Pamela J. Shoemaker

Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media

This article goes beyond describing media content and places it in a broader theoretical framework by examining some determinants that have been considered important in the study of international news flow. The article attempts to identify the factors that best differentiate those international events that are covered in the U.S. news media from events that are not. The dependent variable was media coverage of international events. Based on previous studies, seven variables were selected as predictors to separate the two groups: potential for social change, normative deviance, relevance to the United States, geographical distance, language affinity, press freedom, and economic system. A stepwise discriminant analysis was used to distinguish between the covered events and not-covered events, emphasizing identification of the most powerful discriminators. Results show that four variables contribute significantly to the discriminant function in distinguishing between covered events and not-covered events: normative deviance of an event, relevance to the United States, potential for social change, and geographical distance.

A Media Sociology for the Networked Public Sphere: The Hierarchy of Influences Model

We have promoted a hierarchy of influences model for understanding the complex factors shaping media—particularly news—content: from the individual to social-system level. Meanwhile, technology-enabled changes in the media eco-system have shifted old boundaries and encouraged new, more spatially oriented concepts, such as fields and networks. In this essay we revisit our levels-of-analysis perspective, which in the historical context of communication research was a response to the media effects paradigm, and incorporate within the model examples from recent research. We argue that the hierarchical of influences can still take into account new realignments of media and other forces. Emerging spaces in the network public sphere may not fit as easily into the once familiar professional, organizational, and institutional containers, but the new media configurations supporting these spaces must still be understood with reference to a larger framework of power.

Criticism and Media Content

MURPHY BROWN: ANATOMY OF A SITCOM by Robert S. Alley and Irby B. Brown (New York: Dell Delta Books, 1990—

How Varying Reproduction Methods Affects Response to Photographs

10.95, paper, ISBN 0-385-30129-4, 285 pp.) CHANNELS OF BELIEF: RELIGION AND AMERICAN COMMERCIAL TELEVISION edited by John P. Ferre (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1990—

Mediating the message : theories of influences on mass media content

19.95, ISBN 0-8138-0639-9, 152 pp.) TELEVISION CRITICISM: APPROACHES AND APPLICATIONS edited by Leah R. Vande Berg and Lawrence A. Wenner (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1991—price not given, paper, ISBN 0-8013-0580-2, 490 pp.) LOGICS OF TELEVISION: ESSAYS IN CULTURAL CRITICISM edited by Patricia Mellencamp (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990—

Mediating the message

35.00/14.95, ISBN 0-253-33617-1 hard, 0-253-20582-4, paper, 307 pp.; published in London by the British Film Institute) REDEEMING MODERNITY: CONTRADICTIONS IN MEDIA CRITICISM by Joli Jensen (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990—

Hardwired for News: Using Biological and Cultural Evolution to Explain the Surveillance Function.

29.95/14.95, ISBN 0-8039-3476-9 hard, 0-8039-3477-7 soft, 221 pp.) KILLING THE MESSENGER: 100 YEARS OF MEDIA CRITICISM edited by Tom Goldstein (New York: Columbia Univer...

Individual and Routine Forces in Gatekeeping

Today’s intense competition for readers in the mass marketplace has led to the redesign of many publications, use of more illustrations and increasing reliance on strong graphic treatment of both illustrations and type. The senior author of this paper, who serves as managing editor for a national magazine for dental students, became interested in what might be happening to the message (photographic illustrations) when the medium (type of reproduction screen or technique) was selected for its arty, graphic qualities rather than for its clarity and straightforward value. The present study was designed to provide some empirical answers to this question. Among the decisions confronting magazine editors when they elect to illustrate their publications with photographs are these: “What photographs shall I use, and what kind of reproduction will be most effective?” By kind of reproduction, we refer to either the type of halftone screen the editor requests of the printer or to the absence of a screen. reproducing the photograph as a tone-line shot in which the middle grays drop out. (The tone-line conversion is prepared by shooting one underexposed line negative and one overexposed line negative. The two negatives are put together, and a 30% tint screen is put behind the underexposed negative. It is the underexposed negative that prints gray in the final reproduction; the overexposed negative prints black.) Although newspaper editors have essentially the same options and may be under similar pressures to expand readership, the “magazine look” of an increasing number of dailies has so far not included use of mezzotint, steel engraving and other reproduction variations used by some magazines. As most journalists are aware, photographic illustrations (all continuous-tone “art,” in fact) must be translated into a pattern of dots or lines of varying size in order to be printable in newspapers or magazines and to properly reproduce the tonal variatipns of the original. The tonal variation is provided by a “halftone screen” (usually by the engraver or printer), and this screen is available in a wide variety of patterns, some of which considerably change the appearance of the original. For example, a mezzotint screen and a steel engraving screen can mimic certain artistic techniques rather than recreate the original camera record. A tone-line or dropout treatment, by eliminating some or all middle tones, provides a high contrast, graphic effect. Such “arty” effects are frequently used by magazine editors eager to stress, the graphic quality or the aesthetic appearance of their publications without spending extra money for an artist’s illustrations. The argument for exercising graphic control over the photojournalist’s output