Research within the agenda-setting framework has generally ignored the potential influence of purposive efforts by external actors (those outside the political system) to manipulate media coverage related to their interests. The present study uses interrupted time-series analysis to examine one such set of manipulative efforts, those undertaken by professional public relations consultants to influence the images of foreign nations as portrayed in the United States press. Data represent New York Times coverage of six nations that signed public relations contracts with American firms during the period from 1974 to 1978, and one nation that expressly rejected such a contract. The analysis identifies consistent patterns of improvement along two primary dimensions of national image, visibility and valence, which are associated in time with the public relations contracts.

No abstract

After Argentina, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, and Turkey hired U S . public relations consultants, the news image of each country in the New York Times was found to have improved by a reduction in volume, an increase in the percent of positive coverage, or its portrayal as a more cooperative nation.During the 1970s, countries of the Third World embarked on a concerted program to overcome what they perceived to be the informational colonialism of the industrialized nations. The cornerstone of this effort, the so-called New World Information Order, was perhaps best summarized by Masmoudi (17), who identified two principal dimensions of concern.The first of these dimensions, the technological, encompasses a concern that the sovereignty of Third World nations is threatened or subverted through the control exercised by the industrialized nations over the development, allocation, and use of telecommunications technology (10). The second, dealing with news flows and media operations, emphasizes software-what messages are conveyed and the process by which they are carried. Third World countries worry that they lack control over in-flows of information (news of the outside world, especially the selection of which stories and which aspects of those stories are salient, and all variety of entertainment media; see 25);

No abstract

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (1971, 1977) have argued that mass insurgency in the United States, occurring especially between 1964 and 1969, produced a series of responses by government, one of the most significant being massive expansion of welfare rolls. Using data on which they base their claim, this study examines the hypothesis that there is a positive association between social disorders and welfare caseload increases. The conclusion is that associations specified by Piven and Cloward are not supported by the data and a plausible rival hypothesis is offered to explain the massive increases in welfare caseloads.