Forty‐seven young adults participated in a series of focus group interviews designed to investigate how audiences conceptualize media realism. Contrasts in the way realism was defined and applied in the interviews and explicit statements by the participants supported previous findings that realism perceptions are multidimensional. The participants' discussions encompassed 6 distinct means of evaluating the realism of media texts: plausibility, typicality, factuality, emotional involvement, narrative consistency, and perceptual persuasiveness. Plausibility was the most readily discussed conceptualization. Different realism conceptualizations tended to be used for different media genres and the conceptualizations tended to focus on different features of the evaluated text. This article discusses the relationship of audience perceptions to scholars' conceptualizations and addresses implications for measuring media realism.

The impact of personality characteristics (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Psychoticism) on audiences' use of movies, television, and radio, and on genre preferences within these media was explored. Extraversion was associated positively with in-home movie viewing and with listening to urban, jazz-classical, and pop-rock music. Neuroticism was associated positively with pop-rock music listening. Psychoticism was associated negatively with watching romance and comedy films, but this relation was moderated by an interaction in that the impact of Psychoticism was most powerful among those who were also high in Neuroticism. Follow-up analyses evaluating the impact of personality within groups defined by gender and race were also carried out. The results point to the potential of incorporating audiences' perceptions of the gratifications offered by particular media into further research. These perceptions, which are likely to vary across audience groups, may contribute to how personality factors are expressed in media behavior.Media audiences may select what they see, hear, or read from an array of content that is diverse across many attributes. These attributes include pace and stimulation level, theme, and the type of characters featured. The ways in which individual audience members navigate this environment has been of ongoing interest to media researchers.One of the primary means through which this topic has been investigated is the uses and gratifications approach. This approach assumes that audience members have unique sets of psychological and social needs as well as a specific set of expectations concerning how the mass media may gratify those needs. These needs and expectations contribute to differing patterns of media use (e.g., Katz, Blumer, MEDIA PSYCHOLOGY, 7,

This study investigated whether perceptions of reality programs' authenticity are associated with viewer involvement, enjoyment, and perceived learning. 240 viewers completed a survey about their impressions of the reality program they watch most frequently. Four dimensions of the perceived authenticity were identified: cast eccentricity, representativeness, candidness, and producer manipulation. Perceptions that the cast was not eccentric, that they were representative of people the respondents could meet, that they were behaving candidly, and that the producers were manipulating the show were associated with cognitive involvement. Cast representativeness was also positively associated with social involvement. Cognitive and social involvement were each associated with enjoyment. Perceptions of the cast members' representativeness, candidness, and lack of eccentricity were associated with increases in perceived learning from the shows. Perceptions of the Authenticity of Reality Programs 3 Perceptions of the Authenticity of Reality Programs and Their Relationships to Audience Involvement, Enjoyment, and Perceived Learning Reality programs are now a staple of television programming. The programs have obvious advantages for broadcasters. They are inexpensive to produce, offer considerable scheduling flexibility, and are less dependent on actors and writers than scripted programming. The nature of the appeal that these shows hold for the audience, however, is less clear. Several researchers have begun to investigate the program features and viewer attributes that are associated with enjoyment of or exposure to reality programs (e.g.

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