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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.

The relationship between the media presentation of the nuclear fallout (NF) controversy & (1) knowledge about NF, (2) educ, (3) media exposure, & (4) anxiety among the media audience, was examined. The hyp's were: (1) knowledge about NF will increase as media exposure increases; (2) knowledge about NF will increase as educ'al level increases; (3) anxiety about the effects of NF will decrease as knowledge about NF increases. The data were based on a questionaire survey of 236 R's in a Middle Western Coll town. The questionaire included a test of knowledge relevant to the fallout issue & a series of questions designed to measure anxiety about the effects of fallout. The data supported the 2nd hyp, but not the first & 3rd. Confirmation of the-2nd hypothesis was explained by the selective exposure of more highly educated R's to media content more likely to contain information about fallout (news programs, documentaries, etc). Though the 3rd hypothesis predicted that knowledge would alleviate anxiety, anxiety was found to be equally distributed among all segments of the sample regardless of educ'al background. 2 possible interpretations for this finding were offered: (1) The media did not present a clear & simple picture of fallout effects, & individuals exposed to the media found themselves confronted with opposite points of view re their harmfulness; thus they may not have experienced a reduction of anxiety. (2) A number of `chronically anxious' R's may have been included in the sample. For these individuals, knowledge about fallout effects would probably not have alleviated anxiety once the media had aroused fear of such effects. E. El-Assal.

This paper is an attempt to offer a functional theory of the mass media, and to suggest criteria for evaluating the media which emerge from it—criteria which are not taken from other disciplines or from the technology of the media. First, the present stage of communications research is considered; second, the contributions of Marx and Freud; and third, an alternative hypothesis is suggested.Urban sociologists ought to be parties to any discussion of the mass media, for it is difficult to imagine anything more symbolically urban than the mass circulation daily newspaper, the car radio, or the TV antenna. Yet judging from books on urban sociology interest in this aspect of urban life has, in recent years, dwindled to almost nothing. Neglect here is matched by the peculiar evasion in communications research of the urban context. Comparisons are routinely made between rural and urban populations with respect to readership, audiences and programme preferences, but these tabulations are not weighted any differently from comparisons along such dimensions as marital status, sex, education, and others in our standard repertoire. The two bodies of knowledge, then, have developed independently of each other despite the common-sense observation that they are inextricably related.