Today's news — tomorrow's context: A dynamic model of news processing

We are proposing a feedback model of news processing, assuming that news reception is guided by media input as well as by existing cognitive structures. However, these structures are in turn shaped by former media coverage. In our study we examine viewers’ processing of TV news, comparing objective news content (content analysis) to subjective meaning of news stories (viewer interviews). Results show that viewers interpret information about new events in the context of past events, themselves mainly a reflection of former media coverage.     

High school students' knowledge and beliefs about television advisory warnings

Advisory warnings were adopted by network television stations in the fall of 1993 to inform viewers of violent or sexual programming. To assess the impact of the advisories, independent samples of high school students were surveyed in the fall of 1993 (n = 1,854) and in the fall of 1994 (n = 1,489). Most students reported having seen a warning before programs with violent or sexual content. Furthermore, students were more aware of the advisories and had more accurate recall of the violence advisory over time. Although students’ knowledge of the advisories improved over time, their advisory‐related beliefs and the amount of violence they watched on television remained unchanged.     

线上藏品图文布局对观众信息获取的影响——一项眼动研究

线上藏品不同的图文布局方式会影响观众的注意过程,进而影响观众对相应图文信息的获取效果。本文通过眼动实验,研究了观众浏览藏品页面文物图片与说明文字时上图下文、上文下图、左图右文、左文右图四种页面布局方式对观众注意行为的影响,同时关注了四种形式下观众对页面中所包含的文物大小、形制、纹饰、工艺、历史文化意义等多项信息的获取情况,从而探究线上藏品图文布局对观众信息获取的影响,进而为线上藏品页面的设置提供借鉴,使其更好地以观众的注意特点为导向促进藏品信息的传播。     

Incoming Editors' Note

The authors considered a model of commercial television market with advertising with probabilistic viewer choice of channel, where private broadcasters may coexist with a public television broadcaster. The broadcasters influence the probability of getting viewer attention through the amount that they spend on programming, so that their advertising capacity depends on their own program outlays as well as on those of their competitors. A larger number of broadcasters will reduce overall capacity even when total program outlays are kept fixed, because the attention of viewers is split among a larger number of channels. The authors derive properties of equilibrium in an oligopolistic market with private broadcasters and show that the number of firms has a negative effect on overall advertising and viewer satisfaction. If there is a public channel that also sells advertisements but does not maximize profits, this will have a positive effect on advertiser and viewer satisfaction.     

What Children Watch When They Watch TV: Putting Theory Into Practice

If advertisers and programmers are to keep pace with the rapid structural and contextual changes in broadcast and cable television, and maintain their young audiences, they must gain a better understanding of children's viewing motives and viewing patterns. The authors assess the interrelatedness of television use motives and viewing patterns, and investigate perceptions of viewer loyalty network and station identification, and the generalizability of these perceptions to times when local television stations change network affiliation. This study profiles the child televiewing audience and expands the known parameters of television viewer uses and gratifications by identifying three distinctive viewer archetypes-medium- oriented viewers, network-oriented viewers, and station-oriented viewers.     

The Impact of Viewer Perceptions of Media Personae and Viewer Characteristics on the Strength,Enjoyment, and Satisfaction of Parasocial Relationships

Using a cross-sectional survey design (N = 338), we measured the impact of viewer perceptions of media personae and viewer characteristics on the strength, enjoyment, and satisfaction of parasocial relationships. Strength, enjoyment, and satisfaction of parasocial relationships were strongest with characters that viewers like that are perceived to be similar to the viewer or someone they know in real life. However, the strength and enjoyment of parasocial relationships decreased when the persona was perceived to be similar to either the viewer or someone they know in real life and the viewer was high on attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, or loneliness. Limitations and implications are discussed.     

Network Revenues and African American Broadcast Television Programs

This article explores factors explaining program cast racial composition on television broadcast network programs. The roles of program type, cast composition, and viewer income on advertising revenue are examined. The analysis of the data yields several key findings. First, there is no bias against African Americans on the part of viewers or television networks when adjusting for viewer income and age. Second, African Americans have lower incomes and show a strong intensity of preference for programming featuring African American cast members. Therefore, despite the absence of bias, the advertiser-supported broadcast market likely produces less than the socially optimal amount of African American programming. This article provides policy recommendations to increase viewer benefits.     

Books received

This study examined issue learning outcomes in three intra‐party political debates during the 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The results indicated that intra‐party political debates produce significant viewer learning (1) about the issue positions of each participating candidate, (2) about most issues, and (3) among all categories of viewers. In addition, the study found that intra‐party political debates produce distinct outcomes, including: variation in learning between debates about candidate positions on particular issues; significant increases in learning about the positions of the Democratic candidates on the part of Democratic, Republican, and nonaffiliated viewers; and a negative effect on viewer knowledge about nonparticipating incumbent Ronald Reagan's positions on the issues.     

Empathy and Affective Orientation as Predictors of Identification with Television Characters

This study examined the relationships between television viewers’ empathy and affective orientation and their identification with their favorite television characters. Results showed that viewers’ perspective taking and affective orientation positively predicted cognitive-emotional identification and group identification, and affective orientation positively predicted similarity identification. Similarity in viewer and favorite character sex and the genre in which the favorite character appeared also predicted identification.     

VCR‐use and patterns of time shifting and selectivity

This article elaborates on research suggesting that the VCR is a time shifting device leading to more selectivity. It argues that time shifting can lead to time reduction or time filling and that selectivity can entail diversification or concentration of the TV diet. In both cases, however, no significant difference in TV viewing may occur as well. Data from a representative sample of 909 Flemish respondents showed no evidence of time‐reduction. The VCR is mainly used as a time‐filling device. VCR‐use does not seem to lead to concentration, but rather to diversification of the TV diet. Authors have claimed that the VCR is a device which allows better management of the viewing experience and which liberates viewers of the constraints of viewer or program availability. This article suggests instead that it may be more productive to look at the VCR as another channel (albeit it with peculiar characteristics). It influences the viewers’ TV consumption only to the extent that it is part of the viewers’ “channel repertoire” for selecting programs.     

Show the Truth and Let the Audience Decide: A Web-Based Survey Showing Support among Viewers of Al-Jazeera for Use of Graphic Imagery

This survey examines how viewers of Al-Jazeera perceive the network's presentation of graphic and war-related visuals and whether the viewers perceive that the TV channel provides visual information they cannot find in national Arab media, CNN, and other Western media. Nearly 9 in 10 respondents supported the use of graphic imagery saying watching those visuals was a good decision for them and that the network provides a unique source of visual information. Further, attitudes toward press freedom and media reliance correlated with support for graphic visuals after controlling for demographic variables.     

Genre Studies in Mass Media: A Handbook

Two experiments, one with college students and one with older participants, examine how the addition of text and animated graphics influence the processing of television news stories. Recall data suggest graphics help younger and older viewers store and retrieve information presented in television news stories. Graphics also enhanced encoding of harder stories for younger viewers but not older viewers. The recognition and heart rate data indicate that older viewers engage in more controlled processing of television messages, whereas college students process television in a more automatic fashion.     

Editors' Preface: Think Global. Drink Local. National Studies with Transnational Appeal

Ad-financed TV channels are two-sided platforms where media houses provide communication from advertisers to viewers. Most media houses air several channels, some of which are particularly valuable to advertisers. At first glance, one might expect the ad volumes to be highest for the channels that are the advertisers' favorites. However, a crucial management challenge for media houses is to ensure that viewers go where the potential for raising advertising revenue is greatest. Because viewers dislike ads, we show that this implies that advertising volumes will be relatively low (and advertising prices relatively high) in such channels. Indeed, other things equal, the ad volume in a channel is inversely related to its attractiveness to the advertising market. Only if the costs of using alternative tools to attract viewers to the advertisers' favorite channels are sufficiently small will the advertising volume in channels with high demand for ads be larger than in channels with low demand for ads.     

Intersecting Narratives: Enjoying Daytime Drama as Viewers (and Actors) Experience the Days of Their Lives

In this article, I advance an explanation to account for the exceptionally vested nature of soap opera viewers in “their stories.” After reviewing relevant literature on soap operas and fan contemporary media, I highlight the complex, co-constructed narrative intersections that contribute to powerful and multilayered experiences related to daytime dramas. In particular, I contend that soap operas matter to viewers because the multigenerational nature of audiences and mediated texts foster interconnections between viewer and textual narratives. Second, I argue that soap operas resonate so deeply with viewers due to increasingly blurred boundaries between ever-emergent personal, public, and mediated narratives. As such, the crossing of these narrative paths over time necessarily results in the very real and powerful interrelationships between the show, viewers, and actors in each other's emergent life narratives.     

The Influence of Television News Depictions of the Images of War on Viewers

Results of an experiment about the influence of network television news coverage of combat in Iraq on viewers indicated that, compared with a control condition which featured news stories about combat operations in Iraq described by news anchors, news reports also featuring footage of combat operations increased viewer involvement levels about the war and reduced viewer support for continued military presence in Iraq. Television news footage of combat operations also reduced viewers' pride in U.S. military presence but did not affect other emotions. However, regardless of how news stories were packaged, women experienced greater emotional response to network news stories about combat operations than men. The results also shed light on the potential of inoculation to deflect such influence.     

Facting fiction: Revolution,the United Nations,and cultural politics of electricity

In the summer of 2013, the United Nations and NBC began a season-long collaborative campaign involving the primetime television series Revolution (2012–2014), a show about the global loss of electricity, to promote the former’s energy resource campaigns. The two entities collaboratively produced various texts and events encouraging audiences to learn more about United Nations energy initiatives and how people throughout the world lack consistent access to electricity. This essay offers a close, rhetorical reading of the collaboration’s paratexts, examining stated responses from actors, creators, interviewers, and panel participants within this content. In particular, I argue that contact between the paratexts and the “formative” text (that of the show’s narrative) can encourage viewers to think about electricity from the perspective of their own material practices, dependencies, and fears over losing the technological world. I examine how these invested viewers interpreted the United Nations’ efforts through such commitments. Naming a fictive world, and its feared loss, as metonymic of energy politics illustrates how meaning, emotion, and texts circulate, while also implicating the use of celebrity platforms for sociopolitical issues such as energy access.     

The Self Online: The Utility of Personal Home Pages

This study aims at finding viewer and program characteristics that determine repeat viewing rates, the extent of audience overlap between subsequent episodes of broadcast programs, and comparing them to the results of American and British studies. Results do not support the concept of ritualized viewing behavior: On average not even a third of the viewers of a given TV program watch the consecutive episode. However, several characteristics of the program influence the extent of repeat viewing.     

Public interest programming: Taxation by regulation

This study examined the relationships among viewers’ family communication patterns, sex and pregnancy experience, music video viewing motivations, and viewers’ cognitive processing of a music video about teenage pregnancy. Respondents were high school students, who watched a music video and filled out questionnaires on two occasions. Results of a path analysis demonstrated different paths for girls and boys: For girls, family communication patterns and sexual/pregnancy experience were directly related to the activity with which they processed the video; for boys, family communication patterns had a direct path to activity, but also had a path through observational goals. Results suggest that family communication patterns may operate as enduring general cognitive structures that predict viewer activity.     

Examining Perceived Violence in and Enjoyment of Televised Rivalry Sports Contests

The scholarly attention paid to the ways in which television viewers perceive sports action as violent, how perceptions may differ across games, and how perceptions might impact enjoyment is limited. The current project extends the literature by investigating perceived violence and enjoyment across different intercollegiate (American) football contests between two heated rivals. A total of 568 individuals viewed one of four televised contests featuring the same hometown team: two against heated rivals, two against nonrivals. Results reveal that viewers clearly perceived rivalry games to be more violent than nonrivalry games. Moreover, games won by the hometeam were seen as more violent than those lost. Also, those perceiving high levels of violence reported greater enjoyment than those who perceived low levels of violence in all games. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that perceived violence contributes differently to the enjoyment of games won than to games lost. Possible explanations for and implication of the findings are offered.