Abstract
AbstractSome prime-time TV dramas containing health topics have large audiences both in the countries in which they are broadcast as well as on an international level via Internet television network. We conducted a literature review to map the current research articles on prime-time TV dramas with health themes produced in so-called developed countries from 1986 to 2014. The review discovered 59 articles, of which 29 (49.2%) examined the portrayal of patients, doctors, and illness; two (3.4%) examined audience characteristics and motives for watching medical dramas; 17 (28.8%) used cross-sectional methods to examine viewers’ knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors related to health concerns; and 11 (18.6%) used either pre- and post-exposure or post-exposure and follow-up tests to assess changes in viewers’ knowledge, attitudes or behaviors related to health concerns. Theories employed to understand changes in viewers’ knowledge and behaviors included cultivation theory, narrative transportation theory, and soc...
Highlights
Prime-time TV dramas, defined as TV dramas broadcast in the time period of 20:00 to 23:00, depending on the countries, are watched by large audiences
He was concerned with the repeated broadcasting of violence depicted in prime-time TV dramas and TV dramas for children
Search procedure We searched the following databases for eligible studies published in peer-reviewed journals in English from 1987, one year after the term “entertainment education” was introduced, to December 31, 2014: CINAHL Plus with full text, MEDLINE, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, SocINDEX with full text, PubMed, and Web of Science
Summary
Prime-time TV dramas, defined as TV dramas broadcast in the time period of 20:00 to 23:00, depending on the countries, are watched by large audiences. TV dramas caught the attention of communication scholars, including George Gerbner, one of the founders of cultivation theory (Gerbner & Gross, 1976). He was concerned with the repeated broadcasting of violence depicted in prime-time TV dramas and TV dramas for children. Cultivation theory scholars have pointed out that heavy viewers’ perceptions of crime in society differ from the statistics on crime occurrence in society (Gerbner, 1998). These scholars suggested that social perceptions of reality were being distorted by mass communication content, a consequence that was not intended by the content creators. Such effects have been studied for years in various disciplines such as communication, media studies and psychology, among others (Bryant & Oliver, 2009)
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