Prisons,old cars,and Christmas trees: A metaphoric analysis of familial communication

This paper is a metaphoric analysis that explores college students’ perceptions of their families in relation to their family of origin, concept of family, and family communication. Metaphors were thematically analyzed and placed in categories of positive, negative and neutral responses given by individuals. Constant comparative method was also used to identify themes and dimensions among the metaphors. Throughout the results, students had an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward their family of origin and the concept of family. Responses about family communication, however, tended to range mainly from a neutral to negative perception. Additional results, implications, and future directions for family communication research are also discussed.     

Meetings of Directors of the National Libraries in the socialist countries held in, 1967–1968

Abstract

The years 1989–91 saw tremendous changes in the political map of Eastern Europe. These changes have resulted in varying degrees of acquisition difficulties for Slavic and Eastern European language collections in Western libraries. The following is an early assessment of the difficulties and the resultant damage done to Slavic collections in the West. Preliminary results show that, on the whole, book receipts are down considerably, prices are up considerably, and inconsistency is the only consistency. The data discussed here were gathered by means of a survey of certain aspects of Slavic¹ acquisitions. These data are supplemented throughout by qualitative material gleaned from comments made by vendors and librarians at the 1993 Slavic Librarians' Workshop held at Urbana, Illinois.     

Refereeing Process in Mathematics and Physics: Meaningful Changes and Models for Improvement

Contemporary scientific publishing in mathematics and physics (as in other exact sciences) is a complex and rapidly changing process. The most important element of this process, namely, the refereeing process is considered. In particular, meaningful changes towards refereeing process in mathematics and physics are identified and predicted. Considering a transition that takes place from the traditional refereeing system to other models and introducing the four basic parameters of the refereeing process, namely, the review stage, the openness for editors, referees and authors, journals and e-journals, feedback and e-feedback, several different models are proposed and described for improving the traditional refereeing system (e.g., 2-stage open and semi-open pre-review models, 1-stage open and blind pre-review models, and 0-stage open post-review models).     

Bringing the Author Back Into the Audience Research: A Hermeneutical Perspective on the Audience's Understanding of the Author

In the current media environment the texts available to media audiences are from very diverse sources. This paper deals with a theoretical question of how the audiences' understanding of author co-determines the reader's interpretation of the particular text. Drawing on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, a concept of the imagined author is introduced: a result of the text-reader encounter, where the notion of the author suggested by the text is realized by the reader through their prior knowledge and expectations of an author. A multidimensional model of the author is therefore proposed to appreciate different characteristics and values potentially associated by audiences with varying forms of authorial presence. Distinguishing various dimensions of the author allows a matrix of authorial characteristics to be built that positions the author brought into the encounter by the text as a paratextual feature that co-determines the meaning of the text.     

Book review

Stay tuned. A history of American broadcasting, Third Edition written by Christopher H. Sterling and John Michael Kittross. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, New Jersey, London, 2002, 975 pages, ISBN 0–8058–2624–6, www.erlbaum.com

Media Ownership, written by Gillian Doyle. Sage, London, 2002, ISBN 007619–6680–3/007619–6681–1 (pbk)

Internet management issues: A global perspective, edited by John D. Haynes. Idea Publishing Group, 2002, 340 pages, ISBN 1–930708–21–1, www.idea-group.com     

Border (In)Securities: Normative and Differential Belonging in LGBTQ and Immigrant Rights Discourse

This essay demonstrates the ways in which some lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) rights and immigrant rights organizations enact a form of cultural citizenship that relies upon normative belonging with their depiction of LGBTQ and immigrant rights. It also shows how other groups engender what Aimee Carrillo Rowe refers to as “differential belonging,” by directly confronting normative and exclusionary discourses. This paper first justifies linking these two issues by establishing the notion of the “stranger” as a way to describe how both migrants and queers threaten the way the nation state sees itself. It then unpacks both the normative and differential discourses of belonging in relation to two prominent neoliberal values: family values and good citizenship. Finally, this essay considers the implications of differential belonging as a strategy of cultural citizenship that may confront the exclusions that currently constitute the way the US nation-state imagines belonging.     

The Clientelistic Nature of Television Policies in Democratic Spain

This article uses a case study to contribute to the debate on media-political clientelism and its relation to the theory of media systems. It proposes a cross-disciplinary approach between the fields of communication and political sciences and thus analyzes four dimensions to observe the evolution of these practices in the area of television policies during Spanish democracy: license granting, television ownership regulation, politicization of the public service, and partisan news coverage. The period analyzed includes conservative and social democrat governments, trying to find differences in clientelistic practices among the different political parties. The analysis demonstrates how partisan relationships have evolved and what mechanisms have been put in place to maintain clientelistic ties.