Public officials concerned with attracting residents, companies with jobs, and
tourists who spend money in the local economy also need to be aware of their
area's image among those who live elsewhere. Their perceptions are more
dependent on mediated information. The same process of researching images
among target publics and then designing communication campaigns to influence
perceptions is applicable. While this may be an expensive proposition if applied
to the general public, more limited targets are manageable using communication
theory and practical programs, for example, campaigns utilizing specialized
media that reach businesses or other targets and interpersonal communication
programs designed to use tourists as personal conveyors of messages to others.

Clearly, those interested in quality of life issues need to pay attention to
communication variables. Quality-of-life issues will continue to garner attention
from both scholars and the general public. Sometimes this attention emerges as
concern over how we are doing in education or some specific domain. To con-
tribute to that discussion, we need to move beyond merely citing the public
opinion literature and examine general processes in which people learn about and
assess their environment. Those studies also should not focus exclusively on
mass or interpersonal communication variables but include both as indicators of
symbolic activity that has consequences for the symbol users.

Interpersonal and mass communication are conceptualized, together with
judgment and comparison processes, as learning paths and processes linking
personal values and social structural variables to individuals' subjective
appraisals of their overall life satisfaction, various domains of life activity, and
assessments of the quality of life (QOL) in a metropolitan area. Data from three
telephone surveys over a six-year period were used as a preliminary test of
various relationships in the proposed model. Results showed modest but
generally consistent support for a mediating influence of communication,
judgment, and comparison processes on QOL assessments, but not a direct
impact on QOL ratings for metropolitan areas.

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