Discusses the effects of deliberate vagueness on source credibility, agreement and perceived vagueness. See CS 703 560 for availability. (MH)

Finds that while strong verbs and reporting of "body language" make news stories exciting, they also make the stories less credible. (RB)

John Dewey's vision of communication posits an important ideal that educational researchers are hard pressed to meet, for the language that facilitates exchanges between scholars often encumbers their attempts to convey their work and findings to a wider, lay audience. The canons of inquiry (of foremost concern to researchers) rarely coincide with…

A study was conducted to explore attitudes toward the credibility of individual media and news media in general. The first phase of the study was a series of focused group discussions, while the second involved a national representative sampling of 1,469 adults interviewed by telephone, 875 of whom were then surveyed by mail. Credibility scores…

Results of the 1985 American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) survey--to determine public attitudes toward media credibility--are reported in this paper. Discussion is categorized according to the 12 issues explored: (1) the believability of media when news reports conflict; (2) geographic scope of topics; (3) reliability of reporting and…

The viability of persuasion theory as a framework for the assessment of program evaluation utilization was assessed. Independent variables studied included credibility, involvement, and role groups. More specifically, the research was designed to address three questions concerning: (1) the occurrence of peripheral involvement persuasive effects…

A study was conducted to compare coverage of the United States invasion of Grenada provided by the Third World news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) during October and November 1984, with that provided by the "New York Times." The study instrument tested the direction, themes, sources quoted, and location of the stories. The theme…

Rhetorical theorists since Socrates have advocated a rhetoric that reveals truth and avoids concealment. This tradition rests, however on the questionable epistemological assumptions that data exist prior to the linguistic formualtion of them and that such data can be articulated in objectively verifiable discourse. In opposition to this point of…

The counterplan is a recent strategy used in debate whereby the negative team can urge adoption of a new policy rather than defend the status quo. This paper isolates some of the requirements for a debate counterplan, discusses its strategic implications, and describes three conditions which debate theorists define as necessary for a valid…

This speech calls for a new concept of corporate communication that acknowledges public opinion as the final controlling force in society. Candor and credibility govern the methods outlined in the speech for conducting press conferences and for improving communications with the press. The speech asserts that the survival of free enterprise depends…

The capability of 14 interpersonal dimensions to predict dyadic communication contexts was investigated in this study. Friend, acquaintance, co-worker, and family contexts were examined. The interpersonal valence construct, based on a coactive or mutual-causal paradigm, encompasses traditional source-valence components (credibility, power,…

A study investigated the perceptions workers had of labor unions. Affiliation behavior and gender differences were employed as independent variables with respect to workers' attributions of trustworthiness in labor unions and their messages, as measured by the three dimensions of character, expertise, and dynamism of the Giffin Trust Differential…

A survey of 379 adults was used to assess the extent to which television news credibility scores were a function of researcher operationalizations of the concept. Underlying this effort were published reports suggesting that single item measures of television news credibility were either biased or inadequate indicators of a more complex…

Still photography can help portray educational programs for description and evaluation. There may, however, be problems with this method. Photographic images idealize the subjects; the framing is arbitrary, lends importance and veracity at the same time it levels an event to a very thin slice of reality. The evaluator-photographer may have…