Communication Technology and Policy 2000 Abstracts
Communication Technology and Policy Division
Student and Open Competition
Realizing the Potential Marketplace of Ideas: Utilizing the First Amendment to Advance Universal Service & Access to the Internet • Justin Brown, Pen State • During the last several years concerns have risen over the “digital divide.” This paper examines the potential new marketplace of ideas that exists in cyberspace through adopting a postmodern lens and recommends that we realize the cultural aspects and potential of the Internet. We therefore have an opportunity to utilize the First Amendment to ensure that citizens are provided with universal access opportunities to new media, thereby increasing the diversity of expression and discourse in society.
Opinions Online: The Extension of Computermediated Communication for Survey Research in Research Organizations • Kelli S. Burns, Florida • The extension of computermediated communication tools for survey research is revolutionizing the research industry. The growth rate of online research suggests the Internet may become the most widely used communications tool for conducting research (CustomerSat.com, 1997). The present study interviewed 27 executives to understand the perception and use of online survey methods within their research organizations. Because the literature has yet to examine the use of online surveys throughout the industry, this study is both exploratory and descriptive.
Productivity and Integration in Communication Policy Scholarship: A Content Analysis of the Journal Literature, 1970-1999 • Carl Patrick Burrowes, Umaru Bah and Cleve Mesidor, Howard • This study explores issues of productivity and integration in the communication policy literature based on a content analysis of 288 journals from 1970 to 1999. Productivity was measured by the number of articles published by each author, as well as from each institution and each country. Integration of the field was operationalized as the number of articles published by authors located in a county other than the one in which they reside, and by the number of articles published in a journal located in other countries.
Internet Use and Knowledge About Retirement Financial Planning • Alice P. Chan, Cornell and Teresa Mastin, Middle Tennessee State • We surveyed 189 residents of a southern state on their Internet use, their perceptions towards its credibility and their knowledge about retirement financial planning. While Internet use was associated with higher issue knowledge, interpersonal communication was still the most important contributor to building issue knowledge. Moreover, while Internet users rated the Internet to be more credible than non-users, perceived Internet credibility did not moderate the relationship between Internet use and retirement planning knowledge.
North Korea and the Internet • Jung-Yul Cho, Alabama • North Korea, an output of Cold War, is facing a new challenge with the advent of the Internet. To provide a perspective of how a country tries to control and increase its power as a nation-state in the world of global telecommunication network, this study investigated the development of North-Korean Internet sites and characteristics of those sites. A list of pro-North Korean sites and discussion with experts are also included.
Information Source Use and Dependencies for Investment Decision-Making • Oi-yu Chung and Lulu Rodriguez, Iowa State • This study explores the patterns of information source use of three types of investors: traditional, on-line, and mixed. Testing the uses and gratifications leading to dependency hypothesis, investors’ information seeking behaviors and their dependence on 11 information sources with respect to perceived market uncertainty were examined. The results failed to support the hypothesis that on-line investors are more uncertain about the investing environment. They do, however, have more diversified functional alternative information uses.
Internet Uses and Gratifications: An Online Survey of Bulgarians at Home and Abroad • Daniela V. Dimitrova, Florida • One of the fastest developing technologies of today’s communication world is the Internet. The global “network of networks” provides access to information to people all over the planet, and yet very little attention has been paid to how people use the Internet on the individual level. Even less attention has been paid to non-English speaking populations’ Internet behavior. This study focuses on Internet use of Bulgarians in Bulgaria and Bulgarians abroad.
WANTED: Your News Photo: Police Claims of Fair Use and the Protection of Digital Photos • Victoria Smith Ekstrand, North Carolina • Law enforcement’s use of WANTED Web sites is creating new conflicts with the media. This paper examines two recent incidents in which police took news photos and posted them on their WANTED Web sites without permission of news organizations. This study finds that law enforcement may be successful arguing for the fair use of such photography.
The Transition to Digital Television: A Case Study of KNME-TV • Gillian Kennedy Gonda and Richard J Schaefer, New Mexico • This study applies diffusion theory and understanding based on the social construction of technology toward the implementation of digital television (DTV) at a mid-sized PT V station. The researchers relied on various interpretive techniques to analyze how KNME workers viewed digital television. The findings suggest that public television employees neither accepted the FCCs and other social groups’ technological framing of DTV nor were they prepared to face the funding and organizational challenges posed by the technology.
New Hope or Old Power: New Communication, Pornography and the Internet • Don Heider, University of Texas at Austin and Dustin Harp, University of Wisconsin-Madison • New communication technologies in general and the Internet in particular have led some scholars to speculate that we are ushering in a new era of pluralistic and democratic communication. This paper takes a critical look at this optimistic view. Using textual analysis and a feminist theoretical framework, this research examines pornography sites on the World Wide Web to illustrate how the Internet seems to be reifying existing power structures, i.e. male dominance and the exploitation of women.
Priming Effects of Accidental Exposure to Internet Pornography: An Experimental Study of Construct Accessibility in Search Engine Output • Sriram Kalyanaraman, Chad Mahood, S. Shyam Sundar and Mary Beth Oliver, Penn State • What happens when you type in a innocuous word in a search engine and get a series of search results with links to pornography sites? An experiment was designed to explore the perceptual effects of such accidental exposure to descriptions of pornography. Participants (N = 93) were exposed to a search-results page that featured either none, some or exclusively pornographic descriptions, resulting in differing perceptions of social reality. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
Broadcast Policy Research Of Japan: A Historical Overview • Tsutomu Kanayama, Sophia University, Japan • The expansion of the global media market has led to an unprecedented growth of feedback from news consumers toward media vendors, such as newspapers, television programs, and magazines. Also, the recent digitization of the industry offers media entrepreneurs a good chance to actively participate domestically and globally in the media marketplace. Every country has unique social, economic, political background which shape its media system.
Firm Characteristics Influencing the Extent Of Electronic Billing Adoption: An Empirical Study In The U.S. Telecommunication Industry • Seongcheol Kim, Michigan State • The goal of this paper is to examine the extent to which the U.S. telecommunication service providers are leveraging the electronic billing system to transform their business practices for competitive advantage. We found that electronic billing adoption is still in the early stage in all the basic sectors of the U.S. telecommunication service industry. We also found that big and geographically diversified incumbent firms might be the first movers in the adoption of electronic billing.
The Global Internet Diffusion • HoCheon Kwon, SUNY-Buffalo • Each day, nations, corporations, political groups, nonprofit organizations, and individuals tap into an expansive computer network known as the Internet, and utilize the World Wide Web (WWW) (Bobbitt, 1995; Santoro, 1994). Therefore, the world seems to be on the threshold of a new communicational revolution. The Internet with global reach, communication new technology that has multimedia function, is at the epicenter of this revolution (Atkin, Jeffres & Neuendorf, 1998).
Interactivity: A New Approach • Jae-Shin Lee, Cornell • This paper extensively reviews the various approaches of interactivity studies and summarizes the ample definitions and dimensions of interactivity suggested by researchers. The author argues that there exist two types of interactivity and the researchers’ failure of recognizing such fact has led to the current confusion prevailed in interactivity studies. A new model was developed and suggested to help the future research. The model suggests that the user perception is the key element in studying interactivity.
New Communication Technologies and Market Competition: A Niche Analysis on Internet Shopping, Cable TV Shopping, Catalog Shopping, and Store Shopping • Shu-Chu Sarrina Li, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan • With satellite technology and the Internet rapidly improving, Internet and cable TV shopping emerge as new types of non-store shopping in Taiwan, and are expected to impose a great deal of influence on the traditional store shopping. This study adopts the niche theory that defines market competition by the overlap of resource use to examine the market competition among Internet shopping, cable TV shopping, catalog shopping, and store shopping.
Predicting Online Use Activity via Motives, Innovative Traits and News Media Use • Carolyn A. Lin, Cleveland State • As the 20th century comes to a close, the online industry has taken on a completely different economic as well as social status. The online medium, as a cross-breed of communication technologies, embodies a medium that offers the optimal and perhaps even maximal human communication channel functions. This study intends to address the Internet use activity as a phenomenon where users are set out to get on line with a set of communication motives much like the way they approach other “older” communication media such as the traditional electronic and print media.
Reconceptualizing the Public Sphere: The Differential Role of Media Systems in Enabling Political Elites to set the Public Agenda • Johnette Hawkins McCrery and John E. Newhagen, Maryland • This paper explicates the concept of the public sphere as a virtual space created by newspapers in which political elites set the public agenda. Jurgen Habermas originally conceptualized the public sphere in terms of European salons and coffee houses where the bourgeois gathered to discuss politics. He emphasized that this discussion was both rational and interactive. While he recognized newspapers as important links between these discussion groups, he understated their importance as an enabling technology, bringing them together as a political force.
What is Interactivity and What Does it Do? • Sally J. McMillan, Tennessee • Interactivity has been defined as both process and perception. This study operationalizes measures of interactive processes based on the interactive features at Web sites. Measures of interactive perceptions are operationalized based on individuals’ perceptions of interactivity at those same sites. Relatively few significant relationships were found between processes and perceptions. However, perception of interactivity seems somewhat stronger than interactive processes as a tool for explaining both attitude toward Web sites and future site-related behaviors.
The Internet and The Legacy Of The Communication Decency Act, 1996: Divergent Perceptions of A New Communication Technology • Mustafa Taha, Ohio • This paper examines the legacy of the 1996 Communication Decency Act (CDA) and the controversy it triggered. The paper explores how politicians, lawmakers, entrepreneurs, and educators perceived the Internet as a new communication technology. The paper focuses on how the proponents and the opponents of the CDA envisaged protection of minors from indecent material on the Internet. The paper highlights the analogies presented by the advocates of the CDA, in the Senate, the House, media and courts, and matches these arguments with criticsÕ counter-arguments.
Broadcasters on the Web: Moving From Allocution to Consultation • Mark Tremayne, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study empirically confirmed a model of broadcast transformation proposed by in 1986 by Bordewijk and van Kaam. A longitudinal study of interactivity and nonlinear storytelling on broadcast news web sites found evidence of a shift from the allocution to the consultation pattern of mass communication. However, the statistically significant increases for these variables from 1997 to 1998 are not repeated into 1999.
The Hypermedia News Story • Mark Tremayne, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This two-part study consists of l) a detailed analysis of one WashintonPost.com web story and 2) a longitudinal analysis of the use of hyperlinks in news stories. The study revealed greater context on the web story versus the print counterpart and an increasing use of hyperlinks on national news web sites. The number of initial links in these stories climbed from 4 in 1997 to more than six in 1999.
Global 500 companies’ outreach to worldwide consumers online: A content analysis of corporate web sites to evaluate organizational and intercultural communications • Vandana Vijayasri, Syracuse University • A content analysis of 60 Global 500 corporations’ web sites was conducted using a computer-aided tool specifically designed for analyzing online presence by corporations. The companies’ levels of revenue were used to determine if corporate strategies vary based on their position on the Global 500 list. The results conclusively indicate that visual cues account for lack of multilingual options and that companies’ country of origin affects predomination of English as the lingua franca.
China’s Great Wall Restricting the Free Exchange of Ideas • Xiaoru Wang, Ohio • The Internet has posed People’s Republic China in a complex dilemma. While China needs computer networks to assist the plan for economic revitalization, the government fears the uncontrolled exchange of information between China and the rest of the world over the Internet. In this study, a survey was conducted to examine how China’s Internet: users perceive the censorship. Results suggested that China’s Internet censorship would be effective in the short time.
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