Media Characters Research Articles

Crowd pleasers: media characters in food company websites and apps for children

PurposeSocial cognitive theory suggests that children may have more favorable attitudes toward food products promoted by media characters who are similar to them, in terms of factors such as age, gender and race-ethnicity. This paper aims to profile the characters in food and beverage websites and apps for children and examine whether the healthfulness of promoted products varies as a function of character background.Design/methodology/approachThis study includes two parallel content analyses focused on websites and apps that were produced by America’s top selling food and beverage companies.FindingsThere were very few child-targeted websites and apps, but those that existed were replete with media characters. These websites/apps tended to feature media characters with diverse gender, age and racial–ethnic backgrounds. However, marketing featuring adult and male characters promoted particularly unhealthy foods.Social implicationsAmerican food companies, many of whom signed voluntary self-regulatory pledges through the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative, should make a more concerted effort to refrain from featuring appealing media characters in child-directed new media marketing. Whether conscious or not, it seems as if food marketers may be leveraging characters to appeal to a wide audience of children of varied demographic backgrounds.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this manuscript is the only research to focus specifically on the demographic profiles (i.e. gender, age and race-ethnicity) of characters in food websites and the nutritional quality of the products they promote. It is also the first to systematically examine media characters in food apps in any capacity.

Meet the media characters from another culture: Influence of ethnocentrism on parasocial interaction.

Meet the media characters from another culture: Influence of ethnocentrism on parasocial interaction.

Geopolítica de los medios de comunicación no presencial y el sistema-mundo

<p align="right"> </p><p>Esta colaboración hace una lectura de algunos aspectos relacionados con una posible crisis sistémica que se esté desarrollando en la actualidad, y sobre el papel que el funcionamiento del sistema de medios de comunicación no presencial podría tener en esta transformación que calificaremos como telúrica y planetaria. Para ello, se hará una distinción sobre el uso de la palabra sistema, y cómo se aplica diferenciadamente en los conceptos de sistema-mundo y de sistema de medios de comunicación no presencial. En segundo lugar, se reflexionará sobre algunas posibles implicaciones geopolíticas que podría tener la ampliación de la esfera de influencia del sistema de medios de comunicación no presencial en el sistema-mundo. Finalmente, se realiza un análisis sobre el ascenso de los personajes mediáticos a través del uso de campos programáticos dentro del sistema mediático que conocemos.</p><p> </p>

How caregivers perceive and mediate children’s books featuring media characters in the United States

ABSTRACTCaregivers manage pre-school children’s media choices; however, most research has examined electronic and digital media, while books remain the predominant medium for this age group. We explore how caregivers perceive and mediate children’s books, with an emphasis on those portraying popular media characters, through two qualitative studies. Through non-participant observation at the public library, we capture how caregivers and children negotiate and choose books. While a few caregivers employed restrictive mediation, most valued children’s book choices, irrespective of content. Our interview study of parents largely supports the findings of our observation study. Some parents revealed their concerns about age-inappropriate or problematic characters and passively avoided the books with those characters. However, parents primarily respected their children’s book preferences. The ways in which caregivers shape their children’s media and book reading are discussed.

The virtues and vices of social comparisons: examining assimilative and contrastive emotional reactions to characters in a narrative

Based on social comparison theory, this study investigates how awareness of one’s morality and exposure to a character in a narrative affect emotions associated with four types of social comparisons—upward assimilative, downward contrastive, upward contrastive, and downward assimilative. A 2 (Morality Salience: virtue, vice) X 2 (Character: moral, immoral) experiment (N = 106) revealed that those whose vices were made salient elicited stronger: (1) contempt (a downward contrastive emotion) toward an immoral character than a moral character, and (2) envy (an upward contrastive emotion) toward a moral character than an immoral character. Whereas envy decreased positive affect, contempt increased it. Implications for assimilative and contrastive social comparisons with media characters that lead to distinct affective outcomes are discussed.

Playing with identity: gender, performance and feminine agency in cosplay

ABSTRACTWomen, as producers and consumers, want both to recognize themselves and be seen in fantasy and science fiction genres. When consuming these entertainments, female fans seek and respond to characters that reflect their experience of self and allow for their desire to tell their own, original stories, regardless of assigned, or assumed gender. Women’s assumption of agency in their embrace of characters across the gendered spectrum is particularly visible in the world of cosplay, where women participate in trans-media ‘produsage’ constructing and performing either faithful representations of canonical media characters, or creating new versions of those same figures. Cosplay communities allow for and embrace both crossplay and gender-bent cosplay, practices which allow women the agency to open new doors in representation of gendered identity. This study will examine aspirational fantasy-character identity construction from the perspective of female cosplayers. With a grounding in essential elements of interdisciplinary beauty theory, including the work of Valéry, Etcoff and Butler, as well as the integration of Axel Brun’s concept of produsage (2006), this paper will use personal interviews with cosplayers assigned the female gender at birth to interrogate how fan interaction with producers creates an opportunity for feminine agency.

Healing and Spirituality: The mganga figure between literature, myths and beliefs

In many parts of Africa, illness, health and misfortune are considered human experiences influenced by spiritual entities, and therefore connected to local beliefs and religion. Consequently, the concept of uganga (healing) reflects the total of knowledge, skills and practices based on theories, beliefs and experiences. The ‘conceptual reality’ can be transformed into imaginative and mnemonic reality through stories, narrations, representations and memories. In my paper, I will show the figures of three men who have been transformed into literary and/or media characters: the prophet-healer Kinjeketile, the witchdoctor Nguvumali, and the “dreamy healer” Ambilikile Mwasapile a retired Lutheran pastor who became a public figure for his self-referential ability to cure diseases such as HIV/AIDS. Though they were different in chronology, history and destinies, they are still linked to the topic of the ‘healing’.

Children’s Parasocial Breakups With Media Characters From the Perspective of the Parent

Children’s parasocial relationships (PSRs) with media characters end through a process called PSR breakups. An online parent report measure was used to describe preschool and school-aged children’s breakups with media characters, as well as the attributes of past and current favorite characters. According to parents ( N = 138), 51% of children experienced PSR breakups. PSRs lasted about two years before a breakup occurred. Past and current favorite characters were animated, human-like, and embedded in fantastical content. Current favorite characters taught fewer academic lessons than past favorite characters. Both boys and girls had current favorite characters that were more gendered in their physical appearance than past favorite characters. However, girls’ current favorite characters had more masculine traits than past favorite characters. Our findings suggest possible avenues for the design of future media characters that can teach as they entertain.

PENERAPAN MEDIA WAREK (WAYANG KARAKTER) UNTUK MENUMBUHKAN NILAI RELIGIUS PADA PEMBELAJARAN MENYIMAK SISWA KELAS 1 SEKOLAH DASAR

The purpose of this study is to know the application of wayang media characters to grow religious values on learning listening to grade 1 students of SDN Plangkrongan 3. Type of this research is descriptive qualitative research. The data in this research are verbal data and nonverbal data. Verbal data that is the recording of the application of wayang characters media to cultivate religious values on learning listening to grade 1 students of SDN Plangkrongan 3. Nonverbal data is the evaluation of listening ability. In this research, the subjects are the first grade teachers of SDN Plangkrongan 3 and the 1st grade students of SDN Plangkrongan 3. Data collection techniques in this research are (a) observation, (b) interview, and (c) test, (d) documentation. In this research data analysis techniques using interactive data analysis, there are three steps: data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion. Implementation of wayang characters media to cultivate religious values on learning listening to grade 1 students of SDN Plangkrongan 3 is already running in accordance with the plan and learning objectives have been achieved. From the results of the evaluation listening given, the results of listening to students is good enough. The average grade of grade V SDN Plangkrongan 3 is 85.6% of the total students 9. All students have been able to answer questions from the fairy tales that have been heard.

The influence of audience characteristics on the effectiveness of brand placement memory

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of audience characteristics (who engage with the media content and characters) on brand placement memory. A theoretical framework was empirically tested to examine the influence of predictor variables that includes cognitive and affective reactions, star liking and identification with character on brand recall, from 420 responses gathered from a stimuli-based questionnaire administered to 18-34 age group audiences. To validate the hypotheses, PLS analysis (a variance-based structural equation modelling technique) was conducted using Smart-PLS. The results demonstrate that pleasure, arousal, cognitive effort and star liking do not have a direct influence on brand recall. However, it has indirect influence on brand recall through identification with a character that plays a significant role in memory of brand placement. Audiences who are highly involved in entertainment content and with characters hold the ability to recall brands placed in entertainment content. This engagement with the content and character ultimately results in brand recall and thereby marketers, production houses and brand placement agencies may target the Indian audiences’ memory of brands movies through media characters.

Parents’ Perceptions of Their Children’s Parasocial Relationships: The Recontact Study

Parent report measures indicate that young children’s parasocial relationships (PSRs) are multidimensional constructs consisting of dimensions such as social realism, attachment and character personification, and human-like needs. However, little is known about how parent perceptions of these dimensions evolve as children mature and form new PSRs. In this 3-year follow-up study, parents ( N = 156) from two previous studies were recontacted, and they provided updated information about their children’s PSRs in an online questionnaire. A principal components analysis revealed that the dimensions of social realism, attachment and character personification, and human-like needs reemerged when children were approximately 6- to 8-years-old and had formed new or retained previous relationships with favorite media characters. A new dimension of character qualities also emerged, paralleling the developmental changes that occur in children’s real friendships. These results clarify parent reports of the dimensions that comprise children’s PSRs and provide descriptive information about the ways in which parent perceptions of children’s PSRs shift as their children mature.

Character Apps for Children's Snacks: Effects of Character Awareness on Snack Selection and Consumption Patterns.

Objective: Media characters are used to market snacks that are typically of poor nutritional value, which has been linked to childhood obesity. This study examines whether children's snack selections and consumption patterns are influenced by an app depicting a popular children's media character, as well as the role that children's awareness of the character plays. The results can increase our understanding of how to encourage healthier snack selection and consumption in newer game-based marketing venues, such as apps.Materials and Methods: Four- and 5-year-old children (N = 132) played a bowling game on an iPad with no character or with a character holding either healthier or unhealthy snacks. After app-play, children selected and consumed healthier or unhealthy snacks. Children's awareness of the character was measured by children's verbalizations of the character's name during or after app-play.Results: An ordered logistic regression found no significant effect of treatment conditions compared with the control group. Within treatment conditions, awareness of the character led to selection and consumption of more healthy snacks in the healthier condition (odds ratio β = 10.340, P = 0.008), and of unhealthy snacks in the unhealthy condition (odds ratio β = 0.228, P = 0.033), but children were unaware that the character influenced their decisions.Conclusions: Results suggest that young children will choose and consume healthier, not just unhealthy, products when they are aware that a popular character in an app is associated with the snack, potentially leading to healthier eating patterns.

Influence of a Character-Based App on Children's Learning of Nutritional Information: Should Apps Be Served with a Side of Media Characters?

Objective: Childhood obesity is a health issue in the United States, associated with marketing practices in which media characters are often used to sell unhealthy products. This study examined exposure to a socially contingent touch-screen gaming app, which replied immediately, reliably, and accurately to children's actions. Children's recall of nutritional content and their liking of the character were assessed.Materials and Methods: Four- and five-year-old children (N = 114) received no-exposure, single-exposure, or repeated-exposure to a character-based iPad app rewarding healthy and penalizing unhealthy behaviors. Children reported how much they liked the character and recalled healthy and unhealthy items from the app. An ordinary least squares regression was conducted on how much children liked the character by condition. Poisson regressions were conducted on the number of items recalled by condition alone, and in an interacted model of treatment condition by liking the character.Results: Children liked the character more in the repeated app-exposure condition than in the control group (P = 0.018). Children in the repeated and single app-exposure conditions recalled more healthy (P < 0.001) and unhealthy (P < 0.001) items than the control group. Within treatment conditions, liking the character increased recall of healthy items in the single app-exposure compared to the repeated app-exposure condition (P = 0.005).Conclusions: Results revealed that repeated exposure increased children's learning of nutritional information and liking of the character. The results contribute to our understanding of how to deliver effective nutrition information to young children in a new venue, a gaming app.

“He acted like a crazy person”: Exploring the influence of college students’ recall of stereotypic media representations of mental illness.

Nearly half of all U.S. adults will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their developmental trajectory, and college students may be particularly vulnerable to experience mental distress. Despite its prevalence, public perception about mental illness remains obscured by misinformation and social stigma. Scholars have long recognized the role that mass media play in cultivating and perpetuating this stigma. The purpose of this study was to survey college students (N = 359) to explore how mass media prime stereotypic conceptions about mental illness and subsequently influence the mechanisms of social stigma. Results indicated that media use predicted higher estimates of the prevalence of mental illness. Participants’ descriptions of mentally ill media characters were characterized by stereotypic attributes including violent behaviors, angry outbursts, childlike behaviors, and severe symptomatology. Recall of stereotypic depictions of mental illness predicted discomfort around people with mental illness, but those participants who defined mental illness using severe symptomatology were more willing to communicate concerns about mental illness. These findings illuminate why it is necessary to assess how audiences perceive media representations of mental illness in order to understand the mechanisms through which mass media shape public perception about mental illness.

Parasocial Relationships with Media Personae: Why They Matter and How They Differ Among Heterosexual, Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adolescents

ABSTRACTParasocial relationships are social bonds audiences develop with media personae. Parasocial relationships may be particularly meaningful for those who experience obstacles developing real-life social bonds. The objective of this study was to examine parasocial relationships among a relationally vulnerable population by surveying lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) adolescents (n = 106). Heterosexual adolescents (n = 321) were surveyed for comparison purposes. Results suggest that LGB adolescents have more other-gender favorite media personae than heterosexual male adolescents. LGB adolescents were more likely to select LGB media personae as their favorites, particularly if they lacked real-life LGB friends. Repeated media exposure, perceived similarity, and attraction were positively correlated with parasocial relationship strength for all adolescents, but loneliness contributed to parasocial relationship strength for LGB adolescents only. LGB adolescents were more likely to report their favorite media personae as important sources of information on a range of issues related to socialization. Though previous research suggests that parasocial relationships supplement real-life social relationships, parasocial relationships may be compensatory for LGB adolescents attempting to fill a relational void left by the absence of real-life LGB peers. Scholars must better dissect parasocial relationships with media characters when considering media’s influence on special populations like LGB adolescents.

Monster High as a Virtual Dollhouse: Tracking Play Practices across Converging Transmedia and Social Media

Background Today, children play in transmedia franchises that bring together media characters, toys, and everyday consumer goods with games, apps, and websites in complex mergers of childhood cultures, digital literacies, consumer practices, and corporate agendas. Recent research on youth videogames and virtual worlds suggests the productive possibilities and tensions in children's imaginative engagements on these commercial playgrounds. Purpose Transmedia websites are conceptualized and analyzed as virtual dollhouses, or assemblages of toys, stories, and imagination that converge digital media, popular media, and social media. In this framing, transmedia websites are not texts to be read but contexts to inhabit. Are virtual dollhouses safe places where children can reimagine the worlds they know and play the worlds they imagine? Are girls doing more than playing simple repetitive games, dressing up avatars, caring for pets, and decorating rooms in virtual dollhouses? Research Design Nexus analysis tracks the histories and social functions of traditional doll-houses, then examines the monsterhigh.com website for these functions and converging practices. In nexus analysis, when practices repeat or support one another across imaginaries, shared normative expectations for ideal players and performances are thickened and amplified. Similarly, conflicting practices create ruptures that disrupt expected trajectories and usual ways of doing things. Nexus analysis of website and game designs and children's YouTube videos identifies repetitions of social practices with the dolls in the commercial website and in child-made films on YouTube social media, making visible the resonances across converging cultural imaginaries as well as ruptures that open opportunities for player agency and redesign. Conclusions As children engage the pretense of virtual dollhouses, they play out blended activities that are at once both simulated and real: dressing their avatars, creating imagined profiles, shopping, playing games, purchasing in-app goods, watching and “liking” videos, recruiting followers/friends, and affiliating with the brand and other fans. These lived-in practices align with particular visions of girlhood that circulate naturalized and normalizing expectations for girls that also converge in these concentrations of media. However, examination of the digital dress-up and online doll play that children produce and share on social media shows that players also make use of the complexity that convergence produces. Children remake imaginaries for their own purposes in ways that both reproduce and rupture these expectations. The analysis points up the need for (a) nuanced and expanded research on children's transmedia engagements, (b) productive play and digital literacies, and (c) critical media literacy in schools.

Moral Intuitions

Abstract. This study tested the relationship between morality and disposition formation proposed by disposition theory using intuitive moral intuitions as indicators of membership in a morality subculture. After completing a measure of intuitive morality, participants read a short scenario varying the morality of a character’s behavior, and then rated their moral approbation of the behavior and liking for the character. Results indicated that moral approbation mediated the relationship between character behavior and character disposition, and that intuitive morality moderated this relationship for the violation condition. Findings highlight the importance of moral intuitions in disposition formation processes, and support the use of intuitive morality in understanding responses to media characters.

Character Types in Brazilian Reality Shows: Cultural Manifestation of a Media Protagonist Syndrome

The article argues that today’s media characters may be understood through a typology. As models of acting, these character types appear in programs that raise ordinary people to the heights of media visibility through reality shows. Our article presents a proposal for mapping the characters in Big Brother Brasil, seasons 4 and 10, and discusses what the character types say about the protagonist syndrome and Brazilian culture.

Parasocial Interactions with Basketball Athletes of Color in Online Mediated Sports

ABSTRACTA two (Black athlete vs. Asian athlete) by two (Black viewer vs. Asian viewer) by two (male vs. female) mixed factorial experiment was designed to examine sports viewers’ parasocial interaction (PSI) with basketball athletes of color. Results found that sports viewers were more likely to exhibit higher PSI when viewing athletes who belonged to their same racial group than viewing those from another racial group. Black viewers showed higher PSI with Black athlete than with Asian athlete. Correspondingly, Asian viewers reported higher PSI with Asian athlete than with Black athlete. Evidence for similarity identification suggested that the more similar media viewers were to media characters, the more likely media viewers were to develop affective bonds with media characters. In the context of online mediated sports, these affective bonds would direct sports viewers to desire greater similarity to athletes, activate them to take athletes’ perspective, and eventually lead them to higher PSI with athletes in online mediated sports.

How Important are Media Characters to You?: The Effects of Media Images on Body Concern

How Important are Media Characters to You?: The Effects of Media Images on Body Concern