Media Effects Theories Research Articles

Television Viewing Frequency and Mode of Delivery Preferences among Primiparous Women in Nairobi, Kenya

Purpose: This study aims to establish television viewing frequency and mode of delivery preferences among primiparous women in Nairobi Kenya, aiming at developing informed strategies to minimize health risks and costs, promoting safer childbirth choices in a media-driven urban environment. Methodology: The study utilized a sequential mixed-methods approach, which involved 300 purposefully selected primiparous women from eleven sub-counties in Nairobi during routine child immunization schedules. Among the participants, 150 had vaginal deliveries, while the remaining underwent elective caesarean deliveries. Data collection was carried out through interviewer-administered questionnaires, focus group discussions, and in-depth interviews. Quantitative analysis involved the use of mean-weight scores, Chi-square tests, and Cramer's V using SPSS version 28.0.1.1(15). Thematic analysis was employed for qualitative data using Nvivo 14 to comprehensively understand the research topic. The findings were presented through both numerical analysis and narrative exploration. Findings: Respondents who underwent elective caesarean deliveries had higher mean TV viewing frequencies on both weekdays and weekends, compared to those who had vaginal deliveries. Both for weekdays and weekends had significant associations with moderate effect sizes. The null hypothesis was rejected due to the significant correlation and linear regression explaining 81.3% of the variability. Each additional weekday TV-watching hour increased the odds in preferring a particular mode of delivery by 40%, and on weekends, by 39%. Qualitative analysis confirmed that viewing frequency is influenced by factors such flexible schedules, cost-effectiveness, accessibility, and content preferences. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study uses cultivation and medicalization theory to establish that television viewing frequency shapes perceptions and subsequent childbirth preferences among urban women, adding to existing body of knowledge on media effects theories. To promote informed childbirth choices, recommendations include encouraging women to critically evaluate media information and seek reliable sources. Additionally, integrating media literacy into antenatal care, implementing targeted campaigns, and researching other media forms beyond television are essential.

Doomscrolling evokes existential anxiety and fosters pessimism about human nature? Evidence from Iran and the United States

The media's adherence to “if it bleeds, it leads” has resulted in global dominance of negative news (e.g., stories of corruption, fraud, shootings, terrorism, and war). The appetite for negative news is fueled by negativity bias, which compels people to prioritize negative over positive stories. This cross-cultural study, inspired by media effect theories such as Cultivation Theory, explored the links between problematic consumption of negative news (doomscrolling), existential anxiety, pessimistic views about human nature, and belief about a just world in two distinct cultures. Participants included convenience samples of Iranian (n = 620) and American (n = 180) university-student social media users. Doomscrolling was associated with elevated levels of existential anxiety in both samples. Additionally, misanthropy was positively associated with doomscrolling only in the Iranian sample. Aligned with the Media-induced PTSD Hypothesis and the Shattered Assumption Theory, our findings suggest that prolonged exposure to negative news can contribute to the development of existential anxiety. Current news framing with its overemphasis on negativity could fuel doomscrolling-inspired existential concerns.

ღია პოლიტიკური რეკლამის დაფარული მნიშვნელობები (2014-2021 წლების ქართული სატელევიზიო პოლიტიკური რეკლამების მაგალითზე)

The development of modern technologies has given rise to the era of visual culture, in which visual information is more important than verbal information, because in most respects, it is more comprehensive with implicit messages. Therefore, we decided to study open political advertisements on Georgian TV, in which visual information often has much more meaning than verbal information. In general, advertising producers, and especially the creators of political advertising, should skillfully use the visual component in order to be able to increase the degree of impact on the consumers by increasing the media space. In order to measure the trends observed in Georgian political marketing in this regard, we analyzed advertisements used for different types of elections from 2014 to 2021. The research period was determined by the following fact: since 2014, Georgian Dream has added a new model - the multi-sided positioning of a candidate - to the variety of open political advertisements created by Georgian political parties - counter-advertisement, propaganda. Our goal was to observe the transformation of open political advertising from 2014 to the municipal elections in 2021. Our research is a novelty from the point of view of methodology, because, despite the fact that, as a rule, open or hidden political advertising has been studied by specialists in different contexts, there has so far been no precedent for the presentation of implicit meanings of Georgian open political advertising based on semiotic analysis and theories of media effects. We believe that it is possible to decipher the hidden meanings of open political advertising based on these two areas - semiotics and theories of media effects. The conducted research has shown that in the process of perception of the message by the recipient, the visual code intervenes and gives direction. The examples studied by us prove that frames are mostly created by visual elements that dictate to the addressee how to perceive the message. Based on the theory of ‘agenda setting’, political marketing professionals offer potential voters the questions to think about before making a final decision and, accordingly, the ways of solving these problems are shown to the audience. Since 2014, Georgian TV open political advertising has been improving, there is a tendency of increasing creative approach, which makes this important part of the election campaign diverse. ‘Falling into negativism’ also decreases and its place is occupied by the type of advertising, which is focused on creative presentation of the candidate and his / her action plan.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation as Mediators Between News Media Consumption and Perceived Migrant Threat

ABSTRACT In recent years, Europe has seen a rise of authoritarian sentiments in both politics and among the public, which is frequently manifested through perceived threats from immigrants. This study investigates the link of news media consumption with right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation through an online survey sample in seven European countries (N = 10,599; Austria, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden). Our findings indicate that viewing commercial television and reading popular newspapers is linked with greater levels of authoritarianism, and, in turn, greater perceived threat. Viewing public service television and reading quality newspapers is linked with lower levels of authoritarianism. We find this both through direct and indirect relationships. This pattern is replicated in most countries, although Hungary is an exception. Here, the pattern of public service and commercial television viewing is reversed. These results offer grounds for refinements and nuances in media effects theories and political debates in Europe.

The education policy of the First Democratic Republic of Georgia, published in the Georgian party press of 1918-1921

We present the education policy of the years of the first Republic of Georgia (1918-1921) by observing the main newspapers of the mentioned period ( "Ertoba", "Sakhalkho Sakme", "Sakartvelo", "Sakartvelos Republika"). As you know, the young democratic republic faced many problems. Addressing the issue of nationalization was largely based on a fundamental transformation of the education system. The return of the native language, first of all, required the Georgianization of the educational program, which, in turn, required both material and intellectual resources. Membership of a large European family was associated with the revival of science in Georgia. The issue of Georgia's territorial integrity was also directly related to public education. Accordingly, the education policy of the Sovereign Republic had to be considered in different contexts. Although not a single work has been devoted to the life of Georgia during the years of independence, they are mainly of a historiographical nature. Our research, in particular, focuses on the specifics of the education policy presented in the media, and in-depth research of the issue in this regard is the main task. Based on the theories of media effects, in particular agenda setting and framing, we have outlined the role of the media in leading to a highly contradictory path to education reform. It turned out that the formation of an education system in the Georgian multi-party press was one of the priority issues and different parties pursued a uniform policy on this issue. The media message was as follows: we would connect Europe with the development of science, and we would become a member of the European family only if we were a full-fledged nation. The framework of these messages is defined by the spatial orientation of Georgia - Georgia, not through Russia, but should be directly connected to Europe.

Çevrimiçi Mez/Dezenformasyonun Tespit Edilmesinde Algılanan Yetkinlik: Üçüncü Kişi Etkisini Yeniden Düşünmek

The third person effect coined by Davison, provides a different perspective from media effect theories as it mainly deals with beliefs about media effects rather than its direct influence on individuals. The literature on TPE has demonstrated a broad perspective in exploring perceptual bias in various media contexts as well as conditions to magnify TPE. The issue of digital disinformation has increased the number of studies as it has provided a different perspective in context of the third person effect. The threat caused by COVID-19 has led an increase in health news consumption causing a wide spread of mis/disinformation about the origin, prevention and treatment of the pandemic. Considering source credibility as a moderator in testing TPE hypothesis, people will likely to think that mis-and disinformation online will have a greater effect on others and may depend on their perceived competence in spotting mis- and disinformation online when judging its effect on oneself and others. Therefore, the research aims at exploring the way individuals perceive the effects of health-related mis/disinformation and the possible variables influencing TPE.A survey-based study of 767 Turkish internet users was conducted in January 2021. Paired simple T-test to explore third person effect and hierarchical regression analysis to investigate factors associated with TPE were performed. Results revealed that biased third-person effects existed regarding health related mis/disinformation online and perceived competence to detect mis/disinformation online and exposure to digital mis/disinformation were the significant predictors of TPE.

Social media use and friendship closeness in adolescents' daily lives: An experience sampling study.

The formation and maintenance of friendship closeness is an important developmental task in adolescence. To obtain insight in real-time processes that may underly the development of friendship closeness in middle adolescence, this preregistered experience sampling study [ESM] investigated the effects of social media use on friendship closeness. The study was conducted among 387 adolescents (54% girls; Mage = 14.11 years; 96% Dutch) from different educational tracks (44% lower prevocational secondary education, 31% intermediate general secondary education, 26% academic preparatory education). Adolescents reported six times per day for 3 weeks on their Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat use in the previous hour and their momentary experiences of friendship closeness (126 assessments; 34,930 observations). Multilevel analyses revealed positive between-person associations of friendship closeness with general WhatsApp use and Instagram use with close friends. In contrast, at the within-person level, we found small negative overall associations of general WhatsApp use and Instagram use (with and without close friends) with friendship closeness. However, there was large heterogeneity in the person-specific effect sizes of the within-person associations of social media use with friendship closeness. For example, person-specific effect sizes of the association of Instagram use with close friends with friendship closeness ranged from β = -.745 to β = .697. These results underline the importance of acknowledging person-specific effects in developmental and media effect theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Contingent Europeanism in EU candidate states: effects from immigration news framing on European civic and cultural identity in North Macedonia

ABSTRACT How does European identity manifest itself outside the European Union? How does it come to being, and what is the role of the immigration phenomenon capturing the continent in this dynamic? To examine the different meanings of Europeanism held by citizens of EU candidate states, and the routes through which they are acquired in the context of the ‘European migrant crisis,’ I draw from media effects theory, conducting a survey experiment whose factorial design combines the most common frames in immigration coverage (valence and episodic/thematic frames). Using the Republic of North Macedonia as a case study, this analysis finds evidence that the feeling of belonging to Europe among non-EU nationals are contingent on media exposure, and that emotions are the mechanism which mediates the relationship between news frames and identification adjustments.

Political Influence of Online Platforms: YouTube’s Place in European Politics

Social media platforms are today one of the primary means of political expression and campaigning. The growing entanglement of politics with the online sphere raises interest in how these new types of media shape the social and political reality. While previous research tends to focus on Twitter and Facebook, limited works exists on the political influence of YouTube. This is even though YouTube is the second-most visited website and provides unique ways of engaging users and disseminating political messages through the combination of rich communication functionality with immersive audio-visual media content. Unfortunately, the influence of social media platforms such as YouTube on politics is difficult to analyse, due a lack of transparency and qualitative data. Independent researchers and the public have limited ways to access meaningful statistics about the video service. This article derives a taxonomy to classify YouTube’s ways of political influence from a case-study-driven analysis of YouTube in the European political landscape. Our taxonomy aligns with traditional theoretical concepts from media effects theory, particularly framing, priming and agenda-setting. We provide a brief discussion of the current regulatory landscape in the EU, and highlight gaps that might need improvement. We conclude by considering the question of whether YouTube is a political actor.

User-Generated Crisis Communication: Exploring Crisis Frames on Twitter during Hurricane Harvey

ABSTRACT Traditional mass media effect theories place the burden of crisis communication on the organization or media. Analysis of user-generated content alongside traditional media and organizational content can provide insight into how the general public views the event and their information needs. Twitter was used for this study since it is frequently used for news information. A content analysis of tweets made during Hurricane Harvey by users, organizations, and traditional media showed that Twitter users are using similar frames, and many times collectively framing the situation before the organization or media. Findings indicate an increasing role of user-generated messages during a crisis and a need for an integrated approach by organizations and the media.

The Normative Theories of the Press in the Digital Age: A Need for Revision

Digital communication is changing media practice, relationship between individuals, media, government and society. We are of the opinion that in the wake of the increasingly complex media environment, the philosophical assumptions of some normative media theories and the media effects theories require reexamination as new models are needed given the current realities. The Delphi method was used to gather experts’ opinions of practicing mass communication practitioners on the applicability of the normative theories given the current social realities. This work focuses on not only the dominant normative theories but also several other proposals and calls for revisit of normative theories of the media developed over the years by scholars in the united states, united kingdom, continental Europe and minimally, third world scholars with a new chart for the rethinking process.

KAJIAN SEJARAH DAN PERKEMBANGAN TEORI EFEK MEDIA

Media is one of the important needs for the community, but the media has an effect on the community both directly and indirectly. In Media Effects Theory three paradigms are used by the media to find out the effects of these media. The first paradigm, called the powerful effects paradigm (Direct Effects Models), the media is said to have enormous power so that members of the isolated and anonymous audience of this mass audience will surrender immediately. The second paradigm is the minimalist effect or the limited effects paradigm (Limited Effects Models), the media seen in audience control over selectivity. The third paradigm of cumulative effects (Cumulative Effects Models), the community has too much potential for media in limited exposure. At present, the research on the theory of media effects has developed sufficiently to the extent of several specific sub-areas of research
 Key word : Theory of media effects

Theoretical Foundations of Social Media Power in Hospitality and Tourism: A Hierarchical Model

There has been exponential growth in the power exercised by social media in hospitality and tourism. The power of social media platforms as stakeholders has been widely accepted by both academics and industry practitioners. However, to the best of the current authors’ knowledge, there has been no conceptualization of the power attributable to social media. On this basis, it is both timely and necessary to establish theoretical grounds that explain the concept of social media power and its application in hospitality and tourism. A hierarchical model that characterizes social media power is constructed in the present article by bringing together fundamental power discourses, media effect theories, and technology determinism. The authors identify definitions and sources of social media power at different levels of the power pyramid and present various technological mechanisms that trigger such sources. This conceptual study proposes theoretical foundations for future research and theory-building.

Media’s role in pro-environmental practice changes – proposing an ANT perspective

ABSTRACTThe content of media texts should be considered as a critical factor in the constitution, maintenance and transition of practices. That is the outset and basic point of this article, which suggests an actor-network theoretical approach in order to provide a better understanding of the role media can play in pro-environmental practice changes. There is an exchange between articulations in media texts and performances of social practice, and the study of meaning content in media texts and media-practice interactions is therefore useful in the analysis of societal transition processes. From a critical discussion of conventional media effect theories, the article proceeds to its main objective of presenting ANT as a useful approach in the analysis of media-practice interactions. It is suggested that texts and the meaning units within them can be conceived as actors, which connect to other human and non-human actors in and beyond media texts.

Trust in government: What’s news media got to do with it?

In modern democracies, trust in government is a key indicator of political legitimacy and stability. Drawing from theories of media effects, we investigated whether using traditional media has a negative (media malaise hypothesis) or a positive (virtuous circle hypothesis) impact on trust in the national government. We used a serial mediation model involving evaluations of politicians and evaluations of the political process as mediators of how political communications influence trust in government. To test the model empirically, we conducted an online survey among 1 115 respondents in Germany. Results suggest that the use of traditional media to access political information has a direct positive impact on trust in government mediated by people’s evaluations of politicians and of the political process. We also found a positive serial mediation effect of using traditional media on trust in government mediated first by evaluations of politicians and second by evaluations of the political process.

A Contextual Analysis of Community Radio Programming and Peace Promotion in Political Campaigns in Kenya: A Case of Migori County

With their ability to reach and influence a large number of people, community radios wield immense power in shaping the course of political discourse and contestations. Although many examples of the media’s negative contribution to escalation of violence and conflicts exist, fair and accurate journalism that builds confidence and counteracts misperceptions has the potential to transform and prevent political violence. Migori County is listed by the National Commission on Integration and Cohesion(NCIC) as one of the political violence hotspots in Kenya. The aim of this study was to investigate both programme genre and broadcast content of three community radios in the region. The objectives of the study were: To establish whether Milambo Radio 103.8 FM, Radio Tarumbeta 90.4 FM and Radio Rameny88.3 FM have programmes designed for promoting peaceful political campaigns in Migori County; to determine the extent to which such programmes are used in promoting peaceful political campaigns and to explore strategies through which the programmes may be made more effective in promoting peaceful political campaigns. The study used face-to-face interviews, focus group discussions and document analysis. Agenda Setting Theory supported by the Media Effects Theory were used.

Investigating the relationship between social media consumption and fear of crime: A partial analysis of mostly young adults

Theories of media effects have long established a link between media consumption and fear of crime. To date, prior investigations have almost exclusively focused on traditional types of media content (e.g., television news) or entertainment media (e.g., crime-related shows). However, less is known how social media consumption may influence individuals' levels of fear. Using data collected from a multisite sample of mostly young adults, the present study assesses: (1) the relationship between various types of social media consumption (overall, general news, and crime-related content) and fear of crime and (2) whether these relationships differ based on key audience characteristics. Findings reveal that overall social media consumption is significantly related to fear of crime and this relationship varies by perceptions of safety.

Pope John Paul II and Media Effects Theory: Audiences and Messages Interface

Pope John Paul II and Media Effects Theory: Audiences and Messages Interface

More than Social–Cultural Influences: A Research Agenda for Evolutionary Perspectives on Prosocial Media Effects

Prosocial media effects, short- and long-term intrapersonal changes in prosocial personality traits, values, emotions, and behavior caused by media use, have attracted much less attention than media violence research. Empirical examinations of current theories of prosocial media effects have focused on the indirect effects of prosocial media that explain why exposure to it results in prosocial behavior. However, they have neglected other types of media effects. Further, because of philosophical biases in the field of communication, only the social-cultural perspective has been used to explain the psychological antecedents and consequences of prosocial media effects. The origins and ultimate functions of prosociality in the processes of media effects are unknown. The intersection of evolutionary theories and media effects theories provides a more comprehensive explanation of prosocial media effects. Using various evolutionary perspectives on altruism, reciprocity, and cooperation, this article synthesizes 4 types of prosocial media effects: selective, indirect, conditional, and transactional, suggesting that the dramatic prosocial media learning process should be considered from a comprehensive nature-nurture interactive view. The research agenda, implications, and recent methodological advances are highlighted.

Brain, Mind, and Media

Brain, Mind, and Media