Dave Roskos-Ewoldsen to present video game research

On October 24, Dave Roskos-Ewoldsen will present some of his research on video games to the ATM group. The title of his talk is "Prosocial Behaviors and Violent Video Games." An abstract of his talk is below.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that playing violent video games increases aggressive affect, cognition, and behavior and decreases prosocial behaviors. This talk presents several studies looking at helping behavior during game play, attitudes toward bullying, and cooperative behavior as a consequence game play ­ all in the context of violent video games.

Elias to give practice job talk this week

Troy Elias, one of Osei Appiah's PhD advisees, is getting ready to go on several job interviews at research universities. This week, he will practice his job talk for the ATM group. The title of his talk is "Social Identity, Race, and Ethnicity: Predictors of Consumer Attitudes for Ethnic Minorities in Online Commercial Environments." An abstract of his talk is below.

One of the more commonly held adages of audience dynamics is that members of the audience approach mediated messages with pre-established beliefs and norms that have been established through their group associations and social networks. Media outlets, advertisers, and marketers are well advised that they no longer sell goods and services to individual consumers, but are actually in the business of selling goods and services to networks of customers. In order to understand how certain uniformities of consumer behavior occur, it has become critical to understand how groups are constructed in social systems. It is also critical to understand how members of groups communicate, and who they communicate with, specifically through new media tools. A Social Identity Theoretical Framework is proposed to examine intergroup behavior and communication amongst ethnic minorities in virtual commercial markets.

Eveland to present on Oct 10: "Questioning the Assumption of Uniform News Media Effects Across Time and Space"

Chip Eveland will present some of the work has has done with grad students Eliza Liu and Ivan Dylko. An abstract of his talk is below:

Most research on the effects of news media using survey data implicitly or explicitly assumes that the effects of news media is uniform across time and space. For instance, national survey data are employed without consideration of differences in the form and content of media available across media markets nationally, and state and local surveys are often considered to produce findings representative of research from elsewhere around the nation. Moreover, researchers tend to assume that the findings of a study in one year are comparable to findings from a study in another year. However, the quality and quantity of news content varies across media markets and has been shown to change over time as well. Theoretically, if the quality and quantity of news media content matters for news media effects, then the effects of news media use should not be uniform across time and space. In this presentation I will review two studies -- one comparing news media effects over time, and another comparing news media effects across communities in Ohio -- that test these assumptions. I will close by discussing a third study currently in progress that attempts to improve upon the first two tests.