Politics and the Mass Media:

Studies of the impact of mass media on political attitudes and behavior have generally concluded that the mass media do little more than reinforce prior preferences. These studies have painted a simplistic picture of how the mass media influences the electorate. Using the 1990 Australian National Election as a test case, results show that while the mass media have a significant impact on political attitudes and voting behavior, especially among respondents who viewed the political debates, this effect is specifically restricted to males. Thus, the mass media do have a direct effect on political outcomes, and this process appears to be an exclusively male phenomenon. Several explanations are discussed to account for this finding.     

Media and Families: Looking Ahead

Digital natives and digital immigrants live and grow together navigating a world of media devices and inventing new media practices. As such, it is increasingly important to know about the role of media in the lives of families. Although much is known about the impact of media on children as individuals, far less attention has been given to the impact of media on the family as a whole. A great deal of the research on the family and media focuses on parent-child interactions, relationships, and media practices. While parenting is a key element in family life, other members of the family contribute to family practices and interactions, particularly siblings. This article proposes future directions for research about media and families, turning attention to expanding parenting research beyond media mediation, employment of more observational and ethnographic studies of families and media, and exploring media uses with siblings which continues to be an area of limited focus within the field. Moreover, future research should examine families with different lived experiences both in how their media practices and how they are portrayed within the media. Through research, scholars can serve families as media mentors—supporting families in their media practices in an informed way. We have the ability to be excellent media mentors to families and a key component of that is to continue to find answers to questions for families through research.     

Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media

This article examines the representation of Islam and Muslims in the British press. It suggests that British Muslims are portrayed as an 'alien other' within the media. It suggests that this misrepresenatation can be linked to the development of a 'racism', namely, Islamphobia that has its roots in cultural representations of the 'other'. In order to develop this arguement, the article provies a summary/overview of how ethnic minorities have been represented in the British press and argues that the treatment of British Muslims and Islam follows these themes of 'deviance' and 'un-Britishness'.     

The Print Media and Aging Policy:

This article examines the role of the print media in covering complex ploicy issues. Two models of journalism are considered. "Pack journalism" predicts that print media coverage will be highly consistent in content due to the reliance by those in the media on the same sources of information. In this article another model - "Beltway journalism" - is proposed. It implies that coverage by the print media indigenous to the Washington, D.C. area (inside the Beltway) will diverge from that of other print media, presenting a potentially distorted view of the world to policymakers in Washington. Using the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as possible indicators of the two models, aging policy is addressed through a case study of newspaper coverage during passage and repeal of the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988. Findings suggest that Congress was unduly influenced by the way that Medicare Catastrophic was framed in the Washington Post, lending credence to the Beltway journalism model. By paying insufficient attention to the way MEdicare Catastrophic was being framed by sources of print outside the Beltway area, lawmakers allowed themselves to assume a grassroots-level understanding of the issue and support for the bill, both of which turned out to be illusory.     

Teaching Religion and Media: Syllabi and Pedagogy

This study explores the pedagogy of Religion and Media. The topic has garnered growing attention in recent years (Stout, 2012 Stout, D. (2012). Media and religion: Foundations of an emerging field. New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]) and the sheer array of classes is a testament to its status as a lively growing topic. This study takes a nonnormative, exploratory approach to uncover four key categorical approaches to how the topic of religion and media is taught in universities. The methodology included a textual analysis of 48 syllabi and interviews with professors who teach religion and media.     

Media Events: Past,Present and Future

This paper aims to do three things. First, it will provide a review of key aspects of media events to date. Second, it will consider the relevance and challenge facing the paradigm of media events in the era of post‐broadcasting and terrorism. Third, it will discuss the ways in which media events work in the context of the People's Republic of China. The paper suggests that classic media events were instrumental in recording the significant moments of history during the second half of the 20th century. Although this enchantment with the modern technology of broadcasting and its role in building the national culture has been on the decline in some parts of the world, the concept of media events proves to be remarkably elastic, and as the Chinese case makes clear, innovative media event formats take place in unlikely places and in unpredictable circumstances. As we move ahead into the 21st century, it has become clear – evidenced in the case of China and elsewhere – that the scenario we face is not the replacement of the enchantment of the broadcasting era with the cynicism of the post‐broadcasting era, but rather their uneasy coexistence and curious codependence.     

新媒介环境下传媒与青少年社会化研究

本文对近十几年来国内有关传媒与青少年社会化问题的文献进行了系统回顾,归纳出研究现状和特点:网络和电视等电子媒介是研究的主要内容;研究集中于社会化的结果,缺乏对于青少年的认知机制如何影响其处理传媒的信息的过程研究;研究对象存在着明显的不平衡现象,且概念使用混乱;研究方法日趋多样,但缺乏大型、系统的实证研究。在此基础上,对今后研究的发展方向进行了预测和分析。     

Media and Clergy: Influencing the Influential?

This article examines media use among clergy for purposes of gathering political information. More specifically, it examines the specific forms of both secular and religious media that clergy report using for such purposes. It assesses the extent to which clergy vary in terms of their different patterns of media use; how such differential patterns may be associated with theological, social, and political differences among clergy; and whether such differential patterns of media use are linked to different effects politically.     

Teaching Media and Religion: Emerging Best Practices

This preface summarizes the emergence of religion and media courses from the 1950s to the present day. It makes the case for why analysis of religion and media coursework is a challenge and reports on research that shows enormous diversity among the types of courses commonly classified as within the “religion and media” subject. The preface furthermore summarizes the other articles in this special issue.     

The State of Media Ownership and Media Markets: Competition or Concentration and Why Should We Care?

This article presents a global overview of the state of communications media ownership and markets. The primary issue at stake is whether or not markets and ownership are becoming more or less concentrated. After reviewing contrasting views on this issue, I suggest that the question turns on whether or not we consider 'numerical diversity' (the number of channels available in any given area) versus 'source diversity' (a measure of the number of media owners in any given area). Drawing on recent data I suggest that while there is undoubtably greater 'numerical diversity', we are seeing – within countries, regionally and globally – greater concentration at the level of 'source diversity'. While new media, especially the Internet, open up unprecedented opportunities for people to access and distribute information, the emergence of a powerful nexus between both 'old' and 'new' media means that the character of media ownership and markets still matters greatly. This nexus of ownership and market power spans different segments of the media and is qualitatively different from previous times. These factors have an important influence on the evolution of media technologies and markets, the work of media professionals and the character of information and media content.