Neuroselling: applying neuroscience to selling for a new business perspective. An analysis on teleshopping advertising.

This paper presents an innovative research project that aims to study the emotional factors influencing decision-making elicited by infomercials, a powerful sales technique that uses emotional communication to engage viewers, capture attention, and build trust. Using cutting-edge consumer neuroscience techniques, this study focuses on the identification of the variables that most impact the Call-to-Action and Purchase Intention. Forty participants were selected and divided into two groups, with each group exposed to one of two infomercials (condition A = male seller; condition B = female seller). EEG signals were recorded as well as Eye-tracking data. After the viewing, participants completed a self-report questionnaire. Results show that seller characteristics such as Performance and Trustworthiness, as well as Neurophysiological variables such as Approach-Withdrawal Index, Willingness to Pay, Attention and Engagement, significantly impact the final Call-to-Action, Purchase Intention, and infomercial Likeability responses. Moreover, eye-tracking data revealed that the more time is spent observing crucial areas of the infomercial, the more it will increase our Willingness to Pay and our interest and willingness to approach the infomercial and product. These findings highlight the importance of considering both the Seller attributes and the consumers’ Neurophysiological responses to understand and predict their behaviors in response to marketing stimuli since they all seem to play a crucial role in shaping consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions. Overall, the study is a significant pilot in the new field of neuroselling, shedding light on crucial emotional aspects of the seller/buyer relationship and providing valuable insights for researchers and marketers

Uutisten tulkinta vaaliautoritaarisessa regiimissä : venäläiset TV:n katsojat ja Venäjän ja Ukrainan välinen sota

This dissertation focuses on how Russian TV viewers make sense of the news in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It is based on focus groups with TV viewers and borrows the conceptual apparatus of political communication, psychology, and political science to analyze three separate domains of news processing under an electoral authoritarian regime: the formation of political opinions based on television news, the use of heuristics to evaluate the credibility of TV news, and the use of a range of information sources, both offline and online, in a high-choice media environment. Based on the existing literature, this study relies on the premise that citizens under authoritarian regimes lack incentives, cognitive tools, and opportunities to substantively process news and investigates how these three features are reflected in the political psychology and news processing of TV viewers. First, this study contributes to the literature on news processing under electoral authoritarian regimes. While scholars have identified numerous factors which affect how citizens (dis)trust news in authoritarian contexts, the role of political engagement in news processing is rarely taken into account in the analysis of electoral authoritarian regimes. My findings suggest that crucially affects how citizens make sense of the news. I find that a minority of focus group participants are politically engaged and rely on consistent political schemas to make sense of the news and demonstrate signs of consistency bias. Most participants are politically disengaged. They rely on the ideas which are more accessible in memory, contain both criticism and approval of state policies, and support the authoritarian equilibrium by being unable to articulate consistent opinions. Second, this study contributes to a better understanding of the functioning of low-information rationality under an electoral authoritarian regime. Scholars assume that in dealing with the news and political information, TV viewers rely on a wide variety of heuristics which are drawn from both daily life and the political environment. However, the literature on how citizens use heuristics outside democratic contexts is limited. I find that in dealing with the news, TV viewers prefer to rely on common sense and cultural stereotypes because political and media institutions under an electoral authoritarian regime are not seen as independent and authoritative. Finally, the study contributes to a better understanding of how the development of high-choice media environments affects news processing outside of democratic contexts. I find that politically engaged participants often find information which fits their pre-existing preferences demonstrating signs of selective exposure. Participants who are less politically engaged participants rely on TV news in combination with news aggregators to simplify information search. Since Russian news aggregators include information which is not different from TV news, this synchronization verifies the credibility of TV news. While the original concept of the personalized filter bubble is based on the complex interaction between individuals’ preferences and algorithms, I identify the orchestrated filter bubble effect which is based on the agenda of state-controlled television. Imposed in top-down fashion by the state, this filter bubble effect is used to reinforce the messages of the state-controlled television rather than citizens’ individual preferences under an electoral authoritarian regime.Tämä väitöskirjatutkimus tarkastelee venäläisten TV-uutisten vastaanottoa Venäjän ja Ukrainan välisen konfliktin kontekstissa. Tutkimusaineistoni koostuu fokusryhmähaastatteluista, joita analysoin poliittisen kommunikaation, psykologian ja politiikan tutkimuksen teorioita yhdistävän konseptuaalisen apparaatin avulla. Analyysini keskittyy kolmeen erilliseen vastaanoton alueeseen, jotka ovat 1) poliittisen mielipiteen muodostuminen TV-uutisten pohjalta, 2) heuristiset mallit TV-uutisten uskottavuuden arvioinnissa ja 3) eri tietolähteiden käyttö, käsittäen sekä internetin että perinteisen median, mediaympäristössä, jota määrittää valittavissa olevien uutislähteiden suuri määrä. Aiempaan tutkimukseen perustuen työn lähtöolettama on, että autoritäärinen poliittinen järjestelmä ei tarjoa kansalaisille kannustimia, mahdollisuuksia tai tue heidän kognitiivisia kykyjään prosessoida uutisia kriittisesti. Tätä lähtöolettamaa vasten väitöskirjani tutkii, kuinka yllä mainitut kolme uutisten vastaanoton aluetta heijastuvat venäläisten TV:n katsojien poliittiseen psykologiaan ja sitä kautta uutisten vastaanottoon Venäjällä. Työni edistää ensinnäkin uutisten vastaanottoa autoritaarisissa yhteiskunnissa käsittelevää tutkimuskirjallisuutta. Vaikka aiemmat tutkimukset ovat tunnistaneet useita autoritaariseen poliittiseen järjestelmään liittyviä tekijöitä, jotka määrittävät kansalaisten uutisia kohtaan kokemaa (epä)luottamusta, otetaan poliittisen aktiivisuuden (engagement) rooli uutisten prosessoinnissa harvoin huomioon. Tutkimukseni kuitenkin osoittaa, että poliittisella aktiivisuudella (onko katsoja poliittisesti tiedostava vai ei) on merkittävä rooli siinä, kuinka TV:n katsojat Venäjällä muodostavat merkityksiä TV-uutisten perusteella. Tutkimuksessani vähemmistö fokusryhmiin osallistuneista henkilöistä on poliittisesti tiedostavia, ja he turvautuvat yhdenmukaisiin poliittisiin skeemoihin tulkitessaan TV-uutisten sisältöä ja näin ollen antavat merkkejä nk. yhdenmukaisuuden periaatteesta (consistency bias) eli taipumuksesta tulkita informaatiota omien uskomusten mukaisesti. Suurin osa tutkimukseen osallistuneista fokusryhmähaastateltavista on poliittisesti passiivisia. Uutisen vastaanotossa he tukeutuvat muistinvaraisiin ideoihin, jotka sisältävät niin valtion politiikkaa tukevia kuin vastustavia näkökantoja. Heidän kykenemättömyytensä artikuloida johdonmukaisia mielipiteitä ylläpitää autoritaarista järjestelmää. Toiseksi tutkimukseni lisää ymmärrystä siitä, kuinka matalan informaation rationaliteetti (low-information rationality), eli taipumus prosessoida tietoa oikopolkujen ja yksinkertaistusten kautta, toimii autoritaarisessa järjestelmässä. Aiempi tutkimus olettaa, että käsitellessään uutisia ja poliittista informaatiota TV:n katsojat tukeutuvat laajaan valikoimaan heuristisia malleja eli informaation prosessointia nopeuttavia mentaalisia strategioita, jotka voivat liittyä niin arkielämään kuin myös ympäröivään poliittiseen todellisuuteen. Sitä, kuinka kansalaiset näitä erilaisia heuristisia malleja käyttävät ei kuitenkaan ole tutkittu laajasti demokratioiden ulkopuolella. Tutkimukseni osoittaa, että uutisten vastaanotossa venäläiset televisionkatsojat suosivat arkipäättelyä ja kulttuurisia stereotypioita, koska autoritaarisessa yhteiskunnassa media- ja poliittisia instituutioita ei pidetä riippumattomina tai luotettavina toimijoina. Lopuksi tutkimukseni lisää ymmärrystä siitä, kuinka valittavissa olevien tietolähteiden suuri määrä vaikuttaa uutisten vastaanottoon demokraattisten järjestelmien ulkopuolella. Tutkimukseni osoittaa, että poliittisesti aktiiviset haastateltavat löytävät mieltymyksiään vastaavaa informaatiota, mikä on merkki selektiivisestä altistumisesta. Ne tutkimukseen osallistuneet henkilöt, jotka eivät olleet poliittisesti aktiivisia yhdistelevät TV-uutisiin uutisaggregaattien kautta saamaansa informaatiota yksinkertaistaakseen informaation etsintää. Koska venäläisten uutisaggregaattien tarjoama informaatio ei eroa TV-uutisten tarjonnasta, vahvistavat ne TV-uutisten uskottavuutta televisionkatsojien silmissä muodostaen omanlaisensa informaatiokuplan. Vaikka yleisesti ottaen personoidun informaatiokuplan ajatus perustuu internetin käyttäjien henkilökohtaisten mieltymysten ja automatisoitujen algoritmien vuorovaikutukselle esittelen tässä tutkimuksessa paremmin autoritaarisen regiimin kontekstiin sopivan ”orkestroidun informaatiokuplaefektin” (orchestrated information bubble effect), joka perustuu valtion kontrolloiman television uutisagendaan. Koska tämä informaatiokuplaefekti toimii valtion säätelemänä ja ylhäältä annettuna suhteessa mediankuluttajiin, on sen tarkoitus vahvistaa ja uusintaa valtion kontrolloiman television välittämiä viestejä kansalaisten omien mieltymysten sijaan

The Affective Effect of Late-Night Humor: The Indirect Influence of Late-Night Comedy Consumption on Political Engagement through Emotions

The research in this dissertation explores the complex communication processes whereby late-night comedy viewing can produce significant indirect effects on citizen engagement in political life. To this end, the present study introduces a theoretical framework, which synthesizes Affective Intelligence theory, the Orientation-Stimulus-Orientation-Response (O-S-O-R) approach, and the Communication Mediation Model. Specifically, three indirect effects models are proposed and tested across two different research designs: an online experiment and a mail survey. The main findings include the following. First, late-night comedy viewing can promote citizens’ political engagement indirectly by eliciting their anger and worry. Second, consuming satirical humor can mobilize discursive activities for citizens by provoking their negative emotions. Third, more frequent discussion, the expanded size of a discussion network, and greater engagement in online communication activities can mediate and reinforce the mobilizing effects of late-night comedy viewing. Finally, the mediating effects of negative emotions and heterogeneous discussion are conditional upon education, such that exposure to late-night comedy can encourage political participation of well-educated individuals, while the same experiences from satirical humor can demobilize less savvy counterparts. The current research effort provides a range of insights to explore the role of newly emerging media genres that are presumably of less enlightening value and yet are more emotionally amusing and provocative. Primarily, these findings contribute to our understanding of various mediation models anchored in the O-S-O-R framework. By incorporating emotion as a viable mediator (the second O) between the reception of message (S) and its ensuing response (R), the proposed indirect effects models enlarge the scope of the mediation model, while capturing the dynamic intervening mechanisms above and beyond more conventional cognitive accounts. Further by introducing education as a first O, the current research fully exploits the O-S-O-R framework in assessing the impact of political entertainment. Moreover, investigating multiple facets of interpersonal discussion harboring distinct implications for participatory democracy extends the purview of mediators that might be employed in the Communication Mediation Model.Ph.D.CommunicationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91420/1/hoonlz_1.pd

Leveraging analytics to produce compelling and profitable film content

Producing compelling film content profitably is a top priority to the long-term prosperity of the film industry. Advances in digital technologies, increasing availabilities of granular big data, rapid diffusion of analytic techniques, and intensified competition from user generated content and original content produced by Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) platforms have created unparalleled needs and opportunities for film producers to leverage analytics in content production. Built upon the theories of value creation and film production, this article proposes a conceptual framework of key analytic techniques that film producers may engage throughout the production process, such as script analytics, talent analytics, and audience analytics. The article further synthesizes the state-of-the-art research on and applications of these analytics, discuss the prospect of leveraging analytics in film production, and suggest fruitful avenues for future research with important managerial implications

Improving Intergroup Relations through Para-social Contact: An Examination of How Pro-social Television Can Heal Race Relations between Black and White Americans.

In a world today filled with conflict and strife, effective strategies and policies are needed to bring about intergroup understanding and peace. Guided by the contact hypothesis and social cognitive theories, this study examined how television can be used as a creative tool to reduce intergroup tensions and increase pro-social attitudes and behaviors among people. Using television as vehicle for social change is very promising since Americans on average spend 5 hours per day watching television—more time than all other media combined. Further, television’s status as a cultural icon gives it the power and authority to serve as a key socializing entity in our society. This is the first study to use experimental procedures with an adult population to examine how television can be used to improve interracial relations. In this study participants were randomly assigned to view a pro-social television clip with black and white characters or a similar pro-social television clip with all white characters. Participants were then assessed on their attitudes and behaviors towards black people. The results show that viewing pro-social television depicting black and white characters in positive interactions reduced the amount of anxiety white participants held towards black people, and reduced the amount of physical distance white participants put between themselves and their black conversation partners. Furthermore, participants who viewed the mixed-race television clip and who had black friends selected the shortest preferred physical distance between themselves and their black conversation partners. For participants who identified more with the white characters, viewing the mixed race television clip significantly decreased their negative feelings towards black people. The possibility that television viewing may foster positive attitudes and behaviors has received very little attention. However, this study shows that viewing pro-social mixed-race television programming designed to reduce prejudice and increase acceptance of others can in fact increase positive attitudes and behaviors among people who are or who have historically been at conflict. Pro-social television may help solve some of our most challenging social problems of today.PHDCommunicationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100040/1/maylene_1.pd

Brand awareness of virtual advertising in sport

The purpose of this study was to assess the brand awareness levels of virtual advertising in sport. More specifically, this study explored factors affecting brand awareness communicated through virtual advertising in a sport broadcast. Particularly, this study focused on the following factors: baseball involvement, team identification, animation, and repetition. To measure consumers’ awareness levels of virtual advertising and to control for extraneous variables, two 3x3 Latin square designs were adopted. A group in one of the Latin square groups saw three different brands (Champion, Icehouse, and Mercury) appearing in different number of exposures (one, four, and six). The other two groups in the same Latin square groups each saw the same video with different combinations of number of exposures and brands. The three groups in the other Latin square group each saw exactly the same three videos, but with animation effects on the virtual advertisements. A sample of 208 undergraduate students from several physical activity classes was solicited to participate in the study. They were handed a random CD that contained one of the six 24-minute video clips of a Texas Rangers game with virtual advertising embedded. After watching the CD, they were asked to answer an online questionnaire. Unaided and aided recalls, as well as recognition rates were measured to determine the brand awareness levels of virtual advertising. In addition, items measuring baseball involvement, team identification (Rangers & Red Sox), brand involvement, and demand artifacts questions were included in the survey. A series of sequential logistic regression analyses and analysis of covariance were performed on the awareness measures. The results suggest an effect of repetition on unaided recall levels. At the recognition level, repetition had an interaction with baseball involvement, but no other effects were found. Additionally, animation was found to be ineffective in attracting viewers’ attention; however, animation had an interactive effect with repetition on unaided recall. The effects of baseball involvement and team identification were found to affect awareness levels, but were inconsistent in prediction. Limitations and future research questions are discussed

COMMUNICATION INTERFACE PROXIMITY AND USER ANXIETY: COMPARING DESKTOP, LAPTOP, AND HAND-HELD DEVICES AS MEDIA PLATFORMS FOR EMERGENCY ALERTS

This study is an experiment investigating the effects of communication interface proximity on college students' anxiety when they receive the alerts about on-campus crimes via e-mails and text messages. It proposes a new dimension for the traditional concept of proximity in journalism and suggests a shift in the emphasis of proximity from audience-to-event to user-to-interface. It draws the theoretical framework from multiple disciplines: human-computer interaction research, the information processing model, media effects research, as well as the psychological research of anxiety. A total of 97 college students in a large mid-Atlantic university participated in this experiment. Communication interface proximity was conceptualized as three different media platforms: desktop computer (stationary), laptop computer (portable), and hand-held device (mobile). The students were assigned to one of the three device groups based on their self-reported computer usage and received four crime alerts per day for two days through one of the devices. They were required to carry a Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) pictorial scale during the experiment and reply to the alerts as soon as possible using the SAM and felt anxiety scales. They also filled out an online questionnaire at the beginning of the study, at the end of the first day, and at the end of the study, respectively. Subjects who received the crime alerts on hand-held devices reported higher anxiety upon alert receipt than those receiving the alerts on desktop or laptop computers. Anxiety, valence, and arousal reported upon alert receipt for the laptop and desktop groups decreased significantly in early day two, suggesting an "overnight effect" of the crime alerts on these two groups. However, the hand-held group still reported a high level of anxiety upon alert receipt in early day two, suggesting the ubiquitous hand-held device is just under our skin, with no "down time". This study also found that anxiety predicted latency time of response to the alerts and memory for the crime alerts, indicating that anxiety serves as an adaptive heuristic in an emergency and helps people allocate their limited cognitive mental resources, as suggested by the information processing model

Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law

Law today has entered the digital age. The way law is practiced – how truth and justice are represented and assessed – is increasingly dependent on what appears on electronic screens in courtrooms, law offices, government agencies, and elsewhere. Practicing lawyers know this and are rapidly adapting to the new era of digital visual rhetoric. Legal theory and education, however, have yet to catch up. This article is the first systematic effort to theorize law\u27s transformation by new visual and multimedia technologies and to set out the changes in legal pedagogy that are needed to prepare law students for practice in the new environment. The article explores the consequences for legal theory and practice of the shift from an objectivist to a constructivist approach to human knowledge, using an expanded, multidisciplinary understanding of rhetoric to analyze the elusiveness of evidentiary truth and the nature and ethics of persuasion in the digital era

Toward A Theory of Media Reconciliation: An Exploratory Study of Closed Captioning

This project is an interdisciplinary empirical study that explores the emotional experiences resulting from the use of the assistive technology closed captioning. More specifically, this study focuses on documenting the user experiences of both the D/deaf and Hearing multimedia user in an effort to better identify and understand those variables and processes that are involved with facilitating and supporting connotative and emotional meaning making. There is an ever present gap that defines closed captioning studies thus far, and this gap is defined by the emphasis on understanding and measuring denotative meaning making behavior while largely ignoring connotative meaning making behavior that is necessarily an equal participant in a user\u27s viewing experience. This study explores connotative and emotional meaning making behaviors so as to better understand the behavior exhibited by users engaged with captioned multimedia. To that end, a mixed methods design was developed that utilizes qualitative methods from the field of User Experience (UX) to explore connotative equivalence between D/deaf and Hearing users and an augmented version of S. R. Gulliver and G. Ghinea\u27s (2003) quantitative measure Information Assimilation (IA) from the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to measure the denotative equivalence between the two user types. To measure denotative equivalence a quiz containing open-ended questions to measure IA was used. To measure connotative equivalence the following measures were used: 1) Likert scales to measure users\u27 confidence in answers to open-ended questions. 2) Likert scale to measure a users\u27 interest in the stimulus. 3) Open - ended questions to identify scenes that elicited the strongest emotional responses from users. 4) Four- level response questions with accompanying Likert scales to determine strength of emotional reaction to three select excerpts from the stimulus. 5) An interview consisting of three open- ended questions and one fixed - choice question. This study found that there were no major differences in the denotative equivalence between the D/deaf and Hearing groups; however, there were important differences in the emotional reactions to the stimulus that indicate there was not connotative equivalence between the groups in response to the emotional content. More importantly, this study found that the strategies used to understand the information users were presented with in order to create both denotative and connotative meaning differed between groups and individuals within groups. To explain such behaviors observed, this work offers a theory of Media Reconciliation based on Wolfgang Iser\u27s (1980) phenomenological theory about the \u27virtual text\u27