WITH WHOM ARE MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCHERS COMMUNICATING?

A study examined whether the "most frequently published academic researchers " in mass communications, who collectively wrote 292 refereed articles, informed the public of their research findings by writing articles for consumer and trade publications. An examination of the "Reader's Guide to Periodicals" showed that the 53 academic researchers cited wrote only three consumer magazine articles during a specific period, while a similar examination of "Proquest " showed that these researchers wrote only 6.33 trade magazine articles. A "Nexis " search found that the researchers were cited by the media once every 3 years on average. These findings suggest that academic research findings are not reaching the general public and support previous arguments of C. J. Sykes and R. Jacoby that academic research is not reaching anyone except the readers of academic journals (whose readership is small). (One table of data is included. Contains 22 references.) (NKA) * Reproductions supplied by EARS are the best that can be made * * from the original document.