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It is argued that the use of social science perspectives & methods by journalists in the US is not a recent phenomenon, but one that began to develop long ago within the dominant humanistic philosophy of professional journalism. Changing definitions of news in recent times, however, are likely to enhance the role of the social sciences in both professional journalism & journalism education, especially as some journalists seek to move beyond the reporting of specific, isolated events to providing a context that gives them meaning. If journalistic & social science methods are to become more closely wedded, one very important condition, in addition to interest by editors & availability of talent, is financial support from those who own & control mass media. AA.

While the MM are probably not instrumental in changing pol'al att's during a campaign, voters do learn from the information available in the media. It is hyp'ed that in providing pol'al information the MM set the agenda for the campaign, influencing the salience of att's toward the pol'al issues. 100 voters who initially told interviewers they had not yet definitely decided how to vote in the upcoming 1968 Presidential election were interviewed. Their response to open ended questions asking each R to outline the key campaign issues as he saw them, were coded into 15 categories representing the key issues & other kinds of campaign news. Concurrently, those media known to provide most MM pol'al information to these voters were content analyzed using the same categories. While less than perfect, there is a high degree of consensus among media about the signif issues of the campaign. The rank-order r between the emphasis on the campaign issues by the composite of the media & voters' independent judgments of what were the more important issues was +.967. Judgments of voters who had a preference for one party but did not feel fully committed usually show a higher r with issues reflected in all news than with issues reflected only in news of their party, casting doubt on the process of selective perception. R's whose judgments on important issues show high salience of affect (that is, a strong feeling of liking or disliking), are not likely to recall acquiring recent pol'al information, esp if they have high pol'al interest; but people with high pol'al interest & low salience of affect towards issues did recall acquiring pol'al information. AA.

A series of surveys is reported designed to test G. Ray Funkhouser's mathematical model of news diffusion ('A Probabilistic Model for Predicting News Diffusion,' Journalism Quarterly, 1970, 47, 41-45). 2 series of surveys were done: (a) in San Mateo County, Calif, during the Sum of 1968-tracing 3 news events: a heart transplant operation, a prison riot, & the nomination of A. Fortas to Supreme Court Chief Justice; (b) in NC on Oct 31-tracing the diffusion of the news that the sunken hull of the submarine 'Scorpion' had been found on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; &, also in NC-a survey tracing President R. Nixon's announcement of his plan to administration the draft as a lottery of 19-yr olds which broke as a news story on May 13, 1969. Data show that the always-rising pattern reported by other investigators was not found in any of these surveys. All show dips in the % of knowers from 6 pm to 7 pm, & the heart transplant operation had a distinct inflection in its diffusion curve at this point. The Ohio prison riot news actually experienced 'negative diffusion' over the course of the entire evening-fewer people at 9 pm could correctly answer the question 'Where was the most recent big prison riot?' These findings demonstrate that news diffusion does not proceed with an always-rising, never-fslling % of knowers, as had been suggested by previous studies. Over the course of an evening the % of knowers of a specific news event may decline as a result of disinterest &/or dwindling exposure, or because of competition with an overshadowing event. Except for Nixon's announcement re the draft, the events traced followed a consistent pattern: the higher the audience interest, the higher the % of knowers in the pop & the less the amount of the `dip' in the diffusion curve early in the evening. The potential predictive power of Funkhouser's model was confirmed. It seems possible that, with further testing & refinements, the diffusion of general interest information via the MM may be predictable to some extent on a probabilistic basis. 2 Tables. M. Maxfield.