ABSTRACT
EVER since George Gallup (1930) first examined reader interests, the study of media exposure and appraisal has been a topic of continuing interest within the field of communication. Studies to date have concentrated primarily on who reads and what is read. The question of why people expose themselves to media and have particular appraisals of them has not been explored adequately, however. This study examines this question exhaustively by testing a causal model of international communication media appraisal with readership surveys of three magazines—Dialogue, Economic Impact, and Problems of Communism— distributed in Germany.
