This research investigates the psychological effects of American television series on the Lebanese audience. The research was split into two studies: the first study was a quantitative analysis of the theories of identification and social learning, applied on a Lebanese female audience who watched the series Gossip Girl and Game of Thrones. The second study was a qualitative analysis of the theory of desensitization applied on two Lebanese participants, each watching respectively the series Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones.
In the first study, a total of 115 Lebanese female participants were split into two groups: 75 participants who had watched only Gossip Girl and had an average age of 18 years old, and 40 participants who had watched both Gossip Girl and Game of Thrones and had an average age of 25 years old. The participants completed a survey based on the Wishful Identification Scale, the Parasocial Interaction Scale, the Attitude Similarity Scale, the Character’s Attributes
Scale, the Connectedness Scale, and the Social Group Setting Scale. A T-Test and a Chi-Square analysis revealed that the Lebanese female audience of Group 1, with the average age of 18 years old, found similarities with the characters of the series Gossip Girl, which affected their identification with the characters, and their imitation of the characters’ attitudes. Further, the analysis revealed that the Lebanese female audience of Group 2, with the average age of 25 years old, watched and discussed the series Game of Thrones in a social group setting, which allowed the participants to build parasocial interactions with the characters and identify with them.
In the second study, two participants were chosen based on the fact that one had never watched Breaking Bad and the second had never watched Game of Thrones. The participants were interviewed pre-series, and then interviewed throughout the exposure to several episodes. The qualitative in-depth analysis of the interview answers led to the results that after repeated exposure to Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad, the Lebanese viewer, even if already tolerant to on-screen violence, experienced desensitization signs to the violence, drugs, incest and rape portrayed on-screen in these two series
