one media sector: the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) sub-sector of niche magazines. Can these magazines be identified as “journalistic”, “advert” or “mixed” oriented media? The empirical research is focused on the production process (the implementation of editorial principles) in key MICE magazines mainly in European countries.     

Paper-patent citation linkages as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge: Macro and micro evidence

In this study, we investigate the extent to which patent citations to papers can serve as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge in science using a comparative study with a control group, i.e., instant recognition papers. We identify the two opposite groups of papers by the Bcp measure, a parameter-free index for identifying papers which were recognized with delay. We provide a macro (Science/Nature papers dataset) and micro (a case chosen from the dataset) evidence on paper-patent citation linkages as early signs for predicting delayed recognized knowledge in science. It appears that papers with delayed recognition show a stronger and longer technical impact than instant recognition papers. We provide indication that in the more recent years papers with delayed recognition are awakened more often and earlier by a patent rather than by a scientific paper (also called “prince”). We also found that patent citations seem to play an important role to avoid instant recognition papers to level off or to become a so called “flash in the pan”, i.e., instant recognition. It also appears that the sleeping beauties may firstly encounter negative citations and then patent citations and finally get widely recognized. In contrast to the two focused fields (biology and chemistry) for instant recognition papers, delayed recognition papers are rather evenly distributed in biology, chemistry, psychology, geology, materials science, and physics. We discovered several pairs of “science sleeping”-“technology inducing”, such as “biology-biotechnology/pharmaceuticals”, “chemistry-chemical engineering”, as well as some trans-fields science-technology interactions, such as “psychology - computer technology/control technology/audio-visual technology”, “physics - computer technology”, and “mathematics-computer technology”. We propose in further research to discover the potential ahead of time and transformative research by using citation delay analysis, patent & NPL analysis, and citation context analysis.     

A descriptive investigation of the possible communication‐based reasons for effective and ineffective group decision making

The present study sought to compare the nature and content of interaction within a number of “effective” and “ineffective” decision‐making groups in an effort to identify consistent differences which might account for the differences in the quality of their group decisions. The goal of the investigation was to generate data which will help us better understand the communication‐based reasons for “effective” and “ineffective” group decision making. Using basically a qualitative approach, six “effective” groups and five “ineffective” groups were compared. The study found that the discussions of those two sets of groups can be distinguished on the basis of at least four communication‐related characteristics: (1) The manner in which the groups examined opinions and assumptions advanced by group members; (2) The manner in which the groups evaluated alternative choices; (3) The nature of the premises which served as the basis for the groups’ decisions; and (4) The nature of influence exerted by the most influential members of the groups. These four differences are discussed in terms of specific empirically‐testable propositions regarding the relationship between group interaction and quality of group decision making.     

(1) Meetings 1975–1976

The social impact of the “Digital Divide” in a Central–Eastern European country provides a comprehensive study of different “Digital Divides” existing between “emerging democracies” (or “emerging new market-oriented economies”) from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as between them and industrialized developed countries (Western Europe, USA, etc.). Former and actual influencing factors are analyzed and evaluated, basic facts and social impacts are presented, some solutions are issued. The United Nations' concerns and roles are emphasized.     

The international flow of scientific and technical information

On February 27, 1985, the Federal Library and Information Center Committee (FLICC) convened its second annual Forum on Federal Information Policies at the Library of Congress. “The International Flow of Scientific and Technical Information” brought together some one hundred public and private sector librarians and information policy leaders to hear distinguished professionals discuss a subject of great and growing importance to the future of world communications.Dr. Carol A. Nemeyer, Associate Librarian for National Programs, welcomed participants and thanked key members of the FLICC Executive Advisory Committee for their help in planning the program. (Later, Nemeyer was herself credited for her “vision in pioneering and conceptualizing this forum.”) “As I look around this roomful of leaders,” she said, “I am proud to be a member of this dynamic profession.” Nemeyer introduced Jane Bortnick, Specialist in Information Science and Technology in the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, who moderated the morning session.     

Border Patrolling and “Passing” in Eminem's 8 Mile

This essay argues that the semi-biographical film 8 Mile represents Eminem as being both racially distinctive and as possessing universal commercial appeal. 8 Mile accomplishes this paradoxical construction by portraying “Rabbit” as “white trash,” a discursively “dark” (white) object, and as an American mythological white subject. The film makes whiteness hyper-visible by subjecting it to raced and gendered struggles. Through real and symbolic violence, Rabbit battles “dark” villains and grapples with “dark” women, initiating a rite of passage. The film grounds Eminem's hip hop authenticity in Rabbit's discursive darkness, but attaches to this image the marketable allure of mythic whiteness. I conclude by contemplating how the film's conservatism reifies “blackness.”     

A Cross-Cultural Test of Implicit Theories of Re-requesting

Extant U.S. research shows that when a persuader’s initial message is rebuffed, the next requesting message will tend to be ruder and more aggressive than the initial appeal. The robustness of these results has rarely been tested cross-culturally. Using conversational constraints theory, we further explicate implicit theories by investigating the perceived importance of constraints of re-requesting styles across two cultural-linguistic groups (i.e., Korean and American English speakers). Consistent with the “rebuff phenomenon,” results revealed that people rated the task constraint (“clarity”) as significantly more important, and the three face-related constraints (“concern for the other’s feelings,” “minimizing imposition,” and “avoiding negative evaluation”) as significantly less important for the second-attempt requesting than for the initial requesting. Some of these tendencies were more pronounced among American English speakers than among Korean speakers.     

The Psychology of Marathon Television Viewing: Antecedents and Viewer Involvement

This study focuses on the expanding trend of marathon (“binge”) television viewing. It examines the personality antecedents of such media consumption (attachment style, depression, and self-regulation deficiency) as well as the psychological experiences of marathon viewers relative to the narrative (transportation, enjoyment) and its characters (parasocial relationship, identification). In a two-study design, theoretical models of media use and involvement, on one hand, and models of media addiction, on the other hand, are applied to predict the extent of marathon viewing and to compare it with “traditional” viewing. Results advance understanding of enjoyment and involvement theory and support cognitive theories of media addiction. At the same time, the study’s findings reveal that marathon television viewers are active both cognitively and emotionally during and after the media exposure, thus alleviating some concerns about the “problematic” nature of the “binge” viewing phenomenon.     

Task role ambiguity and conflict in supervisor‐subordinate relationships

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of hierarchical communication distortion on the task role perceptions of subordinates working in the context of a goal setting program. The study used empirical data collected from junior officers, managers, staff employees (N=32) and their executive supervisors (N=15) in one division of a national insurance company. This sample formed 32 supervisor‐subordinate dyads which were classified as “high” or “low” in hierarchical communication distortion. Subordinates in “high” distortion dyads experienced more role stress in terms of conflict and ambiguity than did subordinates in “low” distortion dyads.