BBC's Wednesday Magazine and Arts Television for Women

Wednesday Magazine (1958–1963) was an innovative BBC television afternoon arts and culture strand produced by the specialist BBC women's programme unit, which had been built up and nurtured by the first dedicated head of women's programmes Doreen Stephens, who was appointed in 1953. Stephens was responsible for the development of a diverse and extensive range of women's programming; highly ambitious in the offering that it presented to its female viewers. This article will examine the series Wednesday Magazine exploring the wealth of arts and culture items broadcast, whilst considering the programme's significance in critical histories of both women's programming and arts television. The article will also make an intervention into historical debates around what constituted women's television in Britain.     

The 2008 Presidential Election, 2.0: A Content Analysis of User-Generated Political Facebook Groups

Although Facebook is primarily known for building and maintaining relationships, the 2008 presidential election highlighted this social networking website as a viable tool for political communication. In fact, during primary season until Election Day in 2008, Facebook users created more than 1,000 Facebook group pages that focused on Barack Obama and John McCain. Using quantitative content analysis, the primary purpose of this study was to assess how both John McCain and Barack Obama were portrayed across these Facebook groups. Results indicated that group membership and activity levels were higher for Barack Obama than for John McCain. Overall, Barack Obama was portrayed more positively across Facebook groups than John McCain. In addition, profanity, racial, religious, and age-related language were also coded for and varied with regard to how each candidate was portrayed. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Domesticating patriarchy: hegemonic masculinity and television's "Mr. Mom"

This essay examines television news treatments of stay-at-home dads (Mr. Moms)during the late 1990s and argues that these news accounts represent a challenge to more traditional masculine identities depicted in media. While offering a nominal challenge, however, these representations reinscribe significant aspects of patriarchal privilege within domestic space. Through a combination of discursive strategies compatible with the commercial needs of contemporary media organizations, television news programs' Mr. Moms operate ideologically to legitimate domesticity and nurturance as appropriately masculine. In so doing, they challenge some traditional notions about men while further solidifying a connection between these men and heterosexuality in the context of mainstream television news representations of middle-class family life in the contemporary United States. This process of legitimating nurturance and domesticity also and concurrently reverses the genders long articulated to particular advertising target segments within the commodity broadcast audience. This representational process reifies and naturalizes the class specificity of these Mr. Moms while it fuels television's continual need to produce and satisfy new audience niches in order to survive and compete in the media environment of today.     

Differently Able: A Review of Academic Library Websites for People With Disabilities

ABSTRACT

As an interdisciplinary field, Gerontology shares with History, Literary Criticism, Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology the use of autobiography as a primary research tool. In addition, Gerontology, like Counseling, Social Work and Psychoanalysis, uses autobiography as a counseling technique. We believe that autobiography also has merit in orienting older, non-traditional students, and students in social work related fields, to the library and its resources. In this paper we describe a pilot project based on this theory.     

Cataloging News

No abstract available for this article.     

Perceptions of social‐sexual communication at work: The effects of message,situation, and observer characteristics on judgments of sexual harassment

Social‐sexual communication at work may contribute to either the initiation of an organizational romance or sexual harassment. We examined forces that influence perceptions of sexual messages as harassing rather than flirtatious. We presented 94 working adults with questionnaires soliciting workplace attitudes and experiences. Then, participants reviewed newsletters describing male and female coworkers in a fictitious organization. Finally, participants evaluated the degree of sexual harassment evident in six hypothetical interactions wherein one of the employees introduced in the newsletter makes a suggestive remark to his or her coworker. Newsletters and questionnaires manipulated the explicitness of messages, the initiator's status as supervisor versus subordinate, the attractiveness of the message initiator and target, and the initiator's sex. Message explicitness accounted for 88% of the variance in perceptions of harassment. A five‐way interaction among message and situational cues suggested that perceptions of sexual harassment are also influenced by contextual information. Females rated highly explicit messages as more harassing than did males, and individuals who were more accepting of socializing or dating between coworkers rated scenarios as less harassing. Exposure to socializing at work had a curvilinear association with perceptions of harassment such that low to moderate exposure corresponded with perceptions of greater harassment and moderate to high exposure was associated with lower ratings of sexual harassment. The discussion highlights applications for sexual harassment training programs within organizations.     

Children's expectations for television entertainment vs. television news events

Young children's limited ability to recognize and defend against commercial messages has led to numerous concerns about advertising that targets child‐viewers. Industry self‐regulation of child‐oriented advertising content is one response to those concerns. With the demise of the National Association of Broadcasters Code in 1982, guidelines maintained by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the National Council of Better Business Bureaus comprise the only industry‐wide self‐regulation. This study evaluates the extent of compliance with the CARU standards across a sample of over 10,000 ads directed to children. The results indicate a high overall rate of adherence to the guidelines. Two problem areas emerged which accounted for most of the violations observed: ads that featured premium offers, and ads for recorded telephone message services. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the child audience.     

Affiliative and Aggressive Humor,Attachment Dimensions,and Interaction Goals

This study examined humor production in relation to attachment dimensions and interaction goals. Participants (N = 172) completed measures of attachment dimensions (anxiety, avoidance), humor production (affiliative humor, aggressive humor), and primary and secondary goals. Anxiety was negatively related to affiliative humor, whereas avoidance was positively related to aggressive humor. Affiliative humor was related to effectiveness and being playful in the interaction, as well as the secondary goals of arousal management and clarity. Aggressive humor was not related to any of the goals.     

Routledge as a Global Publisher

A case study of the commercial history of the academic publishing company, Routledge, between 1980 and 2010, with a focus on its global activities and structures. During this period, Routledge experienced changes in ownership, branding and location as well as in its subject disciplines and publishing formats. The company was also an early and continuing innovator in digital publishing. The study presents findings drawn from interviews with past and current managers, and supporting content analysis of documents and web pages. It concludes by identifying the continuities that underlay the many changes in academic publishing over the period, and by suggesting possible future research, including to test the explanatory value of Ohmae’s theories of globalization.