Media Flashcards
Antisocial
Children observe the actions of media models and may later imitate these behaviours. children can be expected to imitate violent behaviour is successful in gaining the models objectives. The more real the child perceives the act to be, the more they associate with the model, the more likely they are to copy.
Cognitive priming is the activation of existing aggressive thoughts and feelings, and it explains why children observe one type of aggressive act then act out another. After a violent programme, the viewer is primed to respond in an aggressive way because a network of memories involving aggression is retrieved.
Desensitisation assumes that under normal conditions anxiety about violence inhibts its use. Media may stimulate aggressive behaviour by desensitising children to it. frequent viewing may couse children to less anxious.
similarly it may provide a justification for the behaviour. The media will provide moral guidelines. This means children will not feel guilty or will justify thier actions with its use on TV.
Evaluate Antisocial
- Josephson (1987): hockey players shown a violent clip including a walkie-talkie were more violent in a game when the ref had a walkie-talkie
- Philips: homicide rates doubled a week after a nationalised boxing match
- Cumberbatch (2001): people might get used to violence on TV but this is not the same as real life. IT is more likely to make you frightened than frightening
- Liss and Reinhart (1979): antisocial acts by a pro-social character provide more justification
- Nobel
prosoical
Observational learning
Bandura (1965): children may learn prosocial behaviour from the media by observing it and later imitating it
if they expect that showing the prosocial behaviour e.g. sticking up for a friend who is being bullied, is more likely to lead to reward than punishment. We are more likely to be rewarded for prosocial acts rather than anto social acts
Developmental Factors
Research suggests that many of the skills synonomus with pro-social behaviour develop through childhood and adolescence. This means we should expect difference in the degree of pro-social behaviour between children of different ages. This would suggest that as younger children are exposed to less forms of media, they are likley to exhibit less pro-social behaviour
-It has also been suggested that parent mediation increases pro-social behaviour. Austin (1993) argued that if a parent is there to talk through bad or good behaviour with the child, and follow up the concepts presented in the programme, it can enhance the learning effect of the programme.
Evaluate prosocial
- Mares (1996) found media had the strongest effect on primary-school children and lowest effect on adolescents.
- Valkenburg (1999) argues parental mediation is ineffective as the parent and child simply ‘co-view’ and do not discuss the actual message, behaviours and morality of the show.
- Mares and Woodward (2001): children are more effected when they are show the exact steps to an altruistic task e.g. giving to charoty.
- RLA: Pro-social programmes e.g. CBBC and Cbeebies.
- Lovelace (1983) suggets pro-social messages are only effective of show in contrast to an anti-social act in the same programme.
Computer and Video Games
NEGATIVE
- Lab experiments have found short-term increases in psychological arousal, hostile feelings and aggressive behaviour following violent game play.
- Increased Physiological arousal – as with watching violence, playing violent games leads to an increase in physiological arousal as shown by heart beat and blood pressure. Music is an important factor in increasing arousal. Tafalla (2007) found that both men and Women showed increased arousal when music was playing.
- Desensitisation
POSITIVE
- Facebook walls can have a positive impact on self-esteem because feedback tends to be positive. In a study when ppts had to either look at their FB page, themselves in a mirror or do nothing. Those who had to look at their FB page gave better feedback about themselves.
- Helping- Greitemeyer and Osswald (2010) found ppts who played pro-social games lemmings for 8 minutes were 67% likely to help a researcher pick up pens than ppts who played a neutral game (33( and those who played an aggressive game (28%)
Evaluate Computer and Video Games
- Anderson et al. (2007): survey found that children who played violent games were more aggressive.
- Gentile et al. (2004): survey found a correlation between exposure to violent video games and arguments with teachers and physical fights.
- Weber et al. (2006) used brain imaging and found that playing a violent video game led to decreased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region involved in controlling aggression. This suggests that violent video games can reduce control over aggressive behaviour.
- RLA theraputic applications of video games e.g. helping soldiers with PTSD with ‘virtual Iraq’
- Greitemeyer and Osswald: we do not see the effect of pro-social video games enough as 85% of games are violent ones
Persuasive effects of media
HOVLAND YALE MODEL
The persuasiveness of a message is influenced by the characteristics of the person presenting it, the message contents, and the characteristics of the audience receiving the message.
-An important aspect is the source, especially their attractiveness. Research has shown more attractive communicators persuade more than less attractive ones e.g. Cheryl Cole for Elnett. Similarly, experts are more persuasive than non-experts.
-Messages are more effective is we think they are not trying to persuade and if they create a moderate level of fear.
-Low and high intelligent audiences are less easily persuaded than moderate intelligence. When presenting to intelligent audiences, both side of the argument is more effective.
ELABORATION LIKELIHOOD MODEL
Petty and Cacioppo (1986): there are two ways of processing a persuasive message: the central route, which involves elaboration and analysis of a message, and the peripheral route, which does not. The mode of processing used depends on whether the message is relevant to the recipient and whether they have the ability to critically evaluate the message.
Central route
In the central route, the message itself is most important. Arguments are followed closely and have to be convincing. If an individual finds a persuasive message personally relevant or important (e.g. lowering the legal age for alcohol), and if they have the ability to understand the arguments being used, then it is likely that they will process the message through the central route.
Peripheral route
If an individual does not consider a persuasive message to be personally relevant or important,then they are likely to process it through the peripheral route, in which they are more easily influenced by contextual cues e.g. a car with a background of a sunset may have emotional cues of freedom and relaxation. Attitudes acquired via the peripheral route are more susceptible to persuasion than those acquired via the central route.
Evaluate the Persuasive effects of media
- Hume (1992): celebrities do nothing to persuasiveness of communication.
- Sometimes the celebrity can overshadow the product, so all the viewer remembers is the celebrity and not the product.
- ICE campaign 78% felt it changed the way they felt about drugs
- Valdrine (2007): need for cognition was also important. high NC follow the central route and low NC peripheral route. They found that with a health campaign on smoking HNC were influenced by facts and LNC were influenced by emotion.
-Lin et al. (2011): when deciding what products to buy in an online virtual shop,high NC individuals were more persuaded by high review quality, which involved reviews that were mainly supported by facts (central route)
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Persuasiveness of TV advertising
Pine and Nash (2002): found a positive correlation between the amount of TV adverts watched by children from the UK and the number of gifts they requested for Xmas.
Robinson and Rossiter (1974): there are age differences in the persuasive effects of advertising. As children get older they become more able to determine that an advert is attempting to persuade them, making them less influenced by the persuasive effects of adverts.
Adverts can be distinguished based on the format that they utilise to persuade viewers.
Hard sell adverts show mainly factual info about a product. In contrast, soft sell adverts are oriented towards the viewer rather than focusing on the product
e.g. a soft selling advert might suggest to the viewer that they can become more popular if they purchase
the product.
Celebrity endorsement of a product can change the image of a product by allowing the viewer to form an association between the product and a particular celebrity.
Walker et al. (1992): participants provided different ratings of their liking for an advertised product
depending on who endorsed it e.g. Madonna compared to a model.
Evaluate the Persuasiveness of TV advertising
- Hume (1992): celebrities do nothing to persuasiveness of communication.
- RLA: reduce sexism and sterotypes
- Comstock and Schmer (1999): 80% of viewers leave the room when the adverts are on
- Giles (2003): cinemas are more effective as they have a captive audience that wont leave
- Okazaki: hardsell techniques have a greater capacity for irritating viewers by being do direct, provocative and confortational- this decreases their ability to persuade
Attraction of Celebrity
SOCIAL
-a parasocial relationship is appealing to some as the relationship makes few demands as the fan does not have the risk of critcism or rejection by the celebrity.
Schippa (2007) carried out a meta analysis and found parasocial relationships were most likely to form when the celebrity was seen as attractive and similar in some way. IF the celebrity was seen as real the fan would compare to them in situations.
-The absorbtion-addiction model is when people go beyond simply admiring celebrities and leads a person into the extreme. The model puts people into one of three catagories.
1]Entertainment social- most people are in the stage… it it reading about them or ‘following’ them in social media
2]intense personal- compulsive feeling about a celebrity ‘consider them to be my soulmate’
3]borderline pathological uncontrollable behaviours and fantasies about the celebrity. genuine belief of a relationship
EVOLUTIONARY
Human beings have a natural desire and love for
novelty, known as neophilia. Before modern media,
the main form of entertainment for our ancestors involved direct interactions with one another.
Neophilia led to ever-more creative displays from potential mates, such as music, art, and humour, where individuals who were most creative were considered the
most attractive.
In recent times, people are repeatedly exposed by the media to celebrity displays of creative characteristics and due to neophilia people then become attracted to celebrities
Evaluate Attraction of Celebrity
- Cole and Leets (1999): insecure avoidant/resistant were most likely to enter parasocial relationships.
- Barkow (1992): in the environment of our ancestors, any person about whom intimate details of their private life was known, because it was shared, was regarded a socially important member of a group.
- Maltby supports this finding with a negative correlation between celebrity worship and Psychological well being.
- Darwin (1871): female birds are attracted to males who display the most complex and creative songs, indicating the importance of neophilia for attraction in non-human animals.
Intense Fandom
WORSHIP
- Celebrity worship is measured on the CAS [17 item scale with a high score meaning over-identificaton and obsession and a low score is normal]
- Maltby found that 1/3 of a group of students were midway on CAS and that 15% are e-s, and 2% b-p.
- Cheung and Yue linked celebrity worship to low self esteem and identity achievment.
- people who cannot cope with everyday pressures
STALKING
- repeated persistent attempts to impose unwanted communication and/ot contact e.g. telephone, emails and following.
- stalkers overvalue others and perceive that contact will mean acceptance.
- 1/5 of stalkers develop a love with no actual relationship.
- stalking can be a result of knowing someone or creating fanatsies with someone.
- Bartholemew and Horowitz (1991) proposed a model of adult attachment. ‘preoccupied’ individuals have been linked to stalking, they have a negative self image and a positive self image of other. They want validation and approval from others.
- Meloy states that stalking should be in the indicative content for abnormal attachments
Evaluate Intense Fandom
Wassermen (1984)- celebrity deaths on TV should be kept to a minimum and tell truth to avoid suicides
- Evolution- successful in careers means they should be role models
- Maltby (2002): Religiosity… religious people are less likely to worship celebrities
- RLA- atistalking laws e.g. madonna and Hoskins
- Tonin (2004): those with abnormal attachments as children should be watched and help before they become adults
- RLA police interviews
