Journalistiek in Nederland: onderweg, maar waarheen? (Studies voor het bedrijfsfonds voor de pers/S17 – De nieuwe reporter – Jaarboek 2007)

What is good water management, if we take scarcity of water, combined with climate change, the rise of sea level and a growing world population into account? Can water management be privatized? Or should the role and the position of the nation state even be strengthened to protect the environment and the citizens? Dicke has conducted a narrative analysis of water management in England, Wales and the Netherlands. Hundred years ago, water used to be a national public good. The nation state was pivotal in water management. Nowadays, water is considered to be part of a global water system. This view transforms water from a national to a global public good. As a result, the nation state is not the only actor, which has a say in the management of this global public good. This transformation places the public private divide once again at the center of attention. The present debate about privatization, both in England and in the Netherlands, is incomplete. It does not take all dimensions of the public private divide into account. Dicke suggests that both visibility (transparency) and collectivity (water belongs to us all) should be considered. The issue is not whether water management is provided by a nation state or not. The issue should be whether the dimensions of collectivity and visibility are well balanced. This can only be achieved through a restoration of the link between water and society. Willemijn Dicke is assistant professor at Delft University of Technology at the Department of Public Management Organisation & Management.

For most consumers, advertising is less important than advertisers might think. Advertising appears to function as ''wallpaper'', something in the background that is hardly noticed. The advertiser, however, wants the consumer to use his advertisement as a piece of information, for example, when standing in front of a shelf thinking what kind of detergent is ''best'' or ''cheapest''. Mass mediated advertising campaigns should therefore at least function as a reminder when making all kinds of choices concerning brands, products or services. This book describes consumers'' use of advertising. The question to be answered is: "How and why do people use advertising?". Are they searching for information or simply watching commercials because they are funny? Are they avoiding ads because they find them irritating? And to what extent is (claimed) advertising use related to remembering having seen specific ads? The five studies in this book use different methods and research designs for addressing these questions, to understand and explain advertising use. These include: a meta-analysis of more than 50 studies on advertising, several in-depth interviews, a nation-wide telephone survey with follow-up by mail, an experiment, and a face-to-face survey. Edith Smit is Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Communication, and The Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR. She is also Deputy Director of SWOCC, the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research on Commercial Communication.