The development of discourse presentation in The Times, 1833–1988

Newspaper preferences for particular formats of speech presentation differ and they change in the course of time. In this contribution we focus on The Times and trace such developments in the formative years of the modern Anglo-American newspapers, from 1833 to 1988. We extracted data from The Times Digital Archive in six samples of roughly 5000 words at intervals of 31 years and analysed the texts manually for instances of reported speech. Our analysis shows that the focus has shifted from the presentation of speech events as coherent wholes in earlier newspapers towards a more selective use of individual statements that summarise an event or characterise it from different angles. And it also shows that the frequency of indirect forms of discourse presentation decreases over the years in favour of direct forms. This gives further support to the claim that in terms of discourse presentation broadsheets slowly develop into the direction spearheaded by tabloids.     

The Beginnings of Radio Communication in Germany, 1897–1918

This article surveys the prehistory of broadcasting in the German Reich. It focuses on wireless telegraphy, where the Telefunken Company succeeded internationally with its quenched spark system on the eve of the war. Telefunken's system was developed as an efficient military technology between 1905 and 1908, and it soon became the core of Telefunken's successful attempt to break Marconi's monopoly in maritime radio communication. Encouraged by this success, Telefunken started to establish wireless transoceanic connections to build a global German radio network. The properties of radio broadcasting as a possible new mass medium only gradually became evident before 1918.     

The effects of truth–lie base-rates on deception detection accuracy in Korea

Two experiments provided the first tests of the Park-Levine Probability Model in an intercultural context. The Park-Levine Model predicts a linear relationship between truth–lie base-rates in messages judged and the proportion of correct truth-lie judgments. Korean students watched and judged videotapes of American students denying that they cheated on a task. The proportion of honest and deceptive denials was experimentally varied to be predominantly honest, equally honest and deceptive, or predominantly deceptive. A second experiment clarified the results of the first experiment by providing a stronger base-rate manipulation. The data were consistent with the prediction that as proportion of judged messages is increasingly honest, there is a corresponding linear increase in accurate truth–lie discrimination. These results add to a growing number of findings showing the cross- and intercultural applicability of Truth-Default Theory.     

Full Text Ejournal Packages East and West:CJN and JSTOR

In libraries,full text ejournal packages are among themost unique aspects of the digital revolution.They challengemany of the basic concepts that librarians have held close totheir hearts:The journals themselves come in packages-thatis,unlike their print counter parts,they are bought as apackage and not one at a time.Many librarians who havelooked with pride at their journal collections because theywere selected one-by-one,on the basis of local needs,     

News in an Age of Competition: The Case of Sensationalism in Dutch Television News, 1995–2001

Recent years have seen changing and shifting technologies as well as an uncertain economic climate. This research focuses on how audiences have reacted to these shifts, using a number of different sources of data to test hypotheses related to spending time and money on media. We suggest that previous studies examining audience expenditures and diffusion of new technologies may have overlooked the stressful economic conditions surrounding diffusion of some of those technologies. We find an increase in entertainment technology purchases as well as time spent with new and traditional media during recession years, beyond that indicated by the longer term trends. While there is a general decrease in coviewing behavior in recent years, the recession years reversed the trend. Results are discussed in terms of the constancy hypothesis and our hypothesis that the media provide outlets for reducing stress during difficult economic times.     

Hallucination as epistemology: critiquing the visual in Ken Burns’ The West

A quantitative content analysis of 1,055 television ads reveals that male voiceovers outnumber female voiceovers 4:1. As has been the case for decades in television, a man is much more likely to serve as the disembodied and objective voice of authority, expertise, and reason. However, a woman's voice is twice as likely to be heard if her body is also represented on screen. Based on that finding, the authors argue that scopocentric sexism influences when and how gendered voices are presented. A woman's relative agency, her recourse to “voice” in both the literal and metaphoric sense, is conditioned by her visual presence. After completing the quantitative content analysis, a qualitative textual analysis was conducted on a subsample of ads in order to explore relationships between voice and body at a finer-grained level. The study provides an important update for critical ad research concerning voiceovers and is the first that systematically compares voice and body data. The authors conclude by presenting ideas for integrating critical sound research into media literacy curricula.     

Rooted in the Past: Use of “East Indians” in Library of Congress Subject Headings

This article argues that the use of the Library of Congress subject heading “East Indians” in reference to individuals from India represents not only a problematic vestige of colonialism, but also a failure of the principle of literary warrant. It provides an overview of the term's historical roots and then examines whether the term is still widely used in published resources. Although assigning a subject heading is not easy and can involve a choice between contested realities of diverse peoples, the author contends that a rejection of outdated terminology is central to providing any culturally sensitive tool for resource organization.     

The evolution of television: 1944–1948

In the Summer of 1960 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting (Volume IV, Number 3) appeared the first in a series of excerpts from the official records of the Federal Commications Commission relating to broadcasting. It outlined the evolution of television from 1927 through 1943. Below, this history is carried through fiscal 1948, the year that television broadcasting took its first giant jump in number of stations, number of receivers, and number of problems. At the end of this period, television was poised at the edge of the “freeze” Following 1948, Annual Reports of the Commission become more readily available (as contrasted to the bare handful of copies of the 1944 Report in dog‐eared existence), as do broadcasters and others who lived through and are familiar with subsequent events.

The Journal is hopeful that these verbatim excerpts from official Annual Reports of the FCC will be of use to researchers, and of interest and value to the Journal's entire readership. As the introduction to the first installment said, “From them we may, with some confidence in factual accuracy, examine the fascinating panorama of the growth of a great American industry . . . .”     

OCLC in Europe,the Middle East and Africa, 1998–2008

ABSTRACT

This article is a continuation of the article of the same name by Christine Deschamps who described the evolution of OCLC in Europe 1981–1997. This article continues the story for the period 1998–2008 and covers the expansion of OCLC services to the Middle East and Africa. It also includes the organizational, governance and product portfolio developments for this period under the global leadership of Jay Jordan.     

Citizen–government collaboration on social media: The case of Twitter in the 2011 riots in England

How social media can enable opportunities for collaboration between citizens and governments is an evolving issue in theory and practice. This paper examines the dynamic aspects of collaboration in the context of the 2011 riots in England. In August 2011, parts of London and other cities in England suffered from extensive disorder and even loss of human lives. Based on a dataset of 1746 posts by 81 local government Twitter accounts during or shortly after the riots, we explore how local authorities attempted to reduce the effects of the riots and support community recovery. Using Twitter's conversational and rapid update features, they produced a variety of informational and actionable messages with clear calls for offline or online action. In some cases, collective against the riots evolved in a mutual way: not only citizens were mobilized by local authorities, but also local authorities actively promoted actions initiated by citizens.     

The Public Library and the Problem of Hospital Libraries for Patients–The Case of Israel

ABSTRACT

Providing information to the health consumer is one of the main tasks of our modern information society. This information falls into two categories: medical information, and supportive information such as literature and poetry. This article discusses the problematic situation of libraries and of information for patients in Israeli hospitals, and raises the question of the public library being a possible solution to help people in need get the information they are entitled to. The conclusions are based on a survey conducted in 1994. The results are rather disappointing: only 26.3% of the hospitals have library services for patients; most of them are managed by volunteers who have no training in professional librarianship. Also, in terms of book acquisition policy, library activities, and criteria for lending books, most of the results indicate that much needs to be done to improve the situation and help the health consumer receive information and support through the library. As it is clear that the situation in hospitals is not going to change in the near future, it is suggested that the public library serve as a helping resource outside the hospital and by that action it would not only contribute to society but expand its functions and strengthen its position in the community.     

The dynamics of polarization and compromise in conflict situations: The interaction between cultural traits and majority–minority influence

The present study looks at the interplay between cultural traits (need for uniqueness [NFU] and naïve dialecticism) and situational pressure (majority–minority influence) in explaining decision-making behaviors, specifically choosing one option between two contradictory but equally convincing opinions. A total of 435 participants were recruited nationally both from the US and Korea to participate in an online experiment. Findings suggest that the NFU and disinclination toward ambivalence drive US Americans (Westerners) to move toward extreme opinions (polarize) more than Koreans (East Asians) in the majority condition, whereas naïve dialecticism and reluctance to stand out for the sake of harmony drive Koreans to merge into the middle (compromise) more than US Americans in the minority condition.     

New media–new voices: satirical representations of Nigeria’s socio-politics in Ogas at the top

New media are increasingly providing spaces and opportunities for media houses and activist groups engaged in socio-political reform in Africa. In Nigeria, social media are becoming platforms for communicating messages of resistance against oppressive political and exploitative economic power structures. This study analyzed Ogas at the top (OATT), an online puppetry series by Buni TV, as a way of examining new platforms and message content in Nigeria’s rapidly changing media sphere. Relying on semiotics and critical discourse analysis perspectives, the study analyzed select episodes of the series, to gauge how producers constructed powerful visual and linguistic messages to boldly satirize social injustices perpetrated by Nigeria’s political elites.     

The development of rhetorical theory in America∗

Expanding upon the Social Value Model of Rushing and Frentz, this essay argues that the fundamental values of the American Western myth exist in the paradoxical form of Individualism vs. Community. Four historical eras are discussed in terms of how the Western film rhetoric of each was patterned in response to threats to the myth. Early Westerns enacted a pattern of “dialectical emphasis” (of Community): classic Westerns, “dialectical reaffirmation “; sixties Westerns, “dialectical emphasis” (of Individualism). It is claimed that reaffirmation of the dialectical tension between the values best strengthens the archetype, and thus America's image of itself. In contrast, the current revival of Western rhetoric, as depicted in the political realm in the elections of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, and in the popular culture realm in The Electric Horseman, Urban Cowboy.,and “Dallas,” enacts a pattern of dialectical pseudo‐synthesis, and thus is seriously subversive of the fundamental archetype.     

The role of third-party mediation and face and favor in executive–legislative relations and conflict

This paper explores the role of third-party mediation in particular and the extent to which four conflict management strategies, i.e., third-party mediation, integration, distribution, and avoidance in general, exist and affect conflict resolution in the Taiwanese government's executive–legislative relations. Additionally, third-party mediation mianzi (face) and renqing (favor) in relation to Chinese culture are explored. Two independent samples were included in this study. The first included 235 legislative members and their assistants working within the legislative branch. The second included 301 legislative liaisons from the executive branch in Taiwan. The results indicated that four conflict strategies had been used in legislative–executive relations, namely integrative, distributive, non-confrontational, and third-party mediation, with mediation being the least frequently used. Third-party mediation, across two independent samples, was shown to have the strongest correlations with non-confrontation/avoidance versus integration and last distribution. Face and favor, then, were first associated with distribution, then third-party mediation, avoidance, and finally integration.     

Librarianship and Information Science in Islamic East Africa 1966–1999: An Annotated Bibliography

This work is an annotated bibliography that consists of articles, books, conference papers, dissertations, and reports, etc. published in various library and information science forums on the subject of librarianship in Islamic East Africa. The goal of preparing this work is to provide a list of citations with abstracts that librarians, library students, and library scholars can use to perform research within this subject area and further the body of knowledge. The research methodology that was used to find these citations involved searching the database versions of ERIC, Dissertations Abstracts Online, and Library Literature within the online public access catalog of the Auburn University library system. It also involved searching the online databases of Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), British Education Index, and Education Abstracts within the DIALOG database as well as the respective print copies of these resources. While this work is by no means an exhaustive analysis of the entire East African library literature, it does strive to be comprehensive in terms of its country-by-country breakdown of librarianship within the region. Islamic East Africa for the purposes of this work incorporates the nations of Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania. In providing a citation for a non-English language work, the English equivalent of the title of that work will be given next to the non-English title.     

The Achievements of Document Database Creation in China

Describes the achievements of document database creation in China after the 1980s in four aspects: quantity, types, media and quality, and then points out the necessary measures China should take to develop its document databases.     

Defensive Communication and Burnout in the Workplace: The Mediating Role of Leader–Member Exchange

This paper investigates the relationship between defensive communication in performance appraisal settings by considering the mediating effect of leader–member exchange relationships. In a study of employees of a US federal fire department, defensive communication was associated with lower quality leader–member exchange relationships, which in turn was related to burnout. We discuss the implications of these findings, particularly as they apply to organizations and their employees, as well as limitations and directions for future research.