Media violence poses a threat to public health inasmuch as it leads to an increase in real-world violence and aggression. Research shows that fictional television and film violence contribute to both a short-term and a long-term increase in aggression and violence in young viewers. Television news violence also contributes to increased violence, principally in the form of imitative suicides and acts of aggression. Video games are clearly capable of producing an increase in aggression and violence in the short term, although no long-term longitudinal studies capable of demonstrating long-term effects have been conducted. The relationship between media violence and real-world violence and aggression is moderated by the nature of the media content and characteristics of and social influences on the individual exposed to that content. Still, the average overall size of the effect is large enough to place it in the category of known threats to public health.
Research on sources of information about sex indicates that independent reading is a primary source of information for many young people. For young men, such reading is likely to involve lad magazines, a relatively new but very popular genre of lifestyle magazines targeted at young men. In the present study, a systematic representative sample of articles about sex from American lad magazines was subjected to content analysis. Results suggest that, although many articles focus on what women want sexually, the overall message of these articles privileges a fairly narrow male sexuality oriented toward sexual variety. At the same time, the normative relational context of sex is depicted as serious dating relationships. These results are consistent with predominant gender stereotypes about sex.
Narratives are often used in messages about health threats. We posited that a 1st-person point of view (POV) narrative would have a greater effect than a 3rd-person POV on the mediators identification and self-referencing-an effect moderated by protagonist-reader similarity. Higher levels of identification and self-referencing were expected to elevate susceptibility and severity perceptions, leading to persuasion. Participants ages ≤30 years were recruited from a crowdsource website and randomly assigned to read one version of a faux magazine article about caffeine overdose. Article versions were defined by a 2 (1st- or 3rd-person POV) × 2 (similar or dissimilar protagonist) design. To manipulate similarity, we had respondents read an article in which the protagonist was also young (24 years of age) and of the same sex or much older (54 years of age) and of the opposite sex. Participants then completed a questionnaire measuring study variables. Contrary to expectations, POV did not affect identification or self-referencing. However, similarity directly impacted identification, which in turn influenced severity perceptions. Self-referencing was not affected by the experimental manipulations but had a direct effect on susceptibility and also mediated the identification → susceptibility relationship. Susceptibility and severity perceptions were associated with greater levels of persuasion. Implications for message design are discussed.
Previous studies of the effects of sexual television content have resulted in mixed findings. Based on the information processing model of media effects, I proposed that the messages embodied n such content, the degree to which viewers perceive television content as realistic, and whether sexual content is conveyed using visual or verbal symbols may influence the nature or degree of such effects. I explored this possibility through an experiment in which 182 college undergraduates were exposed to visual or verbal sexual television content, neutral television content, or no television at all prior to completing measures of sexual attitudes and beliefs. Although exposure to sexual content generally did not produce significant main effects, it did influence the attitudes of those who perceive television to be relatively realistic. Verbal sexual content was found to influence beliefs about women's sexual activity among the same group.
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