Donald F. Roberts

Reconsidering the Displacement Hypothesis Television's Influence on Children's Time Use

This study addresses continuing concern over televisions displacement of other leisure activities form both substantive and methodological perspectives. It examines past conceptualizations of the mechanism by which television is assumed to displace other activities. Following a critical review of the displacement literature, the authors examine data from an 8-year panel study of the introduction of television to South Africa and use a variety of methodological approaches to illustrate a major source of inconsistency in findings from previous studies. The displacement mechanism is found to be asymmetric in nature; that is, although increases in television viewing force out some other activities, decreases in television viewing do not result in parallel increases in levels of any of these activities. This pattern of findings was most pronounced in the case of radio use and movie attendance. Implications for conceptualization of the displacement process are discussed in relation to these findings.

AGE DIFFERENCES IN CHILDREN'S PERCEPTIONS OF MESSAGE INTENT Responses to TV News, Commercials, Educational Spots, and Public Service Announcements

Children four through eleven years old viewed informational (excerpts from network news), persuasive (child-oriented and adult-oriented commercials), educational (excerpts from instructional spots), and mixed (child-oriented public service announcements) messages. They were then interviewed about message content, type, intent, believability, and belief criteria. Comprehension of narrative content was high, even among the youngest children. Most young children were able to identify messages for which common labels exist (news; commercials), but few attached labels to educational spots or public service announcements. Correct articulation of message intent occurred primarily among older children; few under age eight correctly identified the intent of any message type. There was an age-related trend toward the use of functional cues to aid in message identification, and toward reality testing as the appropriate basis for evaluation of message believability. The evidence indicates that young children may interpret messages in informational terms regardless of message intent (e.g., to persuade or instruct).

Television, Reading, and Reading Achievement A Reappraisal

The relationship between TV use and reading achievemet is reappraised, using data from a 3-year panel study. Strong and significant bivariate correlations replicate the findings of previous studies and support the contention that television use is negatively associated with reading achievement. As increasingly sophisticated analytic techniques are applied to the data, however, the relationships are seen to become progressively weaker, more ambiguous, and less compelling. When the LISREL model is used to tease apart the effects of true change from unreliability in the measures and to account for the stability of the variables over time, three patterns become apparent. First, all three variables of interest in this 3-year panel study−reading skills, TV viewing time, and reading time−are highly intercorrelated at the outset. Second, each of the three variables remains highly stable over the entire period of the study; relatively little variance in our sample measures appears to reflect true change. Finally, what change there is in reading time or in reading skills does not seem to be related consistently to time spent viewing television. Nor does time spent reading nonschool materials seem to predict increases in reading skills to any great extent. It is suggested that the entire question of the influence of out-of-school media use on reading achievement requires a far more sophisticated approach than has been typically applied in the past.

Watergate and Political Socialization The Inescapable Event

he Watergate crisis clearly had an important effect on the U.S. political scene, ~ dramatically changing political opinion and the balance of political power. Less obvious, but perhaps more significant, is the possible long-term impact of the entire Watergate scandal on America’s future voters. A brief review of political socialization research reveals that instead of being uninterested in and insulated from political events, children may be one of the more affected segments of the population. Evidence is mounting that children, even in the early grade-school years, do attend to political information (e.g., Chaffee et al., 1970; Hawkins, 1974; Tolley, 1973). Moreover, several studies have shown that children at least as

READING AND TELEVISION Predictors of Reading Achievement at Different Age Levels

How does television affect childrens reading skill development? The relationship between television behavior and reading achievement is examined within a conceptual framework of television and reading constructs such as media availability and parental media behavior, childrens use of print and broadcast media, and measures of their attitudes and orientations toward television and print. The framework is examined for children at three different stages of reading development. Five principal constructs—socioeconomic status, print and television home environment, amount of media use, orientations toward print and television, and involvement with print and television—are used to predict reading achievement in regression analyses performed separately for each grade cohort.

Booze, Drugs, and Pop Music: Trends in Substance Portrayals in the Billboard Top 100—1968–2008

This paper presents the results of a content analysis of alcohol and drug portrayals in the top 100 Billboard songs from each of the years 1968, 1978, 1988, 1998, and 2008, thus allowing both a characterization of substance portrayals in music generally and an analysis of changes over time. Of the final sample of 496 songs, 10.3% contained a reference to alcohol and 5.7% contained a reference to drugs. A substantial increase was found over the decades, and in particular over the last two: in 1988, 12% of songs referred to either or both classes of substance, compared to 30% in 2008. Marijuana was by far the most frequently mentioned drug. Both alcohol and drugs were much more likely to be portrayed positively than negatively, especially in recent decades. The results are discussed in terms of relevant theories of media processing and impact.

SOURCE, DESTINATION, AND ENTROPY Reassessing the Role of Information Theory in Communication Research

Although Shannon and Weavers The Mathematical Theory of Communication has had a profound impact on the development of communication research, few scholars have adapted Shannons concepts to their research questions. The authors argue that the failure to recognize the difference between the two fundamental orientations in Shannons theory—the relationship between source and destination and the technical characteristics of transmission channels—has retarded the use of Shannons concepts, especially his measure of information. Taking care to differentiate between these two aspects of information theory, the authors review the small body of empirical research inspired by Shannons theory. They find that Shannons entropy measure is especially useful in the study of human systems because it permits researchers to analyze categorical data using quantitative statistical tools.

Do the Mass Media Play a Role in Political Socialisation

ences of family (Chaffee, McLeod and Wackman, 1973; Jennings and Niemi, 1973), schools (Langton and Jennings, 1968, 1969), and to a lesser extent peers (Langton, 1967) on the child’s developing image of the world of government and politics. Only recently, however, has attention begun to focus on the role of the mass media in that process (e.g., Chaffee, Ward and Tipton, 1970; McLeod and Chaffee, 1972; Tolley, 1973). Inferences about the role of the mass media in political socialisation may be based

Television and schooling: displacement and distraction hypotheses

Television is often accused of undermining childrens academic achievement. This paper investigates two explanations which frequently accompany such a claim. The displacement hypothesis predicts that the time children spend with television is taken from activities that are more beneficial to school performance. The distraction hypothesis suggests that childrens cumulative exposure to the structure of television—its pace, format, etc.–engenders an intolerance for the pace of schooling. A review of research on television viewing, time displacement, and academic performance fails to find any support for the displacement hypothesis. A review of studies relevant to the distraction hypothesis, however, uncovers mixed findings. This paper presents analyses of data gathered from school children in South Africa.

Letters in Mass Magazines as “Outcroppings” of Public Concern

Cluster analysis based on the co-occurrence of key words in letters to national magazines yields qualitative indicators of the publics concerns and breaks new ground in content (and historical) research.