Joseph R. Dominick

Who Do You Think You Are? Personal Home Pages and Self-Presentation on the World Wide Web.

Personal home pages on the World Wide Web make it possible for anyone to be a mass communicator. They represent an unprecedented chance to study the audience as producers of mass communication content rather than as consumers. The current study content analyzed 319 personal home pages and identified their most popular features. In addition, personal home pages were examined as new channels of self-presentation, a topic that has received much research attention from psychologists. Findings indicated that most personal web pages did not contain much personal information. The typical page had a brief biography, a counter or guest book, and links to other pages. The same strategies of self-presentation were employed on personal pages with the same frequency as they were in the interpersonal setting. There were also gender differences in self-presentation that were consistent with research findings from social psychology.

The portrayal of women in prime time, 1953–1977

A content analysis of 1314 television programs and 2444 starring characters appearing on prime-time television from 1953–1977 revealed that the number of females in starring roles has remained relatively constant over the last 25 years and that most women are still found in situation comedies. While the number of women shown as housewives or housekeepers has declined from the 1950s to the present, the makeup of the television labor force has consistently shown no relationship to the real-life employment patterns of women. The data seem to support the findings announced in a recent study by the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which concluded that women were underrepresented on television and were frequently seen in stereotyped roles.

Acculturation, Cultivation, and Daytime TV Talk Shows

This study explored the cultivation phenomenon among international college students in the United States by examining the connection between levels of acculturation, daytime TV talk show viewing, and beliefs about social reality. It was expected that international students who were heavy viewers of daytime TV talk shows and who scored low on a measure of acculturation about the United States would hold the most negative perceptions and attitudes concerning U.S. society. Three specific hypotheses were tested. International students who score low on acculturation and watch a great deal of daytime talk shows should (1) overestimate the frequency of certain undesirable behaviors in the United States, (2) have more negative attitudes toward human relationships in the United States, and (3) have more negative perceptions of human relationships in the United States. The first hypothesis received limited support while the second and third received strong support.

Product-Related Programming and Children's TV: A Content Analysis.

A content analysis of 16 hours of childrens cartoon television programs, sampled from 1988 network and syndicated shows, found that all programs studied contained some violence, but especially those programs that had a link with toy merchandisers. These programs also used more theme music. There were few black characters shown, while males predominated and females were victims more often than were men.

Economic influences on long‐form network news stories

This study considers the effects of changes in competition at the national television level on the content of national television newscasts. The authors find that from 1975 to 1989, network news use of long‐form stories, a primary means of product differentiation in news, could not adequately be predicted by economic theory or the socialization theory of news.

The effects of commercial clutter on radio news

Increased advertising clutter on radio newscasts did not lower the amount of learning from that newscast, although it did have a negative effect on newscaster credibility. Dr. Dominick is on the journalism faculty at the University of Georgia. He will become editor of the Journal in January of 1977.

Penetrating the great wall: The ideological impact of voice of America newscasts on young Chinese intellectuals of the 1980s

This study examined perceptions and impact of the Voice of Americas (VOA) newscasts on the ideological beliefs and attitudes of the generation of Chinese intellectuals who came of age during the 1980s. A telephone survey and in‐depth interviews conducted among a representative sample of Chinese scholars now living in the United States found that many of these young intellectuals were regular listeners. They rated VOAs coverage of international news as credible but were more skeptical and less dependent on VOAs reports concerning China. Evidence suggested that the VOA had an impact on political beliefs, but its effects were influenced by individual psychological and sociological variables. Theoretically, this study shows some support for media dependency theory and individual differences theory.