Allerd L. Peeters

Bridging or bonding? Relationships between integration and media use among ethnic minorities in the Netherlands

Abstract This article will first of all present a brief literature review on media use and identity construction and integration. This overview will be given in light of two phenomena: The concepts of ‘social quality’ and ‘cultural participation’ and the role played by the media in this on the one hand, and the multicultural composition of Dutch society on the other. The present contribution looks at the four largest ethnic minority groups in the Netherlands: Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean youngsters (13 to 24-year-olds), and adults (25 years of age and above). The key issue is ‘integration’ with its six dimensions, among which the extent to which ethnic minorities endorse norms and values of Dutch society, and the minorities’ motivation with respect to integration. We also focus on related features, such as religious outlook and linguistic fluency. The measure of participation or integration in Dutch society is related to the use of four kinds of media: Radio, television, print media, and the Internet. The present contribution addresses the following question: To what extent are, on the one hand, bonding (i. e., an immigrant’s slant towards maintaining contacts with the ‘homeland’) or, on the other, bridging (i. e., the desire to familiarize oneself with Dutch society and to participate in it socially and culturally) predictors of media use among ethnic minorities? We will address the relative importance of these four media in terms of media time and their twofold ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ capacities; for each of these media we check the extent to which ethnic minorities favor media from their native country and use applications which focus on their country of origin or their own group.

Fright Reactions to Television: A Child Survey

Using telephone interviews with a random sample of Dutch children between the ages of 7 and 12 years, the authors investigated (a) the prevalence of television-induced fright, (b) whether the fear-inducing capacity of different types of television content (interpersonal violence, fantasy characters, war and suffering, and fires and accidents) is associated with the childs age and gender, and (c) how boys and girls in different age groups cope with their television-induced fears. Thirty-one percent of the children reported having been frightened by television during the preceding year. Both childrens television-induced fears and their coping strategies to reduce such fears varied by age and gender.

Explaining Effects of Sensationalism on Liking of Television News Stories The Role of Emotional Arousal

This study investigates the appeal of sensationalist television news. News stories were content analyzed to measure the presence of sensationalist features. In addition, the stories were watched and evaluated by participants to measure the degree to which the items elicited emotional arousal and the degree to which the items were liked. As predicted, the findings showed that emotional arousal mediates effects of sensationalist features on liking and that the relationship between emotional arousal and liking takes the shape of an inverted U.

Television News and Fear: A Child Survey

Abstract Using telephone interviews among a random sample of 537 Dutch children aged 7–12 years old, we investigated (a) the prevalence of fear reactions to television news among younger and older children and among boys and girls, (b) what types of news items children in different age and gender groups refer to as frightening, and (c) whether childrens fear reactions to regular adult television news differed from their fear reactions to a special childrens news program. Overall, 48.2 % of the children who reported watching the adult or childrens news programs, reported fear reactions to adult news, while 32.6 % reported fear of childrens news content. For both types of news programs, younger children and girls more often reported fear than older children and boys did. The most prevalent fear-inducing news content categories were (a) interpersonal violence, (b) fires, accidents, and disasters, and (c) visual depictions of the consequences of violence.

Irritating, shocking, and intolerable TV programs: Norms, values, and concerns of viewers in the Netherlands

Abstract This study investigates the negative reactions of Dutch viewers to the content of television programs. The results show that a vast majority is sometimes irritated by TV programs, that a somewhat smaller majority is sometimes shocked by the programs, and that one fifth of the viewing population consider certain programs to be intolerable. The most frequently mentioned genres are games, shows, and related entertainment programs, while reality TV (scoring high on all negative reactions), news and current affairs (often shocking), and sex (often intolerable) are primarily evaluated as irritating. It appears that violent and frightening material creates by far the largest category of negative responses. Intimidating behavior worries the viewers most, immediately followed by the violation of privacy. This article also discusses the consequences of these results for broadcasting policy in the Netherlands.

Should news on child homicides be broadcast? Opinions of parents, teachers, and children

This survey was designed to investigate the opinions of news consumers about the broadcasting of one of the most devastating news events: parents who kill their own children (filicides). Data were collected in The Netherlands at a time when a sudden increase in filicides occurred. Three groups of news consumers were surveyed: parents (n = 255), teachers (n = 122), and children (n = 255). Results showed that the vast majority of parents (82%) and teachers (89%) agreed that news on filicides should be broadcast in news programs designed for adults. The majority of parents (62%), teachers (62%), and children (74%) also believed that the news on filicides should be broadcast in a news program designed for 10to 12-year old children. Seventy-one percent of the children reported that they had heard about the filicide cases. Of these children, 63% said they had discussed this news with either their parents, teachers, or friends. Introduction Few crimes evoke such horror, indignation, and extensive publicity as the killing of children (Wilczynski, 1997). Research on journalist selection processes has shown that the amount of newsworthiness journalists assign to individual homicides is greatly enhanced if the victims are children (Johnstone, Hawkins & Michener, 1994). In addition, content analyses of crime news have demonstrated that news on child victims significantly increases average story length, number of news stories published, and proportion of items on the front page (Pritchard & Hughes, 1997). Although the killing of children has been practiced since ancient times for reasons such as religious sacrifice, shame of illegitimacy, or psychiatric disorders, it is only relatively recently that child homicides have been considered a major problem in the Western world (Wilczynski, 1997). Since the 1960s, child abuse has received increasing professional and scientific attention, and, particularly since the 1990s, the media have begun to give frequent coverage to the killing of children. Cases such as the killing of two-year-old James Bulger by two boys in England or the abuse and killing of six-year-old Communications 26 (2001) 3 229 Brought to you by | Radboud University Nijmegen