This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 36 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) content diversity in local television news; (2) advertising influences on consumers' use of evidence; (3) organized labor and the mass media; (4) feminist film theory and practice; (5) advertising slogan recall in the fast food industry; (6) the effects of televised political programs upon voter preferences; (7) "televangelism"; (8) learned helplessness in local television news; (9) television program preference, choice, and viewing behavior; (10) the electronic newspaper; (11) television usage among older adults; (12) children's programing in commercial television; (13) semiotic phenomenology and the film image; (14) the debates over radio use during the 1920s; (15) public radio and the community college; (16) individual and environmental determinants of television viewing behavior; (17) the purposes, strategies, and development of political advertising; (18) patterns of television viewing in the United States; (19) the image of the black family and the white family in American prime time television programing from 1970 to 1980; (20) the effects of two health information campaigns of the complexity of cognitive structure; and (21) predictable patterns of network news coverage of the President of the United States. (HOD)