This article aims to extend third-person effect research into a cross-cultural context. How and why the third-person perception (perceptual gaps between media effect on self and others) has dissimilar association with the willingness to support regulation of media content in the United States and South Korea is investigated. The survey results demonstrate a larger third-person perception among U.S. respondents than among Korean respondents. Regression and mediation analyses reveal that the different levels of third-person perception mainly result from the direct influence of nationality, while cultural values were not statistically significant in accounting for the third-person perception. In contrast, Koreans show a greater level of support for the censorship of violent video games than Americans. The national difference in behavioral intention is the direct effect of nationality on the intention to support regulation and by the indirect effect of cultural values such as collectivism. In addition, gender, age, religiosity, negative prejudice against violent video games, collectivism, and the presumption of media effects on others contributed to support for preemptive behavioral measures such as censorship. However, more frequent playing of violent video games decreases support for regulation. In addition, the implications for research on third-person perception and the intention to support media content regulation are discussed.
“Fake news” on global warming is widely disseminated via social and partisan media. Scientists worry about its effect, because fake news may hurt public support and change policy on climate change. The current study tested the roles of cultural constructs (individualism, collectivism, and uncertainty-avoidance) in predicting the presumed effect of fake news on global warming. Based on 770 answers in four countries, the study found that individualism and collectivism influenced the presumed media effect on others and the third-person effect (self-other disparity of media effect). Moreover, the presumed media effect contributed to both preventive actions such as support for regulation on fake news and corrective actions such as a willingness to donate money. Likewise, the study found that collectivism positively predicted a willingness to donate money, while uncertainty-avoidance predicted support for regulation.
This study examined US media coverage of foreign nations and their athletes during the 2012 London Olympic Games. An analysis of NBC primetime telecasts and sports coverage in The New York Times found that foreign nations and their athletes were not significantly affected by any given nation’s performance during the Olympics. However, coverage of the Olympics was actually based on several contextual factors. While a few elite countries’ dominance in the Olympics secured US media coverage, military expenditures, linguistic proximity to the United States, and the number of sports celebrities and gold medals won often predicted a country’s visibility in US media.
In South Korea, approximately 88.5% of online users have obtained news and information from news aggregators such as Naver and Daum. Since most users read news on the internet, a new type of tabloid journalism, referred to as “news abuse,” has emerged in South Korea. “News abuse” is jargon used in South Korea to mean the repetitive display of news by online news publishers. “News abuse” is similar to “clickbait” in its use of clickbait headline links to attract online users’ attention and encourage them to click on links. This study explores the characteristics of news abusing phenomena in South Korea. With content analysis of 2101 articles (609 stories for soft news and 1402 stories for hard news), we attempt to investigate when news abuse saliently occurs and to whom news abusing is attributed. Our results show that news abuse is prevalent among South Korean newspapers during the first three hours after initial news reports are made and when people have time to rest after lunch between noon and 3 p.m. Moreover, the highest percentage of news abuse of soft news was found among tabloid daily newspapers, while that of hard news was found among daily newspapers. In addition, intermedia news abuse was more frequently utilized than intramedia news abuse. The percentage of intermedia abuse, in particular, was higher in general daily newspapers and business newspapers than in other news media platforms. By contrast, the percentage of intramedia news abuse was significantly higher in 24-h news channels. News abuse may be a side effect of news aggregation in the division of labor of news production and news distribution. More steps are required to decrease news abuse, which will lead to maintenance of a healthy digital news ecosystem and development of the news aggregation business.
In the history of world wars, the Korean War (1950–1953) was not a forgotten war but the apogee of a propaganda war. By analyzing the contents of propaganda leaflets distributed during the Korean War, this study explored which frames were dominantly employed. The resulting findings were that the frames of ‘demoralization’ (25.7%) and ‘encouraging surrender’ (24.4%) were the most frequently used during the overall war period. Furthermore, the dominant frames varied depending upon the target audiences and language used. In terms of functional frames, the leaflet messages corresponded to definition and causal interpretation (22.8%), moral judgement (26.2%) and solution (49.9%). Interestingly, Chinese and North Korean leaflets preferred the imperialist frame to the Cold War frame even though the US and South Korean leaflets more heavily used the Cold War frame when they referred to foreign troops. Moreover, thematic frames (91.4%) were more widely used than episodic frames (8.6%) in the samples.
The present study explored the relationships between the tone in news presentations and the third-person effect. It investigated whether news stories about violent video games changed viewers perspectives based on the positively or negatively portrayed messages presented by the media. Overall, this study examined how news stories encouraged or discouraged viewers from supporting government regulations of violent video game content. An online survey of 388 American adults served as the main source of data collection. The study found that presumed media effects decreased on both others and self when viewers were exposed to positively presented news coverage. Subsequently, their support for regulating violent video games was reduced. However, no changes were found in third-person perception. In addition, those who were exposed to negative news coverage showed no significant changes in their perceived media effects on self, others, and support regulations on video game contents.
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