Communication channels within ethnic groups

Major channels of communication are examined for two major functions: providing news of the ethnic community, and linking ethnics to the “mother country.” The four major channels are: interpersonal channels (friends and neighbors), radio, local metropolitan daily newspapers, and ethnic-language newspapers. Size of ethnic group is linked to channel preference, and greater ethnicity is related to a preference for ethnic media for both functions. Lower SES ethnics lend to rely more on interpersonal communication and ethnic media, while higher SES ethnics turn more to metro media and magazines. Channel preference as indicated by respondents is also linked to actual usage patterns.     

Integrating Theoretical Traditions in Media Effects: Using Third-Person Effects to Link Agenda-Setting and Cultivation

In an earlier period of mass communication research, scholars were more adventuresome in advancing “new” theories and less hesitant to “create” theory. The 1970s, in particular, bore witness to the emergence of several such theories—from the knowledge gap and agenda-setting to cultivation. Scholars have generated substantial literatures elaborating work in these and other traditions. Those contributions are now sufficiently robust that it is time to direct some of our energies toward synthesizing theories. This article nominates third-person perception as a candidate for such integration. Several prominent theories of media effects in the mass communication literature are selected to illustrate how the theories can or have been integrated. Results from three surveys provided evidence that the theories of third-person perception, agenda-setting and cultivation can be interrelated. The proposition examined here can serve as a model for further integration of other media theories. This integration attempt harkened back to the times when theory building in media effects was more common and perhaps more optimistic about explaining processes of influence.     

Channel use,channel choices and organizational life cycle stages

This study found empirical support for the proposition that channel use and channel choice of face‐to‐face, group, memo, organizational and external media differ in organizations in the birth, growth, maturity, revival and decline stages of the organizational life cycle.     

Understanding adopters of audio information innovations

The use of two phone‐based audio innovations—audiotext audio information services and fax—was assessed in a probability survey of urban respondents. Support was found for the notion that social indicators are less important in the prediction of innovation use than are attitudinal and communication variables. Findings are interpreted in light of diffusion of innovation theory and research on the adoption of new technologies.     

Re-presenting Sport: How Instant Replay and Perceived Violence Impact Enjoyment of Mediated Sports

Several long-standing theories intersect in discussing the impact of community characteristics and of the mass media. The structural pluralism model popularized by Tichenor and his colleagues says that social structure influences how mass media operate in communities because they respond to how power is distributed in the social system, whereas the linear model says that the increasing size of a community's population leads to more social differentiation and diversity and corresponding increases in subcultures with their own beliefs, customs, and behaviors. Recently, there has been a concern about how changes in society have led to a decline in organizational activity and the network of relationships and trust that constitute “social capital.” This article examines the impact of population and diversity (using census data) on individuals’ media use, interpersonal discussion and civic engagement (measured in a national survey), and the relationship among these variables. Analysis of a structural model provides evidence that the “linear hypothesis” can be combined with structural pluralism, with size—measured by population—impacting diversity, which influences the relationships that people have with their community. Concurrently, social categories influence people's communication patterns and community relationships, and communication impacts civic engagement.