Nowadays, with the radical growth of the Internet, worldwide online discussion forums have become a popular social mechanism for people to learn novel information and knowledge. Frequently asked questions (FAQs), which is a collection of questions commonly asked in the newsgroups along with presumably definitive answers, has become an important reference for readers to understand backgrounds of the newsgroup discussions and to locate their desired answers, if any. The construction of FAQs, however, is prone to errors and time-consuming. Approaches to supporting FAQ generation for administrators are desired to develop. In this paper, we propose a four-step approach to supporting the FAQ list generation based on question/answer pairs collected from newsgroup discussions without labor-intensive processes. Texts are processed, and keywords along with synonyms in context are extracted from the answer part. Cluster analysis helps to identify the answer clusters and the corresponding question clusters are formed accordingly. Representative contents of the answer clusters and the question clusters are finally extracted to support administrators to generate FAQs. Our approach is applied in a real-world case where data are collected from the newsgroup in Usenet. FAQ in a primitive form is constructed using our approach. Evaluations are the performed with satisfactory results. The feasibility of our proposed approach is thus justified.

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New mass media impact on the nature of public communication and the use and gratification of existing mass media because each new medium is used and experienced differently. As a new mass medium, the Internet offers different forms of communication, such as Internet Relay Chat, Multi-User Dungeons and chatrooms. It has also combined traditional mass media, namely print, radio and television, into a single powerful medium. Due to the fact that the Internet is still an emerging medium, its long-term effects on the nature of public communication and traditional mass media warrants ongoing investigation. The first part (Part A) of this dissertation situates the Internet chronologically within the development of traditional mass media and their impact on public communication. Part B investigates Internet use among a group of professionals in South Africa. The objective is to identify how they use the Internet and the gratification they derive from it. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

New mass media impact on the nature of public communication and the use and gratification of existing mass media because each new medium is used and experienced differently. As a new mass medium, the Internet offers different forms of communication, such as Internet Relay Chat, Multi-User Dungeons and chatrooms. It has also combined traditional mass media, namely print, radio and television, into a single powerful medium. Due to the fact that the Internet is still an emerging medium, its long-term effects on the nature of public communication and traditional mass media warrants ongoing investigation. The first part (Part A) of this dissertation situates the Internet chronologically within the development of traditional mass media and their impact on public communication. Part B investigates Internet use among a group of professionals in South Africa. The objective is to identify how they use the Internet and the gratification they derive from it. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)