Controversial Rap Themes,Gender Portrayals and Skin Tone Distortion: A Content Analysis of Rap Music Videos

A content analysis of rap music videos aired on BET, MTV, and VH1 examined the occurrence of controversial themes, gender differences, and skin tone distortion. The results of this study found that current rap music videos have placed an emphasis on themes of materialism and misogyny. Additionally, men and women in the videos differ in their portrayal of these themes. Specifically, female characters are significantly more likely to appear as objects of sexuality. Men and women also differ in their appearance with more African American females appearing to have Eurocentric features. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Representations of Race in Television Commercials: A Content Analysis of Prime-Time Advertising

Given the paucity of contemporary examinations of racial/ethnic minority portrayals in television advertisements, this study analyzed the frequency, context, and quality of 2,3 15 speaking characters in a one-week sample of prime-time television commercials. Results reveal different patterns of portrayals when African American, Asian American, Latino, Native American, and White characters are featured in television advertisements. The implications of these images are examined from the perspective of social cognitive theory to provide insights into their possible impact on audience members' self-perceptions.     

Children's Museums: A Look Back at the Literature

This article examines nine articles from the Curator archive, from 1960–2017, on the topic of children's museums. It concludes that despite enormous changes in these museums over the 60‐year span, there are a number of trends consistent in the literature. The article concludes with a call to museums to invest in research in order to understand the impact of our work, and to help us ensure we are really achieving what we claim to.     

Media Portrayals of Romantic Relationship Maintenance: A Content Analysis of Relational Maintenance Behaviors on Prime-Time Television

Maintenance behaviors play an important role in sustaining relational states, especially within committed romantic relationships. Limited research, however, has considered media portrayals of these behaviors. From the framework of social cognitive theory, this content analysis examined relational maintenance behaviors portrayed by committed romantic couples (heterosexual, gay, and lesbian) on prime-time network television. The frequency of maintenance behaviors (positivity, understanding, self-disclosure, assurances, relationships talks, tasks, and networks) varied by type, valence, program genre, and couple type (married/civil union or cohabitating). Results indicated that comedies featured more frequent relationship maintenance behaviors than dramas. In addition, comedies exhibited more frequent negative maintenance behaviors than dramas. Differences also existed between couple regarding the types of maintenance behavior exhibited. No sex differences in maintenance behaviors were observed between male and female characters.     

Reexamining Diversity: A Look at the Deaf Community in Museums

In accordance with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, museums serve their deaf visitors by offering assistance through accessibility programs designed specifically to provide access to the museum, its collections, and/or information in an exhibition or program that would otherwise be unattainable by a person with a disability. Accessibility provisions such as signed tours, TTYs, and subtitled audio information have helped deaf people experience and enjoy museums. While these programs and provisions are necessary museum services, they do not acknowledge the view of many Deaf people—that they are not disabled but rather members of a community that does not hear. Nor do accessibility programs generally include programs on the shared traditions, values, and language that make up the culture of the Deaf community. This paper seeks to introduce museum professionals to the Deaf cultural community and Deaf cultural exhibitions that celebrate the history, achievements, and tradition of Deaf people; it offers steps to follow in planning such exhibitions and provides some examples.     

议程设置理论概览:过去,现在与未来

本文对议程设置理论的五个研究领域,即议程设置的基本效果、属性议程设置、议程设置效果的心理学、媒介议程的来源和议程设置效果的后果,自该理论创立以来所取得的主要发现作了简要回顾,并基于此讨论了议程设置理论的几个新研究领域,包括对议程设置理论基本概念与观点的在更多新领域的应用,比如企业声誉、教育、宗教组织等,这些新领域已远不是议程设置理论最初生成的公共事务领域了。作为该理论的创立者之一,作者在文章最后提出了对于议程设置研究的几点个人观察。     

Depictions of Gender on Primetime Television: A Quantitative Content Analysis

To document current portrayals of women and men on primetime television, a quantitative content analysis was conducted. A 1-week composite of primetime television programming across 9 broadcast and cable networks was randomly sampled, yielding 89 programs and 1,254 characters. Consistent with prior findings, women were significantly underrepresented on primetime TV when compared with men. Analyses examined representations of gender in the realms of occupation, aggression, sexualization, and stereotypically masculine and feminine attributes, with comparisons drawn across different age groups. Contrary to popular belief, these findings suggest that the current state of primetime television does not represent a “golden age” for women. Although it appears that some gender stereotypes have declined when compared to previous decades, others (e.g., dominant men, sexually provocative women) have persisted. Implications are discussed in terms of cultivation and social cognitive theories.     

The Typhoid Marys of the Left: Gender,Race, and the Broadcast Blacklist

Scholarly accounts of gender, race, and television in the 1950s have mainly focused on the ideological content of programming that ultimately made it onto the air. This research has played an important role in reckoning with the political and cultural legacies of 1950s television. But the focus on ideology and content has prevented us from fully understanding the repressive nature of anti-communist thought and action, both in terms of the powerful ways in which the broadcast blacklist made the production of progressive themes and images impossible, and in terms of how the fear that followed from the blacklist repressed the memory that such alternatives had ever existed. Counter to the images of white suburban women we have inherited from the 1950s, the first two casualties of the broadcast blacklist were professional women who were politically active—white actor Jean Muir and African American musician Hazel Scott—whose involvement in civil rights was deemed evidence of their communist sympathies. This essay builds on earlier research on gender and 1950s television not by analyzing the absence of strong women, people of color, immigrants, and working-class families from the televisual landscape, but by looking at the elimination of the very cultural workers writing, agitating, and fighting to broadcast these representations.     

Judging the Degree of Violence in Media Portrayals: A Cross-Genre Comparison

This study tests the relative importance of different factors of television narratives in how they influence people's judgments of how violent those narratives are. After watching 1 of 3 videotapes of a violent narrative, 99 college students answered a series of questions about their interpretations of the violence. It was found that participants' judgments about the degree of violence in the narratives were more strongly associated with their perceptions of the graphicness of the violent acts and the harm to the victims than with other factors such as the number of violent acts or the seriousness of those acts. Thus, people's judgments of the degree of violence in television programs differs from researchers' conceptualization. Implications of these differences are discussed.     

Defining Identification: A Theoretical Look at the Identification of Audiences With Media Characters

In this article I argue that although the notion of identification with media characters is widely discussed in media research, it has not been carefully conceptualized or rigorously tested in empirical audience studies. This study presents a theoretical discussion of identification, including a definition of identification and a discussion of the consequences of identification with media characters for the development of identity and socialization processes. It is suggested that a useful distinction can be made between identification and other types of reactions that media audiences have to media characters. A critical look at media research involving identification exposes the inherent conceptual problems in this research and leads to hypotheses regarding the antecedents and consequences of identification with media characters. The importance of a theory of identification to media research and communication research, more broadly, is presented.     

Sexual Objectification in Music Videos: A Content Analysis Comparing Gender and Genre

Although sexual objectification is commonplace in media culture, music videos provide the most potent examples of it. In the current study, we developed a coding system to measure sexual objectification and its correlates in music videos. Our analysis compared sexual objectification across artists' gender and musical genres (R&B/hip-hop, pop, and country). Compared to male artists, female artists were more sexually objectified, held to stricter appearance standards, and more likely to demonstrate sexually alluring behavior. In addition, sexual objectification was more prominent in R&B/hip-hop and pop videos than in country videos. The results are discussed in light of objectification theory and sexual agency.     

Navigational Structures and Information Selection Goals: A Closer Look at Online Selectivity

Using an experimental design coupled with Web-tracking technology, this study explores 2 factors that influence levels of congruent information gathering online. The first factor compares the navigational structure of 2 distinct Web pages—the more open, user-directed search engine versus the organized, assembled structure of a portal Web page. The second factor tests the role of goals for information seeking—telling subjects they will soon engage in a discussion with another person who either disagrees with their viewpoint, agrees, is undecided, or no discussion treatment. Results indicate both experimental factors independently contribute to selectivity in online information seeking.