The Power of Narratives: The Effect of Entertainment Television Organ Donation Storylines on the Attitudes, Knowledge, and Behaviors of Donors and Nondonors

Drawing on theories of social learning, social representations and the organ donation model, online surveys were used to examine the impact of organ donation storylines of 4 U.S. television dramas (CSI: NY, Numb3rs, House, and Grey's Anatomy) on viewers' attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors. Results revealed that viewers acquired knowledge from the content of each drama, despite the fact that some content was inaccurate. Viewers who were not organ donors prior to exposure to the dramas were more likely to decide to donate organs if the drama explicitly encouraged donation, portrayed characters revealing how they had become donors and discussed the merits of donating. Viewers were also more likely to become an organ donor if they were emotionally involved in the narrative. Implications for using dramas to educate and motivate the public were discussed.     

Political Implications of Prime-Time Drama and Sitcom Use: Genres of Representation and Opinions Concerning Women's Rights

Scholars studying the content of televised entertainment programming have long argued for a relationship between exposure to sexist media representations of women and opinions concerning women's status in society, yet research has rarely examined prime-time television audiences and their sociopolitical opinions concerning women's rights. To explore these relationships, we engaged in a secondary analysis of the 1997, 1998, and 1999 DDB Life Style Studies. Using hierarchical regression, we found three forms of entertainment television use (traditional drama, progressive drama, and situation comedy) that retain statistically significant, unique relationships with opinions concerning women's rights, even after accounting for variables thought to shape patterns of media use and influence support for women's rights. Further, regression path analysis revealed that these three forms also mediate relationships between various demographic, situational, and orientational variables and the criterion variable.     

Does Television Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations About Marriage?

One explanation for the high divorce rate in our society focuses on the idealistic expectations with which many people enter into marriage. The media have been cited as the source of or major contributor to these expectations; however, no empirical evidence exists to support that claim. Based on a survey of 285 never-married university students, this study sought to examine the relationship between television viewing, holding idealistic expectations about marriage, and intentions to marry. Results from regression and path analyses indicate that, although overall television viewing has a negative association with idealistic marriage expectations, viewing of romantic genre programming (e.g., romantic comedies, soap operas) was positively associated with idealistic expectations about marriage. Further, a strong and positive association between these expectations and marital intentions was evidenced. These findings are discussed in terms of both cultivation theory and the uses and gratifications perspective of media influence.     

广播剧录制中的若干问题分析

广播剧作为听觉艺术形式之一,其通过语言、声效和音乐三个要素相互交融提高听众的故事感染力,利用声音打动听众,进而引起共鸣。为了让广播剧能够更加具有渲染力和听觉冲击力,带给听众丰富多彩的艺术想象力,广播剧在录制的时候必须要做好规划。基于此,本文就广播剧录制中的若干问题展开研究,分别从录制准备、录制人员以及录制效果等技术问题展开了分析,希望能够推动广播剧录制的完善。     

What I Watch and Who I Am: National Pride and the Viewing of Local and Foreign Television in Israel

This study examines the relationship between various measures of exposure to and preference for Israeli television (as opposed to imported foreign programs) and the degree of national pride. Survey results ( n = 408) show that over and above strict demographic, ideological, and general television viewing control measures, viewers who preferred Israeli channels and news programs did not feel more proud of being Israeli. However, the proportion of Israeli favorite television characters did predict national pride. Furthermore, evidence of a relationship between favorite programs and pride that is mediated through favorite characters was indicated. Results are discussed in the context of measurement of television exposure, social effects of media, and television globalization.     

How Individuals Explain Social Problems: The Influences of Media Use

This study examined the role of media use in individuals' explanations of crime and welfare. Attribution theory and the information-processing approach to media effects provided a theoretical framework for this research. Media effects on explanations of social problems are enhanced by individuals' patterns of information processing. Specifically, active processing of national television public affairs content increased while active processing of newspaper public affairs content decreased the likelihood of individualistic explanations. The study also showed that individualistic explanations of crime and welfare are related to support for the death penalty and to opposition toward welfare programs.     

Do talk shows cultivate adolescents' views of the world? A prolonged‐exposure experiment

The traditional cultivation approach assumes (a) a uniform message across all television genres, (b) a nonselective viewing pattern in the audience, and (c) longterm effects. This study of possible effects of daily talk shows on adolescents involved a prolonged-exposure experiment designed to evaluate effects of exposure to sequences dealing with lesbian or gay male relationships between the content of a specific genre and cultivation measures, independent of third variables. The results show that cultivation effects occurred at both first- and second-order level. However, these effects were restricted to the particular issues. No transfer effects pertaining to a general change of attitudes were observed. It is concluded that cultivation effects are limited to both the genre and issue in question. Accordingly, the identification of cultivating messages within and across different televison genres should be emphasized.     

Priming Crime and Activating Blackness: Understanding the Psychological Impact of the Overrepresentation of Blacks as Lawbreakers on Television News

Two experiments examined the extent to which U.S. viewers' perceptions that Blacks face structural limitations to success, support for the death penalty, and culpability judgments could be influenced by exposure to racialized crime news. Participants were exposed to a majority of Black suspects, a majority of White suspects, unidentified suspects, and noncrime news stories. In addition, participants' prior news viewing was assessed. In Study 1, heavy news viewers exposed to unidentified perpetrators were less likely than heavy news viewers exposed to noncrime stories to perceive that Blacks face structural limitations to success. In addition, heavy news viewers exposed to unidentified perpetrators were more likely than heavy news viewers exposed to noncrime stories to support the death penalty. In Study 2, participants exposed to a majority of Black suspects were more likely than participants exposed to noncrime stories to find a subsequent race-unidentified criminal culpable for his offense. In addition, heavy news viewers were more likely to exhibit the above effect than light news viewers. The methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in light of chronic activation and the priming paradigm.     

Television and the Cultivation of Authoritarianism: A Return Visit From an Unexpected Friend

The 2016 Presidential election brought a surprise: the rise of Donald Trump as a viable candidate for the Republican nomination. What started as a seeming publicity stunt morphed into something more. Trump raised fears of authoritarianism—and even fascism—that were thought to be mostly confined to other countries. This study uses a national sample to examine television viewing's relationship to authoritarian values. We find that heavy viewers of television are more likely to be authoritarian, and that authoritarians are more likely to support Trump. We find an indirect relationship between amount of viewing and Trump support through authoritarianism. These findings have implications for current political debates as well as for media effects theory.     

The body electric: thin-ideal media and eating disorders in adolescents

The aim of this study was to replicate survey research demonstrating a correlation between adults' thin-ideal media exposure and eating disorders (Harrison & Cantor, 1997) with a sample of 366 adolescents. Measures included interest in body-improvement media content, exposure to thin-ideal television and magazines, exposure to fat-character television, exposure to sports magazines, and eating-disorder symptomatology. Exposure to fat-character television, thin-ideal magazines, and sports magazines predicted eating-disorder symptomatology for females, especially older females. Exposure to fat-character television also predicted body dissatisfaction for younger males. Relationships remained significant when selective exposure based on interest in body-management content was controlled. Discussion centers on the importance of age and sex in moderating the effects of exposure to thin-ideal media on eating disorders.     

The Relation Between Television Exposure and Theory of Mind Among Preschoolers

This study explored the relation between preschoolers' television exposure and one important indicator of cognitive processing called theory of mind (ToM). A total of 107 preschoolers and their parents provided data on the preschoolers' television exposure (including both intentional viewing and exposure via background television), parent–child discussion of television, and preschoolers' ToM. The results indicated that preschoolers who were exposed to more background television and who had a television in their bedroom performed more poorly on ToM assessments compared with other children. Parent–child discussion of television was positively related to ToM performance, however. These results have implications for how we understand the effects of television on preschoolers.     

秦之声栏目剪辑探讨

剪辑是电视制作中非常重要的一个环节,以陕西广播电视台戏曲节目秦之声为例,分别从视频镜头剪辑和声音效果剪辑两个方面,探讨戏曲节目剪辑过程中的感想,只有处理好上述内容,才能达到剪辑的预期效果。     

Television News and the Cultivation of Fear of Crime

Why has the public persisted in believing that violent crime is a widespread national problem in the U.S. despite declining trends in crime and the fact that crime is concentrated in urban locations? Cultivation theory suggests that widespread fear of crime is fueled in part by heavy exposure to violent dramatic programming on prime‐time television. Here we explore a related hypothesis: that fear of crime is in part a by‐product of exposure to crime‐saturated local television news. To test this, as well as related and competing hypotheses, we analyzed the results of a recent national survey of perceived risk; a 5‐year span of the General Social Survey (1990–1994); and the results of a recent survey of over 2,300 Philadelphia residents. The results indicate that across a wide spectrum of the population and independent of local crime rates, viewing local television news is related to increased fear of and concern about crime. These results support cultivation theory's predicted effects of television on the public.     

Implications of cognitive and affective involvement for channel changing

In this study I focused on channel changing as an aspect of the selectivity dimension of audience activity, and explored the influence of cognitive involvement (attention to and mental engagement with a television program) and perceived affective reactions (positive and negative) on channel changing. Questionnaires were completed by 222 adult respondents who owned remote control devices. Pearson and partial correlations provided preliminary support for the study's hypotheses. LISREL analysis also revealed partial support. In general, the results point out that channel changing while watching a television program is both a reflection of lack of interest and an avoidance behavior. When viewers are not mentally engaged with the program, and are experiencing negative affective reactions to the content, channel changing increases. The discussion links the study's findings to selective exposure research and notes implications for media effects.     

The Polarizing Impact of News Coverage on Populist Attitudes in the Public: Evidence From a Panel Study in Four European Democracies

This study explores how news messages carrying parts of the populist ideology contribute to a polarization of public opinion about populism. It combines a content analysis of news coverage on two policy areas (N = 7,119 stories) with a two-wave panel survey (N = 2,338) in four European metropolitan regions (Berlin, Paris, London, and Zurich). In three regions, unopposed media messages with a populist stance have a conditional effect on populist attitudes that depends on prior convictions. A higher dose of exposure to populist news coverage enhances both prior agreement and disagreement with populism. Although the observed interaction patterns vary between regions, the general picture suggests that populist messages in the news foster polarization between public support and disapproval of populism.     

Research on emotional space for movie and TV drama videos

Emotional space refers to a multi-dimensional emotional model that describes a group of subjective feelings or emotions. Since the existing discrete emotional space is mainly aimed at human’s primary emotions, it cannot describe the complex emotions evoked when watching movies. In order to solve this problem, an emotional fusion space for videos was constructed by selecting movies and TV dramas with rich emotional semantics as the research objects. Firstly, emotional words based on movie and TV drama videos are acquired and analyzed by using subjective evaluation and semantic analysis methods. Then, the emotional word vectors obtained from the above analysis are fused, reduced dimension by t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE) algorithm, and clustered by bisecting K-means clustering algorithm to get a discrete emotional space for movie and TV drama videos. This emotional fusion space can obtain different categories by changing the value of the emotion classification number without re-labeling and calculation.     

Television Exposure and Disordered Eating Among Children: A Longitudinal Panel Study

Although the link between media consumption and eating disorders has been widely studied, relatively little is known about the development of this link in childhood. A longitudinal panel survey of 315 White and Black preadolescent boys and girls revealed that television exposure, after controlling for age, perceived body size, selective exposure to ideal-body television, and baseline disordered eating, significantly predicted disordered eating 1 year later for girls but not for boys. Findings suggest that disordered eating as an outcome of television exposure is an important issue for Black girls as well as White girls. Results also highlight the need for continued investigation into gender differences in the effects of media exposure on eating disturbance in childhood.     

Young Females' Images of Motherhood in Relation to Television Viewing

This study explored the relationship between television viewing and young females' images of motherhood. The respondents were 166 Dutch adolescents (age 15–17) and young women (age 20–22) with various educational backgrounds. None were mothers. We examined the young females' self-image and ideal image of motherhood and explored the extent to which television viewing and viewing motives were related to these images. It was not the total amount of television exposure, but the exposure to certain sitcoms and soaps that appeared to be related to girls' and young women's images of their future motherhood. Sitcoms and soaps that portrayed mothers with a more traditional orientation were associated with young females' anticipation of a traditional motherhood image. Motives for television viewing, indicating a ritualized viewing style, were also related to a traditional view of motherhood.     

A Critical Analysis of Cultivation Theory

This critical analysis of the "cultivation" literature reveals 3 conceptions of the term: (a) George Gerbner's macrosystem explanation of mass media processes and effects, (b) a pattern of operational practices that searches for relationships between television exposure and a wide range of cultivation indicators, and (c) a general forum of explorations of media influence where researchers break away from Gerbner's conceptualizations and boundaries. Using the criteria of heuristic value, empirical support, and precision, this essay evaluates the contribution this large cultivation literature has made to increasing our understanding of the mass media.     

Predicting exposure to and uses of television violence

The uses-and-gratifications tradition posits that individual needs for stimulation and for information vary systematically. These needs may affect what media sources and other stimuli are accessed by individuals. In this study we sampled adolescents and college students to examine (a) the relation between sensation seeking and exposure to violent and nonviolent television, and (b) the subsequent role that violent television may play among high sensation-seeking adolescents in their exposure to risky behaviors. Two sensation-seeking dimensions, disinhibition (positively) and experience seeking (negatively), related to adolescents' exposure to violent television. In addition, among sensation seekers, those who exhibit risk-taking behavior were not similar to those who watched violent television, making it unlikely that the two sets of behaviors can compensate for one another. We discuss implications and directions for future research.