Andrew Weaver

An important element of news delivery on the World Wide Web today is the near ubiquity of breaking news headlines. What used to be called search engines (e.g., Yahoo! and Lycos) are now “portals” or “hubs,” popular services that use news, weather, and other content features to extend the time users spend on the sites. Traditional models of news dissemination in the mass media often assume some level of intention behind most news exposure. The prevalence of news on the disparate corners of the Web provides opportunities for people to encounter current affairs information in an incidental fashion, a byproduct of their other online activities. This study uses survey data from 1996 and 1998 to test whether accidental exposure to news on the Web is positively associated with awareness of current affairs information. The results indicate that incidental online news exposure was unrelated to knowledge in 1996 …

This exploratory study was designed to examine how players make moral choices in video games and what effects these choices have on emotional responses to the games. Participants (n=75) filled out a moral foundations questionnaire (MFQ) and then played through the first full act of the video game Fallout 3. Game play was recorded and content analyzed for the moral decisions made. Players also reported their enjoyment of and emotional reactions to the game and reflected on the decisions they made. The majority of players made moral decisions and behaved toward the nonplayer game characters they encountered as if these were actual interpersonal interactions. Individual differences in decision making were predicted by the MFQ. Behaving in antisocial ways did increase guilt, but had no impact on enjoyment.

A primary argument for the widespread production of media violence is that audiences want to watch violent content. This assumption is examined in this meta-analytic review of existing research on both selective exposure to and enjoyment of violence. The results show that violence has a significant effect on both selective exposure and enjoyment, but in different directions. Specifically, violence increases selective exposure but decreases enjoyment of content. Potential explanations for these effects and moderators that could influence the results (e.g., sex, aggressive personality traits, type of content) are considered, and the practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Movie producers are often reluctant to cast more than a few minority actors in otherwise race-neutral movies for fear that the White audience will largely avoid such films. Two experiments were conducted to test the idea that the racial makeup of a cast could influence White audiences' selective exposure to movies. Results revealed that actors' race does influence selective exposure in certain contexts. For nonromantic movies, participants' racial attitudes moderated the relationship between race and selective exposure. For romantic movies, regardless of racial attitudes, White participants showed significantly less interest in seeing movies with mostly Black casts than in seeing movies with mostly White casts. These findings are discussed in light of both social identity theory and social cognitive theory.

This experiment explores the relationship between television violence and viewer enjoyment. Over 400 participants were randomly assigned to one of 15 conditions that were created by editing five TV programs into three versions each: A graphically violent version, a sanitized violent version, and a nonviolent version. After viewing, participants reported their enjoyment of the content and emotional reactions to the content. Once we controlled for viewer perceptions of action in the program, we found that the nonviolent version was significantly more enjoyable than the two violent versions were. This finding held regardless of participants' sex, level of trait aggression, and sensation-seeking tendencies. Thus, the widely held belief that violence increases enjoyment was not supported.

Content analyses have consistently documented the disproportionate portrayal of Black Americans as criminals in the news. This experiment examines the impact of such portrayals on consumers by investigating the relationship between viewer ethnicity, viewing Black criminal suspects in the news, and beliefs related to public policy. Participants viewed a 30‐minute local newscast containing crime stories featuring a majority of Black suspects, White suspects, or no crime stories. Those exposed to crime stories featuring a majority of Black suspects were more likely to rate a nondescript inmate as personally culpable (i.e., unable to be rehabilitated). An interaction between participant ethnicity and treatment condition revealed that ethnic minority group members who view a majority of Black criminals demonstrated significantly lower police support than other participants. These data suggest a complex relationship …

We conducted a content analysis of news articles (N = 540) to examine whether news coverage of media violence accurately reflects scientific knowledge about exposure to media violence and its effects on viewer aggression. The analysis revealed that over the past 30 years, news articles generally suggested that a link between media violence and aggression exists. However, the tone shifted sharply back toward a neutral conclusion since 2000. This shift may be attributable to the type of medium discussed (e.g., television vs. video games), the number of unaffiliated sources that are cited in the news article, and the sex of the journalist. Implications for how this news coverage may influence news readers are discussed.

Over the past several decades, media coverage of both professional and nonprofessional athletes has reached unprecedented levels. Previously unreported information about these individuals, including their behavior on and off the field, is now massively disseminated to the public for consumption. Although the extensive amount of media coverage often focuses on the athletes’ in-game performances, other information related to their individual characteristics and personal lives can be featured as well. Sports journalists can and do employ various frames that emphasize specific content in their stories; but the influence these frames have on subsequent audience evaluations pertaining to the athletes featured within them is unknown. This study will explore several important factors in the attitude formation process, including features of the media coverage itself, characteristics of the featured athletes, and …

In this content analysis, we examined violence in Web-based entertainment. YouTube videos (N = 2,520) were collected in 3 different categories: most viewed, top rated, and random, with additional comparisons between amateur and professional content. Frequencies of violent acts and the context of violence (e.g., characteristics of perpetrator and victim, justification, consequences) were compared both between these categories of YouTube videos and with existing research on television violence. The results showed far less violence as a percentage of programming on YouTube than there is on television. Moreover, the violence that was present showed more realistic consequences and more negative context than television violence. Post hoc comparisons illustrated several differences in the presentation of violence between make and category of video.

Despite the importance of life-cycle models to sensation seeking research, past studies have typically focused on adolescents and adults. This is especially problematic for researchers studying the role of media use in the development of risky behaviors (e.g., violent video game consumption and aggressive behavior). To facilitate research with child populations, a brief sensation seeking scale for children (BSSS-C) is developed and validated with a sample of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders (N = 136). The BSSS-C is found to be internally reliable (α = .82) as well as a strong predictor of several risky child behaviors. Higher sensation seeking children were more likely to play video games, including violent subgenres (e.g., shooters), and to enjoy playing video games that contained specific acts of violence (e.g., weapon use). Higher sensation seekers were also more likely to engage in rule-breaking behavior, such as …

This content analysis of 15 Arabic and 3 Turkish drama serials on transnational Arab television examined the gender portrayals of characters. The analysis of 743 characters found that women were underrepresented, less likely to have recognizable jobs, and more likely than men to be portrayed in sex-typed occupations, activities, and settings. The analysis also revealed that programs with female writers were significantly less gender stereotypical. Moreover, differences were found among the producing Arab countries in terms of the portrayals of women; conservative countries had more sex-typed portrayals than the more liberal Arab countries, whereas Turkish programs had similar portrayals to Arabic programs produced in the liberal Arab states. The general findings are discussed in comparison to U.S. programming, and in relation to selective exposure, identification with characters, and potential effects on Arab …

In recent years, the viewing of reality television has become increasingly prevalent among television audiences. However, little is known about the psychological processes at work when viewing these programs. This study examined how social comparisons to cast members influenced emotional responses to reality television programming. Participants (N= 231) were cued with a specific comparison target group and placed in a situation of self-image enhancement or threat. Afterwards, participants watched a clip from a reality television program and then reported their emotional reactions to it. The manipulations of comparison target group and self-image affected both the direction of social comparisons made and their associated emotional responses. Participant gender also influenced social comparisons to the cast members and resulting emotional responses to the content. Although we were unable to compare …

This study investigated the effect of individuals’ self-reported skill levels on generated violent content. After playing a violent video game, participants (N = 68) completed a questionnaire determining skill level with measures modified from previous game studies. The resulting 4,023 instances of violence were analyzed using techniques adapted from prior video game content analyses and the National Television Violence Study. Findings indicated a significant difference in the amount and context of violent acts between higher skilled and lower skilled players. Those who reported being higher skilled generated more instances of violence, were more often the perpetrators rather than the targets of violence, experienced greater consequences (graphicness) of violence, and experienced more on-screen and up-close violence.

Research suggests that exposure to graphic violence commonly causes unpleasant emotional reactions. Further, research shows that fictional violence may be more palatable than real violence. We explored whether/why fictional content might lead to weaker aversive reactions than real content. In this experiment (N = 200), we manipulated the perceived reality of violence to determine whether a fictional context leads to reduced aversion, and we examined if gender and empathy could moderate this effect. We found that negative reactions were significantly lower when participants perceived the scenes as fictional. Males in particular experienced lessened aversive states in fictional conditions.

It is widely assumed that children like violence in cartoons, but this assumption has not been supported in existing studies that show nonviolent programs are liked just as much or more than violent programs. The present experiment extended enjoyment of media violence research by testing whether violence and action (independently manipulated) influenced children's liking of slapstick cartoons. We also proposed a path model to test potential indirect effects of violence and action on liking. Using animation software, four versions of a slapstick cartoon were created that varied in terms of violence (present, absent) and action (high, low). A total of 128 elementary school children watched one of the four versions of the program. Violence had no direct effect on the liking of the cartoon, but did indirectly decrease liking for males by decreasing boys' wishful identification with the anthropomorphized characters. Action …