This article investigates media dependency among Chinese individuals during the SARS epidemic of 2003. While most media dependency research has examined dependency relations under circumstances when information was readily available, this study looks at a situation in which information was highly controlled and thus was not easily available from the mainstream media. As the socio-structural environment was not conducive to the free flow of information during a major public health crisis, audience members were not only actively engaged in information seeking from alternative resources such as short message services (SMS) and the internet, but they were also involved in creating alternative information channels by being information producers and disseminators. The internet was a particularly empowering tool to allow individuals to bypass official control and to challenge official claims during the crisis.

By analysing rumour content as covered by major Chinese newspapers, this article explores the multiple dimensions of SARS-related rumouring throughout China during the 2003 epidemic. Findings indicate a strong correlation between the scale of SARS infections and level of rumour activities across regions. As for channels of dissemination, the rumour process still found a natural habitat in word of mouth, while internet-based platforms and cell phone text messaging emerged as viable grapevines. Our particular typology of SARS-incurred rumours leads us to identify four distinct types of rumours: legendary rumours; aetiological narratives; proto-memorates; and bogies. The four types of rumours are discussed against the background of superstitious beliefs, folklore practices, popular mentalities, and China's particular socio-political information environment.

This study develops and tests a theoretical model to evaluate the motivational factors behind perceived ease of use in prior e-commerce experiences. This hierarchical model includes need for arousal as the independent variable; general self-efficacy, technological innovativeness, and consumer self-determination as the mediating variables; and perceived ease of use in prior e-commerce experiences as the dependent variable. Tested by data generated from a survey of 290 consumers, the model yields satisfactory fit and contributes to the literature by adding more intrinsically motivational variables to predict perceived ease of use. Practical and academic implications are also discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Research on Internet-based e-commerce has been phenomenal over the past decade. This study contributes to this growing body of scholarship by investigating the motivational factors that help explain consumers' perceived ease of

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The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to chart the changing landscape of mass communication research in journalism-related studies over the past two decades and, second, to determine the contemporary form and content of the invisible college in the field through its intellectual configuration and structural interaction. A simple citation count is inadequate; the analysis of co-citation networks should be a better indication of the field's effort to build on its theoretical foundation. The findings suggest that there is some sort of theoretical and methodological convergence in contemporary journalism-related studies.