Forms Of Media Consumption Research Articles

Surfing to the political extremes: Digital media, social media, and policy attitude polarization

AbstractBackgroundCable news makes it possible for consumers to avoid information that challenges their predispositions, and the Internet makes it even easier. Cable news consumption is related to attitude extremity, but the extant literature is absent empirical examination of how the two may work together.ObjectivesThis study aims to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between media consumption and policy attitude extremity. In particular,, it asks how digital media consumption may combine with cable or traditional mass media to drive higher levels of polarization and attitude extremity.MethodsWe use American National Election Studies and data reduction methods to model and measure the gathering of political information to compare the relationship between different forms of media consumption and policy attitude extremity.ResultsOur results indicate that, independently, the consumption of both “partisan” cable news and “non‐partisan” political digital information have the same positive relationship to attitude extremity across four major issue domains (economy, federal spending, social issues, and foreign affairs) and that when combined into a single index, the relationship is stronger than their independent relationships. Finally, the results suggest that the combined effect is strongest among those who consume more liberal cable news.ConclusionOur high choice media environment contributes to the polarized climate in the United States today.

Media use, attention, mental health and academic performance among 8 to 12 year old children.

The rise in digital media consumption, especially among children, raises the societal question of its impact on cognition, mental health and academic achievement. Here, we investigate three different ways of measuring technology use-—total hours of media consumed, hours of video game play and number of media used concurrently—-in 118 eight-to-twelve year-old children. At stake is the question of whether different technology uses have different effects, which could explain some of the past mixed findings. We collected data about children’s media uses as well as (i) attentional and behavioral control abilities, (ii) psychological distress, psychosocial functioning, and sleep, and (iii) academic achievement and motivation. While attentional control abilities were assessed using both cognitive tests and questionnaires, mental health and sleep were all questionnaire-based. Finally, academic performance was based on self-reported grades, with motivational variables being measured through the grit and the growth-mindset questionnaires. We present partial correlation analyses and construct a psychological network to assess the structural associations between different forms of media consumption and the three categories of measures. We observe that children consume large amounts of media and media multitask substantially. Partial correlation analyses show that media multitasking specifically was mostly correlated with negative mental health, while playing video games was associated with faster responding and better mental health. No significant partial correlations were observed for total hours on media. Psychological network analysis complement these first results by indicating that all three ways of consuming technology are only indirectly related to self-reported grades. Thus, technology uses appear to only indirectly relate to academic performance, while more directly affecting mental health. This work emphasizes the need to differentiate among technology uses if one is to understand how every day digital consumption impacts human behavior.

Environmental Impacts of Shifting from Movie Disc Media to Movie Streaming: Case Study and Sensitivity Analysis

This case study involved a comparative environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyze the impact of watching a movie on Blu-ray/DVD (physical movie distribution) compared with watching the same movie on a streaming service (digital movie distribution). Considering a viewer in Michigan, USA as the reference case, the journey of a movie file from production to viewing via both the physical and digital distribution models was considered. Data to populate the inventory was assembled from prior LCAs, corporate reporting, and the EcoInvent database. The TRACI impact assessment method was used to generate comparative environmental performance metrics in a variety of environmental dimensions. As expected, the digital distribution model outperformed the physical distribution model across environmental dimensions. The question was then posed how much more digital streaming would need to occur before environmental impacts of digital streaming would be higher than the physical distribution model. This is a relevant question given that in 2017 consumer movie viewing in the USA was almost 8x higher than at the time of peak movie consumption when the physical distribution dominated. The comparative LCA showed that, for the example of global warming potential, the environmental emissions of digital distribution are ultimately higher if the digital distribution leads to more than 4x the amount of movie viewing. Future work should consider the impact of digital streaming on all viewing since the impact of streaming impacts on media beyond movies, as increases in movie consumption in principle could reduce other forms of media consumption. It should also consider movie viewing habits on devices other than televisions.

Evaluating the Fake News Problem at the Scale of the Information Ecosystem

“Fake news,” broadly defined as deliberately false or misleading information masquerading as legitimate news, is frequently asserted to be pervasive on the web, and on social media in particular, with serious consequences for public opinion, political polarization, and ultimately democracy. Using a unique multimode data set that comprises a nationally representative sample of mobile, desktop, and television consumption across all categories of media content, we refute this conventional wisdom on three levels. First, news consumption of any sort is heavily outweighed by other forms of media consumption, comprising at most 14.2% of Americans’ daily media diets. Second, to the extent that Americans do consume news, it is overwhelmingly from television, which accounts for roughly five times as much as news consumption as online, while a supermajority of Americans consume little or no news online at all. Third, fake news comprises only about 1% of overall news consumption and 0.15% of Americans’ daily media diet. Although consumption data alone cannot determine that online misinformation in any dose is not dangerous to democracy, our results suggest that the origins of public mis-informedness and polarization are more likely to lie in the content of ordinary news--especially on television--or alternatively in the avoidance of news altogether as they are in overt fakery.

MEDIA CONSTRUCTION OF CRIME REVISITED: MEDIA TYPES, CONSUMER CONTEXTS, AND FRAMES OF CRIME AND JUSTICE*

AbstractThrough this study, we shed new light on a key line of inquiry for criminologists: the way the media influence the public's understanding of crime and justice. We argue for expanding the lens of studies on the media's construction of crime, moving away from one‐dimensional reactions to crime to an integrated set of frames about crime and justice policy while considering the potential influence of a diverse array of media forms and content. Most critically, this social construction process must be placed in context, specifically, the racial composition in which people consume media. By using two nationally representative surveys matched with contextual data, we identify two forms of media consumption that seem important to understandings of crime: local television news and TV crime dramas. Interestingly, local news seems more important than national news even to perceptions of national crime trends, whereas news consumed over the Internet is not relevant, nor are 24‐hour cable news channels once political views are taken into account. Television news viewers are also more likely to support tougher crime policies. Importantly, context matters: The influence of television news and crime dramas on perceptions of crime is strongest among White respondents who live near larger numbers of Black neighbors.

The Scary World of Online News? Internet News Exposure and Public Attitudes Toward Crime and Justice

A substantial body of literature indicates that certain forms of media consumption may increase anxiety about crime and support for social controls. However, few studies have examined whether Internet news consumption is positively associated with such attitudes. The void is significant given the public’s increasing use of online news sources. This study addresses this research gap. We draw on data from four national surveys conducted between 2007 and 2013, which collectively include interviews with more than 13,000 Americans. Using OLS and logistic regression, we assess the relationships between exposure to traditional and online media and perceptions of victimization risk, support for punitive crime policies, and views about police powers. Consistent with prior work, we find positive relationships between exposure to traditional forms of media—television news and crime programming—and anxiety about victimization and support for harsh crime policies. In contrast, Internet news exposure is generally not associated with anxieties about crime or support for getting tough on criminals. However, there is evidence of an interactive relationship between political ideology and Internet news exposure. The results provide little support for cultivation theory in the context of Internet news consumption. We discuss the import of our findings, and suggest new lines of research to explore the correlates and the effects of exposure to online news sources.

RETHINKING ITALIAN TELEVISION STUDIES

The field of television studies has undergone significant changes in recent years because of technological innovations that have dramatically altered the very concept of television reception. The shift from ‘broadcasting’, through the introduction of niche targeting, to ‘narrowcasting’ has quickly led, thanks to the multiplication of platforms through which television has now become available, to the era of ‘me-casting’. As viewers increasingly turn to Digital Video Recorders and online platforms (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime), replacing their TV set with a laptop, a tablet, a game console, or a mobile phone, television schedules have virtually become obsolete structures imposed on viewers who have learned to bypass them through the flexibility offered by new forms of media consumption. Once merely considered a ‘flow’ (as Raymond Williams’ famously noted) as television’s continuous output existed without and in absence of the viewer, television has now become a virtual ‘quilt’ whose programming blocks can be extracted and time-shifted indefinitely, so as to be enjoyed by viewers at their own leisure, on a number of varied viewing platforms. Such an epochal shift in broadcasting and consumption should indeed be mirrored by a shift in the reconception of the very methods of television studies, which once identified in the ‘flow’ a core element against which all analyses of television were to be structured, foregrounding the centrality of institutional discourse and conditions of production in all viable critical readings. The era of ‘me-casting’ has shifted the critic’s attention from the producer to the product, from the time of broadcasting to that of consumption, from the flow to the actual programme. One of the most indirect consequences of this shift, in the academic field of television studies, has been a gradual widening of the objects of analysis, which were once almost always strictly limited to the broadcasting practices of the country in which the analyst resided. The sole exception to this rule was, of course, US television because of its unique global distribution. In the days of ‘me-casting’, however, television studies finds no methodological resistance in the analysis of programmes and broadcasting practices ex-loco and adopts textual approaches akin to those common in film studies. Although rigorous analyses of television programmes will always need to take into proper consideration questions of production and institutional discourse, the increased broadcasting of so-called ‘quality television’ paired with the diverse modes of its reception justifies critical approaches long associated with film studies. The work of showrunners such as Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Newsroom), Alan Ball (Six Feet Under, True Blood), David Chase (Northern Exposure, The Sopranos), or Shonda Rhimes The Italianist, 34. 2, 260–262, June 2014

Intramedia Mediation: The Cumulative and Complementary Effects of News Media Use

This study focuses on one often overlooked political communication-based media effect, intramedia mediation, and the indirect effects that stem from relationships that exist among various forms of media use. Data from a 2000 national Annenberg election panel survey are used to assess a series of relationships between television and newspaper public affairs use and how these forms of media consumption affect citizens' knowledge of presidential campaign endorsements. The indirect effects that stem from the relationships that exist among these two forms of media use reflect the cumulative and complementary functions of mass communication consumption across time. An analysis of intramedia mediation in coordination with the study of the direct effects of public affairs media use on this study's outcome variable produces substantially larger overall effects for both forms of news use. Thus, the study of intramedia mediation contributes to a better understanding of the full range of media influences on a given outcome variable over the course of a political campaign. Ramifications of these findings are outlined and future lines of research summarized.