A study focused on audience selectivity and involvement before and during television exposure. Two types of selectivity were considered: program selection before exposure and changing channels while viewing. The study included four indications of audience involvement: intentionality, or anticipating TV viewing; attention or focused cognitive…

Analysis of the relationship between undergraduate students' television viewing and their perceptions of personal vulnerability to crime reveals strength and direction of such associations are contingent upon viewer's source of criminal victimization experience, type of prime-time television viewed, and contextual nature of perception of personal…

Assesses how quantity of television news viewing influenced Northern Irish children's perceptions of local political violence. Reports questionnaire results from 520 children, ages 8 and 11, approximately half females, from 5 Irish towns. Finds a correlation between viewing frequency and perceptions that matched social reality. Concludes that…

Describes study of students in grades 8 through 12 that was conducted to determine the degree to which television messages influence a person's construction of reality (the cultivation hypothesis). Research methodology that tests the effects of television exposure is examined with emphasis on the importance of demographic control variables. (38…

This study examined differential perceptions of men and women as they appear on television (symbolic reality) and in real life (social reality). The marked tendency of television viewers to regard symbolic reality as more stereotypic than social reality for most traits, roles, and occupations was especially true for heavier viewers. (Author/MBR)

This report on a study conducted in Iceland to determine the relationship between mass media--especially television--and the attitudes of preadolescents and adolescents toward foreign countries begins by reviewing the following topics: (1) the history of television from its start in 1966 to the present in Iceland; (2) the origins of Icelandic…

This study examined the association between amount of time spent watching television and perceptions of self concept among 102 Black children ranging in age from 7 to 13. A major finding was that television viewing was related positively to the self concepts of girls and unrelated to boys' self concepts. (Author/MBR)

Discussion of mood management strategies focuses on a study of pregnant and non-pregnant women and new mothers, that was designed to examine television program preferences as a function of the physiologically induced affective stages of pregnancy. Television viewing habits are examined and affective dispositions are ascertained. (29 references)…

This test of Marshall McLuhan's claim that increased exposure to television will develop a perception of the world as a "global village" used estimation of cognitive distance as an operational definition of the global village concept. The first phase of the study tested the hypothesis that "heavy" television viewers' estimates…

Two studies used multidimensional scaling to uncover viewers' spontaneous, largely implicit interpretations of Dallas (American) and Coronation Street (British), two soap operas in a genre of social realism that explicitly aims to parallel or directly contribute to the symbolic world of the viewer. The results bear upon the discipline of social…

Examines the relationship between television viewing and reading achievement within a framework of television and reading constructs such as media availability and parental media behavior, children's use of print and broadcast media and measures of their attitudes and orientation toward television and print. Includes the questionnaire. (PD)