immoral, or distasteful?: audience fragmentation and media content
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Popular entertainment media is often lambasted by some for its portrayal of anti-social and immoral content, yet the typical Hollywood blockbuster often serves to reinforce rather than violate social mores (cf. Klapper, 1960). For better or worse, popular tends to serve as a mirror of the culture from which it stems, and producers craft message to appease the needs and tastes of that culture (Gans, 1954; Straabhaur, 1991). Indeed, newer theorizing on media production (Tamborini, 2011) has suggested that aggregate audience moral foundations can influence the production process, and early research has found morally-based content differences between content designed for specific cultures (Mastro et al., 2011). At the same time, if we consider the increased fragmentation of today’s media audience in which media content is produced to appeal to smaller, more well-defined fan bases, we wonder about the portability of this media to other audiences. In short, can increasingly-niche media be expected to survive out of its niche, or will it be seen as at least distasteful or at most immoral?TRANSCRIPT
Bowman, N. D. (2012, April). Immoral, or distasteful? Audience fragmentation and media content. Panel presentation at Southern States Communication Association Annual Meeting, San Antonio.
Nicholas David Bowman, WVUNicholas David Bowman, [email protected]
@bowmanspartan@bowmanspartan
Immoral, or Distasteful? Audience fragmentation and media content
Overview
• Tastes and Media Preference• Cultural Proximity Hypothesis
– Culture as nationality– Culture as morality
• Early evidence for morality as predictor• Future Research
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Tastes and Media Preference
• Media content is produced to appeal to the “masses”– Gans (1954; 1979) taste cultures– Atkin (1984) learned expectations – Stam (1990) social identity– Zillmann (2000) morality subcultures
• Mass appeal usually requires an adherence to macro-level socio-cultural norms – Norm violations result in norm reinforcement (Klapper 1960;
data from Tamborini et al., 2010) – Production inline with dominant values (Mastro et al, 2012)
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Tastes and Media Preference
• Audience fragmentation has altered this process– Highest rated show? M*A*S*H, 1983 (125M)– Only five series since 2000 make the top 50, and only two
break 30M viewers– Renewed focus on “1000 True Fans”
• Increased focus on international markets– US media dominant (Hoskins, Mc Fayden & Finn, 1997)– more chance for audience ≠ content…– …but more chances for new audiences!
• Film: International Gross > Domestic Gross• YouTube (largely) spans national boundaries• Historically, we see “reverse media migration” (i.e. Beatles, reality TV)
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Cultural Proximity Hypothesis
• In general, we prefer “homegrown” content (cf. Straubhaar, 1991) as it tends to be close to our culture…
•…but what is culture?
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Culture as Nationality
• Culture is a function of socialization • Even cultures with similar “Western” or
“individual” dimensions vary– US (compared to Germany): Religion +, Welfare -,
Egalitarian -, Materialism +
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Culture as Morality
• Differences have roots in moral orientation– Hofstede (2011) “collectively-constructed minds”– Haidt et al (2004) examine the role of socialization
in making morality more or less salient– Tamborini (2010) discusses one’s “non-mediated
cultural environment”
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AuthorityLoyaltyPurity
Harm/CareFairness
Morality and Media Preference
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Tamborini (2010)
Morality and Media Preference
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Bowman et al, (2011)
Morality and Media Preference
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A) Sig. ∆ High vs. Low
B) Non-random(highest salience)
C) Random (lowest salience)
Digital Natives
German Adolescents
Yes (.002) Yes (21%) Yes (47%)
US Adolescents
No (.118) No (54%) Yes (41%)
Digital Immigrants
German Elderly
Yes (<.001) Yes (24%) No (77%)
US Elderly Yes (<.001) Yes (12%) Yes (39%)
Jöckel et al. (2011)
Morality and Media Preference
• Mastro et al. (2012; in press)– Compared English-language soap opera with
Spanish-language telenovelas– Significant patterns of content in line with
audience-specific cultural norms
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Soap Opera Telenovelas English Character Latino CharacterFairness/Reciprocity
ViolationsFairness/Reciprocity
AdherenceFairness/Reciprocity _ Authority/Respect +
Care/Harm + Fairness/Reciprocity + Villains: Older, upper-class
Villains: Younger, middle-class
Ingroup/Loyalty + Authority/Respect +
Purity/Sanctity +
Where do we go from here?
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• Traditional cultural proximity foci has looked at national media systems…
• …but the new mediascape might suggest other ways of “grouping” audiences
• Considerations into morality/moral portrayals key to understanding:
Immoral, or Distasteful?
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Thank you!
• In progress research, so for information:Nicholas David Bowman, Ph.D.Assistant Professor, Communication StudiesWest Virginia [email protected] @bowmanspartan
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