COMM 381-2

How media and self complexity are related.

• More time in front of TV, less time doing other novel and stimulating activities
• As cultivation analyses suggest, the messages and images on TV are relatively narrow and UNIFORM
• More TV would reduce self complexity.

• TV is a way to buffer stress
• Music is an active way to work through identity.

If you have a strong sense of self, you can navigate the things in everyday life

Increased TV exposure linked to DECREASED self-complexity scores

***Can't determine causation/time order

It maps peoples interaction with media and their lived experiences.

--> interaction --> application --> identity --> selection --> (in a circle)

Motivation plays a role.

Strategic use of media to negotiate identity formation.

Mood regulation, social modeling, fantasies.

Unconscious adoption of media norms and values into self.

Frames and cultivation

“The media’s influence on adolescents’ sense of themselves is complex and realized through everyday activities, making effects extremely difficult to measure—not because media are weak and the audience is strong, but rather because they are intricately woven into the fabric of daily life.

• 1. Prototypes of drinkers
• 2. Expectancies about drinking
• 3. Perceived alcohol norms
• 4. Friend use

• Nationally-representative random-digit dialled survey
• Four waves (8-month intervals)
• 10-14 year olds (n = 6522)
• Movies seen
• Questions about smoking, drinking, parents, friends, personality, extra-curriculars.

• Movies seen (linked to coding data)
• Prototypes: Image of the typical peer who drinks (e.g., popular, cool, sexy)
• Expectancies: Possible positive consequences of alcohol use (e.g., have more fun at parties, take mind off problems)
• Norms:Perceived prevalence of alcohol use & being drunk among same-age youth
• Friends’ use: How many friends drink?

• Higher exposure to alcohol use in movies is associated with:
• Greater alcohol consumption
• –More favourable images of drinkers
• More positive expectancies about drinking
• Greater perception of alcohol use as normative
• Increases in reports of friends’ alcohol use

• Exposure to behaviour in the movie vs. exposure to movies in general
• Causality and the direction of the effect
• A need for experimental evidence
• Establish causality
• Refine understanding of the mechanism

Early maturation predicts increased consumption of sexual media because they don’t have any other source for information.

Brown argues that there’s a component of selective attention. Identity gives you motivation for the selection. Some teens use media in a motivated way to learn about sex.

Earlier pubertal onset linked to increased interest, exposure, perceived permission

• Frequency of viewing MTV
• Sexual experience
• Viewing to learn or to be entertained
• Exposure to sex-themed TV clip

…Contributed independently to increased endorsement of stereotyped attitudes about sexual scripts and/or gender roles

• Increased exposure to MTV
• Active viewing, learning motive
• Own sexual experience

• …Contributed
• independently to increased endorsement of stereotyped attitudes about sexual
• scripts and/or gender roles
• *Clips had little impact on perceptions*

–3. Altruism or helping behavior

–2. Social Interactions time spent with others, cooperation, affection and attention

–1. Acceptance of Others tolerance, diversity, reducing stereotypes

• Academic
• Prosocial

• Prosocial and anti-social content often co-occur.
• Prosocial justification of aggression may be more harming than helping.

• 3 hours per week of programming
• 7am-10pm
• 30 minutes minimum
• More specific content qualifications

(1) Prosocial content could have stronger effects on viewers than antisocial content

(2) Anti social acts have stronger effects on viewers

• Hearold found prosocial stronger than antisocial by 2x and longer term
• Paik and Mares and Woodard found it was equal to antisocial

• Altruism 73% featured act Average 3 acts per hour
• High rate in situation comedies & kids’ shows
• } In children’s programming
• Prosocial: 4 incidents per hour
• Violent: 14 incidents per hour
• }Yearly exposure (3 hours of kids’ shows a day):
• 4,380 acts of altruism
• 15,330 acts of violence

• Media impact increases with:
• More specific modeled behavior More relevant outcome measures

• Interactivity with teachers and parents
• SES: Stronger for high SES
• Gender: Boys more "backlash" Girls more likely to select prosocial stuff, no difference over all

To learn from media, content must be presented within “zone of proximal development”

That children must be capable of to understand narrative and educational features

If educational content is limited to one narrative, it may limit generalizability.

When watching Blue's Clues, those who were heaviest viewers had the highest attention rate

• Increased Knowledge of show concepts, riddles
• Flexible thinking, problem solving, prosocial behavior
• Vocabulary: Viewers scored higher at pre-test
• No difference in self esteem

• Huston. Tried to explain long term impact of early exposure
• Attitudes and behaviors.
• Doesn't teach kids facts but rather how to do well in school

• Realism v Socialism intervention
• Younger children are most receptive

• Parent communication styles relevant to body image and eating disorders
• Parent communication styles relevant to mediation of media content

• Neutral mediation: increased anorexic symptoms, social comparison, neg emotions
• Positive: negative emotions
• Neg: increased social comparison, body dissatisfaction neg emotions

• Facebook Profiles:
• Accurate or Idealized

• Idealized virtual identity
• Extended real life

• Collect facebook profiles and personality ratings
• Raters make personality judgements based on the profiles
• Correlate rater’s personality judgements with self (friend) reports of ideal and actual personality

• Recall (explicit): ability to recall from memory w/o external prompt
• Recognition (implicit): Retrieving something from memory with prompts

Death anxiety will increase support/loyalty for national symbols, values, and leaders

• }Explicit (e.g. write about death)
• “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you”
• “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you when you die and once you are physically dead”
• }Implicit (e.g. unscramble death-related words)

• Humor may reduce critical thinking about political messages by
• Reducing the listener’s ability to critically engage the message arguments
• Reducing the listener’s motivation to critically engage the message arguments
• Activating a discounting cue

216 participants in 3 groups read 3 online questionnaires: humorous, nonhumorous, and control

• They were asked their thoughts
• Neg messages
• Pos messages
• neutral mess
• cognitive elaboration aimed at humor comprehension.

• Humorous content resulted in more thoughts dealing with humor comprehension
• Argument scruntiny is reduced in the face of humor

Baumgartner found that viewing The Colbert Report (and The O’Reilly Factor) increased support for Republican policies, increased warm feeling for President Bush, increased trust in Republicans in Congress, and decreased internal efficacy

• Perceptions of the importance of being engaging to presidential success rose as a result of watching the program, and The West Wing viewers retained more positive images of Bush and Clinton after the viewing experience
• Viewing The West Wing seems to prime more positive images of the U.S. presidency

• Colbert Report:
• Conservatives thought he was conservative
• Liberals thought he was liberal

• Product Placement
• Seinfeld was their manipulation

Anxious ambivalence.

avoidance.

are attachment styles related to the formation of parasocial relationships?

The relationship between self awareness and television.

The participants who failed watched more tv as did the control group. The successful group watched less tv

• Prosocial television
• More specific modeled behavior
• More relevant outcome measures

Campaigns in the the context of story telling vs facts