Patterns of Internet and Traditional News Media Use in a Networked Community

Abstract

International communication has come increasingly under the impact of at least three major technological, socio‐economic, and political forces: expanded channels of communication provided by technological developments, democratizing pressures that have brought new voices to be heard in international media and forums, and new but as yet weak mechanisms for the conduct of meaningful dialogue and negotiations. Power politics has been thus increasingly supplemented or supplanted by image politics, questioning traditional boundaries between domestic and international politics, and creating image fixations that have proved occasionally inimical to accommodation of real interests. The symbolic uses of images, on the other hand, have served at least three kinds of cognitive interests: national solidarity, and domestic instrumental and global community. The Iranian hostage crisis, among a number of other contemporary examples, illustrates how these interests were served, symbolically and actually, in domestic as well as international politics. Through a case study of the hostage crisis, me paper concludes with some warnings on the potentials as well as menaces of image politics.     

Adolescent Women's Sports Involvement and Sexual Behavior/Health: A Process-Level Investigation

This multimethod study explored the promising link between organized sports involvement during the high school years and sexual behavior/health among 176 adolescent women. Using more sensitive and appropriate measures than those in existing studies and directed, in part, by cultural resource theory, this study helped to fill a gap in the literature by exploring potential mediators (i.e., functional body orientation and self-empowerment/efficacy) of that link. Results from the quantitative data indicated that adolescent women's involvement in organized team sports was favorably associated with each of the following: (a) sexual-risk-taking behavior, (b) sexual/reproductive health-seeking behavior, and (c) sexual/reproductive health. In addition, both functional body orientation and self-empowerment/efficacy emerged as mediators in the associations between sports involvement and sexual behavior/health among adolescent women. Content analysis of participant responses to open-ended items provided further confirmation of those mediating effects. Implications for the development of sports and community programs focused on the prevention of teenage pregnancy and STDs are discussed.     

What Would Harvey Say?

Former Secretary of the Navy remembers his classmate from the University of Pennsylvania's International Relations program. Their subsequent careers intersected often in the years ahead—in Philadelphia, Washington, and beyond. John Lehman said Harvey “was an invaluable counsel on matters great and small, professional and personal.”