Investigates whether audience reaction to an editorial affect evaluations of adjacent newscasters. Tests effects of strong to weak television editorials on audience members and finds that strongly worded negative editorials cause a lowering of the judgment of competence of the adjacent newscaster if the audience members disagreed with the…

Examines images of World War II invoked in two live, international music concerts (one rock, one classical) celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. Argues that Western television's choice of imagery represented the Wall's demise as a marker of the end of the Cold War rather than a vanishing monument of Germany's conflicted struggle with Holocaust…

Analyzes the content of more than 1000 commercials sampled from ABC, CBS, and NBC. Finds that nostalgia was used by means of theme, copy or music about 10 percent of the time and that nostalgic references to family activities or to "olden days" were most likely to be used with food and beverage commercials. (PRA)

Finds support for the general notion of construct accessibility and its effect on judgments can help account for the influence of television viewing on social reality estimates. Shows that subjects who watch comparatively more television not only overestimate frequency or probability but also give faster responses to various types of cultivation…

Concludes that using the eyewitness news format--emphasizing violent, human interest and comic material--in an effort to gain larger percentages of the ratings may not be in the public interest. (RB)

Examines approaches to discourse and television, working from the specific example of the television situation comedy "Designing Women" to the general functioning of discourse in television narrative. Positions "Designing Women" within the sitcom genre. Suggests that "Designing Women" activates television's…

Examines the portrayal of family relationships in television domestic comedy. States that subjects were randomly selected to evaluate samples of nine programs. Finds that on television both parent-child and sibling relationships have developed in relational frameworks defined by the changing levels of conflict, cohesiveness, and socializing, with…

Assesses the variable amounts of attention that are required for a viewer to process two kinds of interruptions common to television: the shift from one message to a different, unexpected message; and the reference to previously presented material. Interprets results in terms of limited capacity and attentional inertia models of attention. (RS)

Finds that inertial engagement sustains looks across boundaries between programs and commercials; inertial engagement does not carry over from one look to the next; inertial engagement was associated with greater recognition memory for television content; and look length distributions are approximately lognormal, and hazard functions are…

Argues that the current popular negative critique of television, if examined carefully, reveals fundamental confusions concerning how print and television communicate information. Discusses the syntax of motion which distinguishes television from print, based on movement in space--a space that is both visual and acoustic. (SR)

Examines psychological concepts and theories about people's restrictions in processing information, and relates the concepts and theories to multiple resource theory. Applies this approach to television viewing, and discusses four separate limiting factors. (SR)

Investigates whether selective attention to a particular television modality resulted in different levels of attention to the visual and auditory modalities. Finds that subjects were able to focus on a particular message channel but that reactions to cues were faster when the audio channel contained the most information and when viewers focused on…

Tests the hypothesis that processing strategy moderates the effect of television viewing on social perceptions of undergraduate students (cultivation effect). Examines views on prevalence of crime, occupations, affluence, and marital discord. Indicates that processing strategy moderated the cultivation effect such that cultivation effects were…

Concludes that while blacks appeared in approximately 25 percent of the news in a given time period, the majority of the time they were seen but not heard in television newscasts. (RB)