Introduction

Thousands of colleges and universities use World Wide Web sites for promotional purposes, to help reach both general and targeted publics with specific information about academic programs and opportunities. Through the display of information in graphics and text, a higher education Web site helps establish institutional public image, a key element of institutional marketing. Web site displays allow institutions to target specific information to specific online users, something which is important in student recruitment. Web sites also allow faculty, staff and students to have an ongoing dialogue within and across academic programs and disciplines, something which is critical to creating productive educational environments.

Many U.S. colleges and universities which offer journalism and/or mass communication programs have embraced the technological advantages of the World Wide Web. Since journalism/ mass communication is a discipline which revolves around reaching large audiences with a technologically-mediated message, it seems only natural that this discipline should use the Web to provide information about specific programs, degree and course offerings, activities, faculty members, scholarly and student life opportunities, and communities.

The Problem

Despite the popularity of WWW sites within the journalism/ mass communication discipline, however, there has been little empirical examination of these sites and their contents. Almost no research effort has been dedicated to learning about the visual, operational, and informational attributes of journalism/ mass communication sites. Even less has been confirmed about how the Web sites of different programs differ from each other, and what might be responsible for the differences. Even the most basic research to simply confirm the presence of absence of journalism/ mass communication Web sites already is outdated (See A Survey of. . . , 1995).

Even less is known about the way social order within journalism/ mass communication programs impacts-and is impacted by-the creation and maintenance of program Web sites. Social order involves the written and unwritten rules, norms, and shared strategies which allow faculty, staff and students to work together (See Crawford & Ostrom, 1995). Social order is, by definition, the result of predictable or coordinated human actions (Elster, 1989); thus one would expect that a critical component in the success of any academic Web site would be the level of perceived predictability or coordination among faculty who establish and maintain the Web presence for their academic program.

This research will make an effort to address some of the unanswered questions about journalism/ mass communication Web sites. It will involve an examination of academic Web sites within the discipline to gather data on the visual, operational and informational enhancements used in Web displays. It also will involve a survey of faculty members, to gather information about perceived social order within academic programs, as that social order impacts Web site creation and maintenance. Based on these findings, the research will then attempt to make some generalizations about institutional, program, and social variables-and how those variables affect the creation and maintenance of academic Web sites.

Development of the Internet

The Internet is a world-wide, informal network of linked computers which allows people to send and receive person-to-person messages. The system was developed in the early 1960s by the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Rand Corporation, and several university research entities. It began as "a military strategy to enable communication networks to survive a nuclear attack" (Castells, 1996, p. 342). Unlike earlier linked networks, which relied upon a centralized command and control hub vulnerable to disablement, the Defense Department's computer network would use packet switching, which allows messages to be sent independently of any command center. Thus, the system would function regardless of whether any single data entry or retrieval point was disabled (Picciano, 1998).

The system, initially known as ARPANET, became functional in 1969 at the University of California Los Angeles. ARPANET grew and developed throughout the 1970s, and was used primarily by engineers and scientists associated with defense projects. By 1973, 25 computers were tied into the system (Castells, 1996).

The first major expansion of ARPANET came in the early 1980s, when the U.S. military established MILNET as a separate network entity. Soon, two other networks were created. The National Science Foundation established CSNET for scientific information and BITNET as a link for major university mainframe computers (Picciano, 1998).

The system jumped from the government to the private sector in the late 1980s, spurred on by improving hardware and software technology - including the development of the modem, a device which allows computers to share information and transfer files without the presence of an intermediating host (Castells, 1996). A growing consumer market driven in part by falling prices on desktop computer systems began bringing the Internet into homes and offices on a large scale (Elmer-DeWitt, 1996).

By 1994, the Internet had become "the world's largest collection of decentralized computer networks," as its size doubled every year between 1988 and 1992 (Jaber & Hou, 1994). By late 1996, it was reported that 60 million people had access to an Internet connection (Ellsworth & Ellsworth, 1997). The growth in number of users has been estimated as low as 10 percent per month (Ellsworth & Ellsworth, 1997), 20 percent per month (Picciano, 1998), and as high as 100 percent every three months (Coffman & Odlyzko, 1998).

General consumer market penetration in the U.S. was estimated at 16 percent in 1995, up from 10 percent a year earlier (Smith, 1996). More recent figures showed one-third of American homes had been equipped with a computer by 1997 (Castells, 1996) and in a six month period of 1998, the percentage of computer-equipped homes increased from 42 percent to 45 percent (Denton, 1998). In 1998, Coffman and Odlyzko believed total Internet traffic and capacity growth had leveled at about 100 percent per year.

The World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is the graphically-driven network dimension of the Internet. Its existence was made possible in the late 1980s through a series of software advances which allowed documents to share a common coded language (Rich, 1999). Today, the WWW is a vivid, colorful environment which uses motion, color, and sound to catch and hold users' attention (Marks & Dulaney, 1998). It is an environment where people do not just read information-they participate in it (Rich, 1999).

Like the Internet itself, the growth of WWW has been so rapid that it is difficult to accurately track. In early 1995, survey data cited by Vora (1998) identified 19,000 active sites. By the end of that year, the number had grown to 171,000 (Helmstetter, 1997). By April, 1997, Vora cited Netcraft Web Server survey data which estimated the number of active WWW sites as exceeding 1 million (Vora, 1998). It is difficult to determine the number of active sites at any given time. And, because it is impossible to determine how many users are accessing each WWW site, "the number of people using the Web remains unknown" (Picciano, 1998, p. 134). The future development potential of the World Wide Web would seem unlimited.

Educational Applications of the WWW

By the 1980s, the personal computer had already proven itself to be an ideal educational tool, as it could deliver instructional content visually, with color animation and audio enhancement (Sultan & Jones, 1994; Lockard, Abrams, & Many, 1987). The development of the WWW made the computer infinitely more valuable in the schools, because the Web facilitated distribution of attractive, prepared material (Burden & Davies, 1998) "to anyone, anywhere, at any time" (McClintock & Taipale, 1996, not paginated).

The WWW works well in education because of the "critical interlock" between structures and processes of the Internet and those of education itself. In this interlock, the online network reinforces the conception of students as "active agents in the process of learning, not as passive recipients of knowledge from teachers and authoritative texts" (Rudenstine, 1997, p. A48).

Specifically, the Web bolsters general educational curriculum because the Web can both deliver information and support that delivery (Gibbs & Cheng, 1995). WWW content enriches elementary and secondary schools' existing scholastic resources (ILT resources, 1998), allows districts to overcome the isolation experienced by individual students and by rural locations (McClintock & Taipale, 1996; D'Ignazio, 1984), promotes content learning and literacy development (Maring and others, 1996), empowers students (Rudenstine, 1997), and equalizes opportunities between students, schools and districts (See Picciano, 1998; Hundt, 1997; Riley, 1997; Couch, 1996).

Similar benefits are found in higher education, where the World Wide Web provides access to "essentially unlimited sources of information not conveniently obtainable through other means" (Rudenstine, 1997, p. A48), allows for the building of entire collegiate communities on the World Wide Web (Mende, 1996) and offers adult learners access and convenience unmatched by program offerings in a traditional classroom (Crawford & Shelfer, 1997; Deloughry, 1996).

Whole degree offerings (SCIS in brief, 1998) and an entire university (Pipho, 1996) have been 'created' in the online environment, despite arguments that this kind of educational experience "is scrupulously soulless" because it lacks a physical campus where students would be allowed to "cultivate their souls as well as their skills" (See Limerick, 1997, p. 15A).

The World Wide Web has changed our understandings of pure and applied research through its development of an "informational and global economy" (Castells, 1996, p. 66). In this new economy, information does not just create value-information is value (Negroponte, 1995). The benefits for researchers and scientists are limitless, as thousands of new online sources of information come into being each year, and faster and more accurate browsers allow users to find the knowledge they seek (Bederson, Hollan, Stewart, et al, 1998).

The Web and the Marketing of Education.

While the Web is making wide-scale changes in the educational system, it is also making changes in the way the educational system connects its offerings with intended recipients. This process is known as marketing. The goal of marketingl is "to attract and satisfy customers or clients on a long-term basis" (Wilcox, Ault, and Agee, 1995, p. 17).

Marketing was not a significant focus for colleges and universities during the first century and a half of higher education in America. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, institutions selected students for admission. Students were relatively passive participants in the process. The concept of institutional marketing, an idea which "rubs against the traditions of academe" (Walters, 1982, p. 378) was not an option because higher learning was viewed as "the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake" (Hutchins, 1936, p. 36).

In the 1960s and 70s, however, economic changes, a growing government and private-sector conservatism, and a decline in the pool of available potential students left higher education institutions in a position necessitating competition for students and resources (See Chait, 1992; O'Keefe, 1991; Paulsen, 1990; Rudolph, 1977). With each passing year, students "became more like academic shoppers or consumers" in the higher education marketplace (Paulsen, 1990, p. 1). Marketing was not only desirable but vitally necessary for any higher education institution to exist and expand to serve the needs and wants of a diverse and changing population.

It has been argued that colleges and universities were engaged in marketing all along, through publication of catalogues, brochures and the employment of admissions counselors (Kelly, 1982). But in the 1960s and 70s, what had formerly become a seller's market became a buyer's market. Higher education evolved into a service industry which required commitment to that service, as well as involvement and openness to a variety of publics. Individual, personal attention was sought by each enrolled student (Ihlanfeldt, 1979). Institutions not meeting student expectations would "find little interest in the product they have to offer" (Ihlanfeldt, 1980, p. 5).

Establishment of Institutional Identity.

"The basic bond of any society, culture, subculture, or organization is a 'public image'; that is, an image the essential characteristics of which are shared by individuals participating in the group" (Boulding, 1956, p. 64). The words written by Boulding more than thirty years ago remain true today, despite all the technological change which has accompanied image-building.

The marketing of higher education in the 1990s involves the establishment of a unique institutional image, or "'aura' about the institution and its programs" (Walshok, 1989, p. 227). This image, which is often created during a planned campaign (University launches..., 1997; Mooney, 1989) allows a college or university to occupy a particular niche in the local marketplace. Ideally, the educational offerings of any one institution should be perceived by the public as exclusive from all other competitive offerings (Corbitt, 1979).

For decades, educational subject offerings were created first, then students were encouraged to take interest in them (Kerr, 1995; Rudolph, 1977). Today, institutions of higher education must research and plan program offerings to match existing or anticipated future interest in particular subjects (Barton, 1979). When educational programs are readied, they are presented to the public through a "marketing mix" which includes information about academic program content, packaging of concepts, branding, advertising, sales and service--with particular attention to the life cycle of each program offering (Riggs, 1989, p. 125).

Academic program information is presented through a variety of media, including display advertising, direct mail, and personal sales (Simerly, 1989), as well as internal public relations documents and news media contacts (Topor, 1993; Harral, 1942). Consumer habits, competition, and government activity are closely monitored (Riggs, 1989), as is the local political climate (Walshok, 1989).

Much of this process can be viewed socially, because it necessitates program leaders who are "visible, involved, and collaborative" (Walshok, 1989, p. 228). Program leaders work inside institutions to "integrate marketing concepts into the daily routine" as well as help maintain organizational support for efforts being made (Simerly, 1989, p. 451). Program leaders work outside their institutions to improve contacts with external groups, and with individuals to "increase the quality of enrolled students" (Kelly, 1982, p. 393).

Successful marketing of a higher education institution or program, then, is not any one particular event in time. It is an approach "woven into the fabric of organizational life" (Simerly, 1989, p. 451). It involves an effort to make a student prefer one particular institution or program to any other which may exist in the marketplace (Doyle & Newbould, 1986). It is "a methodology that permits decision makers in an organization to think systematically and sequentially about the mission of the organization, the services or products it offers, the markets it currently serves, and the extent to which these same markets and possibly new ones may demand its products or services in the future" (Ihlanfeldt, 1980, p. 13).

Applying our knowledge of marketing to an understanding of the Web makes it easy to see how a presence on the WWW would benefit any higher education institution. Web sites for institutions and programs give colleges and universities competitive advantage in a marketplace with no barriers to entry, aside from technological concerns (Helmstetter, 1997). Web sites allow organizations to target specific information to specific groups (Ellsworth & Ellsworth, 1997), to change and update information easily and inexpensively (Siskind, 1996), and to increase the speed at which education consumers can gather data and the level at which they may access it (Tennant, 1996). An institutional presence on the network evens out competitive disadvantages between organizations (Helmstetter, 1997), and, as a consequence of the interactive social nature of the network, "raises the level of personal interaction" (Fisher, 1995, p. 38) between organizations and the users who seek information from them.

Student Recruitment and Retention.

In the changing environment in which we find higher education today, it is clear that the individual student must bear much of the responsibility for securing his or her education. There are no systems or processes at work at the federal, state, or community level to assure that every American who wants to partake of higher learning will be able to do so. Colleges and universities have taken on the responsibility of negotiating with students for financial aid (Chait, 1992) and helping prospective students identify specific academic programs that match their personal skills and interests (Lowery, 1982) while helping students make the social transition into college life.

Students should enter the institution of higher learning with the attributes and abilities to succeed. While institutional characteristics help foster these attributes and abilities, studies have consistently found that much of what students accomplish during the college years can be directly related to the interests, attributes and skills students brought with them when they enrolled (Bowen, 1996; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991).

As such, the process of student recruitment is often connected with that of student retention--since it is as important for the enrolled student to be able to make swift progress toward the degree as it is for the college to manage its institutional support through enrollment. College students have been categorized as "persisters"--those who remain enrolled; "attainers"--those who remain enrolled but are not progressing toward a particular degree; "stop outs"--previous students who leave the institution, presumably to return later; "drop outs"-- those who leave the institution with no presumed intent of continuing their studies; "transfers"--those who leave to enroll in other institutions; and "dismissals"--those whose enrollment is ended by the institution as a result of academic, financial or social misconduct (Dolence, 1991). The ideal student for a college or university to recruit is the "persister" or the "attainer."

In order to recruit these ideal students, institutions use a number of different means to try to target their recruitment efforts to students with the requisite characteristics. Recruitment means used include personalized mailings, literature distribution, presentations, personal visits and college tours (Pagano & Terkla, 1991; Simerly, 1989; Bidelman, 1985; Lowery, 1982). It should be noted, however, that despite the huge expense of institutional effort and funding in these efforts, at least one researcher has found prospective students sometimes doubt the informational accuracy and validity of traditional printed college publicity materials (Boyer, 1987).

Prospective college students who are the recipients of institutional information look for a variety of things from the undergraduate experience (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). They seek an investment involved in making a decision to attend a particular school, a perceived social 'fit' between student and institution, and an appropriate status attainment level which results from the decision (Paulsen, 1990).

Students consult a variety of sources when gathering information about colleges. These typically include guidebooks and directories to develop a preliminary list of preferred colleges. From there, students "gather information and explore their choices in depth" through use of college catalogs, personal visits with counselors, campus tours, and interviews with college students, faculty and recent alumni (Bidelman, 1985, p. 2).

A thorough search helps the student become familiar with institutional characteristics and college environments, both of which are seen by Pagano and Terkla (1991) as critical variables in the student's decision. Students are urged to make as much personal contact with institutions as possible. "Institutional contacts, both formal and informal, reflect and communicate the personality of the institution. As a result they help shape the image prospective students and their parents have regarding the institutional environment" (Pagano & Terkla, 1991, p. 33).

In a survey of minority student recruitment and retention practices among schools of psychology, Hammond and Yung found that a variety of traditional recruitment methods are used. Methods include personal contacts, invitations for campus visits, recruitment materials targeted for specific demographic audiences, and high school multi-media presentations (Hammond & Yung, 1993). At the same time, academic support for computer skill development was the most prevalent item reported by school administrators in the area of "academic retention strategies," (p. 7), a category which included 18 other options for keeping students enrolled.

Given the fact that the strategy of personal contact is ranked with such importance for recruiting students, that computer skill development has been cited in at least one survey as being a critical retention strategy, and that prospective students have previously doubted the validity of many of the traditional forms of printed college recruitment materials--it would seem that prospective student contact via a World Wide Web site would be an ideal way to add impact to the student recruitment process.

Organizational Support Within Academe.

Providing adequate support for faculty and staff is an important goal of any educational institution. Existing survey and case study research confirms that those who work within any place need to feel satisfied on the job (Bruce, 1989; Drory & Shamir, 1988; Ash, 1972). A manager's effectiveness (Blake & Mouton, 1978; Blake & Mouton, 1964) or ineffectiveness (Thompson, Kirkham, & Dixon, 1985) has been shown to have an influence in this process. Other variables in the process include good morale, which has been shown to a positive influence on workplace climate and productivity (Kiechel, 1989; Koenigsberg, 1989; Roberts & Harris, 1989), as well as social elements which foster creativity among employees (Balkin, 1990; Moore, 1990; Webster, 1990).

Managers' actions are key to the creation of positive, creative work climates where people learn (Blendinger & Jones, 1989; Moran & Volkwein, 1988) or work (Chelte, 1989; Miller, 1988). The development of a positive, creative work climate is especially important when managers and subordinates must work together to develop media content. At least one study suggests the presence of relationships between negative social reinforcements in the workplace and poor performance among those who work there (Swanson, 1991).

It is also been demonstrated that academic organizations are unlike any other in their form and complexity--and the unique social relationships involved. Extensive study of the academic environment by British researcher Tony Becher led him to conclude that academe is made up of "tribes," each with their own "traditions, customs and practices, transmitted knowledge, beliefs, morals and rules of conduct, as well as their linguistic and symbolic forms of communication and meanings they share.

"To be admitted to a particular sector of the academic profession," Becher continues, "involves not only a sufficient level of technical proficiency in one's trade but

also a proper measure of loyalty to one's collegial group and of adherence to its norms" (Becher, 1989, p. 24).

Ideally, the creation and management of a Web site for an educational program should be part of a complete and ordered social experience, not only for faculty, staff, and students within a particular discipline and program--but for alumni, potential students, and others in the community outside the university. Of course, every institution is different. The specific variables at work in the creative process will differ depending upon the institution's culture, character, social order, and academic mission.

Taking these issues into account, a program's academic Web site should adhere to the written and unwritten expectations for it. These expectations govern social, technical, and symbolic norms for World Wide Web sites and the people who use them.

The site should adhere to institutional or program guidelines for site creation and management. The site should allow for optimum marketing of the host academic program, as well as of the institution as a whole. This marketing should include an emphasis on student recruitment and retention. The site should support, and be supported by, the host academic program and the institution in general. Finally, the site should support, and be supported by, positive social interactions between faculty, staff, and students in the host program.

The World Wide Web is a social medium; it supports and encourages human action through the use of computer-mediated technology and symbols. In order for a journalism/ mass communication program to gain the most benefit from a WWW site, the site needs to be developed and used in the most positive way, with consideration of all the social, technical, and symbolic elements and associations involved in the process. The academic Web site is not as much an end product in itself as it is a means to an end-it facilitates continuing social experiences to bring about promotion of the institution in general and the host academic program in specific. Therefore, a Web site cannot be considered for analysis as an exclusive entity. It must be considered as part of a complete social system of higher education.

Journalism/ Mass Communication Education

The development of journalism into an academic field for study within the confines of American higher education traces its roots to the late 1860s and what O'Dell terms "natural social action" (O'Dell, 1935, p. 3) resulting from a variety of historical and social events. The first call for establishment of formal journalism training within the academic environment came in 1869, when General Robert E. Lee, the newly-installed president of Washington College, wrote to his board of trustees asking for establishment of 50 scholarships for "young men intending to make practical printing and journalism their business in life" (O'Dell, 1935, p. 15). A similar, vocationally-oriented proposal calling for professional certification in journalism was first proposed at Cornell University in about 1875. But due to a variety of difficult circumstances, these and other early programs never became established (See McClure, 1883).

Instruction in journalism at the college level finally took root at the University of Missouri in 1878, where independent courses were offered in association with literature, history and studies of politics. In 1908, Missouri's program became the first stand-alone journalism school at the college level (Jeffrey, 1994), adopting the philosophy first espoused by Dr. Charles Eliot at Harvard, who saw journalism as first and foremost as a business and felt prospective journalists needed both editorial and management training.

Close behind Missouri was Columbia University. In 1903, publisher Joseph Pulitzer awarded Columbia a $2 million endowment to help establish a journalism school "making it possible for journalism to rise to the level of other professions, through the medium of formal education" (O'Dell, 1935, p. 65). After several lengthy delays, the Columbia School of Journalism opened in 1912.

Other institutions, including the University of Denver, the University of Illinois, University of Michigan and others were soon to follow. Professional associations were formed--the American Association of Teachers of Journalism in 1912 and the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism in 1917. By 1934, 455 collegiate institutions in the U.S. offered journalism instruction (O'Dell, 1935).

Although traditional print journalism education developed markedly in subsequent years, by the late 1950s a new force--that of education in communication studies--was impacting journalism programs. As new technology expanded the size of the audience for various types of communication related to journalism, and as academic researchers began to delve more into studies of communication in social action, many academics within the discipline began looking to lead the field of journalism into new relationships (See Whetmore, 1982).

"The uniting of communication studies and journalism grew, in substantial part, out of a mix of bureaucratic expediency and a lack of understanding of journalism," Medsger writes (1996, p. 55), claiming that the absorption of traditional journalism education into the larger discipline of communication studies was politically and economically motivated. "The union did not result from an altruistic desire for new philosophical understandings and/or a new commitment to academic or professional excellence" (1996, p. 55).

In 1995, college journalism education was well into its second century with at least 427 colleges and universities known to be offering some form of journalism degree--from small programs with just a few students in a journalism subject area, to the University of Iowa Journalism School with an enrollment of almost 2,900 undergraduates (Kosicki & Becker, 1996).

College journalism enrollments grew strongly in the 1970s and 80s (JMC Education. . ., 1995; Cowdin, 1985) and continued to grow at a more moderate pace in the early 1990s (Jeffrey, 1994). In 1996, Kosicki and Becker estimated 141,167 college students were enrolled in journalism programs at the college level, and 91 percent of students enrolled were undergraduates (Kosicki & Becker, 1996).

As in the early years when there were distinctly different perspectives on journalism education--Robert E. Lee's framing of journalism as a vocation; Joseph Pulitzer's framing of journalism as a profession with close academic ties; and Charles Eliot's framing of journalism as a business with editorial and management implications--there remain today great differences within academe as to what journalism education is, where it belongs in the academic hierarchy, and how it should best prepare students for career realities.

The Discipline, Education, and Institutions

Because there are different ways of conceptualizing journalism/ mass communication education, different institutions structure the discipline in different ways. These differences help explain, and are explained by, internal and external variables which are related to campus social order. These variables help determine 'best fit' between an institution of higher education and its journalism/ mass communication program. Internal variables include program and goals, academic culture, and, organizational structure and bureaucracy.

Strategies, Structure, Bureaucracy, Technology

A program and its goals are defined by administrative strategies (Cook, 1989) and mission statement, the document which serves as a test of what organizational and educational inputs are anticipated and what outcomes will be expected (Medoff, 1994). Academic culture is closely related to program and goals. Academic culture involves the particular sequence and structure orientation of the journalism/ mass communication program (Jeffrey, 1994), the number of faculty holding doctorate degrees (JMC Education. . ., 1995; Dickson & Sellmeyer, 1992; Cowdin, 1985), the extent to which faculty members have the opportunity to do academic research (Medoff, 1994), and the extent to which the academic culture implicitly or explicitly demands faculty research production (Bodle, 1993).

Organizational structure and bureaucracy relates to the degree to which the institution's inputs and outcomes are tightly- or loosely coupled (Weick, 1991), the size of a journalism/ mass communication program and its "centrality in the academy" as related to the general political climate and allocation of funds (McCall, 1994, p. 8), the blending of the discipline with other institutional programs and the sharing of faculty from different academic areas (Medoff, 1994), the extent of facilities which facilitate teaching, advising, and research (Medoff, 1994), and even the extent to which the institution promotes access by students to journalism/ mass communication program sequences (Jeffrey, 1994).

External variables which affect 'best fit' between an institution and its program of journalism/ mass communication include opinions of working professionals, technical change, and opinions and actions of university alumni and the community at large. Opinions of working professionals are important to educators, for it is the working professionals who hire students graduated from college programs. Dozens of surveys of working private sector journalists taken in recent years would appear to have a great influence on the direction of journalism/ mass communication as a discipline (See Auman & Cook, 1995; JMC Education. . ., 1995; Bautista, 1994). Most of the surveys reflect dissatisfaction over alleged irrelevancy of academic curriculum, vocational aspects of journalism education, quality of graduates, and other issues related to academics and program administration (Dickson & Sellmeyer, 1992).

Technical change is an important variable, because journalism/ mass communication programs must recognize and adapt their curricula to a world in which electronic reception, processing, storage and delivery of information is the routine, not the exception (Jeffrey, 1994). Regardless of their academic or vocational orientation, programs which cannot keep up with changes in technology will not be able to recruit and retain students for their host institutions.

Community

Opinions and actions of university alumni and the community at large also are powerful. In today's economic climate, higher education institutions must continually look outside their institutional boundaries to raise financial support to build buildings, purchase expensive equipment, endow scholarships, hire special faculty and engage in service endeavors. Higher education institutions with student publications or broadcast media as part of a journalism/ mass communication program have an additional burden in that, in most cases, they must recruit advertising support for those media. An institution must consider the attitudes and opinions of its community and former students when attempting to 'fit' a journalism program--as it would any program which cannot survive without outside support.

Obviously, there are critical social implications involved as we begin to discuss the discipline of journalism/ mass communication, its role in academia, place in society, and development among working professionals. Journalism/ mass communication is itself a social discipline. It has a distinct order that exemplifies what Edgerton describes as "the regularity of human life" (1985, p. 255). Journalism/ mass communication has a social order within itself--as a discipline, and as institutions and programs. It also re-creates perceived social order, as journalists and other professionals conceptualize, structure, and disseminate messages about the social processes they see at work in the world.

Social Order

The concept of social order takes into account the whole spectrum of relationships which put communication in context with human action (Couch, 1996). Social order is not accidental (Eisenstadt, 1992). Every choice people make about their conduct within the sphere of collective relationships with others is open to study under this framework. Thus, by definition and by design, industrialized society is itself a social order (Cowan, 1997) because its very existence stipulates certain responsibilities for people who live together. Society is by definition cooperative; people must act together to accomplish tasks. Therefore, any effort to explain this action is an effort to understand social order.

Social order demonstrates itself directly and indirectly through culture, "an organized set of meaningfully understood symbolic patterns" (Alexander, 1992, p. 295).

Culture has been defined as the "symbolic dimension of human activity" (Eisenstadt, 1992, p. 83). In the workplace, culture reflects the values, beliefs, and meanings of people working together in cooperative relationships (Dill, 1991).

Human action and information sharing is dependent upon culture. When human action and information sharing takes place within a culture, flows of data within the social system shape organizational, institutional, and cultural processes (Boisot, 1995).

Social Acts and Social Structure

A social act, the unit of measurement in social order, is a result of a sharing relationship between people (Couch, 1996). The social act is the observable evidence of process or stimulus, either direct or indirect, toward a certain objective (Fisher, 1978). The act's influence on other acts and on people in the environment can be witnessed.

Social acts occur within the social structure, the formal and informal framework people conceptualize and maintain to carry out their lives and tasks. Social structure is "the way in which a culture or society patterns its interactions" (Klopf, 1987, p. 132). Social structure contains people, social acts, intended goals from social acts, norms for conduct, beliefs held by people in the social structure, status and status relationships between people, authority relationships between people and acts of people, and role expectations (Szilagyi & Wallace, 1983). Included in social structure are social institutions, which "are the established patterns of social behavior which organize the life of a particular segment of society" (Kraybill, 1978, pp. 41-42). Institutions are deeply ingrained in social culture and organize human education, work, family life, recreation and religious behavior.

Social Rules

Because social order is a concept which is applied to a structural environment in which obviously 'disorderly' action takes place, by understanding people's attention to rules we may attempt to explain social order. Written and unwritten rules, also known as norms and shared strategies (Crawford & Ostrom, 1995), affect acts which make up social order because rules prescribe or proscribe behavior--they tell people what actions to take, and what actions not to take. Social rules are supported by formal and informal rewards and punishments (Elster, 1989).

Rules to regulate and control human actions may be expressed directly or indirectly from one human to others. They may be expressed verbally, symbolically, or through demonstrated behaviors. They need not be explicit. "Implicit rules may be as imperative as explicit ones, and they may be every bit as vital to the establishment and maintenance of social order," Edgerton observes (1985, p. 25). Rules help create and manage human behavior which is predictable, or coordinated--two concepts which have been defined as key components of a socially ordered environment (Elster, 1989).

There are exceptions to rules, of course. Edgerton identifies four. In situations where we find ourselves faced with abnormal, temporary conditions, special status people, special occasions, and/or special settings, rules may be excepted or changed (1985). But these exceptions do not violate social order. In fact, "exceptions that are defined by rules do not weaken social order but maintain it in the same way that rules do" (Edgerton, 1985, p. 248).

Lack of predictability, or, the absence of coordination among people in the social environment implies disorder. However, disorder itself is a social order because it makes a definitive statement about the environment in which it takes place (Duncan, 1962). So, as with the old adage "one cannot not communicate," a social order cannot not demonstrate order. Even a social order which is in total disorder defines itself through that disorder (Duncan, 1968; Duncan, 1962).

Predictability and Coordinated Action

Predictable action, the first of two possible conditions under which social order is manifested, shows itself through human behavior which is consistent, repetitive, and capable of being correctly anticipated in advance of its occurrence. Predictable action is regulated by social norms. Social norms coordinate expectations (Elster, 1989).

Coordinated action, the second of two possible conditions under which social order is manifested, comes about through a process which involves sharing of past experiences, the projection of shared futures, the projection of a social objective, interpersonal timing, and timing of actions within the external environment (Couch, 1996; Novosad, 1994). Coordinated action requires that people be responsive to unfolding events, and that they be able to anticipate future events and formulate their intentions for dealing with those events.

Whether it comes as the result of predictable action or coordinated action, social order is sustained through a division of labor, a construction of trust and solidarity, a regulation of power, and a legitimization of social activities among humans (Eisenstadt, 1992).

Technology and Human Action

Technology is a design for action which always takes place in a social context (Couch, 1996). Technology is responsive to social demands (Alexander, 1992). Information technology increases the amount of information available to humans which is preserved, in circulation, or both. Each information technology favors some kinds of information over others (Couch, 1996). All information technologies either enhance or erode social structure, and result in changes in human history (Miller, 1995). All information technologies change social order, and are changed by social order, because they are a part of humanity and human history (Cowan, 1997) and because they influence the human environment where work is done (Kling, 1996).

Because computers have been fully integrated with all facets of human life, computers are themselves an inherent part of our social structure (Couch, 1996). Computer hardware and software reflects the personality of the designer and psychology of the modern office (Harris, 1995). Computer-mediated communication by humans within the modern office involves a performance of numerous communicative elements at the same time, in synch with each other (Carlsson, 1995). Computers empower - and are empowered by - people to engage in social acts (Couch, 1996). In the education environment, successful educators collaborate with experts to use technology to meet educational and technological goals (Picciano, 1998).

Education and Human Action

The educational environment is a social structure unto itself, with its own distinct order. Schools are "knowledge centers" which "have become social structures that compete with state and economic structures for hegemony in programming the future endeavors of humanity" (Couch, 1996, p. 237). Within these structures, teachers are agents of social order, and their written work offers an additional reinforcement of the social order expectations (Walters, 1995). Establishment of a cooperative social order among groups of teachers leads to effective curriculum development which all may share (Saga, 1993). Technology, applied through social order, 'creates' time for some teachers to take leadership positions where they direct the work output of others in the educational environment (Franklin and others, 1991).

Academic groups within higher education "define their own identities and defend their own patches of intellectual ground" by employing different social strategies to control the environment (Becher, 1989, p. 24). These strategies include defining physical space occupation, establishing membership rules or requirements, making social organizations within the discipline, and transmitting particular cultural information which only members may acquire. All of this is done in an effort to establish a "self-reinforcing elite structure" for academe (Mulkay, 1977).

The school administrator is a primary agent of this social order within the educational environment (Peca, 1991). In the higher education setting, in particular, the department chair is a critical determiner of social order because he or she is the "chief architect of the department's future" and creates the role according to his or her own talents and skills, within a framework which is consistent with departmental and personal goals (Tucker, 1984, p. 35).

The department or program chair holds administrative authority, which "is predicated on the control and coordination of activities by superiors" (Birnbaum, 1988, p. 10). The academic administrator must be skilled in "presentation and maintenance" of symbols and meanings which support academic culture (Dill, 1991, p. 189). The administrator has "principal responsibility of superintending academic values" (Dill, p. 193). He or she leads the academic unit in the "struggle for power and status, in which the hardiest and most applicable flourish while the weakest go to the wall" (Becher, 1989, p. 142).

A number of different models have been posed in an effort to explain how the academic department functions and how the chair of the department affects that functioning. These models include the bureaucratic model, the collegial model, the loosely-coupled system model, the organized anarchy model, and the political system model (See Baldridge, Curtis, Ecker, & Riley, 1991). Regardless of their differences, each of these models recognizes-to some extent-the existence of social and cultural variables, and the department chair's responsibility for coordinating them.

The World Wide Web and Social Order

Social order comes into play as we discuss World Wide Web sites because the Web is itself considered an environment for human action (Rich, 1999; Marks & Dulaney, 1998; Vora, 1998). In the online world, "symbols are not just metaphors, but comprise the actual experience" (Castells, 1998, p. 350). Therefore, Web designers and Web users need to take into consideration the social expectations which are explicit and implicit, and still developing, in this medium.

Institutional Policy Issues.

Among the first issues to be resolved when an institution considers launching a Web page is the establishment of institutional or departmental policy to regulate development of online content. Essentially, institutions and departments need to create the rules under which people will be allowed to create and manage WWW sites-as well as the rules for the display of content in sites.

Within the past few years, the number of institutional policies to guide Web site development and use has increased dramatically. Although a few appear to have resulted from online usability testing (Corry, Frick, & Hansen, 1997; Everhart, 1996), most policies appear to be purely based on administrators' perceptions of need.

Policies have resulted from actions of institutional committees (University of Miami..., 1998; Education via advanced..., 1995) or have been developed through the natural bureaucratic action which accompanied the proliferation of online resources (SDSU World Wide Web..., 1997). Some policies have been established by university computing services (World-Wide Web publications..., 1997) or were suggested by computer consultants (Marr and Kirkwood's..., 1998; Stoner, 1996). Other policies have been developed by faculty members (Seven Cs of Webservice design, 1998) or by librarians (Grassian, 1997; Scholz, 1996).

While some policies have been created for use specifically in higher education, there also are policies which address concerns for Web site development and use in elementary and secondary schools (Critical evaluation..., 1998; Creating and placing..., 1996). All are essentially organizational rules to directly and indirectly govern social action-regardless of the creative source of the policy, the environment where policy is applied, the action taken to create policy, or the prescriptive or proscriptive goals of the policy. Policies governing online communication affect the creation of online content by people within the institution, and the access and use of that content by those outside it (See Swanson, 1993).

Technical, Graphic, Symbolic, Linguistic Design Issues.

Specific Web site content issues tend to revolve around the overriding concept of visual literacy, or a site's transmittal of "information, emotion, and data" (Jaber & Hou, 1994). Among the most basic visual literacy concerns is that of technical compatibility, the mechanistic demand which must be met for a user to access a particular Web site. Evan the most informative and 'valuable' Web site is of no value if it cannot be accessed by users. So, experts agree that site technical elements-including design, colors, and embedded software--must be compatible with the highest possible number of potential users (Rich, 1999; Borges, Morales, & Rodriguez, 1998).

Journalist and Web designer Carole Rich recommends that site content be limited to 20 kilobytes or less in size, so sites do not take excessively long to load. "You have 20 seconds to make an impression with your Web site. That's all the time you will get before visitors to your site decide to stay or leave," Rich writes, suggesting that social order has already established a distinct 'value' exists in sites which load quickly-and does not exist in sites which do not (Rich, 199, p. 230).

In addition to technical concerns, the concept of visual literacy encompasses also the organization and inclusion-or exclusion--of graphic, symbolic, and linguistic elements in a Web site, something which makes stated and unstated assumptions about the role of the site in social order. Graphics and symbols within a Web site should be presented in ways which enhance-rather than hinder-a presentation (Griffin, Pettersson, Semali, & Takakuwa, 1994). Graphic illustrations should be used with caution, because pictures "always incorporate some ambiguity and numerous "correct" interpretations, although not always a picture's intended or anticipated interpretation" (Pettersson, 1994, p. 136).

Symbols are important because they are the primary means for helping users navigate through a Web site. In the Web environment, as they would in the physical world, humans have become accustomed to completing tasks in regular, repetitive ways. Users of the Web navigate sites they find through one or more of three methods: They seek landmarks, or visual cues; they rely on route knowledge, or an understanding of the organization of a Web site based on a series of visual cues; or, they rely upon survey knowledge, or, information gained from recent past experiences with a particular site or another one similar to it (Whitaker, 1998).

Users employ strategies which are both discriminate and indiscriminate to follow symbols and navigate through WWW sites. In any case, in the online environment-as in life in the physical world-human action does not happen by accident (Marks & Dulaney, 1998; Eisenstadt, 1992). Familiar, understandable symbols are vital.

Linguistic elements are important because language "creates the forms which make possible the communication of experience" (Duncan, 1962, p. 144). Linguistic or textual information should be presented in a "clear, easy to use way" (Geske, 1997, p. 1) and in its full and accurate historical and cultural context (Messaris, 1994). This information should be ordered and organized in accordance with user expectations (Hagerty, 1994), and with the recognition that not all users have the same cognitive and physical abilities (Laux, 1998). The technical, graphic, symbolic, and linguistic elements of a Web site all facilitate information dissemination to users-they support, and are supported by, the social order.

User Access Issues.

Concerns of Web users revolve around Netiquette, what has become known as "etiquette or good manners" (Rich, 1999). Even though many if not most Netiquette rules are unwritten, they're still important because "[b]asically there are no rules for use, [and] no one to answer to" in the online world (Jaber & Hou, 1994, p. 344). Netiquette helps prevent abuses which could result when large numbers of users associate with each other in an unstructured, mostly unregulated environment. Some of the more major abuses include illegally storing and re-transmitting copywrite-protected, pornographic or offensive material (Rich, 1999) or online stalking of other users (Jaber & Hou, 1994). Some of the more minor abuses include sending private messages to large groups of people, 'flaming' other users for their lack of rule-understanding or following behavior (Harnack & Kleppinger, 1998), and writing textual copy in all capital letters, something "which is considered shouting or screaming" (Rich, 1999, p. 91).

Whether in person or online-effective communication is more than just the sum of raw ingredients (Kerns & Johnson, 1994). Presentations are made by people and for people, and must fulfill a variety of different stated and unstated social expectations. The established 'rules' for communication on the World Wide Web serve as a guide for effective communication between people in this rapidly-expanding medium.

Summary of Issues

Obviously, there's a large amount of literature addressing World Wide Web and the many ways it can be used now, and in the future, as a medium of communicative expression. The literature addresses Web use from a business perspective, in areas of advertising, marketing and promotion. It deals with consumer issues, such as who is using the Web, what it is used for, and how users relate to others in the process. Existing literature also addresses educational uses of the Web in regard to program administration, curriculum development and delivery of services. Likewise, there is a significant amount of literature which addresses social order. There has been quite detailed examination of the ways people order their society, and carry out the rule-reinforced acts which make up modern life and work. Because a World Wide Web site is supported by, and is a supporter of social order, it is important that we draw together these two study areas, to examine WWW sites and their specific impact on a specific higher education discipline in terms of business applications (presentation of a 'marketing' or 'promotional' message about programs), consumer use (dissemination of specific information to specific audiences), and social order implications (how actions of faculty within the academic unit impact site development).

In the competitive marketplace of higher education, educators need to be as effective as possible in administering their individual institutions, and the discipline in general. Higher education institutions must be able to use the World Wide Web successfully as part of a strategy to promote programs, build on institutional strengths, and recruit the greatest number of students who are most likely to be retained to graduation. In order to accomplish this, educators and administrators must understand the World Wide Web, know how to use it effectively, know what groups to target with WWW-disseminated information, understand how to encourage interaction between prospective students and the institution, and be able to use the WWW to help solidify relationships throughout the academic unit. We must have all the information possible at our disposal to do this work on behalf of our discipline and our institutions. This research is where we begin to gather the new knowledge.

Research Questions

The analysis of the problem at hand, coupled with a review of existing literature in this field, resulted in the development of seven research questions to be addressed:

1) To what extent do U.S. college and university journalism/ mass communication programs utilize publicized academic program Web sites?

2) What types of visual, operational, and informational enhancements are in evidence on journalism/ mass communication program Web sites?

3) What quantitative differences are observed among enhancements displayed by journalism/ mass communication program Web sites, and how do these enhancements work together to establish "user friendliness" of sites?

4) Are relationships indicated among particular institutional, academic program, or subject area characteristics and quantitative differences observed among journalism/ mass communication program Web sites?

5) How do faculty members qualify four key areas of social order (delegation of labor, establishment of trust, regulation of resources, and support for academic processes) as those relationships affect journalism/ mass communication program Web site creation and maintenance?

6) How do faculty members rank their own academic program Web sites in regard to visual, operational, and informational enhancements; concept; site maintenance; purpose; and faculty involvement?

7) Are relationships indicated between particular institutional, academic program, or subject area characteristics and faculty rankings of journalism/ mass communication program Web sites?

Significance

This research has the potential to benefit the academic discipline of journalism/mass communication, because it has resulted in additional knowledge about the number of programs making use of public Web sites, the contents of those sites, and the institutional social order relationships which affect-and are affected by-the process.

The objective system of measurement developed for this research allowed sites to be quantitatively scored on the basis of their visual, operational, and informational enhancements. The resulting scores were then linked to institutional and program characteristics to illustrate how program Web sites differ, and the institutional and/or social variables which may be responsible.

The evaluations of social order by journalism/ mass communication faculty members allow us to have an increased understanding of key social expectations within academic units. The evaluations suggest, for the first time, relationships between the social order--or disorder (Duncan, 1962)--of a program and the structure of its Web site, a technology which is responsive to social demands (See Alexander, 1992).

One would expect that the increase in knowledge of this type would allow administrators and faculty in journalism/ mass communication programs to better understand the interpersonal, organizational, and technical elements which come together to allow WWW sites to be created and maintained. This improved understanding could lead to more effective online marketing of programs and their offerings, better use of current and future resources, and greater ability to practice and teach communication skills. Many of the general findings of this research are applicable to other disciplines, as well.