Mixed messages: The relationship between sexual and religious imagery in rock, country, and Christian videos

Abstract

Music videos from three types of music networks—rock (MTV), country (TNN), and contemporary Christian (Z music)—were content analyzed to determine patterns of occurrence and co‐occurrence of sexual and religious imagery. In general, results indicate that sexual imagery was more common than religious imagery for the total sample of 207 videos, although religious imagery was present in approximately 30% of the videos. In addition, the presence of sexual and religious images in combination occurred more often than would be expected by chance and in relatively equal proportions across the three network formats. Finally, comparisons of proportions across genre indicate that country music videos are relatively more likely to have sexual imagery than rock or contemporary Christian videos.