Jonathan L. Freedman agrees that in the real world, children who watch more violence on television (TV) generally behave more aggressively. Freedman's reasons for rejecting laboratory evidence include the presumed artificiality of the laboratory experiments. Freedman justified his exclusion of laboratory experiments by saying that he wanted to examine only the research conducted in natural settings. Experimenters in the field have always been aware of the possibility of demand effects, so from the earliest experiments on film violence they have taken great care to avoid obtrusive measurement. Another instance of Freedman's selectivity bias in favor of negative results is his inclusion of the S. Milgram and R. L. Shotland experiment testing the notion that the portrayal of stealing on TV would induce stealing in natural situations. In terms of developmental theory, the results would be highly suspect if the coefficient from early viewing of TV violence to later aggression were higher than that from early aggression itself to later aggression.

M1101/PCO2 Plus Postage. Adults: *Behavior Change: Behavior Patterns: Information Seeking: Information Sources; *Media Research: *Models: *Newspapers: *Predictor Variables: *Reading Habits Data from a national survey were used to test a model representing the dynamics of newspaper reading behaviors. It was hypothesized that three types of constraints (structural constraints, transitional constraints, and self-constraints) would be present to various degrees in four typed of newspaper readers: regular readers, regular nonreaders, past readers who had quit reading (droppers), and past nonreaders who had begun reading (adders). These four types of readers were present in a sample of 1,201 people surveyed during both the 1974 and the 1976 election campaigns. Operational indicators included education and income for structural constraints; age and residential, marital, and occupational changes for transitional constraints: and campaign interest, campaign activity, attention to public affairs, and political activity outside the campaign context for self-constraints. Overall, the constraints model held up well under testing. As predicted, structural constraints accounted for stable nonreading. Transitional constraints, particularly those associated with youth and mobility, predicted changes in readership status. Directional changes, as represented by the adders and droppers, were associated mainly with indicators of self-constraints. The data were also consistent with expectations that self constraints would be a function of structural factors, the strongest indicators of readership status. (RL) ************* ****************************** .**__ * ** ** *** Reproductions supplied by Epps are,thebest-that can be made from the original dochment. ************************ ************************** U.S, DEPARTMENT OF KEALTK eputATto19 4 WELFARE NATitiO,AL. 1.,vSTITUTE OF ki17uco,Tior4 ,,umENt. 4=las NA-NI 4E.,f!i;',(ED EXACTLY AS ,E,17 711'eriT THE PERSON OR OP,7;.1:24",-.-., ATING IT POINT', VIEW C=IINIONS SEI.cT STAED P: :I$OT NEEESSAR/LY R PPE1,7;1LrtAL_ NATIONAP., INSTITUTE OF !.`r.,:tCATION POSITION OR POLICY /111i1SPAPTR READING I T LONGITUDINAL PER PER` : TIVE : BEYOND STRUCTURAL EXPLANATTOTZ Steven H. Chaffee and Slit Yuel Choc Mass Communication Research Center University of Wisconsin-Madison "PERMISSION TO REPP-:UilE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Steven H. Chaffee TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."

ABS4ACT Czech and Slovak journalism, which began with the revolutionary press of 1848 and 1849, became a dominant force cultural and political'life, after a brief repressive period in the 1850s. This study traces the evolution of modern Czechoslovak journalism from 1848 to February 1948, when the Communist party's rise to power forced a change in its orientation and mission. The first section deals specifically with the establishment of press tradition's, and with growth and activism until the end of the First Republic in 1938. The second section focuses on the Communist party press, its origins, and the conflicts which arose from Its given task, to reorient the nation toward a new political and socioeconomic course. Journalism is shown to have been an important weapon, utilized by an activist intelligentsia in the struggle against tyranny, absolute rule, and'suppression of basic human rights.

Research following the "selective exposure" model has focused on avoidance of political messages with which a person might disagree. But positive attention to such "counter-attitudinal" messages is worthy of study, in part because normative theories of democracy value exposure to information that might disturb citizens' political predispositions. Surveys of youth (N = 417) and parents (N = 430) examine attention to newspaper, television, and Web messages about candidates. While there is somewhat more attention to messages about and for a person's favored political candidate or party, forms of political involvement (knowledge, curiosity, and discussion) that predict this "attitude-consistent" attention also predict counter-attitudinal attention at least as strongly. Parents' education and students' exposure to civics lessons also predict both kinds of attention. These results suggest that attention to counter-attitudinal political messages is worthy of further study as an important goal of political socialization and a criterion of citizen performance in democracy.

Between 1959 and 1975, television replaced newspapers as the public's major source of news. To examine this trend in further detail, a national sample of 1,519 adults were asked to construct diaries of their activities during one day in the fall of 1975. These adults were also interviewed for their use of television news and newspapers. In a static context, the media appeared to follow a supplementary rather than couplementary/ccapetitive pattern. In a cross-time context, however, free time increased significantly from 1965 to 1975, while time devoted to ntwspapers decreased. Moreover, television viewing increased dramatically, particularly among older people. Increased television viewing was found for younger people, but the younger age groups also gave evidence of a "tradeoff" between newspapers and more specialized media (magazines and books). The results suggest that American television's second stage of development, in which news and reality-oriented content increased, made inroads on newspaper reading hanits. In its third stage of development, the coming age of more personalized packaging via tapes and discs, televisicn may challenge the specialized media of magazines and books. (PL) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDPS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** U.S. DI RANT/RENT OR SEAM. EDUCATION& INELPARSI s. NATIONAL INSTITUTE OP 4 EDUCATION r THIS DOCUMENT HAS SEEN R MORO114 DUCED f:XACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PEASON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATINO IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY *ERRECX) SENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POt.iv ri JOFIN P. ROBINSON and

Early explications of family communication patterns (FCP) suggested that a family's communication pattern arises as a result of interactions in which parents and adolescents influence each other. In contrast, empirical research usually treats FCP as parent-imposed norms that influence socialization outcomes in adolescents, without testing whether adolescents' socialization influences FCP. This study revisits the assumption that adolescents influence FCP, using data from a longitudinal quasi-experimental evaluation of a school-based civics curriculum intervention (N = 313 parent-adolescent pairs). Results show that the intervention-stimulated adolescents to initiate discussion of politics at home and that these adolescent-initiated discussions influenced adolescents' and parents' perceptions of FCP 6 months later.

We invite theorists and architects of interventions to consider the stimulation of family political communication as a powerful strategy for the mobilization of civic involvement. Family-based interaction constitutes a valuable resource for activation efforts, but to appreciate this potential requires a conceptualization of political involvement as a micro-social process. The family constitutes a social system that tends to maintain homeostatic balance in various domains of social interaction, including civic competence. An intervention such as a school curriculum or a media campaign can heighten the political interest of the family member initially reached by the intervention, which creates tension if other family members perceive a need to increase their own civic competence. Strides toward citizenship occur when the family system adjusts to re-establish equilibrium in response to exogenous influences that create tension. This framework situates the family as a mediating institution in relationship to societal agents that periodically heighten the flow of political information. The family is responsive to increased political stimulation and generative of motivation that leads to voting and other forms of participation outside the home. Our functional model of family political communication contrasts with a tendency toward reductionist thinking in which campaign effects are evaluated in isolation to each other, and in the absence of social context. We conclude with an intervention strategy that incorporates family interaction to amplify the impact of political stimulation originating from media, schools, and elections.

(1997). Learning about Politics from the Mass Media. Political Communication: Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 421-430.

This study compares empirically the relationship between presidential approval and interpersonal discussion in parallel with the role of mass media, during the 1992 U.S. primary election campaign. Data were collected in a panel survey of 670 randomly sampled registered voters in four California counties (Humboldt, Santa Clara, Orange, and San Diego). Interviews were conducted by telephone at the beginning of the primary campaign, and again just after the California primary election and before the Democratic and Republican party conventions.We used multiple regression to test the correlations of interpersonal discussion and the mass media on decline in approval of President George Bush. Interpersonal discussion was the strongest predictor (negative) of Bush's rating at time 2 of the survey, a time when Bush's rating had declined significantly Talking about issues was more strongly correlated (again negatively) with Bush's job rating than was talking about electability or about candidates' personal qualities.

A cross sectional survey of newly naturalized U.S. citizens, during the month preceding the 1988 U.S. presidential election, uses within-media measures of exposure, attention, and recall to explore the influences of newspapers, television news, and television ads on political knowledge of new voters. Controlling for traditional indicators of immigrant political socialization, each channel made a separate, significant contribution to issue learning. For newspapers and television news, questions about attention were the strongest predictor items. Recall of television ads, a measure designed specifically for this study, had the greatest predictive strength.

Relative contributions of television news and campaign advertising to U.S. voters' knowledge about candidate issue differences are compared. Empirical comparisons are based on interview data from six campaign surveys of voters, in various election settings from 1984 to 1992. In hierarchical regression analyses, after controls for demographic and political interest variables, measures of attention to television news consistently account for a significant increment of slightly more than 2 percent of variance in issue knowledge. Parallel measures representing attention to candidates' televised advertisements produce a much more variable pattern in terms of variance explained in knowledge. Usually the effects of advertisements are less than those of news, and sometimes they are nonsignificant; but in one hotly contested ideological race the informative effect attributable to advertisements exceeds that of TV news. These patterns hold up after further controls for other media use variables, including newspaper reading.

Journal Article Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945–1960. By Christopher Simpson. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. x, 204 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-19-507193-X.) Get access Steven H. Chaffee Steven H. Chaffee Stanford University, Stanford, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 82, Issue 1, June 1995, Pages 345–346, https://doi.org/10.2307/2082133 Published: 01 June 1995

Effects of various mass media on political learning during the 1992 presidential campaign are examined via analyses of two voter surveys conducted in different states. Three indicators of political knowledge are compared: differences on issues between parties (Republican vs. Democratic), differences on issues among candidates (Bush vs. Clinton vs. Perot), and personal knowledge about the candidates (Bush, Clinton, and Perot). Campaign media, including both news coverage and special events (conventions, debates), added significantly to the prediction of both kinds of knowledge about the candidates, even after controlling for major demographic variables and for habitual uses of news media. Of the new forms of media campaigning that became prominent in 1992, at least the interview/talk show format apparently added to voter learning about candidates. Television sources of various types tended to contribute more to learning about the candidates, whereas the newspaper was the medium more associated with knowledge of policy differences between the two major parties.