Emerging pandemics call for unique health communication and education strategies in which public health agencies need to satisfy the public's information needs about possible risks while preventing risk exaggeration and dramatization. As a route to providing a framework for understanding public information behaviors in response to an emerging…

Examines two motivational models: a drive reduction model in which media use and satisfaction are directed by the gratifications people seek, and an exposure-learning model in which the gratifications are largely received as an accidental result of exposure to media. Concludes that both can be used effectively to represent media use and…

A survey of 481 individuals from a major southwestern metropolitan area suggests that a newspaper audience is not monolithic but rather a collection of numerous subsegments with different attitudes and needs regarding newspapers. (GT)