Introduction Of Television Research Articles

Remembering television as a new medium: Conceptual boundaries and connections

Academic and industry discourses in Sweden blamed the rapid decline of cinema-going in the late 1950s on the introduction of television. Complicating the issue, Swedish television ties in with radio as a domestic medium, making the conceptual links between television and cinema seem less obvious. If we write a history of media characterized by replacement, we tend to overlook how new and old media exist simultaneously in everyday life. Our article investigates how television features in memory narratives of cinema in the context of quotidian life in the late 1950s and 1960s in Sweden. The study draws on memories collected through 60 oral history interviews in two large-scale projects. With a focus on cultural practices and Lisa Gitelman’s concept of ‘associated protocols’ in media use, we ask how cinema and television are conceived in relation to each other in hindsight when remembering television as new.

Television and Material Culture: Mediating the Temporal and Consumerist Practices in Pre-liberalised Kerala

The introduction of television in Kerala was an event marked by the encounter between spatial practices, discursive structures and visual paradigms. As a result, it becomes important to contextualise television’s presence in Kerala in the socio-economic conditions that defined the region in and around the time when television was introduced. This would provide some seminal cues about the mutual imbrications between television and its politico-discursive context. The present paper tries to look into the ways in which television fashioned new spatio-temporal practices and embodied various consumerist tendencies in pre-liberalised Kerala to argue that television is an artifact grounded in the region’s cultural values and material aspirations. The first section looks at how television-viewing and the socialities formed around the act were ‘timed’ by television. In the second section, the paper studies the popular advertising strategies employed to market television as a ‘tamed’ object that is representative of the consumerist aspirations that defined the region.

Establishing Early Literacy Habits in a Profit-Driven Digital World.

Books are remarkable objects. They carry children into imaginary spaces and offer parents a familiar script to settle children down at night. Books challenge readers’ minds to stretch their attention span, pause and contemplate, and take others’ perspectives. Early book sharing is promoted by the American Academy of Pediatrics because of its clear impact on reading scores, which predict high school graduation rates.1Since the introduction of television, early childhood experts have wondered whether time spent in pleasurable but “minds-off” screen experiences displaces reading. Studies using time use diaries and surveys offered conflicting evidence2,3 but suggested that educational television was linked with more reading in stressed families.4However, the digital ecosystem has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Children can find their favorite programs on demand in any room of the house or moment of boredom. Myriad digital products marketed to children provide engaging interactivity but often have low educational value and high advertising load.5 By algorithmically predicting what children might click on next, platforms are able to extend viewing time and make billions in profits.6With this engagement-promoting digital ecosystem in mind, updated research evidence about children’s reading and media habits is needed, particularly in developmentally sensitive windows when such habits are established. In this issue of Pediatrics, McArthur et al7 present findings from a large birth cohort in which reading and screen use were assessed at 24, 36, and 60 months of age. The children were born in 2008–2010, so they likely had access to smartphones and tablets.With three waves of data, the authors were able to statistically control for between-child confounders (eg, family stress) and isolate within-child variation in screen use and reading over time. They found that more screen use at 24 months of age predicted less shared book reading at 36 months of age (β = –.08), which in turn predicted higher screen use at 60 months of age (β = –.11).These results suggest that toddlerhood may be a key window in which children establish preferences for media over reading as a daily activity, which sets the stage for more screen use around kindergarten entry. Daily toddler habits (eg, sleep and feeding) are influenced by the intense emotionality and self-directed behavior that can dominate this period.8 Therefore, it is possible that toddler demands for media and parents’ related low self-efficacy in establishing daily reading routines may drive this association.Like many large cohort studies, in this study, McArthur et al7 only assessed one dimension of media use: time. Now that media are engineered to engage young viewers through persuasive enhancements, more longitudinal research is needed that interrogates children’s reactions to mobile and interactive design: Are devices coming to bed and meals with them or being grabbed in the moment to calm a tantrum?9 When young children engage with apps and videos, do they go on “autopilot” and expect to follow a frictionless feed, and how does that influence their more friction-full daily interactions with people and learning? Do they take a “minds-on” orientation to screen media, as they would a book?5 As the US government debates potentially increasing funding for children and media research (ie, Children and Media Research Advancement Act),10 these types of questions, and implications for the corporate responsibility of the companies designing children’s digital ecosystems, should be prioritized.

Politics of Constituency Representation and Legislative Ambition under the Glare of Camera Lights

The introduction of legislative television as a transparency initiative has been welcomed in an increasing number of democracies. The impact of television cameras on parliamentary behavior, however, has received scant attention in systems where personal vote‐earning attributes are thought to be of little importance (e.g., closed‐list proportional representation). Additionally, studies examining this relationship relied exclusively on over‐time variation in legislative behavior (i.e., before and after the introduction of television into parliament), which arguably has important deficiencies in demonstrating the true effect of legislative television. Capitalizing on a unique quasi‐experimental setting, the present study aims to close these gaps in the literature by analyzing parliamentary activities in Turkey, where the legislative television was restricted to 3 days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) in 2011 after almost two decades of continuous 7‐day operation. Results based on original data sets of parliamentary activities from the pre‐ and postreform periods (2009–11 and 2011–13) indicate that the varying presence of television cameras exacerbated the effect of electoral and reputation‐building motivations on parliamentary behavior, encouraging electorally unsafe and junior MPs to shift their constituency focus to the televised proceedings. The results offer important implications for the study of legislative transparency and constituency representation in party‐list proportional representation systems.

The Birth of Petroleum Path Dependence: Oil Narratives and Development in the North

ABSTRACT This article focuses on three moments in Alaskan history that were mediated through southern visual narratives in the 1970s: the discovery of oil; the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act; and the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. First, the article introduces the media context of the time and the news sources used in the visual discourse analysis that follows. It offers a description of the introduction of television nightly news and discusses the sources chosen for analysis: NBC Evening News and CBS Evening News. Second, the article discusses the print photojournalism of National Geographic magazine and the New York Times. Visuals published in these outlets from 1967 through to the completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1977 are then analyzed as discursive negotiations between Native paternalism, extermination, and self-determination for Native rights, and between environmentalism and development. The article argues that there were visual tensions between Native activists and negotiators and the strong legacies of American settler colonialism present in American reporting of 1970s Alaska. Finally, the article deconstructs the metanarrative of oil in Alaska during the 1973 oil crisis—namely, the essentiality of producing domestic oil during the 1973 oil crisis to secure the independence of the United States.

Did Television Reduce the Effect of Partisan Press on Electoral Politics?

In this study, I examine whether the effect of biased media can be reduced when voters have an alternative source of political information. Specifically, I investigate whether the introduction of television mitigated the effect of partisan press on U.S. presidential elections from 1944 to 1964. I first show that newspaper coverage of presidential campaigns during this period was affected by newspapers’ party affiliations and their readers’ political preferences. The main finding of this study is that television decreased the correlation between the circulation of partisan newspapers and parties’ vote share. The results suggest that the existence of centrist media can make voters less susceptible to partisan media.

HABILIDADES DO TELESPECTADOR NA TV SOCIAL

The article analyzes the cognitive, social, sensory and material implications of multiscreen behavior in television consumption, especially the skills demanded from the viewer for practices of Social TV. The introduction of television in the convergence environment points to audience practices which need to be better identified and problematized. The article presents a portion of the results of empirical research, who analyzed the interaction of viewers of The Voice Brasil and MasterChef Brasil along three seasons, in three social networks (Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp). The study points out seven skills needed by the viewer for Social TV practices.

The Taming of the Electronic Shrew: Localizing the Global Spread of Television

A common assumption maintains that the global outreach of mass media inevitably leads to deleterious consequences for native communities. Indeed, different scholars have argued that awareness of the outside world from television results in the homogenization of local cultures. However, images viewed through the electronic peephole radically transform not only an understanding of the outside world, but the way indigenes define themselves and their relationship to each other. By presenting subaltern audiences with an idealized other, television compels the emergence of an objectified self. “Who are ‘we’?” would not have been asked—or asked in the same way—were it not for the “Who are ‘they’?” necessitated by the introduction of television. Paradoxically, contrary to most fears, television actually helps to create rather than destroy a cultural identity by forcing subaltern viewers to re-define themselves in a dialogical relationship to the dominant society.

E-readers and the death of the book: Or, new media and the myth of the disappearing medium

The recent emergence of e-readers and electronic books (e-books) has brought the death of the book to the centre of current debates on new media. In this article, we analyse alternative narratives that surround the possibility of the disappearance of print books, dominated by fetishism, fears about the end of humanism and ideas of techno-fundamentalist progress. We argue that in order to comprehend such narratives, we need to inscribe them in the broader history of media. The emergence of new media, in fact, has often been accompanied by narratives about the possible disappearance of older media: the introduction of television, for instance, inspired claims about the forthcoming death of film and radio. As a recurrent narrative shaping the reception of media innovation, the myth of the disappearing medium helps us to make sense of the transformations that media change provokes in our everyday life.

Good news: the Carmel Newsreels and their place in the emerging Israeli language media

The Carmel Newsreels were screened in cinemas for more than a decade before and for two decades after the establishment of the State of Israel (1935–70). The newsreels were of prime importance in creating and documenting visual representations of everyday life in the burgeoning Jewish state, particularly in view of the late introduction of television (1968) to Israel. This article examines the place of the newsreels in the Hebrew language media on the eve of the establishment of the state, particularly the division of roles between newspapers and the filmed newsreels. It argues that for various reasons, including a range of technological and contextual constraints and the fact that they were screened in cinemas in conjunction with feature films as part of a programme of entertainment, the newsreels were for the most part upbeat, celebrating the achievements of the Zionist project. They did not offer an alternative to the print press, but rather added a visual, in the main positive, perspective to the print newspapers.

Trading Dollars for Dollars: The Price of Attention Online and Offline

Popular accounts suggest that advertising revenue per unit of consumer attention is lower online than offline, and has fallen in traditional media as the Internet has made advertising markets more competitive. I assess these claims theoretically and empirically, and compare the patterns we observe for the Internet to trends in advertising around the introduction of television and radio. The evidence suggests that the price of attention for similar consumers is actually higher online than offline, and that the growth of new media is not robustly associated with a declining price of attention.

FROM FEAR OF TELEVISION TO FEAR FOR TELEVISION

New media technologies are often met with political and public ambivalence, as they are perceived to threaten established activities, values and institutions, as well as bring progress and improve political, cultural and social life. Taking the Norwegian history of television as an empirical case study, this article relates to an international research agenda focusing on the cultural political debates in the early phases of broadcast media. The article is structured according to five key conjunctures where significant new media and technologies were introduced with corresponding political debates: the introduction of television (1940s–1950s), of colour television (1960s–1970s), of satellite, cable and commercial television (1980s), of digital distribution (1990s–2000s) and the expansion of television to new platforms (2000s). The article addresses the key arguments and dividing lines in these political debates, as well as the change in the perception of television when the medium is no longer new, but has become an integrated part of people's everyday life.

Did television empower women? The introduction of television and the changing status of women in the 1950s

This article examines the possibility that the introduction of television may have played a role in women’s empowerment. Focusing primarily on the historical context of the post-war United States, this article takes as its starting point the temporal coincidence of the very rapid uptake of television in the late 1940s and 1950s, followed in the 1960s by the women’s liberation movement and the increasing social status for women. It draws from a wide range of literature, focusing on three broad areas: the technological features of television, in particular its equalizing mode of address; the domestic and social context to which it was introduced; and the subversive and counter-hegemonic content that was available on early television.

Facebook: When Education Meets Privacy

Introduction In 1997, SixDegrees.com was launched, a website now believed to be a precursor of more current social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Hyves. Today the use of social networking sites (hence SNSs) has become commonplace amongst youngsters and young adults. Tufekci (2008) found that between 80% and 90% of college students are a member of at least one SNS. The first SNS that gained worldwide popularity was MySpace. Barely four years after its launch in 2003, it had become by far the most adopted SNS amongst youngsters, with 100 million users and attracting 230,000 new users each day at some point in time (Lenhart & Madden, 2007; Sellers, 2006). According to Hinduja and Patchin (2008), this popularity is due in large part not because of innovative functionality and utility, but because it centralized many attractive functions that were already a part of other social networking sites in a user-friendly (p. 130). Not surprisingly, MySpace is not the only SNS available (for an overview, see Boyd & Ellison, 2007); Facebook seems to be the most popular for people of all ages (Doughtery, 2010; see also Judd & Kennedy, 2010). In a follow-up study in September 2009 by Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, and Zickuhr (2010), 71% of a sample of American young adults (between 18 and 29 years old) owned a Facebook account, 66% a MySpace account, and 7% a LinkedIn account. In July 2010, Facebook reached over 500 million active users (Facebook, 2010). In Belgium alone, more than 4.6 million active users (of the 7 million who surf the Internet) have a profile on Facebook (Socialbakers, 2012). In this contribution, the focus is upon Facebook. Taking into account Facebook's current popularity amongst college students, much research has been established to explore the possibility of using Facebook as an educational tool. Such interest is, of course, not new. Ever since the introduction of television into schools and the increasing popularity of computers and video games, scholars have been paying attention to education that is in some way technologically facilitated (Cuban, 1986). So is the case with regard to SNSs: a lot of research concerning the SNSeducation relationship has been conducted over the last years (e.g. Anderson, 2007; Anderson & Dron, 2011; Bugeja, 2006; Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010; Mason & Rennie, 2008; Mazman & Usluel, 2010; Roblyer, McDaniel, Webb, Herman, & Witty, 2010; Sandars & Schroter, 2007; Selwyn, 2009) and resulted in some systematic reviews (e.g. Manca & Ranieri, 2013). Moreover, some of them argue that SNSs entail a lot of educational possibilities (e.g. Greenhow, 2011; Halverson, 2011; Lee & McLoughlin, 2008; Selwyn, 2007). For instance, Lee and McLoughlin (2008) claim that SNSs are pedagogical tools, because one can use them for content creation, collaborative information discovery and sharing, and knowledge and information aggregation and modification. Despite high expectancies with respect to the potential of Facebook, current research on the relationship between Facebook use and academic achievement shows no--or even a negative--relationship (e.g., Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010; Pasek, More, & Hargittai, 2009). Yet, what seems for the most part to be ignored in the research literature regarding SNSs, in our view, is the willingness of students to accept Facebook as an educational tool, a tool that is used in an instructional context to foster their learning processes (Roblyer et al., 2010). Therefore, we delve into students' own, self-reported perspectives regarding the use of Facebook in education, as further insight into students' opinions, to add value within this currently popular research domain. In case students do not appreciate the use of Facebook as a tool for educational purposes, it can be expected that the added value of Facebook will be rather limited (cf. Perkins & Turpen, 2009). After this short introduction on the popularity of Facebook, this article briefly presents role theory and reference group theory, as we will use them as an interpretive framework. …

Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid (review)

Ron Krabill Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid University of Chicago Press, 2010; 199 pages; $21.00 By the time television reached the homes of (mainly white) South Africans in 1976, it had already been introduced in over 130 nations. The late embrace of television in South Africa wasn't a result of technological or financial hurdles, as in other nations, but rather a deliberate effort on the part of the ruling National Party to limit the reach of transnational media flows. The apartheid state, cognizant of the important role television played in the United States' civil rights struggle, was anxious to avoid the potentially destabilizing and democratizing effects of viewing international media. By 1976, however, anyone who could afford a satellite dish could gain access to transnational television; in order to avoid the influence of these flows, government officials initiated the development and deployment of state run television. The introduction of television in South Africa provides the starting point for Ron Krabill's new book, Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid. In addition to seeing the introduction of television, 1976 also ushered in an era of political agitation that provides the second strand of Krabill's argument. On June 16th of that year, South African police fired on a group of unarmed students who were gathered to protest inequities in the education system. Although the social and political turmoil of the Soweto Uprising was contained after several months, the incident ignited the political agitation that would ultimately lead to the collapse of apartheid. While significant attention has been paid to the political events of the time, scant attention has been paid to the role of television in South Africa's social and political upheaval. In Starring Mandela, Krabill links these two histories together, and portrays South African politics and media engaged in a mutually constitutive relationship. He argues that the government's hegemonic control over the new medium did not prevent television from subverting the ideology of the state. He locates this subversion in two ways. First, he attempts to show television's role in transforming the political landscape and identifications of White South Africans. Second, he posits that while apartheid created a structured of South Africans in the lives of White South Africans, this absence was de-stabilized, in part, by the introduction of television. Krabill identifies a viewing phenomenon that appeared following the introduction of in 1983 that he calls surfing into Zulu. Although channels 2/3 were designed specifically for South African audiences, Krabill demonstrates that White South Africans were also interested in channels 2/3, and frequently surfed into Black programming. Thus, despite the tight control over television exercised by the state, viewing patterns could not be fully controlled by state interests: both transnational and intranational media flows led to a form of integration (albeit virtual) of and White South Africans-exactly what the apartheid state worked to suppress. …

‘INVASION BY THE MONSTER’

This article explores links between the debates that surrounded the introduction of television in Australia, and parallel controversies in Britain, the USA and Canada. Richard Boyer, chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), looked for evidence of how these other places had experienced television to support his case for an Australian public television monopoly financed without advertising. For Boyer and many ABC colleagues, British regulatory practices and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television were the model for emulation. Boyer also hoped that public broadcasting would sustain Australia's Britishness, and deter broader American cultural influences. Canada potentially showed how British and American approaches might be reshaped to suit Australian circumstances. However, as the strength of US broadcasting influence became apparent, as the limits of the response of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) to the television challenge were revealed, and as Britain itself adopted a ‘dual system’ of public and commercial broadcasting, the ABC found its position in the Australian television debate progressively and inexorably undermined. Transnational connections thus failed to serve the ABC's particular national agenda.

Automobile television, the post-nuclear family and SpongeBob SquarePants

An investigation into the introduction of television in private automobiles taking as its objects advertising discourse, television news and Hollywood-produced disaster epics. The representational strategies at work in these visual forms overlap and, taken in relationship to each other, can help illuminate collective anxieties regarding contemporary post-Cold War culture in the United States.

A influência da televisão no desenvolvimento regional da zona rural no município de Palmas (TO)

Considering the rural origins of Brazil and the accelerated process of urbanization in recent decades, this article seeks to analyze and compare the social developments resulting from the introduction of television among peasants as well as its influences on the audience made up of children and youth.The case study applied to the rural area of Palmas (TO) aims to observe the consequences of the introduction of TV in the lives of peasants and to discuss possible changes it brings to their culture, economy and social relations through the influence it has on children. When investigating the integration of that medium in the rural context, the author is aware of the influence of television and the extension of the urbanized and capitalist global reality to the local reality of peasant families. Without ignoring the benefits provided by TV in rural areas, this paper observes the social consequences resulting from its introduction among peasants.Key words: peasantry, social developments, television, childhood.

The Indian Film Market

Media economics investigations of the international flow of media such as films reveal the importance of domestic consumer spending on films. Television penetration is seen as a threat to this. In this article, the effect of television penetration on the annual number of theatrical admissions, the annual number of films produced and the number of screens was examined using time series data from the introduction of television until the year 2005. This was examined in the context of the five major film producing countries: US, UK, France, Germany and Japan. Statistically, India fits the international pattern of a significant negative effect of television penetration on aggregate and per capita theatrical film admissions. Further, television penetration had a negative but non-significant effect on the number of films produced and on the number of screens. Descriptive data show that India’s persistent aggregate admissions appear to be more an artifact of the population size rather than a higher frequency in visits to the theatres. Since 74 per cent of Indian film industry revenues come from theatrical admissions, these results may interest policy makers in view of the fact that India is the only country in the world other than the US where domestic films have approximately 93 per cent market share.

Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children (review)

Reviewed by: Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children Jan Rosenberg Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children. Eds. Kate Darian-SmithJune Factor. (Melbourne: Museum Victoria, 2005. Pp. vii + 231, 20 black-and-white photos, 33 illustrations, two appendices, bibliography.) Child’s Play: Dorothy Howard and the Folklore of Australian Children is a celebration of Howard, the pioneer of children’s folklore study in [End Page 372] Australia. Edited by historian Kate Darian- Smith and folklorist June Factor, the book consists of ten Howard articles and three contemporary essays contextualizing her work. These are written by Factor, Darian-Smith, and Brian Sutton-Smith, whom Howard first met when she visited New Zealand during her Fulbright tenure. When Howard (1902–96) landed in Victoria in 1954, she resolved to stay for ten months to document the games of Australian children. To cover as much of the country as possible, she traveled by bus and rail and overcame many obstacles along the way. Folklore was something Australians didn’t regard highly at the time, and they said that Australian children had no folklore of their own. Rather, Australians believed that their traditional expressions had their basis in the lore of the British Isles. A Fulbright scholar sponsored by the University of Melbourne, Howard came to Australia interested in the traditions of English-speaking children outside the United States. She had spent the past twenty-five years working with schoolchildren in the United States, teaching language arts by encouraging students to collect their own verbal lore, and she wholly believed that one learns by experiencing one’s own world. Although she didn’t teach in Australia, she let hundreds of children teach her what they knew. Child’s Play starts out with the two essays by Factor and Darian-Smith. Factor’s essay outlines Howard’s life, beginning in 1902 when she was born in the Sabine Bottom of East Texas and following through to her teaching career and discovery of children’s folklore while observing students on a school playground in upstate New York. Howard developed one of the first modern folklife-in-education programs through her introduction to children’s rhymes; there, she had students record their chants and rhymes and then study them for their literary structure, content, and merit. She did the same thing with students’ names, having them spell the names and research their origins. She applied John Dewey’s concept of experience—the interaction of the individual with the environment— in a way that met the school curriculum with ease. In Factor’s essay we learn that Howard first heard the word “folklore” from a professor her sister encouraged her to meet in New York City. The discussion led to Howard’s entry into the education program at New York University, where she shaped her exploration of children’s play life into a dissertation titled “Folk Jingles of American Children,” accepted by her committee in 1938. She collected the folklore of children’s play and taught in New Jersey at a junior high before transferring to teach at Frostburg State Teachers College, located in the Appalachian mountain range of western Maryland. Howard taught folklore and literature at Frostburg, encouraging her students to collect and analyze child lore. Given all of her experience, she became curious about the child lore of English-speaking students in other countries. When she proposed to document the child lore of the entire country of Australia, she was awarded the Fulbright fellowship for her 1954 trip. According to Darian-Smith, Howard arrived on the cusp of the postwar period in a country that was finding its feet as an industrialized nation. Her visit preceded two important events: the Olympics, held in Melbourne, and the introduction of television, both in 1956. During her Fulbright tenure, Howard experienced an Australia that was developing its modern national pride and the anticipation of communications technology. It was a country increasingly immersed in traditional Christian values, moving forward in the midst of economic upheaval. Howard does not mention these changes, so Darian-Smith’s essay deftly contextualizes the experience. What we do learn from Howard is that children’s folklife...