Northern Caribbean UniversityCollege of Humanities, Behavioural and Social Sciences

Determining the Relationship between Mass Media and the Social Behaviors of

Adolescents in the Mandeville Community

In partial fulfilment for the requirement of the Department of Communication Studies

COMM320 Communication Research Methods

Submitted by

Kenisha Hanson 11031552

To

Elaine Oxamendi Vicet

February 17, 2012

Chapter 1

Introduction

The world of mass media has for decades been used as the medium through which advertisers

and government leaders alike have as said in colloquial terms “milked the engine” in

manipulating a scenario, event or cause in getting a predicted response from its public. Whether

it’s through the use of print, radio, television or electronic media, it has been studied and proven

that, what is communicated through media makes an impression on the individual listening or

watching, which undoubtedly influences a change (whether beneficial or not) in their social

behavior. Likewise, “eating disorders, theorists and feminist scholars have long indicted fashion

magazines, movies, television, and advertising for their advocacy of disordered eating (Levine &

Smolak, 1998).

It is said that individuals are “products” of their atmosphere, the way they were or are socialized

through daily interactions with their preferred media genre influences highly the way they

behave. Females for example and the pursuit of being thin can be connected to the images that

are constantly appearing in magazines and “given the relationship between the mass media and

initialization of sociocultural standards for appearance, researchers have proposed possible

interventions specifically targeting the negative effect of mass media messages promoting the

thin ideal (Jasper, 1993; Shaw & Waller, 1995)”.

Incidentally, the media driven era that we live in heavily contributes daily to life events, impacts

or changes the behavior of adolescents. Mass media highly influences shopping, relationships,

communication and the education of an adolescent.

Statement of the problem:

Research shows that there is a direct relationship between social behavior and media

consumption. “Current research suggests that “mass media (TV, movies, magazines, internet)

pervade the everyday lives of people living in Western societies, and undoubtedly one of the

effects of such media saturation is the pervasive transmission of societal beauty ideals”

(Tiggemann, 2006, para. 2).

The craftiness of mass media to influence what an adolescents wear’s, eats, talk about or try to

become is communicated through all the media genres. “Digital editing has created a false world

that is impossible to achieve. Celebrities, good or bad, have been made “role-models” and are

presented as people that should be emulated. Media marketing has taken a negative toll on many

aspects of adolescent lives. It is entwined with entertainment, fashion, and music, making it

almost impossible to differentiate reality from fantasy. Teen-age girls who viewed commercials

depicting women who modeled the unrealistically thin-ideal type of beauty caused adolescent

girls to feel less confident, angrier, and more dissatisfied with their weight and appearance

(Hargreaves, 2002, p. 287).

This research is aimed at studying directly the influences of mass media on the behavior of

adolescents in the community of Mandeville.

Purpose statement:

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between mass media and the social

behaviors of adolescence 13-18 in the Mandeville community. Subsequently, this study will not

be focusing primarily on the benefits, positive or negative influences of media, but will be

researching the influence that media has on the social behavior of the demographics.

Research questions:

(1) Are individuals aware of the influence that media has on their social behaviors?

(2) What is the relationship between the media genre that has the most influence on social

behavior and why?

Significance of the Study

The study is significant because determining whether or not there is a relationship between mass

media and the behaviour of adolescents, which could be used to guide parents as to what they

allow their children to watch, read or listen to. It could also help the different media genres to

take into consideration the influential role they play in sending subliminal messages, thus

producing work that will be of a benefit to all its customers and society.

Rationale for the research

“All together, the massive flow of popular images, representations, and symbolic models

disseminated by the media profoundly shapes what young people think about the world and how

they perceive themselves in relation to it.” (Huntemann & Morgan, 2001, p. 309)

Proven is that whatever information the media transmits during one’s formative years as a child

or adolescence tends to influence cognitive thoughts and interpretations. Thus contributing to the

way individuals behave socially. This study is important to explore because it will seek to

determine if much of what people eat, drink, talk about, places they visit, and their fashion-

consciousness, spiritual beliefs, etc are influenced by the media genres of print, television, radio

and or electronic media.

Definition of terms

Colloquial: characteristic of or appropriate to ordinary or familiar conversation rather

than formal speech or writing; informal.

Mass Media: any of the means of communication, as television or newspapers, that reach

very large numbers of people.

Demographics: the statistical data of a population, especially those showing average age,

income, education, etc.

Adolescent: growing to manhood or womanhood; youthful.

Formation: the act or process of forming or the state of being formed:

Cognitive: of or pertaining to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and

reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes.

Rationale: the fundamental reason or reasons serving to account for something.

Hypothesis

There is a direct correlation between mannerisms and behaviors which is communicated through

indirect and unintentional subliminal messaging via mass media.

Chapter 2

Literature Review

Since being formally introduced to mass media, I have heard and read many times that media

contributes heavily to the way an individual acts whether positively or negatively. This issue has

been a topic of discussion and debate among many psychologist, specialist and researchers such

as Tammo H.A. Bijmolt and Wilma Claassen.

According to the website http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/pspi43.pdf , “research

has been done in many areas of mass media and some early researches show that “entertainment

violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior, particularly in

children”, while in comparison “a mass media program may be used to affect health policy by

influencing public opinion. “For example, addictive behaviors are relatively difficult to alter

directly through the mass media, an expectable finding because these behaviors are often

difficult to modify even with intensive one-to-one intervention. Nonetheless, mass media

programs aimed at reducing smoking have been credited with being more cost-effective than

many other methods of controlling tobacco use by influencing public attitudes. Changes in public

attitudes have led to policy changes in areas such as the rights of nonsmokers, cigarette taxes,

and bans on advertising (7,8). As a result of these changes, tobacco use declined 22.4 percent

between the years 1963 and 1975 (9).” (Austin & Husted, 1998)

The results from researchers such as (Austin & Husted, 1998) and information discovered at

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/pspi43.pdf , proves that individuals tend to

“model” behavior or mannerism of which they are exposed to, a process normally observed in

children. For example, if a child watches a movie where his favorite character does something

such as drink a beer, the child then with this image tends to want to imitate the actions of the

person they admire. Because the beloved figured does this action, the child then thinks this is an

acceptable thing to do, which they end up doing. This action of imitating could adversely lead to

the child becoming an alcoholic later in life, but that is another research for another time.

As adolescents have open access to world the media: through television, internet, radio, and

video games, it is safe to say that the availability of these media’s can possibly influence greatly

their behaviors and social skills. The media can influence an adolescents final decisions about

what they wear, their reactions to certain things, and attitude, “every exposure to every media

model provides a potential guide to behavior or attitude, a potential source of identification, a

human exemplar we may use whether in accordance with the model or explicitly contrary to it,

and whether consciously or not to define and construct our identities” (Huntemann & Morgan,

2001, p. 310).

The actors, actresses, and other celebrities that portray certain behaviors, ideas, and beliefs are

now prominent models in an adolescent’s life. The radio, for example, “has been explained by

many as providing teenagers with acceptable social cues; as giving them something of interest to

discuss with their friends; as an important source for socialization…” (Paik, 2001, p. 13). Still,

the radio is not the only source that adolescents turn to; there are movies, television shows,

magazines, advertisements, and the internet just to name a few sources. Albert Bandura, a

psychologist specializing in studies about social learning, estimates that the media ranks third as

a source of influence on an individual, behind family and social environment respectively

(Huston & Wright, 1996).

The world of mass media hasn’t only left an imprint on the lives of adolescents but it is also

playing the role of a puppeteer in their daily lives. “Adolescence comprises the important

formative years in individuals’ lives, the time when individuals are forming their own, separate

identities” (Myers, 2008). And, although they prefer to have separate, unique identities,

teenagers tend to conform first before branching out as individuals. At this time, especially, the

“models” that adolescents observe can influence who they become. Social Learning Theory

emphasizes the role of observation, looking to these models, in an adolescent’s learning process.

These models can include parents, teachers, siblings, peers, the media, and more. Observational

learning, then, explains the role of modeling in an adolescent’s learning process. (Shirfley, 2008)

As aware or unaware an adolescent may be about the influences of mass media on their

behaviors “the ability of media marketing to affect adolescents today has evolved through many

different means. Digital editing has created a false world that is impossible to achieve.

Celebrities, good or bad, have been made “role-models” and are presented as people that should

be emulated. Media marketing has taken a negative toll on many aspects of adolescent lives. It is

entwined with entertainment, fashion, and music, making it almost impossible to differentiate

reality from fantasy. Teen-age girls who viewed commercials depicting women who modeled the

unrealistically thin-ideal type of beauty caused adolescent girls to feel less confident, angrier,

and more dissatisfied with their weight and appearance (Hargreaves, 2002, p. 287). According to

the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, sociocultural norms for ideal appearance lead

women to base their self-worth more strongly on appearance than on character. This study

focused on the effects that media marketing has on influencing adolescent girls’ lives”. (Sanders

2009)

After reading through research after research about the influences of mass media, it is evident

that the psychologists, scientists and specialists are attributing many human behaviors to mass

media. Although sociocultural pressures may be exerted by a variety of sources (e.g., peers,

parents, and partners; see Thompson, Heinberg, et al., 1999), it has been suggested that the mass

media are the most potent and pervasive communicators of sociocultural standards (Heinberg,

1996; Mazur, 1986).

Mass media is defined as modes of communication that generate messages designed for very

large, heterogeneous, and anonymous audiences with the goal of maximizing profit (Harris,

1994; Levine & Smolak, 1998). Although images of beauty have historically been communicated

through art, music, and literature, it is the ready accessibility and universality of today's print and

electronic media that have been most harshly criticized by body image and eating disorders

researcher. There is little doubt that media reach their audience. Women's magazines, probably

more than any other form of mass media, have been criticized as being advocates and promoters

of the desirability of an unrealistic and dangerously thin ideal (Wolf, 1990). For example, 83% of

teenage girls report spending a mean of 4.3 hours a week reading magazines for pleasure or

school (Levine & Smolak, 1996), and Levine, Smolak, and Hayden (1994) found that 70% of

girls who read magazines on a regular basis endorse them as an important source of beauty and

fitness information. Research strongly indicates that a thin ideal is promoted by the print media,

particularly magazines aimed at teenage girls and adult women (Cusumano & Thompson, 1997;

Nemeroff, Stein, Diehl, & Smilack, 1994; see Levine & Smolak, 1996, for a review). For

example, in a study by Nichter and Nichter (1991), adolescent girls endorsed their ideal as the

models found in fashion magazines aimed at teenage girls. This ideal teenage girl was described

as being 5'7", 100 pounds, and size 5 with long blonde hair and blue eyes. Reaching such an

extreme ideal is quite unrealistic for most women and also dangerous, given that the body mass

index of someone with such proportions is less than 16, clearly in the anorexic and amenorrhea

range. Television may also be a powerful influence: In the average home, the television is on for

more than 7 hours per day (Harris, 1994), and unrealistic ideals similar to those found in the print

media can be found on television shows. The vast majority of female television characters are

thinner than the average American woman, with less than 10% of women appearing on television

being overweight (Gonzalez-Lavin & Smolak, 1995; Heinberg, 1996). These trends may be even

more typical in television programs favored by younger women and adolescents. Gonzalez-Lavin

and Smolak (1995) demonstrated that middle-school-aged girls' favorite television characters

were rated as much thinner than the average woman. The advocacy organization Children Now

and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 71% of adolescent girls ages 16 and 17 believed

that female actors on television were unrealistically thin (Labi, 1998).” (Thompson & Heinburg,

1999)

“The link between media and body dissatisfaction or disturbed eating is supported by women's

and girls' own reports (e.g., Milkie, 1999; Tiggemarm, Gardiner, & Slater, 2000; Wertheim,

Paxton, Schutz, & Muir, 1997), and by prospective studies that have demonstrated that media

involvement (trying to look like the models on television or in magazines) predicts the

development of weight concerns (Field et al., 2001) and purging behavior (Field, Camargo,

Taylor, Berkey, & Colditz, 1999). In addition, several studies (but not all) that have assessed

media exposure and weight concern independently, report positive correlations between fashion

magazine or television consumption and body dissatisfaction (Anderson, Huston, Schmitt,

Linebarger, & Wright, 2001; Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, & Stein, 1994), perceptions of

overweight (McCreary & Sadava, 1999), and eating disorder symptomatology (Harrison, 1997,

2000; Stice et al., 1994). (Tiggemann & Mcgill 2004)

As far as we can see, there has been no real difference in the conclusions of the researches that

mass media does indeed have an effect on both children and adolescents. Researches have been

done from the 90’s and are still continuing today 2011 and as much as the media environment

may change, the results of its effects seems to always remain. “Decreases in the prices of

personal computers, growing use of high-speed Internet connections, developments in size and

definition of TV screens, rapid diffusion of DVD players, the introduction of affordable digital

TV recorders (DVRs), the emergence of digital music recorders and music file-sharing – all such

developments continue to reshape the media environment…and thus, we believe, to reshape

children’s media behavior.” (Roberts, Foehr, Rideout, & Kaiser Family Foundation 2005)

Theoretical Framework

For this study, the theory the Hypodermic Needle Theory also called the Magic Bullet Theory

will be employed. The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct,

immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. “The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were

perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change”. (Katz & Lazarsfeld 1955)

Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including:

- the fast rise and popularization of radio and television

- the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda

- the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on

children, and

- Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the

Nazi party

- Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the

Nazi party.

This theory is very much applicable to my study because it implies that mass media has a direct,

immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. Coincidently the audiences in this study are

adolescents from the ages of 13-18, they will be observed after they would have been exposed to

watching a movie or ad, listening to the radio, being on the internet and looking through a

magazine.

Chapter 3

Methodology

The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of mass media on the social behaviors of adolescents

(13-18) in the Mandeville community. A quantitative approach will be followed in conducting this study.

With the readily availability of mass media through television, internet, radio, magazines, and

video games, children and adolescents encounter one or more of these medias on a daily basis,

making the argument that their behaviors and mannerisms are influenced greatly by what is

communicated through anyone of the medias.

Participant selection: The criteria for selection of the participants are individuals ranging from

8-18 living in the Mandeville Community and the target gender is both male and female.

Instruments: The instruments that will be used are questionnaires.

The selected participants in this research will be easily accessible, because they all attend one of

the schools listed: Northern Caribbean University, the West Indies Preparatory School and

Victor Dixon High School.

The reasons for this particular location are:

Demography

These campuses are Christian Schools but the enrollment of students is not just Seventh-

day Adventists, so therefore the findings will reflect a true representation of our actual

society.

It would be financially viable to spend much needed time in the aforementioned target

audience, by so doing the real effects would unearthed.

Focus groups are readily available.

Data Collection- The interviews will be done face- to-face in a small group on the campus of

Northern Caribbean University. The participants will be presented with questionnaires after they

would have either listened to an advertisement, read a magazine or watch a clip. The focus group

will be divided into 4 groups each being questioned on one of the 4 media’s that were listened to,

read or watched.

As the sole researcher for this topic I will be responsible for:

writing up the questionnaires

conducting the interviews

correlating the findings

select participants

organize meetings times and places

undertake recommended reading

produce written work

References

Anderson, Craig A. Berkowitz, Leonard. Donnerstein, Edward. Huesmann, Rowell.

Johnson, James D. Linz Daniel. Malamuth, Neil M. and Wartella Ellen THE

INFLUENCE OF MEDIA VIOLENCE ON YOUTH.

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/pspi/pspi43.pdf .

Austin, Linda S. and Husted Katharine. Cost-Effectiveness of Television, Radio, and

Print Media Programs for Public Mental Health Education, 1998.

http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/49/6/808

Foehr. Ulla G, Rideout. Victoria and Roberts Donald F. Generation M: Media in the

Lives of 8–18 Year-0ld, Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005

http://www.kff.org/entmedia/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=51809

Heinberg . Leslie J. and Thompson Kevin.J The Media's Influence on Body Image

Disturbance and Eating Disorders: We've Reviled Them, Now Can We Rehabilitate

Them? (Joumal of Social Issues, Vol. 55, No. 2, 1999, pp. 339-353)

http://students.ced.appstate.edu/newmedia/06fall-cohort/gray/MediaInfluence.pdf

Mcgill Belinda and Tiggemann Marika. The Role Of Social Comparison In The Effect Of

Magazine Advertisements On Women’s Mood And Body Dissatisfaction (Journal of

Social and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2004, pp. 23-44)

http://students.ced.appstate.edu/newmedia/06fall-cohort/gray/effect.pdf

Sanders, Erica Laurén. The Influence of Media Marketing on Adolescent Girls. 2009.

http://www.kon.org/urc/v8/sanders.html

Shifley, Allyson. The Influence of the Media on Adolescents: An Examination of

Identity Formation. 2008.

http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_63/2491000/2491750/1/print/Allison_Shifley.pdf

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