Media Frenzy
Telling your own bad news: Eliot Spitzer and a test of the stealing thunder strategy
Shelley Wigley
Public Relations Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study explored the concept of stealing thunder, or telling your own bad news. Unlike previous research which used surveys and experiments, this study examined actual news coverage following crises that involved individuals. One case study compared media coverage of two New York governors while the second case study compared media coverage of a high profile athlete and a late night talk show host. In each of the two studies, one of the individuals in crisis stole thunder from reporters by revealing negative information before the media did; while the other person in crisis engaged in silence and allowed the media to break the story. Results indicate there may be an association between stealing thunder and the amount of news coverage one receives. Both studies found that the source who stole thunder received considerably less news coverage than the source who did not. Additionally, results from both studies showed that stealing thunder was associated with more positively framed stories and headlines and fewer negative media frames.
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Violence and sex as advertising strategies in television commercials
Christopher Ferguson et al.
European Psychologist, Winter 2010, Pages 304-311
Abstract:
Despite several studies investigating the impact of sex and violence in television on consumer behavior and memory for products in commercials, results remain inconsistent and debated. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of television violence and sex on memory for commercials and willingness to buy products. Two hundred twelve young adults were assigned to watch either a sexual, violent, combined sexual and violent or neutral television show. Within each show were embedded 12 commercials, four violent, four sexual, and four neutral. Results indicated that violent or sexual content of the television show did not impair memory for commercials or willingness to buy products, and that sexual or violent content in the commercials themselves increased memory for those commercials. Implications for the current study are that violent or sexual shows may adequately function in attracting viewers' attention, with sexual and violent content in the commercials themselves improving viewers memory for products. Use of violent or sexual content in commercials may thus be useful in advertising for brand recall.
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An Exploratory Study Of Students' Use Of Cell Phones, Texting, And Social Networking Sites
Alexa Angster, Michael Frank & David Lester
Psychological Reports, October 2010, Pages 402-404
Abstract:
In a sample of 128 undergraduate students, a higher frequency of texting to others was associated with finding the relationships with those others less fulfilling. Similarly, having more social network "friends" was associated with finding the relationships with those individuals less fulfilling.
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Thomas Ksiazek, Edward Malthouse & James Webster
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, October 2010, Pages 551-568
Abstract:
This study examines patterns of news consumption across multiple media platforms and relates them to civic participation. Analyzing a national sample of close to 25,000 respondents, nearly half the adult population in America is classified as news "Avoiders," and the other half as "News-seekers." Testing the relationship between civic participation and news consumption for each of 6 media platforms individually, and to an overall index combining those sources into 1 measure, the results show a positive relationship with civic participation, but the influence of Total News Consumption on civic participation is greater for Avoiders than for News-seekers.
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Jordi McKenzie
Applied Economics Letters, November 2010, Pages 1559-1564
Abstract:
This article investigates the box office performance of films defined as being 'African American', with respect to their cast and content material, against those which are not. Using a large sample of films released in the North American market from 1997 to 2007, the analysis shows that, in general, African American films earn higher revenues yet are typically produced on lower budgets. Regression results of revenues show that this difference is highly statistically significant. Further, the profit functions are also statistically different, leading to the conclusion that, ceteris paribus, African American films perform better at the box office.
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Brett Danaher, Samita Dhanasobhon, Michael Smith & Rahul Telang
Marketing Science, November-December 2010, Pages 1138-1151
Abstract:
The availability of digital channels for media distribution has raised many important questions for marketers, notably, whether digital distribution channels will cannibalize physical sales and whether legitimate digital distribution channels will dissuade consumers from using (illegitimate) digital piracy channels. We address these two questions using the removal of NBC content from Apple's iTunes store in December 2007, and its restoration in September 2008, as natural shocks to the supply of legitimate digital content, and we analyze the impact of this shock on demand through BitTorrent piracy channels and the Amazon.com DVD store. To do this we collected two large data sets from Mininova.com and Amazon.com, documenting levels of piracy and DVD sales for both NBC and other major networks' content around these events. We analyze these data in a difference-in-difference model and find that NBC's decision to remove its content from iTunes in December 2007 is causally associated with an 11.4% increase in the demand for NBC's pirated content. This is roughly equivalent to an increase of 48,000 downloads a day for NBC's content and is approximately twice as large as the total legal purchases on iTunes for the same content in the period preceding the removal. We also find evidence of a smaller, and statistically insignificant, decrease in piracy for the same content when it was restored to the iTunes store in September 2008. Finally, we see no change in demand for NBC's DVD content at Amazon.com associated with NBC's closing or reopening of its digital distribution channel on iTunes.
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Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out: Radio Listening, Ownership Policy, and Technology
Catherine Tyler Mooney
Journal of Media Economics, October 2010, Pages 231-248
Abstract:
Radio listening in the United States fell by more than 10% between 1998 and 2003. During this time, broadcast radio faced new competition from satellite radio and the Internet while the industry was also undergoing significant changes due to increased radio ownership caps. This article quantifies the effects of these factors on audience sizes and explores the implications for audience composition and programming content. The results show that industry consolidation played a larger role in decreasing overall listening than new technology. New technology did have a role in altering the distribution of listeners among programming formats.
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Christopher Ferguson
Journal of Psychiatric Research, forthcoming
Background: Research on youth mental health has increasingly indicated the importance of multivariate analyses of multiple risk factors for negative outcomes. Television and video game use have often been posited as potential contributors to attention problems, but previous studies have not always been well-controlled or used well-validated outcome measures. The current study examines the multivariate nature of risk factors for attention problems symptomatic of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and poor school performance.
Method: A predominantly Hispanic population of 603 children (ages 10-14) and their parents/guardians responded to multiple behavioral measures. Outcome measures included parent and child reported attention problem behaviors on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) as well as poor school performance as measured by grade point average (GPA).
Results: Results found that internal factors such as male gender, antisocial traits, family environment and anxiety best predicted attention problems. School performance was best predicted by family income. Television and video game use, whether total time spent using, or exposure to violent content specifically, did not predict attention problems or GPA.
Interpretation: Television and video game use do not appear to be significant predictors of childhood attention problems. Intervention and prevention efforts may be better spent on other risk factors.
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How Well Does Advertising Work? Generalizations from Meta-analysis of Brand Advertising Elasticities
Raj Sethuraman, Gerard Tellis & Richard Briesch
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study conducts a meta-analysis of 751 short-term and 402 long-term direct-to-consumer brand advertising elasticities estimated in 56 studies published between 1960 and 2008. The study finds several new empirical generalizations about advertising elasticity. The most important generalizations are: The average short-term advertising elasticity is .12, which is substantially lower than the prior meta-analytic mean of .22 (Assmus, Farley, and Lehmann 1984); there has been a decline in the advertising elasticity over time; and advertising elasticity is higher a) for durable goods than nondurable goods, b) in the early stage of the life cycle than in the mature stage, c) for yearly data than for quarterly data, and d) when advertising is measured in Gross Rating Points than in monetary terms. The mean long-term advertising elasticity is .24, which is much lower than the implied mean in the prior meta-analysis (.41). Many of the results for short-term elasticity hold for long-term elasticity, with some notable exceptions. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.
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Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising
Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker
Management Science, January 2011, Pages 57-71
Abstract:
Advertisers use online customer data to target their marketing appeals. This has heightened consumers' privacy concerns, leading governments to pass laws designed to protect consumer privacy by restricting the use of data and by restricting online tracking techniques used by websites. We use the responses of 3.3 million survey takers who had been randomly exposed to 9,596 online display (banner) advertising campaigns to explore how privacy regulation in the European Union (EU) has influenced advertising effectiveness. This privacy regulation restricted advertisers' ability to collect data on Web users in order to target ad campaigns. We find that, on average, display advertising became far less effective at changing stated purchase intent after the EU laws were enacted, relative to display advertising in other countries. The loss in effectiveness was more pronounced for websites that had general content (such as news sites), where non-data-driven targeting is particularly hard to do. The loss of effectiveness was also more pronounced for ads with a smaller presence on the webpage and for ads that did not have additional interactive, video, or audio features.
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Chul-joo Lee & Jeff Niederdeppe
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Cultivation theory and research have been criticized for their failures to consider variation in effects by genre, employ appropriate third-variable controls, and determine causal direction. Recent studies, controlling for a variety of demographic characteristics and media use variables, have found that exposure to local television (TV) newscasts is associated with a variety of problematic "real-world" beliefs. However, many of these studies have not adequately assessed causal direction. Redressing this limitation, we analyzed data from a two-wave national representative survey which permitted tests of lagged association between overall TV viewing, local TV news viewing, and fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention. We first replicated the original cultivation effect and found a positive association between overall TV viewing at Time 1 and increased fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention at Time 2. Analyses also provided evidence that local TV news viewing at Time 1 predicts increased fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention at Time 2. There was little evidence for reverse causation in predicting changes in overall TV viewing or local TV news viewing. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
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A note on the relationship between television viewing and individual happiness
Mitesh Kataria & Tobias Regner
Journal of Socio-Economics, February 2011, Pages 53-58
Abstract:
In a recently published article, Bruni and Stanca (2008) suggest that television viewing has a negative impact on life satisfaction. In this note we argue that the empirical approach they use (an approach that omits the main effect of TV viewing in life satisfaction) is problematic. We estimate a microeconomic life satisfaction function and find little support for the claim that television viewing in general has a negative impact on individual happiness. Using a large cross-country comparison we find that there is a substantial heterogeneity across countries, which needs to be taken into account when concluding about television's effect on life satisfaction.
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Rachel Shaw, Claire Whitehead & David Giles
Health, Risk & Society, December 2010, Pages 575-589
Abstract:
This study analysed news media content to examine the role played by celebrity drug use in young people's perceptions of drug use. We know that young people have access to discourses of drug use through music and other media which may emphasise short term gains (of pleasure or sexual success) over longer term health and social problems. This study goes beyond a simple modelling approach by using Media Framing Analysis (MFA) to take an in-depth look at the messages themselves and how they are 'framed'. New stories about Amy Winehouse's drug use were used and we conducted focus groups with young people asking them questions about drugs, celebrity and the media. Frames identified include: 'troubled genius', 'losing patience' and 'glamorization or gritty realism'. Initially, the press championed Winehouse's musical talent but soon began to tire of her recklessness; the participants tended to be unimpressed with Winehouse's drug use, characterising her as a promising artist who had 'gone off the rails'. Young people were far more critical of Winehouse than might be expected, demonstrating that concerns about the influence of celebrity drug use and its impact on future health risk behaviour among young people may have been over-simplified and exaggerated. This study illustrates the need to understand young people and their frames of reference within popular culture when designing drug awareness information relevant to them. Furthermore, it indicates that critical media skills analysis may contribute to health risk education programmes related to drug use.
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The 2008 Presidential Campaign: Political Cynicism in the Age of Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube
Gary Hanson et al.
Mass Communication and Society, November 2010, Pages 584-607
Abstract:
Considerable research over the years has been devoted to ascertaining the impact of media use on political cynicism. The impact of the Internet has been difficult to assess because it is not a single monolithic medium. For example, the 2008 presidential campaign was the first presidential campaign in which popular social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube were widely available to voters. Therefore, the campaign offered the first opportunity to explore the influence of these social media on political cynicism. In this study, we examined whether the use of such social media influenced political cynicism. We also considered the influence of user background characteristics (e.g., self-efficacy, locus of control, political orientation, demographics, and influence of family and friends), motives for using social media for political information, and users' elaboration on political content. Several individual differences were stronger predictors of political cynicism than was social media use. In fact, social networking use was a negative predictor of political cynicism. Results supported uses and gratifications' notions that the influence of social media on political cynicism is more attributable to user background and media-use differences than to sheer use of these popular sites.
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‘The spirit of America lives here': US pro-wrestling and the post-9/11 ‘War on Terror'
Lucy Nevitt
Journal of War and Culture Studies, January 2011, Pages 319-334
Abstract:
This article argues that the ideological mechanisms and norms used to render the ‘War on Terror' both familiar and seemingly inevitable to a wide public have long been present in popular American culture in the form of professional wrestling. The professional wrestling performances of American company WWE attract an enormous global audience of committed followers. This article considers pro-wrestling as an example of what Jon McKenzie calls ‘a regime of normative force', identifying similarities in structure, imagery and rhetoric between a range of WWE performances and the US-led War on Terror. The article analyses the familiar codes of pro-wrestling performance in the contexts of propaganda and ideological reaffirmation. The analysis includes the considerations of performer/spectator relationship, the slippage between fiction and reality, the centrality and inevitability of unending combat and the construction of foreignness in opposition to a paradigmatic ‘America'. Through a range of examples of post-9/11 WWE performances, this article will draw out connections between the ongoing state of combat entertainment and the popular US preparedness for an ongoing state of war.
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Repeated Exposure to Daytime Soap Opera and Shifts in Moral Judgment Toward Social Convention
Ron Tamborini et al.
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, October 2010, Pages 621-640
Abstract:
This study examined the influence of prolonged exposure to soap opera on character dispositions and real-world moral judgments. Eight groups viewed from 0-7 weeks of soap opera prior to a final week after which participants completed measures of disposition towards show characters as well as perceptions of morality in real-world situations. Results demonstrated the effect of prolonged exposure on both the polarization of dispositions toward characters and a trend in moral judgments toward social convention. These findings highlight the role of disposition within social cognitive theory, and the importance of dispositional considerations in understanding learned morality.
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Gold Digger or Video Girl: The salience of an emerging hip-hop sexual script
Jasmine Ross & Nicole Coleman
Culture, Health & Sexuality, February 2011, Pages 157-171
Abstract:
Concerns have been expressed in the common discourse and scholarly literature about the negative influence of Hip-Hop on its young listeners' ideas about sex and sexuality. Most of the scholarly literature has focused on the impact of this urban, Black media on young African American girls' sexual self-concept and behaviours. In response to this discourse, Stephens and Phillips (2003) proposed a Hip-Hop sexual scripting model that theorises about specific sexual scripts for young African American women. Their model includes eight different sexual scripts including the Gold Digger script. The present study proposes a ninth emerging script - the Video Girl. Participants were 18 female African American college students, between the ages of 18 and 30 years old from a large urban public university in the Southwest USA. Using q-methodology the present study found support for the existence of a Video Girl script. In addition, the data indicates that this script is distinct but closely related to Stephens and Phillips' Gold Digger script. These findings support their theory by suggesting that Hip-Hop sexual scripts are salient and hold real meaning for this sample.
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Culture, Rap Music, "Bitch," and the Development of the Censorship Frame
Christopher Schneider
American Behavioral Scientist, January 2011, Pages 36-56
Abstract:
Drawing theoretically both from cultural studies and cultural criminology, this exploratory project suggests that negative public perceptions associated with rap music are in large part informed through both formal and informal censorship agendas and campaigns, what the author terms the censorship frame. The censorship frame consists of mass media reports that proclaim the cultural association between music and collectively shared and culturally agreed-upon perceptions of deviance. The focus of this project concerns rap music and the term bitch, a relatively recent common feature of everyday language use. This article (a) investigates the increased use and acceptance of "bitch" in popular culture; (b) examines this process in relation to the demonization of rap music; and (c) demonstrates the role of both mass media and claims-makers in shaping public opinion of rap music as deviant, even while other similar messages continue to remain virtually unchallenged throughout the popular cultural milieu. Implications for future research are discussed.
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Piet Verhoeven
Science Communication, September 2010, Pages 330-355
Abstract:
Science forms an integral part of our daily lives and plays an important role in democratic deliberation and decision making. One would expect this omnipresence of science to be reflected in television news programs in public broadcasting because of its responsibility to preserve the diversity and openness of the media. For this study, a representative sample of six Western European news programs was analyzed. The results show that science has a marginal presence and that "science news" is about technology or the natural sciences. In national, foreign, or economic news items, "embedded" scientists rarely comment on the issue at hand.
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Michael Socolow
Journalism, December 2010, Pages 675-691
Abstract:
The US broadcast networks have traditionally argued that their news divisions were unprofitable. The networks used their news divisions to secure regulatory advantages by claiming that losses incurred in producing broadcast journalism proved a commitment to operating in the public interest. Network broadcast journalism was promoted as a singular genre, resistant to the economic imperative found elsewhere in American broadcasting. This article explores the history of profitability in network broadcast journalism, and, by doing so, it challenges the traditional economic and regulatory narrative. Countering the myth of the unprofitable network news division raises important questions concerning journalistic independence and autonomy within American broadcasting.
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Is banner blindness genuine? Eye tracking internet text advertising
Guillaume Hervet, Katherine Guérard, Sébastien Tremblay & Mohamed Saber Chtourou
Applied Cognitive Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Over the last decade or so, the Internet has become a privileged media for advertisement. Despite this increase in popularity, several studies suggested that Internet users ‘avoid' looking at ads (what is often referred to as the banner blindness phenomena). This conclusion, however, rests mostly on indirect evidence that participants do not remember the ad content. Therefore, it is unclear whether participants actually fixated the ads and how their gaze behaviour is related to memory for the ad. In the present study, we investigated whether Internet users avoid looking at ads inserted on a non-search website using an analysis of eye movements, and if the ad content is kept in memory. Our results show that most participants fixate the ads at least once during their website visit. Moreover, even though the congruency between the ad and the editorial content had no effect on fixation duration on the ad, congruent ads were better memorised than incongruent ads. This study provides a novel and systematic method for assessing the processing and retention of advertisements during a website visit.
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Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters
Berthold Hoeckner, Emma Wyatt, Jean Decety & Howard Nusbaum
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Film music has powerful aesthetic effects on the perception and understanding of screen content, but does it also influence viewers' sense of connection with movie characters thereby creating antecedents for an experience of empathy? Participants viewed clips showing characters' neutral or ambiguous reaction to an event, person, or object. Viewers rated character likability and their certainty about characters' thoughts in three conditions: thriller music, melodrama music, and no music. The effect of music conditions differed significantly from the no music condition. Compared to melodramatic music, thriller music significantly lowered likability and certainty about characters' thoughts. During subsequent cued recall of screen content, thriller music increased anger attributions and lowered sadness attributions, while melodramatic music increased love attributions and lowered fear attributions. The study provides evidence that film music can influence character likability and the certainty of knowing the character's thoughts, which are antecedents of empathic concern and empathic accuracy. Thus film music may be regarded as modulating antecedents of empathic concern and empathic accuracy.