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This study analyzes the development of the free media system in East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The mass media were part of the peaceful revolution in East Germany in 1989 and contributed to the end of the socialist regime. In addition to political and social upheavals there was a fundamental restructuring of the media system in East Germany that followed the reunification of Germany. The task of media policy was to convert the previously state-controlled media system into a pluralistic media landscape which contributes to the success of democracy. This paper now focuses on the question whether media legislation was adjusted to the regional needs of the emerging Eastern German federal states or whether it has just been copied from the West. Experience from this transformation process - 20 years after the transformation - might also be useful for other states which go the path of democratisation and grant their media more freedom. For the analysis of the transformation process literature, original sources, documents and archives have been taken into consideration. In addition, 435 interviews with experts - former and current persons in charge in the media and politics - were conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, intergroup contact via the mass media has received increasing attention in the research community. In an attempt to strengthen the conceptual foundation for the emerging research field, the current study examines existing media stereotype research from the perspective of intergroup processes and synthesizes it with the intergroup contact theory. To do so, each research tradition was examined first, followed by a new conceptualization of mediated intergroup contact enabled by media texts. Afterwards, the psychological processes of mediated intergroup contact were explicated by applying and further expanding the existing intergroup contact theory. Critical assessments of the US mainstream media, ethic media, and international media were made to illuminate the ways that these media outlets can enhance the outcomes of mediated intergroup contact. Toward the end, a few recommendations were put forward for future research and practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narratives about the killings of people seen as gender deviant present a unique opportunity to investigate the discursive production of gender. In this paper, I examine the production of gender within mass media descriptions of these murders. I find that, when faced with moments of gender trouble, the media (re)produce an idea of a "true" gender, and that the criteria for determine a person's "true" gender have changed over time. In the 1990's, the media (re)produced a gender system with two categoriesâ?”men and womenâ?”and determined membership in those categories based on the shape of people's genitals. But in the early 2000s, the criteria changed from solely focused on bodies to one determined by a combination of bodies and identity. Moreover, the number of gender categories expanded from two to three: men, women, and transgender. I focus on the media's construction of gender to highlight change in the meaning of "gender" and describe the texture of gender as it is produced for general public consumption. In the conclusion, I speculate about the causes of this change in the texture of gender, pointing to influence from activist groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines differences in time use between fulltime working women and men between 25 and 65 years of age living in urban, suburban and rural areas. With respect to Georg Simmel's image of the "pace of life" we hypothesize that women and men living in urban, suburban and rural areas differ in their way of using their time spent on leisure, for example mass media use. In our analyses we focus on simultaneous use of time as one strategy to accelerate time use. Inhabitants of urban areas might choose within a greater amount of leisure activities than those of rural areas. Therefore we assume that the former use media to a greater extent simultaneously to other activities than those living in rural areas. To test our hypothesis we use time diary data of the German Time Use Survey 2001/02. The findings of our analyses partly support our hypothesis. When looking at women and men separately greater differences were found between women living in different living contexts than between men. Women in urban areas seem to use media simultaneously to the greatest extent. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article identifies specific research streams in the academic media-planning literature from the Journal of Advertising Research, covering the period of 1999-2003. The literature also provides an understanding of the contributions of academic research, as well as insight into the practical implications of the research applications. A review of the research literature on media planning indicates that attention has been paid to the issues connected to the media-planning research itself.

Social movement activists use mass media to project their concerns and activity to the wider public. Activists assume that if the public were exposed to their grievances consistently and in an emotionally provocative way they will become sympathetic to their movement. Animal protection activists work under this assumption and spend much effort exposing graphic images and descriptions of targeted animal abuses through the media. This project examines the conditions under which mass media provides the animal protection movement (APM) with this valued coverage, called "vivid grievance description" (VGD). Under what conditions does newspaper coverage include vivid grievance description when covering protest activity? Do disruptive protest events receive less grievance description than institutionalized activity such as lawsuits and policy reform? Do organizational characteristics such as identity (radical vs moderate) and organizational field density influence the quality of coverage? Using articles drawn from the New York Times from 1950-1995, this project shows that protest activity involving radical organizations, but not necessarily disruptive protest activity, is more likely to produce vivid grievance description. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the destruction of the Korea National Treasure no. 1; Sung-Nye-Mun in 2008, which is a representative national symbol. It is historically important heritage, the backdrop of people's everyday lives, and the centerpiece of the South Korea's international tourism campaign. This national treasure was destructed by arson in February, 2008. Immediately after the incident, news media headlines lamented the destruction of national sprit and national pride with Sung-Nye-Mun. For the month, news media coverage predominantly depicted national co-grieving practices. By analyzing news media descriptions, I explored how this incident was publicly characterized and what underpinned such characterizations. Considering the crucial role of mass media in shaping the reality, I argue the massively produced news descriptions not only reflected but also directed the ways in which this incident revived the "dead past" embodied in Sung-Nye-Mun to "collective memory" and, furthermore, this incident and Sung-Nye-Mun are to be collectively remembered in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the apparent temporal impact of the two important electronic media of the second-half of the 20-th Century, television and new information technology (IT) through the use of 24-hour time diaries completed by adults aged 18-64. Television had by far the greater impact on people's daily time, initially taking over almost 10 hours of the 168 hours a week of total time in the 1960s. TV's initial gains came mainly at the expense of other mass media (like radio and movies), but also from social life and sleep. More recent national diary studies indicate further TV gains to 16-20 hours a week, which translates to more than half of all free time in the US and 30-45% of free time in other Western countries. In contrast, diary IT use (outside of work) takes up less up less than 15% of this free time. Moreover, this IT time does not seem tied to significantly decreased time in other media or personal activity, but of work activity. At the same time, recent General Social Survey (GSS) documents that IT has become the public's main source of information for jobs and health and for personal communication. The implications of this contrasting set of results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How Neurophysiological Findings can Enrich Media-Emotions Research Joanne CantorUniversity of Wisconsin-Madisonjrcantor@wisc.eduAbstractWhen I began studying the emotional effects of the mass media in the late 1960s with Dolf Zillmann, using his theory of excitation transfer (Zillmann, 1972), we assessed such peripheral indices of emotion as heart rate and blood pressure, but the role of the brain in emotions was beyond our ability to measure. Since then, there have been huge developments in neurophysiological measurement through the availability of fMRI, among other procedures. LeDoux's (1996) two-component conceptualization of traumatic memories has helped illuminate why seemingly irrational long-term effects of scary movies are so prominent (Cantor, 2006). The discovery of mirror neurons (see Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006) will no doubt also be helpful in understanding both empathetic and imitative processes in response to media. I wholeheartedly agree with Rene Weber and associates' (2008) call to incorporate neurophysiological approaches into the study of communication. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]