bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Terror Management Theory: Mortality Salience
Authors: Rhodes Nancy
Published: September 2020

Terror management theory (TMT) describes how humans cope with the existential terror aroused by mortality salience—the awareness that all creatures must die—juxtaposed with the instinct to survive. Proximal defenses such as denial and repression relieve this terror in the short run, but these thoughts can remain activated outside conscious awareness. Distal defenses, which come into play to address unconscious mortality salience, include worldview defense and bolstering self‐esteem. Experimental manipulations to increase death‐thought accessibility include having people write a paragraph about their own death. The operation of distal defenses can be observed after a delay involving a distracting cognitive task. These distal defenses include: favoring people in one's ingroup, denigrating people in the outgroup, and expressing one's national identity. By defending one's worldview and self‐esteem, these defenses relieve existential terror through symbolic immortality. TMT has been studied extensively in the context of health communication, because it is thought that many fear‐inducing health messages implicitly or explicitly engage thoughts of death. The terror management health model has been developed to describe the application of TMT to health contexts. TMT has also been studied in the political arena, because worldview defense is often defined as expressions of one's political ideology. The ways in which people defend their ideology is of interest to political scientists. The theory has been criticized because the role of emotion (fear and anxiety) has been unclear, and its conception of survival instinct is at odds with current thinking in evolutionary theory.
Involvement
Authors: Shen Lijiang
Published: September 2020

This entry summarizes how the construct of involvement is treated in different models of persuasion and media effects, including its definition, typology, and its impact on persuasion and media effects. Involvement in persuasion and media effects is differentiated from a similar construct in narrative communication. The definitions and measurement of different types of involvement are presented, and their impact on persuasion and media effects discussed.
Influence of Presumed Media Influence
Authors: Tal‐Or Nurit , Tsfati Yariv
Published: September 2020

The influence of presumed media influence (IPMI) is a theory of media effects that suggests that people react not necessarily to media content per se but to their perceptions of how the media affects others. The theory originated from Davison's notion of the third‐person effect, describing people's tendency to perceive that others are more strongly affected by media compared to themselves. Later, the IPMI model was more fully articulated and conceptualized as a media effect by Gunther and Storey. Three major categories of presumed media influence are offered: prevention (related to “the impulse to stop or limit the dissemination of an apparently harmful message”); coordination (in order to achieve their goals, people temporarily change their behavior in response to the presumed effects on others); and normative influences (the active acceptance or defiance of deeper and more stable social norms in response to the presumed effects on others). The main methodological issues preoccupying IPMI scholars relate to causality (whether the consequences of presumed influence are truly its consequences or its antecedents) and how to best operationalize the theory's independent variable (as the perceived influence on others, or as the difference between the perceived influence on others and self).
Opinion Leaders
Authors: Boster Franklin J.
Published: September 2020

This entry elucidates the opinion leader construct, distinguishing it from positional leadership and from elites. The attributes of high connection in a social network, high persuasiveness, and mavenness characterize the opinion leader. In contrast to the notion of a generalized opinion leader, the argument advocates the position of a fuzzy domain‐specific knowledge (mavenness) conception of the opinion leader. Subsequent discussion focuses on methods of identifying opinion leaders, including both self‐report and observational methods. A treatment of the effects of opinion leadership, distinguishing effects on beliefs, attitudes, and behavior, ensues, followed by acknowledgement of opposing viewpoints. The entry also acknowledges limitations of the associated two‐step flow model, that is, in some cases only one step may occur, whereas in other cases multiple steps may emerge. It then concludes with recommendations for advancing opinion leadership scholarship, including a sketch of the types of experiments and subsequent cumulation of evidence required to draw firm conclusions as to the usefulness of the concept of the opinion leader.
Agenda Building
Authors: Vu Hong Tien
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an overview of Lang and Lang's agenda‐building model. It describes the theoretical rationale, arguments, and a four‐step model that the two scholars proposed in order to cover for conceptual and methodological flaws in agenda‐setting research. Lang and Lang's model examines the reciprocal influence between different actors including the news media, the public, and political figures. Using the Watergate case, the Langs theorized the process in which an event develops to become an issue of concern in the media agenda. Although it is recognized for its comprehensiveness in assessing such a process, the model has suffered a lack of interest because of the challenges in its applicability.
Process Model of the Formation of Spatial Presence
Authors: Hofer Matthias
Published: September 2020

Spatial presence is defined as the experience of being located in a mediated environment and being able to act within this environment. The process model of the formation of spatial presence describes the emergence of spatial presence as a two‐step process. The first step consists of the formation of a mental model of the mediated environment. In the second step this mental model becomes the user's primary frame of reference. In other words, the user feels spatially present within this mediated and not his or her actual environment. At both stages of the formation process media and user variables (both personality traits and processes) can enhance or hinder the formation of a mental model or the feeling of spatial presence, respectively. This entry gives a short overview of the presence concept and discusses theory of and research on the model by Wirth and colleagues.
Empowerment
Authors: Li Zongchao Cathy
Published: September 2020

Empowerment is a broad concept discussed across multiple disciplines. Empowerment could refer to the act of granting power to others, the internal mental process of the individual being empowered, or the outcome of being empowered. When discussed at the individual level, empowerment is referred to as psychological empowerment. When studied at the organization level, empowerment concerns the organization structures, policies, and practices. When examined in the context of digital media, studies from consumer research, political studies, and gender research offer useful insights regarding digital and social media empowerment.
Sleeper Effect
Authors: Kleinnijenhuis Jan
Published: September 2020

A
sleeper effect
of a message can be defined as a delayed increase in the effect size of that message. The sleeper metaphor entails its concern with the awakening of persuasive power after a period of sleep. A sleeper effect of messages from low‐credibility sources was established in the pioneering work of Carl Hovland and colleagues. Such an unconditioned effect was not found in follow‐up research. A 2004 meta‐study limited the sleeper effect to cases in which a highly credible message was discounted, either by its attribution to a low‐credibility source or by message disclaimers. The explanation of the sleeper effect is the fast decay of message sources in memory compared to the slower decay of message memory. Scholars who investigated the strong persuasive power of exemplars hypothesized that the slow decay of exemplars would explain the sleeper effect. Other research on sleeper effects does not rely on memory decay, but on delayed events that trigger the awakening of the persuasive power of old messages. Negative news may immediately lead to distrust in incumbent political leaders, while party loyalty remains unaffected until a shocking event, such as the murder of an opposition leader, triggers the awakening of the impact of distrust on party choice (i.e., a loss for the incumbent parties). In the age of digital media, many different types of sleeper effects are to be expected. Investigating them and incorporating them into a single theory of sleeper effects is a major intellectual challenge.
Agenda‐Setting
Authors: Markiewitz Antonia , Arendt Florian
Published: September 2020

The basic agenda‐setting hypothesis states that the media contribute to what issues the public considers to be important. The agenda‐setting approach comes with a long research tradition and is said to be among the top theoretical perspectives being discussed when it comes to media effects. Importantly, meta‐analytic evidence supports the idea of agenda‐setting. Over the last decades, the basic agenda‐setting approach has been refined and conceptually extended. This entry provides an overview of the pioneer work and its basic assumptions; also, it presents newer avenues of research and developments on a conceptual level, such as second‐level/attribute agenda‐setting, agenda‐building, theorizing on the underlying mechanisms, and the relevance of social media in the agenda‐setting domain. Furthermore, this entry provides an overview of the typical methodological paradigms used in this research. By doing this, it emphasizes and confirms the importance attributed to the agenda‐setting phenomenon by the scientific community. In fact, the idea of agenda‐setting is still of utmost importance, and thus should be included in the conceptual toolbox of every media scholar conducting research on media effects.
General Aggression Model
Authors: Bushman Brad J. , Anderson Craig A.
Published: September 2020

The general aggression model, or GAM for short, is a metatheory for understanding the roots of aggression. The GAM is especially useful for understanding how exposure to violent media can increase aggression. In the GAM, personal and situational variables independently and interactively influence a person's internal states (cognition, affect, arousal), which eventually influence behavior. Some people might be more vulnerable to violent media effects than other people, such as people who strongly identify with violent media characters or people who are characteristically aggressive. Such individual differences are personal variables. Exposure to violent media is a situational variable. Thus, there are three routes through which exposure to violent media can increase aggression—through aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and physiological arousal. Exposure to violent media increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and physiological arousal. Exposure to violent media also decreases feelings of empathy and compassion for others. Internal states, in turn, influence the attributions, decisions, and appraisals a person makes, such as whether an ambiguous action was accidental or intentional. Research shows that exposure to violent media increases hostile appraisals. That is, people who consume violent media are less likely to give someone the benefit of doubt. These findings explain why exposure to violent media increases aggression and decreases helping. People who have aggressive thoughts, who feel angry inside, who are aroused and stressed out, and who make hostile appraisals are especially likely to hurt others and especially unlikely to help others.
Media Equation
Authors: Lee‐Won Roselyn J. , Joo Yeon Kyoung , Park Sung Gwan
Published: September 2020

Research based on the media equation has shown that people treat nonhuman technological objects and mediated representations socially and naturally. In their seminal works, Reeves and Nass conducted experiments replicating well‐established social science findings on how people behave in a natural environment or with other people, only changing the experiment procedures and materials to have participants perform tasks with mediated representations or with computers. The Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) framework, extending the media equation, has highlighted that social responses to computers are primarily driven by mindless application of overlearned social scripts, not by conscious and deliberate anthropomorphizing; the CASA framework has also contributed to elucidating some of the boundary conditions (e.g., mindlessness, anthropomorphism, information processing style) and the role of agency perceptions in social responses to computers. In the contemporary media environment where agents, robots, and artificial intelligence are becoming ubiquitous, the media equation/CASA framework will continue to advance the efforts to understand human–media interaction and relationship.
Media Use and Materialism
Authors: Lee Shu‐Yueh
Published: September 2020

Research studies indicate that media use can contribute to the development of audience materialism. Primarily guided by cultivation analysis, social learning, and social comparison theory, the studies of media use and materialism began with concerns about the influence of television on viewers' materialistic values. With the change in media consumption shifting to be more personalized and selective in recent years, research has turned to study the effects of media celebrities and specific media content such as that found in reality shows. However, it also extends its scope to new media, such as social media. Even though the impact of media use on materialism is widely supported by various studies, it is important to note that the effects are either universal or consistent throughout all studies. The emergence and strength of media effects on materialism are moderated and mediated by various factors.
Ecological Systems Theory in Media Research
Authors: Gee Elisabeth
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an introduction to Uri Bronfenbrenner's original ecological systems theory and its later instantiation as bioecological systems theory, issues associated with the application of these models, and implications for media scholarship. Bronfenbrenner's initial theory stressed the importance of context in human development, and provided a framework including the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. Bioecological systems theory elaborated the role of proximal processes, person attributes, and time, as well as context in development. Media researchers have proposed various ways to incorporate media into Bronfenbrenner's ecological framework, and his broader bioecological model offers a valuable, if complex, starting point for investigations of the role of media in development and learning across the lifespan.
Family Systems Theory in Media Research
Authors: Wallace Heather Sedges
Published: September 2020

Whatever form a family takes, the core and essential element is that it is a system made up of a group of people who interact with one another and therefore influence others in the system. Bowen's family systems theory is a framework used to understand healthy and unhealthy family relationships as they contribute to identity development. Family systems theory is most often used in clinical/therapeutic settings with families, to understand developmental processes of individuals and family groups, and to inform the creation of prevention and intervention strategies. This entry first defines this notion of family systems theory, then specifies the contexts of its application, and concludes with an exploration of how this theoretical frame is used specifically in the field of media research.
Information Processing Theory
Authors: Herrera Carolina M. , Goldstein Sara E. , Boxer Paul
Published: September 2020

Information processing theory stipulates generally that the human mind functions and makes decisions in a manner similar to a computer: Inputs accrue from the social environment and the emotion reactivity system and are subsequently processed, leading ultimately to behavioral outputs. In the context of media psychology—how media can activate, shape, and sustain habitual patterns of human behavior—information processing theories offer a well‐elaborated framework for explaining how the unidirectional and transactional
inputs
of the media environment can lead to the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral
outputs
of the individual. This entry presents an overview of the research underpinning information processing theoretical approaches to understanding development and behavior, and delineates how these approaches can account for the role of media in socialization and social interaction over time.
Parental Mediation of Media Use and Effects
Authors: Warren Ron
Published: September 2020

Parental mediation refers to parents' efforts to monitor and regulate children's and adolescents' media use, as well as their comments and discussion about media content with their children. Mediation has nearly always assumed a purpose of preventing negative media effects. However, definitions of the concept have evolved as new media technologies have given children increasingly private and mobile access to media content. Within the family, a complex array of parent‐ and child‐related demographic, social, psychological, and other factors has been linked to parents' frequency of mediation. Parents and children often disagree about the amount of mediation or its meaning in their relationship, especially as children navigate adolescence. In this regard, parents face a dual challenge of adapting their mediation strategies to their developing child, while at the same time acknowledging the child's growing independence. Over three decades of research indicates that these strategies can be important in fostering healthier patterns of media use among children, as well as in the prevention of negative effects of an array of media content.
Developmental Changes in Fright Reactions Through the Life Span
Authors: Martin Rebecca M.
Published: September 2020

This entry discusses the development of fright across the life span, focusing on what causes fright at different ages and the reactions to frightening media. In general, younger children are frightened by more fantastical portrayals, while older children, adolescents, and adults are more frightened by realistic images. There is some evidence that enjoyment of frightening media increases during adolescence and early adulthood, but then decreases as one ages. At all ages, frightening media can cause anxiety and stress and have an impact on behavior. Children may avoid activities related to frightening media they have seen, such as avoiding water after viewing a drowning. Adults may have greater fears of crime and terrorism based on exposure to these topics in news media.
Appreciation and Eudaimonic Reactions to Media
Authors: Eden Allison
Published: September 2020

Entertainment has historically been associated with enjoyment. Yet, many experiences considered under the label of entertainment are not particularly
enjoyable
for viewers, and may instead evoke feelings of sadness, pensiveness, or mixed affect. Attempting to answer the question of why audiences would select media which do not promote hedonic pleasure, researchers have suggested that appreciation may better describe the experience of liking media which provokes mixed affect. Appreciation of media is thought to promote long‐term goals such as life improvement and self‐betterment, in line with the philosophical concept of eudaimonia. This entry examines appreciation‐based responses to media in terms of short‐ and long‐term outcomes.
Parasocial Relationships and Affective and Emotional Character Engagement
Authors: Giles David C.
Published: September 2020

The affective and emotional engagement that audiences have with media figures has been studied in media psychology under the broad category of parasocial interaction. First coined by Horton and Wohl, parasocial interaction is usually interpreted as a sense of intimacy engendered through media use with one or more figures who would otherwise remain unknown to the user. Such figures include real people, dead people, fictional characters, and nonhuman figures both real and fictional. Over many years researchers have devised numerous ways of studying this interaction, mostly through the method of psychometric scaling. In most studies, media users have been asked to select a favorite figure (from a specific genre or category) and to agree or disagree with a set of statements about them, with a view to measuring strength of attachment. Earlier studies have been critiqued for conflating the interaction that takes place during an episode of media use (e.g., watching a TV show) with that persisting across time. It is now more usual to refer to the latter phenomenon as a parasocial relationship, and measures have been devised that differentiate this from the actual experience of parasocial interaction during media use itself. Various other phenomena related to parasocial interaction have been observed, including the different types of relationship, parallels between parasocial and everyday social interaction, the termination of parasocial relationships, and parasocial interaction with disliked figures.
Research on the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars
Authors: Hahn Lindsay , Tamborini Ron
Published: September 2020

Researchers have traditionally studied media's impact on morality indirectly, by examining topics of moral concern (e.g., sex and violence). Most of this research was based on rationalist models, which argued that moral judgment resulted from deliberative reasoning about right and wrong. Contemporary dual‐process models in moral psychology argue, instead, that most moral judgments result from gut reactions of right or wrong, which are then justified by rational thought. Building on social intuitionist perspectives, these gut reactions can be understood as
moral intuitions
, or instinctive sensitivities that generate positive or negative affect in response to actions that are beneficial or detrimental to others. One dual‐process approach, the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME), describes a process of reciprocal influence between media content and moral intuitions. Research examining the model is consistent with its underlying logic, which predicts that moral intuitions are susceptible to media influence. Exposure to moral exemplars in media can temporarily increase the salience (in conscious thought) or accessibility (in preconscious thought) of moral intuitions and influence subsequent decision‐making. Repeated exposure to such exemplars can increase an intuition's chronic salience/accessibility and predict habitual audience behavior. The MIME holds that these processes play an important role in shaping moral judgments, content appeal, and the production of media designed to match audience preferences. More recent advancements to the model have examined the inclusion of
egoistic intuitions
, or instinctive sensitivities to actions that can harm or benefit the self. This entry describes the MIME's logic and reviews current related research.
Suspense
Authors: Bálint Katalin E.
Published: September 2020

Suspense is a key component of entertaining narratives. It is discussed in relation to narrative scenarios in which the character is placed in a charged situation with potential alternative outcomes. The term suspense can be approached in two ways: (i) it can refer to the suspense structure, which is the discourse structure of a narrative sequence containing an initiating event, outcome delay, and outcome event; (ii) it can denote felt suspense, which is the pattern of experience in the audience characterized by high intensity of apprehension, tension, fear, and hope, and increased attentional focus and predictive inference. Suspense structures present narrative events chronologically and often share more story information with the audience than with the character. Suspense structures can be found in various genres and modalities. Important antecedent conditions of felt suspense are a high degree of character engagement and significant outcome value. Empathy and counter‐empathy are important psychological processes channeling feelings during a suspense scene towards liked and disliked characters respectively. Outcome delay is an effective tool to build up tension during a suspense scene. The enjoyment of suspense has been explained by the need for escapism theory, the excitation transfer theory, and the social comparison theory. The level of felt suspense can be assessed by self‐report and psychophysiological measures.
Guilt and Media Use
Authors: Reinecke Leonard , Meier Adrian
Published: September 2020

Media use is often referred to as a “guilty pleasure.” In fact, a growing number of studies provide empirical evidence of a high prevalence of guilt reactions to media use. Negative self‐conscious emotions such as guilt are elicited by actions or events that are incongruent with the individual's personal standards or identity goals. In the context of media use, guilt reactions can be triggered by perceived incongruence with personal standards on three different levels of evaluation: (i) Media users may perceive that specific mediacontent(e.g., pornography or graphic violence) conflicts with personal or external standards. (ii) Guilt can also be the result of useractions performed within interactive media(e.g., immoral behavior in a computer game or on social media). (iii) Finally, guilt may also be triggered by negative appraisal ofmedia use as an activity per se. This is particularly likely if media use is perceived as meaningless or if it conflicts with other situational goals and obligations. Extant research has linked guilt reactions to decreased media enjoyment and media‐induced recovery as well as impaired situational well‐being.
Gain‐ and Loss‐Based Frames
Authors: Ledford Victoria A. , Nan Xiaoli
Published: September 2020

Psychologists, health communication scholars, and researchers across disciplines have long sought to understand how the framing of a message, in terms of what individuals may gain (or lose) from following (or not following) the message's recommendation, affects an audience's compliance with that message. This entry provides an overview of this body of research, synthesizing key findings from the 1980s onward into a cohesive review that offers theoretical and practical guidance for academic researchers and practitioners across disciplines. It presents evidence about the relative persuasiveness of gain and loss frames, and findings on the moderators and mediators in the framing‐persuasion relationship; discusses traditional and new media applications of gain/loss framing; presents a step‐by‐step process to developing gain and loss frames; and suggests avenues for future research. It should provide a more holistic understanding of gain/loss framing that can be used to inform theory and practice.
Motivated Cognition
Authors: Rheu Minjin (MJ)
Published: September 2020

Motivated cognition is an approach emphasizing that individuals' motivation directs cognitive processes. Since the 1970s, it has been one of the most influential views of information processing, engendering many interesting theories. This entry aims to introduce some of the most influential classic studies that contributed to the development of the motivated cognition approach and provide an overview of diverse theories based on the motivated cognition approach, such as self‐evaluation maintenance theory, self‐affirmation theory, and cognitive adaptation theory. Further, it discusses how motivated cognition has been applied in communication and media research.
Executive Function
Authors: Xiong Shili , Duff Brittany R.
Published: September 2020

This entry provides an introduction to executive functions in the context of media usage. The term “executive functions” refers to a series of top‐down mental processes (inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) needed to allocate attention and efforts to certain things. This entry reviews some of the existing uses of specific executive functions in scholarly media literature (e.g., Internet use addiction and self‐regulation; cognitive processing capacity and working memory; media multitasking and distractor inhibition/task switch, etc.). It also suggests areas of executive functions that appear underexplored (e.g., cognitive flexibility, the causal relationship between media usage and executive function) in media literature.
Cultivation and Psychological Processes
Authors: Coenen Lennert
Published: September 2020

Cultivation is often referenced as one of the most influential traditions in the history of media research. The original purpose of cultivation studies was to investigate if media portrayals of social reality would bias people's perceptions of the real world and, thus, gradually alter society's norms, values, and customs. The field was quickly met with substantial criticisms, however, especially with regard to its testing procedures. Cultivation studies typically only reported correlations between measurements of television viewing and people's reality perceptions, and critics noted that this type of evidence was insufficient to conclude that television was, in fact, biasing people's belief systems. In response, cultivation scholars started to research the psychological processes that would explain their correlations and, thus, add validity to their theoretical claims. The processing models resulting from these efforts have had an enormous influence on the cultivation literature over the past three decades. However, they have also been subject to many criticisms themselves and, as a result, the viability of the cultivation research remains a topic of controversy.
Edutainment
Authors: Hoeken Hans
Published: September 2020

For centuries, narratives have been used to teach people a lesson, thereby combining education and entertainment. These narratives sketch two landscapes: the landscape of action depicts actions and their consequences whereas the landscape of consciousness reveals the intentions, thoughts, and feelings of the characters. The extent to which people learn from narratives depends on the narrative's ability to engage its audience. Two types of engagement are distinguished: transportation (the feeling of being an invisible witness to the story events) and identification (taking an interest in a specific character's well‐being). Depending on the type of engagement, the audience will take home a different lesson. The level of transportation differs as a result of both personal characteristics and the way in which the story is told; in a similar vein does identification depend on the audience's perceptions of the character's similarity and likeability as well as from whose perspective the story events are told or experienced. The story's educational message can be relatively implicit which implies that the audience may miss the message or draw unintended conclusions. The explicit mentioning of the intended message in the form of an epilogue can redress this problem but may also evoke resistance in audience members depending on their level of engagement.
Cue Theory
Authors: Arriaga Patrícia , Santos Anabela Caetano
Published: September 2020

There has been considerable debate about media effects, especially concerning the effect of exposure to violence on cognition, emotions, and aggressive behavior. Leonard Berkowitz systematically researched aggression and was an influential author who investigated the effects of this exposure in the 1960s. Berkowitz's contribution to the field of media exposure and the empirical evidence of his work are summarized and discussed in this entry. One of his early contributions was the “weapons‐effect” hypothesis suggesting that aggression could be influenced by the presence of aggressive cues. He then developed the cognitive neoassociative model of affective aggression, which made important contributions to the discussion about the effects of exposure to violent movies, television, and video games. Several authors have replicated his studies and his theoretical model is still being used in research to address important societal problems.
Heuristic‐Systematic Model
Authors: Winter Stephan
Published: September 2020

The heuristic‐systematic model (HSM) by Chaiken and colleagues describes how people form attitudes in response to persuasive appeals. It distinguishes an effortful mode of processing in which individuals carefully scrutinize the given information and a lower‐effort mode in which they employ rules of thumb (heuristics). Furthermore, it specifies how these modes can co‐occur and how they are affected by information processors' motivations (accuracy, defense, and impression motivation). This entry provides an overview of the assumptions of the model and empirical findings in the realm of media psychology. Additionally, criticism toward the model and implications for future research are discussed.
Unimodel
Authors: Silver Nathan A.
Published: September 2020

The unimodel offers an alternative perspective to dual‐process models of persuasion. Instead of separate routes for substantive arguments and heuristic cues, the unimodel posits that both forms of information constitute two special forms of information that we nonetheless use as evidence when evaluating a persuasive message. As a result, the influence of that information is better explained by epistemic motivations and the ease of processing than by the form of the information itself. This entry presents the logic and empirical evidence supporting the existence of a single route to persuasion concluding with a brief discussion of the potential of the unimodel to inform future research on complex motivated reasoning processes.
Parasocial Contact and Prejudice Reduction
Authors: Bond Bradley J.
Published: September 2020

The parasocial contact hypothesis extends intergroup contact theory by predicting that exposure to different outgroups in the media can have the same effect on prejudice reduction as interpersonal contact. Parasocial contact assumes that people are capable of perceiving intimate, affective bonds with fictional characters and celebrities. The positive, enjoyable mediated experiences that audiences have with outgroup media personae may contradict previously held stereotypes or prejudices about the respective outgroup, creating dissonance in the audience that can best be relieved by altering stereotypes and reducing prejudicial attitudes. Cross‐sectional surveys, experiments, and longitudinal panel studies measuring exposure to various social minorities have provided support for the positive effect of parasocial contact on prejudice reduction. This entry explicates the concept, details research supporting the concept, and makes recommendations for future research employing parasocial contact as a psychological mechanism explaining the relationship between media and prejudice.
Humorous Media and Youth
Authors: van der Wal Amber
Published: September 2020

Humor plays a vital role in childhood and adolescence. It helps with forming friendships, gaining peer approval, and solidifying one's social position in the peer group. In addition, humor enables youth to cope with difficult situations and maintain a positive outlook on life. Youth's ability to use humor emerges in early childhood and develops into adolescence. Although humor development is influenced by many sources, entertainment media provide an important way to learn how to use humor effectively, especially now that children are using media more than ever before and at ever younger ages. However, whereas adult humor has received ample research attention, humor in youth has been studied much less extensively, with only a handful of studies touching upon the role of humor in youth's media. Furthermore, the research that has been done is scattered across disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, and communication. Therefore, this entry provides an overview of how youth's (mediated) humor preferences are connected to cognitive development, developmentally related themes, and personal characteristics, and identifies key directions for future research.
Effects of Media Use on Family Bonding
Authors: Rasmussen Eric E.
Published: September 2020

Family bonding, or family connectedness, refers to a sense of belonging and closeness to the family. It is related to a host of indicators of personal and family well‐being, including family resilience and mental, physical, and emotional health. Family connectedness also decreases the likelihood that family members will experience many risks to their well‐being. Family connectedness is enhanced when families spend time together and engage in positive communication with each other. From a family systems perspective, media use is an input that results in changes to the family, including changes in family functioning. While solitary media use by individual family members tends to isolate family members from each other, shared media use can serve to enhance family relationships. Several types of shared media use, such as listening to music together, playing video games together, and watching TV and movies together can facilitate family communication, togetherness, and, ultimately, connectedness. Certain types of media content are associated with either increased or decreased family connectedness. Family connectedness can also protect against excessive media use by family members. Parent–child media‐related communication serves to promote quality family functioning. As a large part of contemporary family life, media can be harnessed to facilitate meaningful interactions and promote family connectedness.
Media Use and Socioemotional Learning
Authors: Peebles Alanna , Snyder Maura N.
Published: September 2020

Research defines socioemotional skills as self‐awareness, self‐management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision‐making. This entry reviews the current research on how media use influences learning these skills from early childhood to adolescence. Research has largely focused on the effects on young children (around ages 3–5) and adolescents (around ages 13–18). Overall, findings suggest that narrative‐based media (usually, television shows) can foster socioemotional learning, with some caveats. In order for all ages to best learn these skills from media, additional help is often required. Examples of such help include parental discussion, relevant conversations in classrooms, supplemental new technologies (e.g., apps, touchscreen interactivity), and repeated viewings. This entry also reviews emerging research that examines the impact of social media on adolescents' socioemotional skills.
Parasocial Engagement in Childhood
Authors: Calvert Sandra L.
Published: September 2020

Parasocial engagement emerges in childhood and persists throughout adulthood as demonstrated by emotionally‐tinged parasocial relationships and socially contingent parasocial interactions with favorite media characters. Children treat media characters as if they are real social partners in their lives who fill important roles and needs for them. As children's social and cognitive needs shift, they typically break up with earlier favorite characters, moving on to prefer those who are more developmentally appropriate to their current stage in life. Emotionally close parasocial relationships and parasocial interactions with favorite media characters also influence the cognitive and social learning of children, making parasocial engagement a valuable resource for educational and social development.
Media Use and Self‐Esteem in Childhood and Adolescence
Authors: Rodgers Rachel F. , Campagna Jenna
Published: September 2020

Media use in children has increased significantly over the past decades, particularly screen media use, raising concerns as emerging research has suggested that children's media use might be associated with self‐esteem. This entry provides an overview of the theoretical frameworks that account for such an association as well as the empirical work on the topic. Media use in childhood may be related to self‐esteem both through exposure to media‐promoted stereotypes regarding self‐worth that may impact self‐esteem, as well as through the sedentary nature of most media use, and lost opportunities for engaging in activities and peer interactions that promote social skills and competencies. The extant data are still inconsistent, although evidence has been found for an overall cross‐sectional relationship between media use and lower self‐esteem, particularly among girls. Importantly, this relationship may be qualified by the individual characteristics of children, the media content and format, as well as the dose. Further longitudinal research to better characterize this relationship, and help identify children most vulnerable to media influences is critical to advance our understanding and inform practices and guidelines.
Fandom
Authors: Lundy Jonathon , Jenkins Alexander , Van den Bulck Hilde
Published: September 2020

Despite its seemingly ubiquitous nature today, the concept of fandom still eludes a singular unified definition, partly because how fandom is studied and who studies it vary almost as much as its manifestations. Most scholars agree that fandom is an emotional attachment to a person, activity, or media object that tends to inspire creative production and participation in communities of like‐minded fans. Popular and scholarly attention to fandom have evolved over time, with a focus ranging from pathological behavior to a modern form of hyper‐consumption. From a media psychology perspective, research has examined the positive and negative effects on knowledge, ideas, beliefs, and behaviors at both the individual and group level. Such research suggests fandom's positive impact on information seeking and decision making for health, purchasing, voting, tourism, support for a variety of social causes, and the effects of basking in reflected glory. Negative effects include abnormal behavior and pathology, such as negative body image, copycat behavior, stalking, and crowd hysterics. From a critical‐interpretative perspective, fandom is studied as a product and process of modern participatory culture, where fans produce and consume meanings, mediated communication, and texts about the objects of their fandom. Fandom implies an attempt by individuals to actively—at times subversively—create meaning in an increasingly mediated world where traditional resources for identity construction have diminished.
Media Use and the Development of Moral Reasoning
Authors: Krcmar Marina , Locke Sarah
Published: September 2020

Research on children, media, and moral development focuses on the negative effects of media on children's moral judgments and reasoning as well as potential positive impacts of prosocial portrayals. This review utilizes moral foundations theory to group and summarize the research. Overall, children's existing moral developmental stage affects how they interpret and make sense of moral messages. In addition, problematic media content has been shown to have a negative influence on several moral domains, most notably harm/care as well as fairness/cheating. Importantly, children's perspective‐taking abilities act as an important mediator between exposure to moral media and outcomes such as sympathy and harm. Thus, evidence exists for the transactional relationship between moral media and moral development, a point that is supported by the media influences on moral intuitions and development (MIMIAD) model.
Media Use and Development of Executive Function
Authors: Eisen Sierra , Lillard Angeline S.
Published: September 2020

Children spend a significant portion of their time engaged with screen media. Media use has been argued to be harmful for the development of executive function (EF) and a potential contributor to increases in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses. Children who frequently watch entertainment television or play video games are more likely to display attentional impairment or ADHD‐related behavior. Fast pacing, fantasy content, and violence are all theoretical mechanisms for the harmful relation between media use and executive function and ADHD. However, questions remain about the causal direction of such effects.
Effects of Background TV on Early Development
Authors: Pempek Tiffany A. , Kirkorian Heather L.
Published: September 2020

The potential for screen media use to affect early development in both positive and negative ways has long been recognized. However, secondary exposure such as playing in the room while a parent watches television is often overlooked when considering the child's media context. This type of “background” exposure is most common during the first few years of life, occurring an average of 5.5 hours in a typical day for children under 2 years of age. Definitions of background television for young children vary considerably but often touch upon the characteristics of target audience (e.g., content designed for adults vs. children) and task prominence (e.g., play as the primary task and television as the secondary task). Although the literature on the effects of background television exposure early in life is not extensive, the methodologies employed provide convergent evidence for negative effects for several key areas of development, including toy play, parent–child interaction, and cognitive development. Given the significant amount of background television exposure experienced by young children, research described here suggests that long‐term cumulative effects throughout early childhood may be substantial.
Media Use and Academic Achievement
Authors: Camerini Anne‐Linda , Marciano Laura
Published: September 2020

Children and adolescents are intensive media users, especially when it comes to digital mobile media. The prevalence of media activities in their day‐to‐day life has caused concerns about potential negative effects of media use on academic achievement. This has led to substantial research on the relationship between media use and academic achievement guided by theories from different disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and communication sciences, including displacement hypothesis, uses and gratifications theory, short‐term gratifications theory, media multitasking theory, limited capacity model, and digital divide theory. These theories explain media use in children and adolescents and why and how media use relates to activities and developmental outcomes that directly or indirectly affect academic achievement.
Media and Theory of Mind
Authors: Choi Eunjoo , Lapierre Matthew A.
Published: September 2020

Theory of mind (ToM) involves the set of skills that helps us understand the mental states of other people. These skills are crucial because understanding what other people are thinking helps us to anticipate their motivations and subsequent actions. Research on the development of ToM suggests that this set of skills develops most rapidly during the preschool years (ages 3–5) but continues through childhood and adolescence as children become more skillful in understanding the subtlety and complexity of other people's mental states. There are two main factors that facilitate the development of ToM skills: neurological development (e.g., the maturation of the prefrontal cortex) and environmental factors (e.g., parent communication with the child about mental states and children's pretend play). In addition to these factors, recent studies suggest that the media may play a role in shaping children's ToM development and/or engagement with media. This entry introduces readers to the concepts underlying ToM and offers a brief overview of how ToM develops in children. It then explores how ToM is associated with media use. The entry examines the links between media use and ToM development, the possible effect of engagement with media on ToM abilities, and how ToM influences one's ability to interpret persuasive messages—specifically, commercial advertisements—which typically contain appeals that are difficult to discern among populations with less developed ToM abilities.