This study examines how and to what extent nonprofit organizations are using their Web sites to fulfill their organizational goals and missions through volunteerism and fundraising. Through in-depth interviews of communication/public relations managers and executive directors at nonprofit organizations new information reveals factors that negatively affect nonprofits organizations growth in Web site development and technology, as well as those factors that push nonprofits to break the digital divide. Four nonprofit organizations that provide youth services in Memphis, Tennessee were selected.

This study examined the content of 200 commercials from the 2004 season of Monday Night Football documenting sexual content, violence, and gender role stereotypes. The data revealed that despite the fact that men appeared twice as often as women, women were more likely to be stereotyped than men. About one quarter of the commercials contained sexual content and about one-fifth contained violence. Beer ads were more sexual than other ads but were not significantly more violent than other ads. There was no clear pattern of variance in the amount of sexual and violent commercials across quarters. Programming commercials were far more sexual and violent than other commercials and were most likely to appear last in the pod. These findings have relevance for recency effects of ad recall as well as social learning theory and gender schema theory. The present data indicate a decline in sexual content, violence, and gender stereotypes compared to previous television advertising studies. Possible reasons for the decline include recent political and social pressure and increased female viewership of NFL games. Despite apparent declines in sexual and violent content, this study alerts us to lingering concerns about commercial content, and raises the possibility that the networks themselves may be the worst offenders.

Several Lighten Up programs around the United States were qualitatively studied in efforts to determine their target audiences and the communication channels used to reach these audiences. To guide this study, principles from the social marketing framework and the diffusion of innovations theory were applied. Several Lighten Up program executive directors and other high-ranking individuals in charge of the programs were interviewed in-depth to answer questions pertaining to target audiences and communication channels. Inductive data analysis illustrated that programs did not segment their target audiences, that more programs depended on interpersonal and group communication than mass communication, and finally, that programs relied on opinion leaders, innovators, and early adopters to diffuse the program. This one-dimensional view of the audience and the lack of research also found caused the Lighten Up programs studied to have two of the symptoms of organization-centered programs.

This study content analyzed print media coverage of government response from four newspapers in the five weeks immediately after Hurricane Katrina, looking for common frames, attribute agenda setting, and tone. In addition, it assessed week-to-week differences throughout coverage. Findings indicate that the order of Semetko and Valkenburg's (2000) common frames changed, emphasizing human interest first. Conflict, attribution of responsibility, economic consequences, and morality frames followed. Media's use of attribute agenda setting was evident throughout coverage, primarily emphasizing the issues, relief and rescue, economic, negative timeliness, and rebuilding and repairing. Media's tone of government response was moderately neutral with federal tone covered more positively, and local tone covered more negatively. Frames and issue attribute varied throughout coverage, however, tone did not. This study recognized media's use of framing, attribute agenda setting, and tone, thereby offering a better understanding of how print media portray government response during a natural disaster.

This research tests the public health model of reporting to discover if changing the way newspaper stories frame the top two health concerns in the United States cancer and obesity affects readers view of the problem. Using an experimental design, this study manipulated the context of newspaper stories about cancer and obesity. Applying thematic (broader context) and episodic (individual or event) framing concepts and gains (emphasizes benefits e.g. lives saved) and losses (emphasizes costs lives lost), this research revealed how the differences in framing affect public opinion about cancer and obesity. This research expands framing theory by showing that the effects of thematic/episodic framing are intensified when combined with gain/loss framing concepts from prospect theory. Overall, this study advances understanding of how framing affects attribution of responsibility and informs the comprehension of the effectiveness of health news and communication messages. Two-hundred-and twenty-nine adults from the South, West, and Southwest were recruited to participate in this study. The findings of this study provide support for the public health model of report and strongly indicate combined news frames influence framing effects. In this study, the combination of the thematic loss frames and episodic gain frames led to significant findings. These results clearly support the theoretical argument that intersecting frames generate more detailed information processing among audiences and intensify media effects. The findings have implications for future research on the use of news frames to discuss health and other policy issues.

This study became to first to scientifically explore the relationship between city typology and the use of advertising message strategy and interactivity within municipal web sites. The study used Taylors six-segment strategy wheel to analyze message strategies and previous scales of interactivity to analyze structural interactivity. Medium-size cities and cities within the South and West geographic regions more likely used sensory strategies within their web sites. Cities with racially diverse populations more likely used sensory strategies within their web sites as well. Large cities and central cities, both with large populations, used the most interactive strategies within their sites compared to their respective classifications. Cities within the mountain geographic division used the most interactive features among geographic locations and more racially diverse cities used more interactive features than predominantly Caucasian or minority populations. Thus, both message strategy and interactivity proved to share relationships with city typology.

This study sought to fill in a gap in civic journalism research by considering its implications for community newspapers, those small, locally oriented publications that serve rural and suburban communities throughout the country. In particular, this study posed the argument that such newspapers may have advantages in pursuing civic journalism, and that these approaches may especially benefit newspapers in high-growth communities. This study relied heavily on the language of theorists who describe journalism as a public conversation, the quality of which - its usefulness for readers as citizens and members of a community - the press can either help or hinder. This study also relied on the assumption that civic journalism suggests a social imperative as well as a civic one: How well newspapers help readers, particularly newcomers, integrate into the community socially may affect how well these residents become invested, participatory citizens. Accordingly, this study sought to test whether new and long-time readers seek different kinds of information from the newspaper and whether a leaning toward civic or social interests corresponds to length of residence. A telephone survey of subscribers of The Williamson County Sun, a semi-weekly newspaper in Georgetown, Texas, was undertaken to evaluate readers' use and perceptions of the paper as a vehicle for familiarizing newcomers with the community, facilitating community involvement and helping residents navigate changes related to growth. Results did not demonstrate a relationship between length of residence and interest in social-oriented news, although a potential relationship was suggested between interest in certain types of news and reasons for moving to Williamson County. The strongest findings of the study related to readers' perceptions of their relationship with the community newspaper compared to the nearby metro daily, and their evaluations of the newspaper's usefulness in facilitating a public conversation through strong local news coverage.

This study examined corporate public affairs and brand awareness advertising under the third-person effect. Third-person effect studies examine the interaction between the media and its effect on public opinion. Past research in third-person effect indicates that individuals perceive that the media is more influential on others than oneself. However, recent studies find a reverse effect, where individuals perceive a greater effect on oneself when compared to others when media messages are positive and desirable to be influenced by. Findings from this study indicate that ExxonMobil public affairs advertisements are found to be socially desirable to be influenced by and that individuals attribute a greater effect to themselves from such ads when compared to others. Further, they are likely to act on that perception in the form of purchasing ExxonMobil fuel and voting for legislation supporting the cause promoted by the corporation. These unique findings suggest that message influence is derived in part from social acceptance in general rather than one's individual assessments of media messages. As such, corporate use of tools such as issue ads, cause related marketing and advocacy advertising are valuable when those messages are deemed socially acceptable, as they lay a foundation of support for corporate operations. Pro-social messages help build the image of a corporation as socially responsible. And the bottom line for such a reputation for corporations is the importance it has securing future sales both directly and indirectly. In other words, public affairs messages can help a company's bottom line indirectly by managing the corporation's image to ensure favorable policies toward the corporation. As well, socially responsible corporations are looked favorably upon by individuals and this perception can realize a direct increase in sales. The implications of such findings rest in the commercial speech debate of corporations who comment on public issues and under the larger umbrella of media effects. We realize that media effects do not occur in a vacuum. They occur in social contexts. As such, as undue influence is of great concern to the debate of public salient issues, the need for responsible corporate citizens who comment in the market place of ideas is paramount.

This dissertation examines the public opinion-public policy nexus with regard to the making of U.S.-China policy during the Clinton administration (1992-2000). The researcher investigates how the mass media discourse on U.S.-China relations relates to the policy tradeoff between economic interdependence and confrontation on human rights. Particularly, the quantitative study of the media discourse is placed within a Communitarian perspective to determine: (1) whether the policy tradeoff can claim to have the support of public opinion; (2) whether the media discourse originated from the active civic participation; and (3) how the policy tradeoff broke its promise. As a result, the researcher concludes that the eclipse of co-operative inquiry of the U.S. public, the ascendancy of issue management of special stakeholders, and the entanglement between newsmaking and policy-making may have jeopardized the republican virtue of U.S. diplomacy. First, the researcher contextualizes U.S.-China relations and relates it to the dynamics of U.S. foreign policy choices among four national interests: power, prosperity, principle, and peace. Then, the researcher sets the Communitarian theory of the press as a normative theory of media democracy and incorporates other positive theories of political communication to make sense of the dilemma of the current media democracy. Following that, a content analysis of the New York Times and Cable News Network examined: (1) who said what; (2) which perspective prevails; (3) the correlation between newsmaking and policy-making; and (4) the congruence/dissension between policy beltway and other social groups. The finding suggests a significant correlation between/among the policy proposal, the author of that proposal, and the issue/frame espoused; on the other hand, the conspicuous differences among policy-makers, ordinary citizens (issue public), and professional communicators in regard to the policy trade-off indicates a low public accountability of the policy tradeoff. To explain the discrepancy, the investigator examined corporate America's issue management of U.S.-China trade and put the policy tradeoff into the perspective of capitalistic globalization theory. Finally, the lack of republican virtue is explained as a result of corporate-driven diplomacy and the media discourse short of civic participation. Henceforward, a Communitarian press becomes recommendable for the rejuvenation of media democracy.

A study of 10 states that have statewide public affairs television networks finds that these systems have become an integral part of the state governmental process in the same way that C-SPAN has become an institution in Washington, D.C. That is, lawmakers, legislative staff members, lobbyists, and statehouse reporters ignore it at their peril. At the same time, the content produced by these state versions of C-SPAN has altered the way in which the members of these groups do their jobs by providing a monitoring capacity that makes it easier for them to be more productive. This study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies to examine data gathered through in-depth interviews with network managers and employees, legislative staff members, lobbyists, and statehouse reporters and through a national telephone survey that sought to determine if there was an audience for statewide public affairs television. The study seeks to expand the applicability of institutionalism theory by using it as the framework to examine statewide public affairs television through the lenses of civic engagement, policy-making, norms and routines, social network analysis, and diffusion of innovation.