Willsie presentation on parental mediation of children's television viewing

This week, PhD student Brandon Willsie will discuss his ideas and research on the topic of parental active mediation of children's television viewing. The title of his talk is "Predicting and Protecting: Building a Conditional Model of Active Mediation." The abstract for his talk is below.

Children's television content has long been a concern of parents and researchers alike. The technique of an adult co-viewer engaging a child in conversation about mass media messages is known as activemediation and is seen as one way of mitigating harmful media effects on youth. The current study places the study of active mediation within a conditional model of media influence. When placing extant research on active mediation within this framework, it becomes evident that little focus has been given to understanding what predicts this potentially important parental behavior. This study focuses on assessing the predictive value of a host of pre-media use individual-difference variables relative to the dependent variable of active mediation and the development of a functional conditional framework which may be applied to the study of active mediation.

David Roskos-Ewoldsen joins OSU and ATM!

ATM would like to welcome Dr. David Roskos-Ewoldsen to the School of Communication and ATM! Dave will be joining our faculty as a Full Professor beginning in January 2009. Dave studies persuasion and social influence, adolescent risk-taking behaviors, and media psychology. We look forward to Dave's arrival here on campus!

Holbert to present study on satire's influence

On April 11, Lance Holbert will present some research on the influence of satire. An abstract of his talk is below.

Satire as a form of humor and social criticism has been undertheorized in the political communication literature. Two types of satire, horatian and juvenalian, will be outlined in the talk and several hypotheses positing divergent effects for these types of satire will be outlined. The pure random-placement experiment consists of a 3 (stimulus: horatian satire, juvenalian satire, traditional criticism) X 2 (ability: high, low) between-subjects design. The focus of the persuasive messages (satirical and traditional) is on Senator Hillary Clinton (D ­NY) and her plan for universal health care, and the study was conducted within a month's time of the State of Ohio's Democratic primary held on March 4, 2008. The dependent variables focused on in the study include thought listing, counter arguing, as well as a series of attitudinal outcomes. This study was conducted by a research team that includes four OSU School of Communication graduate students: Jay Hmielowski, Parul Jain, Julie Lather, and Alyssa Morey. Each graduate student provided valuable insights for the project and will be leading their own research papers generated from this study's data. The results presented by Professor Holbert will reflect only an initial set of insights.

McDonald and Meng's research on media enjoyment

On February 29, Dan McDonald and Jingbo Meng will present a paper they co-authored with former OSU student Shu-Fang "Sophia" Lin on media enjoyment. The title of their paper is "Media Enjoyment as Experience: Segmentation, Cohesion and Empathy." The following is an abstract of their paper:

This study examines how audience members’ enjoyment of programs and program segments may differ, and some of the structural factors that may impact enjoyment. Drawing on recent research in psychology and marketing which suggests that people develop expectations about future experiences that are differentially affected by the positive or negative trend of an experience and by the segmentation of that experience, we examine the impact of structure and cohesion on enjoyment, and whether empathy interacts with structural factors in producing enjoyment. Results suggest that the empathy, evaluative trend of the content and cohesion of the content appear to affect media enjoyment in main effects. Segmentation of content does not have a main effect, but instead works in interaction with cohesion; empathy does not interact with the structural factors in affecting enjoyment. Results are discussed in terms of current industry concerns regarding audience behavior and implications for communication research.

Knobloch-Westerwick and LaMarre to present their research on music to ATM

On February 15, Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and Heather LaMarre will present their research on music. The title of their talk is "Dark Black Rap and Bright White Rock: Effects of Radical Music on Support of Ethnic Groups." The following is the abstract from their paper:

In an experimental design, participants (n = 148) listened to music during an ostensible waiting period and were then asked to allocate funding to projects about different ethnic groups. Two radical music conditions (gangsta rap and white power rock) and one mainstream music condition (pop music) as control were used. Results indicate that white power music had the strongest effect on listeners wherein funding for White-Americans increased significantly while funding for African-American and Arab-American groups decreased. Funding allocation did not differ between the gangsta rap and pop music conditions. The results suggest that radical rap has become so common that it hardly affects listeners anymore.

ATM members to present at ICA

The ATM group will have a strong presence at the annual ICA conference in Montreal this May. Both ATM faculty and grad students will present papers in a variety of divisions. Congratulations to everyone, with a special congratulations to Joyce Wang for her Top Paper in the Information Systems Division!

Appiah, O., & Goodall, C. Hip-Hop Imagery on Cigarette Packages and their Effects on Audiences Smoking-Related Attitudes: Ethnic Identity as a Defense Against Tobacco Marketing. Health Communication Division

Gong, L., Appiah, O., & Elias, T. Race as a Real and Virtual Social identity: The Moderating Effects of Ethnic Identity on Ingroup Favoritism toward Real versus Virtual Human Representations. Communication and Technology Division

Hively, M. H. & Landreville, K. D. The Interaction between Efficacy and Emotion in Predicting Civic Engagement. Mass Communication Division

Holbert, R. L., & Benoit, W. L. A Theory of Political Campaign Media Connectedness. Political Communication Division

Holbert, R. L., & Hansen, G. J. Stepping Beyond Message Specificity in the Study of Affect as Mediator and Inter-Affective Associations: Fahrenheit 9/11, Candidate Aversion, and Perceptions of Debate Superiority. Mass Communication Division

Hu, M., & McDonald, D. G. Social Internet use, trait loneliness and mood loneliness. Mass Communication Division

Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Meng, J. Looking the Other Way: Selective Exposure to Attitude-Consistent and Counter-Attitudinal Political Information. Political Communication Division

Knobloch-Westerwick, S., David, P., Eastin, M., Tamborini, R., & Greenwood, D. Sports Spectators' Suspense: Affect and Uncertainty in Sports Entertainment. Mass Communication Division

Kurita, S., Lee, S., Wang, Z., & Lang, A. (2008). How Much is Too Much? Media Structure, Content, Cognitive Load, and Overload. Information Systems Division.

LaMarre, H. & Knobloch-Westerwick, S. Dark Black Rap and Bright White Rock: Effects of Radical Music on Support of Ethnic Group. Mass Communication Division

Landreville, K., & LaMarre, H. Documentary and Historical Reenactment Film: A Comparison of Transportation, Emotion, Interest, and Learning. Mass Communication Division

Mahood, C. How violent video game play and aggressive personality interact to affect aggression: An examination of competing hypotheses. Game Studies Interest Group

McDonald, D. G., Meng, J. & Lin, S. Media Enjoyment as Experience: Segmentation, Cohesion and Empathy. Information Systems Division

Moyer-Gusé, E., & Nabi, R. Comparing the persuasive effects of entertainment-education and educational programming on risky sexual behavior. Mass Communication Division

Nathanson, A. I. Investigating the Generalizability of Mediation Results to New Populations and New Contexts. Mass Communication Division

Riddle, K., Cantor, J., Byrne, S., & Moyer-Gusé, E. Young children’s fright reactions to violence, war, and conflict in the news. Instructional and Developmental Communication Division

Wang, Z., Lang, A, & Busemeyer, J. R. Motivational Processing and Choice Behavior during Television Viewing: An Integrative Dynamic Approach. Information System Division. (Top Paper Award)

Yegiyan, N., Wilson, B., Gao, Y., Mayell, S., Wang, Z., & Lang, A. Approach? Avoid? Or Both? Processing Coactive Motivational Media Messages. Information Systems Division.

Congrats to Osei and Troy for a Top-4 NCA Paper!

At the recent National Communication Association conference in Chicago, Troy Elias presented his co-authored paper with Osei Appiah and Li Gong in the Top Papers in Intercultural Communication session. The paper was titled "See Minorities Through the Lens of Ethnic Identity: Reflected onto Racial Representations of Real Humans and Virtual Humans." This is an impressive accomplishment, given that this division, one of NCA's largest, had 140 paper submissions this year. Congrats Troy and Osei!