Mr. Halloran's working paper prompted me to look up the record of that seminal conference on "Popular Culture and Personal Responsibility" which the National Union of Teachers organised five years ago, to see whether much progress has been made since. Stanley Reed, of the British Film Institute, said then that it was amazing how little we know about the psychology of people watching moving pictures. We still need to know more as communicators, as educationists, and as sociologists; we ought especially to know more about the effects of the mass media on the mental health of children and adults. Mr. Reed said: "We need research into the effects of cinema, the effects of television, the effects of mass media generally. ... We need this over a long time, backed with adequate money and done at a proper professional level." We 277

The Effects of Mass Communication

The Supreme Court, like all political institutions, requires some minimal level of support because, as the high bench performs its political and constitutional roles, the justices must on occasion stand against the winds of public opinion. With data from a recent national survey, we reexamine the levels, sources, and explanations of public support for the Supreme Court. Since racial differences in attitudes toward the Court are so great, we focus here only on the attitudes of white U.S. citizens. Our purposes are both substantive and methodological. On the substantive front, we examine changes in the etiology of support. We investigate the traditional explanations of diffuse support, but, more important, we introduce and evaluate the power of a new set of variables, political values. These political values do an uncommonly good job of predicting attitudes toward the Court. In addition, we devote particular attention to the important role of "opinion leaders" as supporters of the Court. These leaders relate to the Court in a fashion very different from that of the mass public. On the methodological front, we offer an alternative means of thinking about and capturing diffuse support for the Court among the mass public. We close with speculations about the process by which diffuse support for the Court changes over time and, more generally, the implications of attitudes among the mass public and opinion leaders for the functioning of the Supreme Court.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2111585.pdf

The Etiology of Public Support for the Supreme Court

This article goes beyond describing media content and places it in a broader theoretical framework by examining some determinants that have been considered important in the study of international news flow. The article attempts to identify the factors that best differentiate those international events that are covered in the U.S. news media from events that are not. The dependent variable was media coverage of international events. Based on previous studies, seven variables were selected as predictors to separate the two groups: potential for social change, normative deviance, relevance to the United States, geographical distance, language affinity, press freedom, and economic system. A stepwise discriminant analysis was used to distinguish between the covered events and not-covered events, emphasizing identification of the most powerful discriminators. Results show that four variables contribute significantly to the discriminant function in distinguishing between covered events and not-covered events: no...

Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media

While studies of public confidence in institutions have long been a part of the public opinion literature, systematic analysis of public confidence in America's lower courts has been missing. This is troubling, especially since support for the rule of law is integral to a democracy and support for courts essential to the operation of the rule of law. I offer an explanation of public support for lower courts, finding that experience with courts, perceptions regarding the fairness of court procedures, and choices made over institutional design all play a role in explaining the public's support for state courts.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2006.00455.x

Understanding Public Confidence in American Courts

Knowledge and Attitudes

In the 1960s, Murphy and Tanenhaus examined the linkages between public opinion and the U.S. Supreme Court. This article represents a new look at that question within the context of the 1970s, using national survey data. Four clusters of explanations are developed, based upon the previous literature, and tested, using trust in the Court as the dependent vanable. The two most important explanatory variables found are race and education, but race is declining as an explanation for variations in support for the Court.

/pdf/public-support-for-the-supreme-court-in-the-1970s-vu8olqrwbn.pdf

Public Support for the Supreme Court in the 1970s

predictor of free circulation. Free circulation does not seem to be a phenomenon confined to newer, less established newspapers; older newspapers tended to be heavily represented among free circulation newspapers. Free circulation newspapers are also more likely to be part of a chain or group, which is probably one of the most significant findings. Groupswned free circulation newspapers constitute a barrier to entry into the industry. A newspaper group has the benefits of economies of scale that a single, independent fkm does not have unkss, of course, that firm takes advantage of central printing. Because the chainswned newspaper can offer an advertiser larger circulation through combination rates, the chainowned newspaper can make up in advertising revenue what it does not earn in subscription revenue. The fact that only 12.6% of the weeklies had competition from other weekly publications indicates that the barriers to entry into the industry are already very high.

Foreign Affairs Coverage in Elite and Mass Periodicals

a topic of continuing interest to students of mass communication and political science. One review of the findings in this field suggests that we should investigate &dquo;the importance of mass media portrayals of specific events, and of characteristic patterns of media use (Kraus and Davis, 1976: 28). Although the specific events studied are often crisis situations, such as assassinations or scandals, the topic of this investigation is

Children View the New President

The expression of positive feelings toward the president by children has been challenged as possibly being a methodological artifact. This research attempts to separate expression of presidential affect from expressions of chauvinism. With data from 759 sixth grade students. we offer additional evidence of chauvinism among children which may be the source of the presidential affect reported by earlier researchers.

Presidential Affect and Chauvinism Among Children

An analysis of 1976 data indicates that nonvoters' images of presidential candidates do not differ drastically from the images expressed by voters. Nonvoters respond to fewer candidates and tend to rate some "outsider" figures more positively and "establishment" figures less positively. With regard to most candidates, however, nonvoters' perceptions resemble those of fellow partisan identifiers more than those of fellow nonvoters. Tests of candidate-related explanations of turnout provide more support for the "indifference" and "other preference" hypotheses than for alienation, but the utility of these explana tions varies across partisan groupings.

/pdf/candidate-images-among-voters-and-nonvoters-in-1976-4i6yd9k8vc.pdf

William S. Maddox

Papers

Public Support for the Supreme Court in the 1970s

Foreign Affairs Coverage in Elite and Mass Periodicals

Children View the New President

Presidential Affect and Chauvinism Among Children

Candidate Images Among Voters and Nonvoters in 1976