Robert L. Stevenson

The world of U.S. network television news: Eighteen years of international and foreign news coverage

This study updates the research on international and foreign news coverage of U.S. network news with a content analysis of almost 10,000 stories from 1972 to 1989. The results suggest that network news has presented a fairly consistent picture of foreign news over time and that there is little difference between the three networks. A minor increase in on-site correspondent reports has occurred over time, and the difference between in-studio and on-site reports is stronger when time, rather than frequency of stories, is the unit of analysis. Finally, foreign coverage is geographically unbalanced and emphasizes disruption more than domestic coverage does.

Defining International Communication as a Field

This essay finds major trends that can be identified from the diverse studies in international communication: Anglo-American dominance (but with increasing competition); a resurgence of culture, including global culture; the triumph of independent journalism; and the growth of some powerful media moguls around the world. The essay outlines key questions for researchers to ask of their own studies, and sketches some parameters for scholars seeking to make major contributions to the field of international communication.

The MacBride commission report reconsidered

Abstract The report of the Unesco International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (MacBride Commission) is described as ambiguous but useful. It acknowledges the emergence of “information societies” ‐ nations like the United States where a majority of the workforce is employed in information‐related activities rather than agriculture or industry ‐ but does not link information economies to Western dominance of international communication. The rapid development of second‐generation television systems in the United States, which combine satellite and cable distribution, affords new opportunities for a balanced exchange of TV programming. But as long as a few Western countries dominate in the production of new knowledge, a “free and balanced flow” of communications among the nations of the world as called for by the MacBride Commission is considered unlikely. Current efforts to improve third world communications structures ‐ notably the new International Program for the Development of Commun...

Public Opinion Trends in the Last Days of the Nixon Administration

Those who viewed hearings were more likely to favor impeachment and more likely to base opinion on information about Watergate.

The audience for the impeachment hearings

While most of us wish to put events of Watergate behind us, it is very important to remember the (thankfully) unique events which took place then. The following article notes that most viewers of the July 1974 House Judiciary Committee hearings on articles of impeachment were quite casual about when and how much of those important events they saw. Dr. Stevenson is on the journalism faculty at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, while Dr. Laing is a member of the Michigan State University advertising faculty. Both were graduate students at the University of Washington when this study was done, and acknowledgement is due Dr. Alex Edelstein there for his assistance in developing the study and in securing financial support for it.

World communications after UNESCO

Abstract The withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) represented an abrupt change in the long debate over the role of mass media, especially the so‐called New World Information Order. The NWIO issue itself was not a justification to withdraw, but other factors—corruption and incompetence within UNESCO and ill‐conceived programs— were. The debate, however, did spark a renewal of interest in the role of communications, particularly telecommunications, to promote Third World economic and political development. It also produced a modest but important commitment by U.S. government and private mass media to increase technical assistance and training programs. Despite the UNESCO rhetoric, support for the Western tradition of independence between mass media and government remains strong among Third World journalists.

Review Essay: Studying Communications Across Cultures

more frequently used, and probably more often misused than the semantic differential (SD) introduced by Charles Osgood 25 years ago (Osgood, 1952) and presented in detail five years later by Osgood and his colleagues (Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum, 1957). In a personal introduction to a later book of readings on the semantic differential (Snider and Osgood, 1969), the &dquo;Geppetto&dquo; of the semantic differential &dquo;Pinocchio&dquo; acknowledged his amazement at how his progeny had &dquo;wandered off into the Big City, and Lord knows what mischief he is getting into.&dquo; That book, published in 1969, contained a bibliography of almost 300 pages listing nearly 1,000 studies related to or incorporating the semantic differential. One can only speculate about the number of studies that have been added to the SD literature since then or that never got into print at all. The range of problems to which the semantic differential has been applied is dazzling-psychology, sociology, communications, business. It