Multiculture
The Nationalistic Revolution Will Be Televised: The 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games on NBC
James Angelini, Andrew Billings & Paul MacArthur
International Journal of Sport Communication, June 2012, Pages 193-209
Abstract:
A population of NBC's primetime coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics (64 hours) was analyzed to determine differences between the media treatment of U.S. and non-U.S. Olympians. Results showed that U.S. athletes were highlighted at three to four times the rate their successes would suggest. In addition, American athletes were more likely to be depicted as succeeding because of their intellect, commitment, and consonance while non-American athletes were more likely to be depicted as failing because they lacked the strength and skill of other athletes. From a personality/physicality standpoint, American athletes received enhanced comments about their outgoing/extroverted nature while non-American athletes received more comments about the size and parts of their bodies. Ramifications for framing theory and Olympic nationalism research are articulated.
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From Karen to Katie: Using Baby Names to Understand Cultural Evolution
Jonah Berger et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do psychological processes shape cultural evolution? We use over 100 years of first names data to investigate how the popularity of other, similar variants shapes cultural success. Names can be broken into phonetic parts, or phonemes, and we examine how a name's popularity is influenced by the popularity of that name's component phonemes in other names in the past year. Building on mere exposure research, we show that names are more likely to become popular when similar names have been popular recently. These effects are non-linear, however, indicating that over-popularity hurts adoption, and vary based on phoneme position. Further evidence for the causal impact of similarity on cultural success comes from a natural experiment using hurricane names. An exogenous shock to phoneme frequency, due to prominent hurricanes containing those sounds, boosts the popularity of phoneme-sharing names. Taken together, our results suggest how inter-item similarity shapes popularity and cultural evolution.
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Mei Hua & Alexis Tan
Mass Communication and Society, July/August 2012, Pages 546-558
Abstract:
Our study examines media reports of attribution of success by American and Chinese gold medalists at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. Broadcast interviews were selected from official websites of NBC from the United States and CCTV from China. In addition, news reports from Chinese and American print media were selected through the Access World News database between August 8, 2008 (start of the Olympics) and August 31, 2008 (1 week after the closing ceremony). Results show that Chinese athletes, as reported by both Chinese broadcast and print media, attributed success to situational factors such as support and encouragement from socially important others, societal motivation, and national pride. American athletes were reported by American media to attribute success to dispositional factors such as personal characteristics and self-motivation. These results suggest that individual accounts of success as reported in the media are consistent with cultural norms and values.
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Emotional Cues in American Popular Music: Five Decades of the Top 40
Glenn Schellenberg & Christian von Scheve
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some musical characteristics are cues to happiness (fast tempo, major mode); others are cues to sadness (slow tempo, minor mode). Listening to music with inconsistent emotional cues leads to mixed feelings and perceptions, or simultaneous happy and sad responding. We examined whether emotional cues in American popular music have changed over time, predicting that music has become progressively more sad-sounding and emotionally ambiguous. Our sample comprised over 1,000 Top 40 recordings from 25 years spanning five decades. Over the years, popular recordings became longer in duration and the proportion of female artists increased. In line with our principal hypotheses, there was also an increase in the use of minor mode and a decrease in average tempo, confirming that popular music became more sad-sounding over time. Decreases in tempo were also more pronounced for songs in major than in minor mode, highlighting a progressive increase of mixed emotional cues in popular music.
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Trends of Sexual and Violent Content by Gender in Top-Grossing U.S. Films, 1950-2006
Amy Bleakley, Patrick Jamieson & Daniel Romer
Journal of Adolescent Health, July 2012, Pages 73-79
Purpose: Because popular media such as movies can both reflect and contribute to changes in cultural norms and values, we examined gender differences and trends in the portrayal of sexual and violent content in top-grossing films from 1950 to 2006.
Methods: The sample included 855 of the top-grossing films released over 57 years, from 1950 to 2006. The number of female and male main characters and their involvement in sexual and violent behavior were coded and analyzed over time. The relationships between sexual and violent behavior within films were also assessed.
Results: The average number of male and female main characters in films has remained stable over time, with male characters outnumbering female characters by more than two to one. Female characters were twice as likely as male characters to be involved in sex, with differences in more explicit sex growing over time. Violence has steadily increased for both male and female characters.
Conclusions: Although women continue to be underrepresented in films, their disproportionate portrayal in more explicit sexual content has grown over time. Their portrayal in violent roles has also grown, but at the same rate as men. Implications of exposure to these trends among young movie-going men and women are discussed.
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Twitter and Disasters: The uses of Twitter during the 2010 Pakistan floods
Dhiraj Murthy & Scott Longwell
Information, Communication & Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research explores the specific use of the prominent social media website Twitter during the 2010 Pakistan floods to examine whether users tend to tweet/retweet links from traditional versus social media, what countries these users are tweeting from, and whether there is a correlation between location and the linking of traditional versus social media. The study finds that Western users have an overwhelming preference for linking to traditional media and Pakistani users have a slight preference for linking to social media. The study also concludes that authorities and hubs in our sample have a significant preference for linking to social media rather than traditional media sites. The findings of this study suggest that there is a perceived legitimacy of social media during disasters by users in Pakistan. Additionally, it provides insights into how social media may be - albeit minimally - challenging the dominant position of traditional media in disaster reporting in developing countries.
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American media, intercultural stories and the 2004 Olympic flame ceremonies
Marianthi Bumbaris Thanopoulos
Sport in Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper explores backstage conventions and conditions for national and local broadcasting of the Olympic Games. While the Olympic Movement sees sport as a means to the larger end of intercultural understanding, American media largely frame the Games as a competition among nations for the glory of athletic victory and superiority. ‘Covering' the Olympics within this dominant framework leads the American broadcaster National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) to a studied disinterest in intercultural stories, becoming itself a roadblock to understanding foreign cultures and the Olympic ethos, rituals and symbols. The author, a Greek-American and local NBC employee at the time of the Athens 2004 Olympics, describes her struggles to generate intercultural programming and interprets NBC's refusal to allow American audiences to view the 2004 flame-lighting ceremonies at Ancient Olympia and the relay through Greece as lost opportunities to temper the stereotyping of host cultures for the American public.
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Let Me Tell You What to Do: Cultural Differences in Advice-Giving
Yulia Chentsova-Dutton & Alexandra Vaughn
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, July 2012, Pages 687-703
Abstract:
Although few decisions are made without seeking advice, advice can challenge the autonomy of its recipient. As a result, it is viewed as potentially intrusive and is enacted cautiously. In part, these findings may reflect European American culture, which fosters respect for personal autonomy. Cultural models of social relationships can affect advice-giving. In contrast to European American cultural context, Russian cultural context fosters an emphasis on practical interdependence. Because advice can promote the exchange of practical information, it is viewed as helpful and is enacted freely. In three studies, we have compared advice-giving across groups from European American and Russian cultural contexts (European Americans, Russians living in Russia, and Russian Americans). Russians living in Russia were more likely than European Americans to give advice, particularly practical advice; less likely to modulate their advice-giving based on whether or not it was solicited; and more likely to describe advice as characteristic of supportive relationships. Together, these studies suggest that advice-giving is a culturally embedded behavior. Cultural models of social relationships can promote unsolicited advice, a seemingly intrusive form of social support, as a way to share information and connect with others.
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Cross-cultural differences in cognitive development: Attention to relations and objects
Megumi Kuwabara & Linda Smith
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Growing evidence indicates a suite of generalized differences in the attentional and cognitive processing of adults from Eastern and Western cultures. Cognition in Eastern adults is often more relational and in Western adults is more object focused. Three experiments examined whether these differences characterize the cognition of preschool children in the two cultures. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds from the two cultures (N = 64) participated in a relational match-to-standard task in two conditions, with simple or richly detailed objects, in which a focus on individual objects may hurt performance. Rich objects, consistent with past research, strongly limited the performance of U.S. children but not Japanese children. In Experiment 2, U.S. and Japanese 4-year-olds (N = 72) participated in a visual search task that required them to find a specific object in a cluttered, but organized as a scene, visual field in which object-centric attention might be expected to aid performance and relational attentional pattern may hinder the performance because of relational structure that was poised by the scene. U.S. children outperformed Japanese children. In Experiment 3, 4-year-olds from both cultures (N = 36) participated in a visual search task that was similar to Experiment 2 but with randomly placed objects, where there should not be a difference between the performance of two cultures because the relational structure that may be posed by the scene is eliminated. This double-dissociation is discussed in terms of implications for different developmental trajectories, with different developmental subtasks in the two cultures.
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Cultural effect on perspective taking in Chinese-English bilinguals
Kevin Luk, Wen Xiao & Him Cheung
Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Some recent evidence has suggested that perspective taking skills in everyday life situations may differ across cultural groups. In the present study, we investigated this effect via culture priming in a group of Chinese-English bilingual adults in the context of a communication game. Results showed that the participants made more perspective taking errors when interpreting the game instruction under the Western than the Chinese primes. The findings suggest that the ability to assume others' mental states not only can be used strategically but is also influenced by the currently active cultural frame in the mind of the bilingual. The present study provides the first evidence for a cultural effect on perspective taking using a within-sample approach via culture priming.
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Amanda Haboush, Cortney Warren & Lorraine Benuto
Sex Roles, May 2012, Pages 668-676
Abstract:
Mainstream North American media promotes the message that attaining a thin, youthful appearance is central to a woman's value and social role while appearing older is highly undesirable. However, appearance ideals and attitudes toward aging differ substantially across cultural and ethnic groups, which may influence the degree to which one internalizes media ideals and holds anti-aging attitudes. Consequently, this study examined the relationships between internalization of the youthful, thin-ideal appearance perpetuated by mainstream North American media and attitudes toward the elderly in a sample of 281 undergraduate females under the age of 30 attending a university in the Western United States. Specifically, European American (n = 115), Asian American/Pacific Islander (n = 74), Hispanic/Latina (n = 52), and African American (n = 42) women voluntarily completed self-report measures of internalization of media ideals and attitudes towards older adults. Attitudes towards the elderly were significantly more negative at higher levels of internalization of North American appearance ideals, independent of ethnicity. These data suggest that internalization of North American appearance ideals perpetuated by media are related to negative attitudes towards older adults. Future research should investigate the influence of negative attitudes about aging on behaviors toward older adults or one's own aging process.
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"A Helluva Read": Profanity in Adolescent Literature
Sarah Coyne et al.
Mass Communication and Society, May/June 2012, Pages 360-383
Abstract:
Although the use of profanity has been examined in a number of types of media, to our knowledge profanity has not been examined in adolescent literature. Thus, the frequency and portrayal of profanity was coded in 40 bestselling adolescent novels. Results revealed that some novels did not contain a single instance of profanity, whereas others contained hundreds of often very strong profanity. When profanity was used, characters were likely to be young, rich, attractive, and of pronounced social status. Novels directed at older adolescents contained much more profanity. However, age guidance or content warnings are not found on the books themselves. Discussion is provided regarding the implications of the findings and the appropriateness of including content warnings in adolescent literature.
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Peter Dahlén
Sport in Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
When the Swedish ice hockey team lost to Belarus [Vitryssland] in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics after a ‘sudden death' goal, the Swedish media surpassed one another in throwing insults at the team, and the players were regarded with contempt as traitors. Of key significance in understanding this animosity towards the team's loss against Belarus are the historical and geopolitical power structures that the match brought into the open, the notions of development and underdevelopment and centrality and peripherality on a European scale. Theoretical considerations regarding the mythological role of journalism and the processes of identity construction will be taken into account to fully appreciate the attractive force and the ideological significance - the geopolitics - of the press coverage on the loss of the Swedish team against Belarus.
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Andreas Schneider & Tobias Schröder
Social Psychology Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose that macro-level ideal types of leadership, as described in the classic work of Max Weber and reflected in the contemporary management literature, are mirrored in micro-level affective meanings. Within Osgood's three-dimensional affective space, we identify specific patterns corresponding to leadership styles: people evaluate authoritative/transactional leadership as positive, powerful, and neither passive nor active. Charismatic/transformational leadership is perceived as equally positive and powerful but involves a much higher degree of activity-arousal. Finally, coercive leadership is negative, powerful, and active. Based on Heise's cybernetic symbolic-interactionist affect control theory, we compare cultural representations of business managers in the United States and Germany at different points in time. We demonstrate a shift from transactional to charismatic leadership in the U.S. manager stereotype and a contrasting consolidation of coercive leadership expectations in Germany. We discuss implications for (1) cross-cultural communication and (2) affective meaning as indicator of social change.
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Individualism and the field viewpoint: Cultural influences on memory perspective
Maryanne Martin & Gregory Jones
Consciousness and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Two perspectives from which memories can be retrieved have been distinguished: field resembles the view from the first-person vantage point of original experience, whereas observer resembles the view from the third-person vantage point of a spectator. There is evidence that the incidences of the two types of perspective differ between at least two different cultural groups. It is hypothesised here that this is a special case of a more general relation between memory perspective and cultural individualism, such that field and observer perspectives are more prevalent among people from, respectively, relatively individualist and relatively collectivist societies. Memory perspectives adopted by participants from a range of different countries were recorded, and were found to vary in the predicted manner. Regression analysis showed that the potential effects of three other cultural variables - uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and, to a lesser extent, power distance - were eclipsed by the influence of individualism, and the implications are discussed.