Magazine 2001 Abstracts
Magazine Division
UNION MAGAZINES’ COVERAGE OF THE NAFTA CONTROVERSY BEFORE CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL • Eric Freedman, Michigan State University • The 1993 congressional consideration of NAFTA drew intense labor lobbying. Simultaneously, union magazines served as advocacy tools, attacking the pact and urging members to take political action. Coverage focused on job-related critiques, especially predictions of a job drain to Mexico and potentially lower wages for U.S. workers. Much less attention went to environmental and other perceived flaws of NAFTA. Language in those articles was frequently more heated, even inflammatory, than in the mainstream media.
Mirroring Mediated Images of Women: The Influence of Media Images of Thin Women on Their Eating Disorder-Related Behaviors and Body Image • J. Robyn Goodman, University of Florida • This paper used an experiment to investigate whether images of excessively thin women in the media have negative effects on women. It was hypothesized that varying amounts of thin and “plus-size” models in women’s magazines might influence body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and difference between perceived and actual body size. The experiment revealed a significant main effect and significant group differences for drive for thinness only. The mostly thin model group had the lowest drive for thinness followed by the all thin model group and the few thin model group.
Hot Flashes, Mood Swings, and Miracle Babies: Magazine Framing of Menopause • Stacy J.T. Hust and Julie L. Andsager, Washington State University • Women over the age of 40 are largely absent from media imagery This study examined how magazines have framed menopause over the past two decades, as an increasing number of women have entered the phase. Using two content-analysis methods, we analyzed author and source gender, topics, frames, and photographs in menopause articles in seven news and women’s magazines. Women’s magazines provided a broad range of topics, focusing on helping women prepare and cope; news magazines reported scientific developments, particularly in fertility. More frames, including more graphic descriptions of symptoms and effects, occurred in women’s magazines. Female authors included menopausal women as sources, males did not. White women were pictured as subjects in photos, but photos of menopausal women appeared in a small portion of articles. Though some findings of this study are consistent with coverage of other women’s issues, menopause appears to differ somewhat, perhaps due to stereotypes of menopause.
Getting Personal: A Framing Analysis of Microcomputers in Magazines, 1969-1981 • Jean P. Kelly, Ohio University • Using both framing and diffusion theory, this study considers at how magazines defined the characteristics of microcomputers that aided the technology’s diffusion soon after its introduction, from 1969 to 1981. Among the findings was that a once-threatening war-time technology was reframed into a “personal” medium of expression and social autonomy. Later a “computer literacy” frame prompted parents to buy computers for children. No longer were computers threatening when controlling the machine and controlling one’s life became entwined.
U.S. Magazine Coverage of Forest Conservation, 1901-1909 • Jan Knight, Ohio University • This study explores how popular magazines covered forest conservation during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. Roosevelt appreciated forests for their aesthetic as well as economic values, but his administration – which included Gifford Pinchot, the “father of U.S. forestry” – took a solidly utilitarian approach to forest resources. This study shows that magazines largely parroted the federal line, but they also struggled with the topic, presenting forests as places where individuals could find solace as well as places where the United States could demonstrate its technological prowess. It concludes that magazines sometimes blurred the lines between the preservation and conservation philosophies that emerged before and during the Progressive era, perhaps as a result of Roosevelt’s own waffling on the topic as well as a result of the nation reflecting with shock and perhaps some sadness at the rampant use and destruction of U.S. forest resources during the 1800s.
Racial Cover-up 1996-2000: Who Is the Face on Today’s Fashion Magazine? • Lindsey Kressin, Trinity University • The covers of three popular fashion magazines were examined to determine whether strides have been made in eradicating racial stereotypes of the past. Every issue of Glamour, Cosmopolitan and Vogue from 1996 through 2000 was studied to determine the ethnicity of women depicted on the cover. Of 180 magazine covers studied, 87.5% of the covers featured one white model. Hispanics were featured on 6.6% of the covers, blacks 3.6%, and the racial identity of the model was unidentifiable 2.4% of the time. No Asians were featured on the covers studied.
The Heroic Leader and The Hapless Counselor: Were Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and William Rogers Really the Men News Magazines Reported Them to Be? • Carolyn Ringer Lepre, California State University-Chico • During Richard Nixon’s term of office, he had two very different men as his primary advisers on foreign policy. In this study, news magazine articles covering Rogers and Kissinger were examined, in an effort to determine whether an inequality of coverage may exist, what effect this has on current day perceptions of these two men, and how we can learn from the past to be critical media consumers regarding press coverage of current and future politicians.
The Visual Representation of Quantitative Data In Two U.S. News Magazines • Matthew M. Reavy, University of Scranton • This paper examines the use of graphics in two major U.S. news magazines. Two research questions, drawn from literature in the field, are addressed: 1) are graphical errors widespread in the nation’s two largest news magazines; and 2) if errors exist, do they tend to exaggerate rather than minimize differences in the data. The study found that errors were indeed pervasive in both Time and Newsweek. However, many of the errors fell into the study’s two most controversial categories. With regard to the question of whether or not magazine graphics tended to exaggerate differences, the results were mixed.
Art, Ideology and Americanization in post-war Dutch Journalism •Hans Renders, University of Groningen, Netherlands • In post-war Netherlands the aim was to restore politics in art criticism. The authoritative US publication The New Yorker functioned as a fig leaf. I intend to test whether this aim was achieved by embarking on a case study of Mandril, an opinion-shaping monthly magazine that was edited from the Netherlands between 1948 and 1953. It also projected a modern transparency in its political commentary. At the same time, however, the editors seemed to reject artistic renewal.
Reporter at Large: Morris Markey’s Literary Journalism in The New Yorker • Les Sillars, University of Texas-Austin • Although frequently mentioned in histories of The New Yorker, Morris Markey (1899-1950) has not received due credit for his work in maintaining a tradition of literary journalism in the U.S. in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Markey, who started at The New Yorker a few months after its 1925 founding, foreshadowed the New Journalism of the 1960s with his literary techniques, his tone, voice, and choice of topics.
Sixty-Four Years of Life: What did its 2,128 Covers cover? • David Sumner, Ball State University • The purpose of this research is to analyze the 2,128 cover images of Life between its first Nov. 23, 1936, issue and its last May 2000 issue to determine whether the magazine’s editors viewed its cover as a “cultural artifact” or a “marketing tool.” The cultural artifact model, which looks at magazines as a reflection of cultural demography, measures how accurately they reflect gender, racial and other social norms. The marketing tool model assumes that covers are simply a marketing decision and are chosen on the basis of what editors believe will sell the most copies. Cover content was analyzed according to type and theme of image. Seven hypotheses related to cover type and theme were tested to determine whether Life followed the cultural artifact or marketing tool model. The study concludes that Life covers reflected the marketing tool model during its early years between 1936 and 1959. After 1960, they were more likely to mirror cultural norms than before, but these results were mixed. The most surprising finding was that Life had more covers with women than men on them prior to 1960, but more covers with men on them after 1960. Covers with African-Americans on them were rare except during the 1960s.
The Very Fabric of Modern Life: Social and Political Issues in Scientific American in the 1960s • Mary Carol Zuegner, Creighton University • The publisher and editor of Scientific American ventured into social science to publish what they called socio-political articles in the 1960s because of their belief that science was “the very fabric of modern life.” Using science and the authority of science to explain non-scientific problems or to offer an analysis of a political problem with its roots in science enabled them to add credibility and scientific resonance to essential issues. An examination of each monthly issue of Scientific American in the 1960s and oral histories with publisher Gerard Piel and editor Dennis Flanagan reveal a wide scope with stories on race, poverty, LSD, war and environmental issues.
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