Amir Hetsroni

If You Must Be Hospitalized, Television Is Not the Place: Diagnoses, Survival Rates and Demographic Characteristics of Patients in TV Hospital Dramas

This study maps the distribution of diagnoses, survival rates, and demographic profiles of patients in primetime hospital dramas and compares the results with actual hospital data. Complete seasons of ER, Chicago Hope, and Greys Anatomy are content analyzed and compared with a survey of U.S. hospitals. Compared to real-world patients, hospital patients on television have a lower representation of Hispanics, senior citizens, infants, and women; and a higher representation of White, middle-aged men. The medical diagnoses of TV patients are biased toward dramatic diseases such as mood disorders and medical problems that are graphic and easily visible. The mortality rate among TV patients is nearly nine times higher than that of hospital patients in the real world. The results are discussed from the perspectives of media system dependency theory and cultivation theory.

Overrepresented Topics, Underrepresented Topics, and the Cultivation Effect

This study examines whether topics that are underrepresented in TV programming differ from topics that are overrepresented in their capability to cultivate distorted estimations of social reality. A content analysis of prime-time programming (63 hours) was used to detect overrepresented and underrepresented topics in four content domains: criminality, occupations, demography, and sex life. A survey (N = 517) tested the effect of different topics on reality estimation and found no systematic differences between topics that are overrepresented in the programming and topics that are underrepresented. The fact that distorted reality estimation may occur with topics that are not frequently depicted in the programming supports the thesis that cultivation stems from actual learning of facts and figures from the screen.

A comparison of values in infomercials and commercials

The study compared values represented in infomercials with values represented in conventional commercials. A total of 318 infomercials and 861 commercials broadcast in Israel in the late 1990s were coded to examine the prominence of value systems and of specific values. Of the three value systems examined – functionalism, hedonism and altruism – functionalism was over three times more frequent in infomercials than in commercials, and altruism was over three times more frequent in commercials than in infomercials. The frequency of hedonism in commercials was 25 percent greater than it was in infomercials. Joy, the most prominent value in commercials, ranked only third in infomercials. Overall, the results show that in spite of the fact that the infomercials are longer than the commercials, they present a more limited selection of values. Infomercials repeatedly mention only the product’s price, its basic qualities and its obvious uses.

Choosing a Mate in Television Dating Games: The Influence of Setting, Culture, and Gender

This work examines the influence of setting (TV dating games vs. questionnaires), culture (America vs. Israel), and gender on mate selection. Ordinary men and women, ranging in age from 16 to 24 years, took part in this study as participants in a TV dating game and as questionnaire respondents. A content analysis of 80 dating games from the United States and Israel yielded 258 topical categories (76 from American shows and 182 from Israeli shows) used to screen potential mates. Two hundred and four questionnaires yielded 408 topical categories (200 from American questionnaires and 208 from Israeli questionnaires). Both genders in both countries used physical categories more often in the TV dating games than in the questionnaires. There was an effect of culture: Americans—regardless of setting and gender—employed the physical categories less often than Israelis. There was also a small effect of gender, showing men more often employ physical categories, especially in questionnaires. The results attest to the strength of the mass media capability to reduce gender differences in mate selection, but they do not strongly support Baumeisters theory of female erotic plasticity.

Associations between Television Viewing and Love Styles: An Interpretation Using Cultivation Theory

This study evaluated the associations between television viewing and love styles. The Love Attitudes Scale (LAS), based on Lees love style taxonomy, was administered to a sample of 338 unmarried Israeli students along with questions about TV viewing habits, current involvement in a serious romantic relationship, and marital intentions. A confirmatory factor analysis of the LAS indicated that the expected six-factor solution adequately fit the data. Correlations between individual love styles and TV viewing were small to moderate, ranging from .12 to .29. Scores for Ludus love style correlated positively with viewing of news and general programming. Those for Pragma love style correlated positively with news viewing and negatively with viewing genres frequently including love themes such as soap operas and family drama, while scores for Eros love style positively correlated with watching these love abundant genres. No significant association was found for TV viewing with Storge, Mania, and Agape love styles. Hierarchical regression using demographic variables, love status, and viewing habits mirrored these results, with the unique R2 for Ludus, Pragma, and Eros ranging from 1.8% to 8%, while the total variance accounted for by the models ranged from 12% to 21%. The findings can be interpreted as support for a weak cultivation effect, in which habits in long-term TV viewing among young adults correspond to small to moderate tendencies for particular love styles that thematically relate them. However, because they are correlational, the findings could equally be interpreted in terms of tendencies that exist due to modeling within families and socialization during development.

Open or Closed — This Is the Question: The Influence of Question Format on the Cultivation Effect

This study uses open ended and multiple choice questionnaires to examine the influence of question format on the cultivation effect. Student respondents (N=517) were requested to estimate the prevalence of criminality, single parent families, and sexual activity among teens in the society. The given estimates were compared to real world figures and to TV world values that were obtained from a content analysis of one week of prime-time network programming (63 hours from 3 different channels). The results confirm to cultivation predictions by pointing at differences between heavy viewers and light viewers, so that heavy viewers give extremer estimates, but the findings also indicate that the impact of the question format is greater than the effect of cultivation, and that the amount of viewing and the question format interact so that cultivation is more visible in open ended questionnaires.

Ceiling Effect in Cultivation

This study addressed two fundamental questions in cultivation: Is the total amount of time devoted to TV viewing a stronger predictor of cultivation than genre-specific exposure, and is the cultivation phenomenon in some domains capped by a ceiling effect? Data obtained from a content analysis of complete seasons of three successful medical programs – ER, House, and Grey’s Anatomy (66 episodes altogether) – were used to compose a survey which asked a representative sample of US adults (N = 281) to estimate the frequency of health concerns that were identified in the content analysis. The results partly support the cultivation hypothesis in its Gerbnerian version because the total amount of time devoted to TV viewing was found to be related to overestimating the proportion of dramatic diagnoses (poisoning and injuries) and exaggerating the mortality rate of inpatients; however, no effect was noted for items concerning elderly inpatients, and no effect was found for viewing of medical dramas. Since the dist...

Economic Expectations, Optimistic Bias, and Television Viewing During Economic Recession A Cultivation Study

We examine the relationship between TV viewing and economic expectations during economic recession. A content analysis of 84 hours of local network primetime programming (news and nonnews) identifies a moderate bias toward economic pessimism in the broadcasts. A survey of the adult population (N = 356) points at a significant positive relationship between TV viewing (total viewing and viewing of news programming) and economic pessimism at both the national and the personal levels. A similar relationship exists between TV viewing and optimistic bias—the tendency to be more pessimistic on economic matters at the national than at the personal level. These results remain significant when controlled for demographics, trust in national institutions, evaluation of current economic situation and consumption of media other than TV, and corroborate a second-order cultivation effect in the economic context.

What do you really need to know to be a millionaire? Content analysis of quiz shows in America and in Israel

The study analyzes the content of questions in the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and compares the American and Israeli versions of the game. One thousand and seventy questions (488 from American programs and 582 from Israeli programs) were sampled. In both countries the topics vary greatly and cover different fields from light entertainment, through politics, languages, science and mathematics, geography, religion, sport, food and leisure, high culture and economics. The lighter topics (entertainment, sport, food and leisure) are considerably over‐represented in the easier small‐prize questions, whereas the heavier topics (high culture, history, languages, science and mathematics) are more frequent among the harder big‐money questions. The American program contains a few more questions on economics and science. In the main, however, content differences between the two countries are small.

Violence in Television Advertising: Content Analysis and Audience Attitudes

This article features a cross-cultural examination of the presentation of violence in advertising and a description of public opinion trends concerning the appearance of this material in mainstream TV commercials. A content analysis of 1,785 American ads and 1,467 Israeli ads maps the representation of violence in TV advertising in the two countries and finds it present in 2.5% of the American advertisements and in 1.5% of the Israeli advertisements. The most frequently depicted conduct in the two countries is bare-handed assault. Sexual violence is not presented at all. A public opinion survey shows that concerns over the appearance of violence in advertising are correlated with an exaggerated estimation of its prevalence, and, specifically, an overestimation of the frequency of vandalism and assaults that use a cold weapon.