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Even at the low development level of a small Andean village, there are persons receiving messages from the modern mass media. The study suggests that the process of media audience building may be fundamentally the same in this quite different culture as in the United States.

Analyzing data gathered in studies of three different "news breaks," the authors describe apparent regularities in the diffusion process and note differences in the functions of the newspaper and broadcast media. Other findings suggest that person-to-person "relay" may be of limited importance.

The authors have made a statistical construction of the "average" Latin American country. Factor analysis produced three central indices—Size, Developmental Level, and Exports to the United States—which account for considerable differences between nations. Similarities in certain of the 16 basic factors, such as literacy, are also pointed out. Paul Deutschmann, who died unexpectedly last year, was Professor at Michigan State University, and one of the finest and most cordially liked younger scholars in the field of journalism and communications research. Professor McNelly is at Michigan State, following an extended period of research in Latin America.

This department is devoted to shorter articles and notes on research in the communications field, either completed or in progress. Readers are invited to submit reports on investigative studies which might prove useful to other students because of content, method, or implications for further research.

Interviewers find the daily mass communication intake of Latin American professional and technical people roughly on a par with, and in some ways broader than, that of comparable North Americans. Domestic and foreign media consumption patterns are analyzed in terms of education and U.S. exposure.