The Role of Social Comparison in Emotional Responses and Exposure to Reality and Scripted Television Programs

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Mass Communications/Telecommunications, 2015The goal of this dissertation was to examine how social comparisons with entertainment television cast members influence emotional responses to reality television programming. Two studies were employed to examine social comparison processes and the relevant factors that influence those comparisons. Both studies were similar in design in that participants viewed a reality or scripted television program and then reported their emotional responses to it. However, the first study utilized a forced exposure environment and the second study implemented a selective exposure environment. There were similarities among the emotional responses to the content across both studies, where generally, viewers experienced stronger social comparison-related emotional responses to scripted programs as compared to reality programs. However, several important differences regarding exposure settings emerged. Negative emotional responses were generally stronger for those in a forced exposure environment than those in a selective exposure environment. Accordingly, positive emotional responses were stronger for those in a selective exposure environment as compared to those in a forced exposure environment. Some participants selected programs for the experience of ‘guilty pleasure,’ choosing programs featuring cast members who were clearly worse off than them and engaging in downward social comparisons with those characters. Individual differences including perceived realism of television and perceived similarity to the characters also demonstrated to be relevant factors that influenced social comparison processes, where stronger emotional responses to the content were experienced when it was either more realistic (Study One) or when the viewers felt highly similar to the cast members (Study Two). Overall, the presented findings provide evidence that directional social comparisons occur with mediated television characters during and after viewing. The findings here serve to inform future research in social comparison theory’s application in mediated contexts and to illustrate how individual differences, content factors, and exposure can influence emotional responses to mediated characters in an entertainment environment

Scripted Stereotypes In Reality TV

Diversity, or lack thereof, has always been an issue in both television and film for years. But another great issue that ties in with the lack of diversity is misrepresentation, or a substantial presence of stereotypes in media. While stereotypes often are commonplace in scripted television and film, the possibility of stereotypes appearing in a program that claims to be based on reality seems unfitting. It is commonly known that reality television is not completely “unscripted” and is actually molded by producers and editors. While reality television should not consist of stereotypes, they have curiously made their way onto the screen and into our homes. Through content analysis this thesis focuses on Latina/Hispanic-American and Asian-American contestants on ABCs’ The Bachelor and whether they present stereotypes typically found in scripted programming

The civic and social implications of over-the-top television

Through the lenses of Apparatgeist Theory and the Theory of Networked Publics, this dissertation examines the civic and social implications of the contemporary television ecosystem, focusing on the phenomenon of binge-watching as it relates to political participation and empathic concern. Results of an online survey, including quantitative and qualitative measures, indicate that binge-watching television is a statistically significant factor in positively shaping political participation, both online and offline, regardless of the genre consumed. That said, news and informational programming served as the most powerful genre in predicting political participation. Additionally, this dissertation considers the role of empathy within the binge-watching ecosystem, as informed by the Theory of Narrative Empathy; most strikingly, results suggest that empathic concern relates negatively with binge-watching, regardless of genre consumed. However, the process of talking about the television shows binged proved to be a positive and statistically significant contributor to political participation, political discourse, as well as other-oriented dimensions of empathy. Implications and potential directions for future research and theory development are discussed

Who Feels All the Feels? Individual Differences in Emotional Responses to and Enjoyment of Depictions of Romantic Relationships

This experiment investigated relationship satisfaction and attachment orientations as moderators of emotional responses to and enjoyment of typical movie and television relationship portrayals. The effects of comedy versus drama exposure were also examined. Participants were 306 adults. Results showed that participants with higher relationship satisfaction experienced more amusement in response to the comedies and hope in response to the romantic movies than those with less satisfaction. Participants with higher attachment avoidance experienced less romantic feeling and hope in response to the romantic movies and less amusement in response to the comedies than those with less avoidance. Main effects of relationship satisfaction and attachment orientations were also found. Additionally, relationship satisfaction and attachment anxiety led to greater enjoyment whereas attachment avoidance led to lesser enjoyment. Higher relationship satisfaction led to more hopeful feelings, which led to greater enjoyment in the romantic movie conditions only. Results are discussed in light of social comparison theory and differential susceptibility to media effects.https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/faculty_staff_works/1035/thumbnail.jp

(Re)contextualising audience receptions of reality TV

This paper seeks to recontextualise key findings from recent studies of reality TV audiences in light of insights drawn from across the wider field. It suggests that modes of engagement and response adopted by different reality TV audiences appear broadly consistent with those identified in relation to a wide variety of genres viewed in diverse national contexts, as charted in the Composite Multi-dimensional Model of audience reception (Michelle 2007). To further illustrate these parallels, this paper analyses online audience responses to a specific event that occurred during the 2006 reality game show, Rock Star: Supernova, applying the Composite Multi-dimensional Model as its conceptual schema. In so doing, this paper seeks to demonstrate how we might move beyond the traditional focus on specificities of genre and format to recognise and begin to theorise broader continuities in the nature of audience engagement that may persist beyond the transition to new, hybrid, and increasingly interactive media formats

'I Like the Metamorphosis of the Characters': Dynamics of Transnational Television Comedy Engagement

This article contributes to debates on transnational television comedy audiences through analysis of Eastern European audiences’ engagement with British television comedy. Using questionnaire and focus group data it examines the extent and nature of British television comedy engagement by Romanian audiences and the limits of broadcasting British television comedy to Romanian audiences. The research reveals Romanian audiences’ high involvement with television comedy. Over half of questionnaire respondents watch British television comedy. Three themes regarding Romanian audiences’ engagement with British television comedy are identified in the focus group data: 1) transnational television comedy aesthetics; 2) transnational television comedy as intellectual comedy; and 3) ethical limits of transnational television comedy. These themes highlight the complex contours of transnational television comedy engagement.https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2941/152

Television Viewing, Satisfaction and Happiness: Facts and Fiction

Despite the increasing consumption of new media, watching television remains the most important leisure activity worldwide. Research on audience reactions has demostrated that there are major contradictions between television consumption and the satisfaction obtained from this activity. Similar findings have also emerged in the relationship between TV consumption and overall well-being. This paper argues that television viewing can provide a major example where consumption choices do not maximize satisfaction. We review the evidence on the welfare effects of TV consumption choices, focusing on two complementary dimensions: consumption satisfaction and overall well-being Within each of these two dimensions, we consider both absolute and relative over-consumption, referring to quantity and content of television viewing, respectively. We find that research in different social sciences provides evidence of overconsumption in television viewing. The relevance of these findings for consumption of new media is discussed in the conclusions.satisfaction, rationality, media consumption, television

Media Takes: On Aging

With the longevity revolution, humankind enters a new and unprecedented stage of development, the impact of which is even greater because of its rapidity. This report/styleguide is an important step in overcoming ageist language and beliefs by providing journalists and others who work in the media with an appropriate body of knowledge, including a lexicon that helps redefine and navigate this new world

Broadcasting the body: affect, embodiment and bodily excess on contemporary television

In recent years television has seen a notable increase in evocative images of the human body subject to exploration and manipulation.Taking the increasing viscerality of television’s body images as a starting point, the work presented in this thesis asserts the importance of considering television viewing as an embodied experience. Through a focus on displays of the body across a range of television formats this thesis demonstrates the significance and complexity of viewers’ affective and embodied engagements with the medium and offers an alternative to accounts of television which are focussed only on the visual, narrative or semiotic aspects of television aesthetics. This work challenges approaches to television which understand the pleasures of looking at the body as simply an exercise in power by considering the role of the body in fostering the sharing of affect, specifically through feelings of intimacy, shame and erotic pleasure. Additionally, the research presented here accounts for and situates the tendency toward bodily display that I have described in terms of traditional television aesthetics and in relation to conditions within the television industry in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rather than considering the trend toward exposing the body as a divergence from traditional television, this thesis argues that body-oriented television is a distinctly televisual phenomenon, one that implicates the bodies onscreen and the bodies of viewers located in domestic space in its attempts to breach the limitations of the screen, making viewers feel both intimately and viscerally connected to the people, characters and onscreen worlds that television constructs for us. The methodological approach taken in this thesis is based on close textual analysis informed by a focus on affect and embodiment. This thesis relies on the author’s own embodied engagement with televisual texts as well as detailed formal analyses of the programmes themselves. In order to understand the place of explicit body images on television this thesis engages with a broad range of contemporary debates in the field of television studies and with the cannon of television studies. This thesis is also deeply informed by writing about affect developed in film studies and studies of reality television. This thesis is structured around a set of case studies which each explore different dimensions of the trend toward bodily excess across a broad range of genres including reality television, science programming and the drama series. The chapters in this thesis are organised around four tendencies or modes related to traditional television aesthetics: Intimacy, community, public education and melodrama. Each of these case studies examines how the affective body capitalises upon and extends the traditional pleasures of television through an affective appeal to the body