Thursday 29 March 2012

Liberal Brown Deer School Board Candidate: Have Legal Counsel Find Way to “Restrain” Criticism

Local school board politics can get very interesting, and Brown Deer is no exception.

Conservative former school board member Mike Christopolus has been a bit of a thorn in the side of liberal board members, engaging in the nefarious activity of writing to the local paper BrownDeerNOW criticizing the policies and performance of the school district.

Some people are more thin skinned than others, but liberal school board member Leslie Galloway Sherard wanted to explore legal avenues to shut Christopolus up.

In an e-mail to board members in late 2010, she complained:
I am tired of seeing a letter in the NOW paper from Mike C. that continues to attack our District, its’ [sic] employees and our efforts to help students be successful. I would like to craft a response to the paper from the school board.
OK, she is blowing off steam, and wants to respond. No harm, no foul.

But then she escalates:
I would also like to ask our legal council [sic] about these continued attacks many of which contain information that is not true. These letters do nothing but defame the District’s character and reputation. They also negatively impact the work we are trying to accomplish.
Heaven help us if free speech “negatively impacts” somebody’s idea of what they are trying to accomplish.
We owe it to our children and our community to respond and identify a strategy to get these kinds of letters restrained.
Sherard, who signed the Walker recall petition, is up for reelection on Tuesday.

Neither Christopolus nor Sherard was immediately available for comment.

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Newt Gingrich On Campus

From Marquette News Briefs:
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will speak at a campaign rally Thursday, March 29, from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Weasler Auditorium. Gingrich will give a speech and answer questions from the audience. Tickets for this free event will be available after noon on Tuesday, March 27, in the AMU, Brooks Lounge. There is a limit of one ticket per MUID.

Gingrich’s wife, Callista Gingrich, will also join him at the event, which is sponsored by College Republicans. For additional information, email Marquette College Republicans.
We are not a particular fan of Gingrich, but we welcome any presidential candidate to campus, as it provides students an opportunity to become involved (even if, initially, only as a spectator) in the political process.

Monday 26 March 2012

John Stossel At Marquette

Trayvon Martin: The More We Learn, the More Complicated It Becomes

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player


Then there is this from the Orlando Sentinel:
With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered, law-enforcement authorities told the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say. There have been no reports that a witness saw the initial punch Zimmerman told police about.

Zimmerman has not spoken publicly about what happened Feb. 26. But that night, and in later meetings, he described and re-enacted for police what he says took place.

In his version of events, Zimmerman had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words and then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.

Zimmerman told police he shot the teenager in self-defense.

This is what the Sentinel has learned about Zimmerman’s account to investigators:

He said he was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father’s fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

Police have been reluctant to provide details about their evidence.

But after the Sentinel story appeared online Monday morning, City Manager Norton Bonaparte Jr. issued a news release, saying there would be an internal-affairs investigation into the source of the leak and, if identified, the person nr people involved would be disciplined.

He did not challenge the accuracy of the information.

Zimmerman got out of his SUV to follow Trayvon on foot. When a dispatch employee asked Zimmerman if he was following the 17-year-old, Zimmerman said yes. The dispatcher told Zimmerman he did not need to do that.

Zimmerman told them he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words.

Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone, he told police. Trayvon then said, “Well, you do now” or something similar and punched Zimmerman in the nose, according to the account he gave police.

Zimmerman fell to the ground and Trayvon got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk, he told police.

Zimmerman began yelling for help.

Several witnesses heard those cries, and there has been a dispute about whether they came from Zimmerman or Trayvon.

Lawyers for Trayvon’s family say it was Trayvon, but police say their evidence indicates it was Zimmerman.

One witness, who has since talked to local television news reporters, told police he saw Zimmerman on the ground with Trayvon on top, pounding him — and was unequivocal that it was Zimmerman who was crying for help.

Zimmerman then shot Trayvon once in the chest at very close range, according to authorities.

When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody lacerations to the back of his head.

Paramedics gave him first aid but he said he did not need to go to the hospital. He got medical care the next day.
If Zimmerman is telling the truth, it is indeed self-defense.

There is solid evidence that Martin had Zimmerman on the ground, and was pummeling him. But did it start with Zimmerman retreating toward his SUV, or was Zimmerman belligerently demanding that Martin explain what he was doing there?

The story is obviously more complicated than the simple narrative of racial murder that the media was first pushing. We doubt that Zimmerman can be convicted of anything by a fair-minded jury, and this is not because he did nothing wrong, but because any prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was not defending himself.

Our best guess as to what happened: an aggressive Zimmerman provoked a violent response from Martin which then caused Zimmerman to use deadly force.

Saturday 24 March 2012

More on Trayvon Martin Shooting

Two accounts. First a teenager who was a witness:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AySYPMy1Ejw

Now, someone in the neighborhood who heard (but did not see) the confrontation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj4RHJ0taoc

Key point here: somebody was shouting before the shot.

Was it Trayvon Martin yelling after being accosted by Zimmerman? Or was Zimmerman being assaulted by Martin, as one witness claimed?

We’ll welcome comments on the relative plausibility of both scenarios.

Friday 23 March 2012

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Obama’s Edsel

From Rich Lowry in National Review Online:
President Barack Obama says he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when he’s out of office in five years. If getting into a General Motors electric automobile means so much to him, he’d better hope he loses in November. What the president dubbed the “car of the future” in a visit to a Volt plant may not make it to January 2017.

The partially government-owned General Motors has suspended production of its government-approved miracle car and temporarily laid off 1,300 workers at a Detroit plant. The halt is the result of a piddling detail lost in the gushers of praise for a big, bad car company supposedly learning the error of its environment-destroying ways — people don’t want to buy the damn thing.

GM hoped to sell 10,000 Volts last year and sold only 7,500. It planned to sell 45,000 this year and is scaling back production to meet the real rather than the imaginary demand. The Volt is the Solyndra of automobiles, another Obama-touted recipient of government subsidies that was succeeding as a great paladin of the future in all the speeches and press releases until it ran into hard market realities.

The Volt is too expensive, too small, and too complicated to appeal to all but a tiny slice of what is already a tiny segment of the car market. Hybrids have never been more than about 3 percent of all U.S. sales. To buy a Volt, you need the money to splurge and the exquisite environmental consciousness to think plugging in your car will help save the planet, even though about half of electricity comes from coal. The Volt is as much affectation as car.

It costs more than $40,000. At that price, perhaps GM should have made it part of the Cadillac brand rather than Chevy. Most buyers dropping that much prefer to go all the way and buy something really nice — say, an Audi or a BMW.

According to GM, the average income of a Volt purchaser is $175,000 a year. These well-heeled buyers get a $7,500 tax credit for selecting a car out of reach of many Americans, a trickle-up redistribution toward the upper, politically correct end of the car market.

It’s not that the Volt isn’t a fine piece of machinery. It is a smooth ride and has been well-reviewed. It’s just not going “to make Big Oil sweat,” in the words of a smitten writer for the New York Times. Big Oil presumably has other things to worry about than a rounding error in the more than 12 million vehicles sold in the U.S. every year.

As Henry Payne of the Detroit News argues, the Chevy Volt is basically the electric version of the gas-powered Chevy Cruze. Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s rating that the Volt gets 60 miles per gallon, as a practical matter it’s more like 35 (it can go less than 40 miles on battery alone and then needs to switch over to gas). That’s comparable to the Cruze, which costs half the amount, has greater range, seats more people, and is easier to operate since all it requires is a visit to the filling station. GM sells more than 200,000 Cruzes a year.

The Volt is looking like Obama’s Edsel. What the president so confidently deems “the future” when he talks of energy and cars is his ideological vision dressed up in the language of historical inevitability. If he had been told in 2009 that the real future of the car market would be trucks, SUVs, and the like, which again ticked above half of sales, he surely would have blanched. If he had been told that technological breakthroughs would bring a future of new oil production, he would have been no less insistent on funding the likes of Solyndra.

For all his smug confidence about his vision of the future, he doesn’t truly know what car he will be driving in five years. If he stays true to his word, it might have to be a secondhand Volt.
Ultimately, the liberal obsession with “sustainability” comes down to raw cultural bias.

Liberals resent mass affluence. The believe they are entitled to live better than other people, but ordinary Americans live in nice houses, own big cars, drive in from the suburbs to work and go where they want to go.

They vote against gay marriage and sometimes elect Republicans.

They are, in other words, uppity.

Since elitist liberals have trouble distinguishing themselves by consuming more than ordinary Americans, they have to distinguish themselves by consuming differently.

Thus they despise the vulgar affluence of the masses, while consuming politically correct luxuries. Hybrid cars. Fair Trade coffee. Exotic cuisines.

And of course they deride the tastes of ordinary Americans, whose affluence and political power they resent.

Monday 19 March 2012

Single Parenthood is Bad for Children

It seems Senator Glenn Grothman has stirred up all the politically correct types by introducing a bill that would require a state agency that is concerned with child abuse and neglect to pay attention to the most important cause of that abuse and neglect: family structure.

This reflects on sexual behavior (having children out of wedlock) and liberals are committed to the notion that no sort of sexual behavior should be stigmatized, even if it has nasty social consequences.

But the data are overwhelming. Below is a chart from a report by the Department of Health and Human Services on child abuse and neglect.


(You can click on the image to see a larger version.)

There simply isn’t much room for debate on this. Sure some (actually many) single moms do a good job with their children. And some marriages are destined to break up. Further, maybe it’s the father’s fault.

But the social norms and mores that have produced a massive number of children being raised by a single parent have harmed children hugely.

That liberals want to impose silence on this reality suggests that they don’t really care that much about children.

Saturday 17 March 2012

ESPN:The Body Issue - where women are sexy and men are athletes

Headed by M.A./Ph.D. student Gregory Cranmer, a recent content analysis conducted at West Virginia University's Media and Interaction Lab has found some preliminary evidence that the athletes portrayed in ESPN The Magazine: The Body Issue might not be as egalitarian as the magazine claims. Specifically, female athletes - particularly non-White women - were found in significantly more sexual poses than their male counterparts; when considering "masculine" gendered sports, these effects intensified. This data suggests that ESPN might be flawed in it's claims that the magazines - unlike rival Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issues - are intended to be a "celebration of the athletic form."

The 2010 edition of ESPN's Body Issue, featuring the USA Women's Water 
Polo Team. Early data from West Virginia University's Media and Interaction Lab  
suggest that women are more likely than men to be portrayed 
sexually in ESPN's annual celebration of the athlete body.
The study analyzed 93 images representing each single-athlete photo from the 2009, 2010, and 2011 Body Issues. Based on past theory and research, images were coded for the passivity of the athlete (stationary images indicate increased sexuality), context of the image (where images taken in the context of sport or not), clothing on athletes, self-touching (increased self-touching was indicative of increased sexuality), the athlete's pose (sexual or not), and the focus on the image as being sexual or not. Three independent coders were used to avoid experimenter bias. 

The paper is still in progress - currently being prepared for submission - but here's an excerpt of the results section:

Descriptives. Photos were evenly distributed across the three years analyzed in our study, with 28 from 2009, 37 from 2010, and 28 from 2011, p = .419. As well, male (n = 40) and female (n = 53) athletes were featured equally (p = .213) although White athletes (n = 55, 59 percent) were featured more often that Black (n = 22, 24 percent) or Other (n = 16, 17 percent) races, p < .001. The majority of photos (n = 42) were of masculine sports, with 46 labeled androgynous and only five considered more feminine sports, p < .001. 

In terms of photo content, 62 percent of images (n = 58) showed athletes in more passive poses. Athletes were often shown partially or out of context (M = 1.25, SD = .79), with only 22 percent (n = 20) shown in the context of their sport. Unsurprisingly, athletes were shown nude nearly 82 percent of the time (M = 2.76, SD = .54). Self-touching was prevalent in 23 percent of photos (n = 21), and sexually-suggestive poses were prevalent only 25 percent of the time (n = 23), although 57 percent of the photos used a sexualized focal point (n = 53). For data analysis, all six coding categories were equally weighted and summed to create a composite measure of sexualized imagery ranging from 0 (not at all sexualized) to 6 (extremely sexualized), M = 3.21, SD = 1.49, suggesting them to be moderately sexualized. This composite variable was significantly correlated with coders’ evaluations of the photos as being sexually-themed, r = .604, p < .001. 

Hypothesis Tests. Our first hypothesis predicted female athletes to be portrayed out of the context of their sport more than male athletes. Chi-square distribution test showed that females and males were equally distributed across context categories, χ2 (2) = .099, p = .951. H1 is not supported, see Table 1.

Our second hypothesis predicted that female athletes would be shown in more passive poses significantly more than male athletes. Chi-square distribution test could not confirm this prediction at the p < .05, although the distribution of frames trended in the predicted direction, χ2 (1) = 2.91, p = .088. H1 is not supported, although we note that our study uses population data and as such, our descriptive analysis trends in the direction predicted by theory, see Table 2.

Our third hypothesis – most central to the current study – predicts that overall, female athletes will be portrayed overall more sexually than male athletes. Independent samples t-tests show support for this prediction, with female athletes (M = 3.51, SD = 1.64) being shown on average more sexually than male athletes (M = 2.82, SD = 1.19), t(91) = -2.34, p = .022. Notably, coder perceptions of the general sexualization of male (M = 40 percent, SD = 4.96 percent) or female athletes (M = 53 percent, SD = 5.03 percent) did not differ significantly, t(91) = -1.22, p = .224. We caution against making broader claims about this data, but it does suggest that subjective judgments of the photography make them appear to be equivalent, while objective measurement using our theoretically-derived content analysis scheme reveal more nuanced differences in the portrayal of sexually female and athletically male athletes. Post-hoc analysis comparing the means of our individual coding categories shows stark differences in the sexual posing of females (M = 38 percent, SD = 4.89 percent) compared to males (M = 7.5 percent, SD = 2.67 percent), t(91) = -3.53, p < .001. 

Post-hoc analyses considered whether athlete race or gender of sport would influence our predictions specified in H1, H2, and H3. We caution that these individual analyses leave us with small sample sizes with which to evaluate, but as we are using the population of all eligible photos from ESPN: Body Issue we still see value in their inclusion here. Considering race, we see H3 approach significance, t(36) = -1.94, p = .061, suggesting that non-White females (M = 3.58, SD = 1.47, n = 12) are sexualized more than non-White males (M = 2.74, SD = 1.13, n = 26); this effect does not replicate for White athletes, t(53) = -1.04, p = .303. For both White and non-White athletes, females were placed in sexual poses significantly more than males. Considering the gender of the sport portrayed, in masculine sports we see significant differences between genders on several variables of interest, including overall the sexualization of females, t(40) = -2.90, p = .006, increased self-touching by females , t(40) = -3.00, p = .005, and more sexual posing by females , t(40) = -3.36, p = .002, while sexual focus on females approached significance, t(40) = -1.89, p = .066. None of these differences are significant when considering androgynous (n =45) or feminine sports (although the latter was severely underrepresented in our study, n = 5). We interpret this data as evidence that an interaction effect might exist between an athlete’s gender and the socialized genderization of the sport they play. 

What does this all mean? To us, this might suggest that ESPN's coverage is not as sexually egalitarian as promoted. Female athletes are still sexually objectified at a greater rate than their male counterparts. It was also interesting that so many of the athletes featured (as many as 60 percent) were White, although we have no readily-available baseline information to compare this to. We wonder if ESPN's over-sexualizing of female over male athletes might be of greater concern to scholars of cultivation theory, as it seems to reinforce the notion that women athletes are sexy first and athletic second, or rather they are sexy because they are athletic. Content differences are subtle but present - this is reinforced by the lack of significant findings for subjective "sexy or not?" judgments of female and male photos - and this might actually make their influence on audiences stronger; we don't think to criticize the presentations in  ESPN The Magazine: The Body Issue because they are presented to use not as sexy, but admirable. Indeed, one can turn to recent coverage of Danica Patrick's move to NASCAR as evidence that even a high-performing woman can't seem to shake the "babe" label (NBC's Rick Chandler writes an interesting headline inviting readers to view her 2012 St. Patrick's Day-themed car before it is smashed up as if she is the only racer to wreck her ride). Of course, Patrick has been strategic in leveraging her looks and her skills as marketing tool (cf. Ross, Ridinger, and Cuneen, 2009) but one wonders the extent to which she - and other female athletes - volunteer themselves to this cycle or are forced into it as part of career survival. The question is open for research and debate. 

As with all research posted to the blog, these analyses are preliminary and our interpretations are quick. What do you think? 

This study is co-authored by myself (Dr. Nick Bowman) as well as Dr. Maria Brann, both of WVU's Department of Communication Studies. Look for a cleaner and more detailed version at a conference (and maybe a publication?) near you! 

Friday 16 March 2012

Morality in video games: Gut or Game?

Over the last week, we've posted a few commentaries on potential pro-social influences of otherwise anti-social media content - including the notions of Appreciation and Disinterest. Today's post will focus on the role of moral intuitions in the processing and playing of video games. 

A scene from Heavy Rain for the PS3 (Sony)
Morality. Historically, the concept of morality has been a central focus of media research. In the early 20th century, the Payne Fund’s studies on children and movie content examined the moral lessons adolescents took from the cinema (cf. Lowery & DeFleur, 1995). Later, Wertham (1954) argued that comic books of the time were full of misogyny, sexual perversion, and graphic violence that had the potential to corrupt the pliable morality of children. Indeed, these views are not inventions of the modern era, as history is rife with examples of book burnings and other censure at the hands of governments, monarchs, and religious orders alike. In short, the belief that morally-questionable content serves only to corrupt individual moral codes has persisted. Indeed, considerations of morality has been the center of many of our classic theories in entertainment research, from understanding specific-level individual character judgments (Zillmann & Cantor, 1976) to broader audience patterns of media consumption (Gans, 1974; Zillmann, 2000).

Likewise, morality has been a focal point for video game theory and research. As interactive spaces, games are thought to be particularly adept at allowing gamers to encounter, learn and even rehearse reactions to a variety of different emotional states, including those concerned with morality (Grodal, 2000; Johnson, 2010). But how does an individual’s morality explain their motivation to enact (or not) the models of morally-questionable behaviors experienced in video games? Emerging research applying moral foundations theory (Haidt & Joseph, 2004) suggest that innate moral judgments may be key to this process. For example, Tamborini and colleagues report that variance in individual moral intuitions is predictive of how they appraise and eventually react to violent media content (Tamborini, Eden, Bowman, Grizzard, & Lachlan, 2012). Extending this research to video games, Bowman and colleagues found initial evidence to suggest that moral intuitions are not only predictive of gamers’ appraisals of content as moral or immoral, but also predictive of in-game responses to this content. Specifically, their research found that when a video game presented gamers with a choice to commit a moral violation, gamers who felt strongly about the particular situation (i.e. inflicting harm on an innocent) would go to great lengths to avoid the violation. Conversely, gamers who did not feel particularly strong about the situation – that is, gamers who did not have a strong intuitive reaction to the moral presentation – were inclined to make seemingly-random decisions to violate or not in an effort to play with different outcome scenarios (Joeckel, Bowman, & Dogruel, in press - see presentation below). This observed “gut” (moral intuition-based) or “game” (experience-based) reaction is in line with current theorizing on the function of morality in entertainment media, specifically Raney’s (2010) notion of moral disengagement – that we actively suspend our moral code in order to maximize media enjoyment. Indeed, the research expands this line of reasoning further to suggest that while we initially suspend morality in favor of enjoyment, there are aspects of our moral codes that are likely non-negotiable.

Adolescents, Morality and Interactive Entertainment: The influence of moral salience on actions and entertainment experience in interactive media.

Of course, it can be argued that repeated exposure to moral violations might weaken our resolve, particularly if games reward us for committing moral violations. In his model of moral intuitions and media entertainment, or MIME, Tamborini (2011) argues that moral intuitions are initially fostered from our non-mediated cultural environment and reinforced or manipulated through long-term exposure to media content. While popular media generally adheres to rather than violates societal-level moral standards (cf. Klapper, 1960), producers will occasionally break these expectations to surprise audiences; this is particularly common in video games, where production norms associated with what is an is not acceptable content are different than in more traditional forms of media. As Tamborini and colleagues have found evidence suggesting that entertaining media content can result in shifts in moral judgment (Tamborini, Weber, Eden, Bowman, & Grizzard, 2010), a logical extension of this research may be to examine long-term influences on moral intuition stemming from video game play. The popularity of “M”-rated content is apparent, and as result we might consider the dominant narratives in games such as Grand Theft Auto to be particularly rewarding of anti-social over pro-social behavior (Bowman, in press). From this, an area of research ripe for investigation  the role of repeated exposure to scripts shifting witnessed decisions form the “game” category to the “gut” category. Assuming moral intuitions to play an important role in how we  evaluate, enjoy, and respond to anti-social models in video games, such an approach should provide a more robust explanation as to the mechanism behind the connection between morally-questionable content and observed media effect.

Saturday 10 March 2012

Disinterest as a Media Effect?

Last week, I posted about the potential for anti-social media content to have a pro-social effect on individuals in the form of eliciting feelings of appreciation and meaningfulness - that is, such content could led to moral pause rather than moral panic. Today, I consider how anti-social content can elicit feelings of disinterest; that is, virtual experiences with morally abhorring content might drive us to be disgusted by rather than engrossed in the content. These passages are excerpts from an upcoming essay on video game theory and research - rough pages here, so please feel free to comment and challenge! 


Disinterest. As entertainment software, we commonly assume video games to be inherently engaging and interesting. Yet, an often-overlooked effect of game content on individuals is that of disinterest – simply, the notion that we can become less interested or attracted towards a thought, feeling, or behavior after experiencing its mediated version. Bogost (2011) argued that gaming experiences are not inherently enjoyable, and that they can be just as include to licit shock as well as awe; that is, we can be repulsed by gaming content just as much as we can be engrossed by it. Notably, this is not a cathartic argument, as catharsis would assume individuals to have some affinity toward the content so as to expunge it in advance of real-world consequences (a concept that has been heavily critiqued in the literature; cf. Bushman, 2002). Rather, disinterest argues that video game portrayals can create or reinforce our negative gut reactions to anti-social content.

Figure 1. Screenshot from The Torture Game
An example of such disinterest can be found in the browser-based casual game The Torture Game (Figure 1), a game that invites players to take turns “tortur[ing] the poor guy using different objects” (ArcadeCabin.com, para. 2). In the game, players select from a series of brutal – nooses, guns, straight razors, chainsaws, and pikes to name a few – and are invited to use them in an effort to inflict varying amounts of damage onto the zombie-like figure (Figure 1). While the figure appears to be in a catatonic state, his health status is displayed as a smear of blood in the bottom-left portion of the screen and once depleted, the figure collapses into a bloody mess, bellows a desperate groan and is proclaimed “dead.”  Gameplay is simple, violent, and graphic, and is not justified by any narrative element. Rather, it is clearly and blatantly labeled as torture. Furthermore, gamers are given the option to replace the figure’s head with any image from their computer or the Internet, serving as a digital voodoo doll. In short, if any video game could be considered a true torture and murder simulator, The Torture Game most closely fits the bill. Reaction to the game was (and continues to be) very intense, with even avid video gamers questioning the role of such content in the general panacea of gaming. Popular video game forum Kongregate hosted a debate about the “evil or stress-relieving” qualities of this game, and a general theme of the discussion can best be summarized by user @kingbilly, who writes:

“To be honest, the concept of having torture in a flash game is sick. I’ve never played it and never will…” (Kongregate, 2008).

Yet, such repulsion is precisely what Bogost (2011) argues is both (a) a potential media effect and (b) a decidedly pro-social one. In being repulsed, gamers are reminded of their own humanistic limits, and by vicariously experiencing the role of executioner, are left with a feeling of guilt and even disgust from bearing witness to their own actions. Moreover, the real-world implications of this process are not trivial. Consider the current debate in the US regarding proper interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists. Proponents of the practice contest that such “enhanced interrogation techniques” (Nordgren, 2011) allow intelligence agents to ascertain valuable information regarding future terrorist activities against US targets. Yet, these individuals rarely have experienced the practice themselves. In fact, US human rights activist Steve Powers has already hosted public events simulating water boarding in real life, finding individuals who experience the treatment firsthand almost instantaneously reverse their support of the practice (cf. Nordgren, 2011). Video games may play an even more compelling role in this process, allowing for the simulation of similar actions and forcing individuals to cope with the consequences of their own actions. The concept of disinterest moves beyond the catharsis perspective and argues that the learning of anti-social models of cognition, affect, or behavior can result in the internalization and eventual rejection of the same – yet this claim has yet to be tested empirically.

Read more about the notion of disinterest in Ian Bogost's book "How To Do Things With Video Games" (Chapter 19), and read my review of the same in the International Journal of Communication. 

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Appreciation, video games, and media effects: Playing, or Pondering?

Video Games Worth Pondering? By Kyle Francis   

Working with a few colleagues on an upcoming literature review/theoretical synthesis article, I started thinking about newer perspectives in video game research - in short, how to move past the "Media Content --> Media Effect" paradigm. [Note: As far back as Schramm, we've been pushing social science research into understanding more importantly the role of mediation and moderation in media effect, but *sigh* we rarely seem to move past it]

In this discussion, I started thinking about the potential for anti-social media content to elicit pro-social media effects. Ian Bogost has a great (albeit short) chapter on "Disinterest" in his book "How To Do Things with Video Games" where he argues that video game content can be every much repulsive as they can be engrossing (he uses The Torture Game as an example; I'll write more on this later. update 03.10.12 - more on this here). From this, I began thinking about Mary Beth Oliver's discussions of appreciation and meaningfulness as media effect and how these constructs explain the paradox of "enjoying" sad or otherwise negatively-valenced media...

And the gears started to spin.

Give this a read - I'm trying to implicate appreciation in the Stimulus --> Response connection. Rough, but a start?

Appreciation. The dominant paradigm in media effect research hinges on the rewards associated with the experience of enjoyment as reinforcing the retention of anti-social models of behavior. Yet, recent theorizing by Oliver and colleagues suggests this to be a myopic view of the entertainment experience that masks an equally prevalent and powerful media effect: appreciation. Understood as truth-seeking behaviors aimed at helping individuals reflect upon truth and purpose in their own life (Oliver & Raney, 2011), such an effect seems plausible in explaining the apparent paradox of experiencing enjoyment from sad or tragic media, such as Schindler’s List or Old Yeller (cf, Oliver, 1993). In short, Oliver argues that a powerful motivation for consuming media is to seek out meaningfulness, and that this experience is orthogonal from the more basal hedonic motivation.

In this vein, video game research might investigate the way in which the interactivity afforded by the virtual environment might encourage or inhibit feelings of appreciation. On one hand, video game technologies are particularly well-suited at increasing feelings of social presence, a known predictor of narrative processing and feelings of connectedness with game characters (Tamborini & Bowman, 2010) that is likely associated with feelings of meaningfulness. Bowman, Schultheiss, and Schumann (2012) found that increased feelings of responsibility for and control over character actions – both dimensions of character attachment (Lewis, Weber, & Bowman, 2008) – were predictive of playing games for pro-social motivations, and this line of argumentation might be extended further to suggest that increased pro-social involvement with a virtual narrative might elicit more powerful meanings of meaningfulness. On the other hand, it could be argued that video games as a form of popular entertainment have been long-established as simple challenge and competition games (Sherry, Lucas, Greenberg, & Lachlan, 2006) that the learned expectations associated with their consumption are firmly rooted in the hedonic model. Atkin (1985) argues that learned expectations are a robust indicator of selective exposure, as they guide the types of media we seek as well as the gratifications sought in them.

From this, it may simply be the case that gamer audiences do not seek meaningfulness in their gaming experience, thus mitigating any potential for the medium to provide reflection and introspection. Moreover, one might wonder whether or not the gameplay elements of a video game might be counter-productive to the reflection elements of the same, as they might compete for the limited cognitive resources of the gamer (cf. Schneider, Lang, Shin, & Bradley, 2004). For example, the highly-regarded first-person shooter Medal of Honor: Allied Assault begins by placing gamers on the beaches of Normandy as part of the Allied invasion forces, but the game quickly shifts from its dramatic, panoramic and retrospective presentation of the invasion to a more narrow, fast-paced and isolated perspective in order to allow the gamer to concentrate on getting from checkpoint to checkpoint; this shift in perspective also brings with it a focus on murdering your opponent rather than reflecting on the historic gravity of the event itself. Related to this, video game play is known to be significantly more cognitively taxing than other forms of media (Bowman & Tamborini, in press; Reinecke, Tamborini, Grizzard, Lewis, Eden, & Bowman, in press), and this increased task demand may interfere with our ability to process more introspective narrative elements, as suggested to some extent by Schneider et al. (2004). To date, no known research has examined the potential for video games to elicit feelings of meaningfulness in players, and as media psychologists continue to focus their attention on the dual outcomes of enjoyment and appreciation, this research should prove to be particularly relevant.

[references forthcoming; still working on getting electronic versions so I can link them into the blog post]

Sunday 4 March 2012

"Six points for six posts?" Facebook increases student's cognitive; affective learning in college mass lectures

I've been running an early data analysis on Facebook comments from my Fall 2011 "Introduction to the Mass Media" course at West Virginia U, and the results are very promising. In short, we find that students participating in a voluntary Facebook group as a supplement to the mass lecture attendance scored nearly six percentage points higher on their comprehensive exams (a significant effect), and enjoyed the class more. Early results of course, but their implications for college instruction are apparent.

477 Facebook posts from our supplemental Facebook group 
to WVU COM105 "Introduction to the Mass Media"
It's no secret that the mass lecture-format of college lecture has some shortcomings. They are designed for efficiency of education - to teach the greatest number of students in a specified time and space requirement. Unfortunately (as colleague and coauthor Meagan Bryand points out) the immense size of a mass lecture can make it difficult for all students to decode message perfectly as they were intended. As well, students in mass lectures often feel detached from their professors and from each other - and they often report feeling intimidated by the mass lectures as a "public space" where they don't want to share their opinions and questions in front of peers. In general, we recognize that the mass lecture can be an isolating environment, but we also recognize that is an efficient and effective way to give students a broad base of knowledge before directing them into smaller, upper-level courses. While a larger discussion of the situation is beyond the scope of this one post, for most universities it is simply impractical to remove the mass lecture format from course offerings. Not only impractical, but undesired.

To help address some of these points, our research team of myself, Bryand and WVU undergraduate Lindsey Carr wondered using Facebook as supplemental space to the mass lecture might be a useful and cost-effective way to enhance the mass lecture experience. Thus, in Fall 2011 students (N = 321, 195 male and 126 female) enrolled in a mass lecture were invited to join a closed Facebook group devoted to their class. Participation in the group was strictly voluntary and students were assured that their profile information would remain private and closed to other members (or at least, they would not be required to friend anyone to use the page). We wondered if involvement in the group might influence learning and attendance in class, and the results are quite interesting. [NOTE: Data analysis still in progress, particularly with affective reactions to class]

DESCRIPTIVES:

Course grade. Three exams were given in COM105 to provide an assessment of student’s basic understanding of course concepts; our cognitive assessment. These exams were 50-item, four-response options closed-ended format, with slightly heterogenous test items (average Kuder-Richardson 20 = .76) falling just below the KR = .80 cut-off suggested by (Lewis & Ortiz, 1988). All three were weighted equally; these grades were added together and transformed into a simple percentage, with students scoring an average grade of M = 75.27%, SD = 12.57.

Attendance. Attendance in COM105 was measured using a random assignment of seven different attendance activities given throughout the semester; this was considered a measure of student engagement. These activities were coded “1” (completed) or “0” (not completed), and students completed an average of M = 4.80 of these assignments, SD = 1.98. Research activity (extra credit). Students were provided with three opportunities to earn six total extra credit points in COM105, and these scores were tracked as an indicator of increased engagement in the course. Students completed an average of M = 3.55 of these six points, SD = 1.61.

Use of Facebook group. In all, n = 142 students (44%) used the Facebook group, posting an average of M = 6.88 posts, SD = 9.50. Students posted an average of Knowing that a significant bias exists such that females are more likely to use social media than males (Bowman,Westerman, & Claus, 2012), we examined the distribution of Facebook members and non-members by gender; no significant difference was found, χ2 (1) = .043, p = .835. For both males and females, distribution to Facebook members and non-members was nearly 50% each (males: 89 members, 106 non-members; females: 59 members, 67 non-members). A total of 477 posts were made to the Facebook students, with 283 of these (~ 60%) posted by students. Cluster analysis by three expert coders (i.e., authors of this report) found nine distinct categories of post, see Figure below.

Exam Review Admin Class-Related
External Links
Peer Support Humor Affect for
Instructor/Class
Unrelated External Links Instructor Support Unclassified
# posts
201
119
61
17
16
15
13
8
27
Avg # comments
per post
3.60
2.47
1.46
3.41
2.74
.292
.288
.375
1.64
# posts initiated
by instructor
64
60
39
0
3
1
5
8
13
Avg # of comments per post
3.66
1.22
.923
0
4.33
0
0
.375
2.92
# posts initiated
by students
137
59
22
17
13
14
8
0
14
Avg # of comments
per post
3.54
3.71
2.00
3.41
1.15
4.39
3.75
0
.357

Unsurprisingly given visual inspection, a chi-square goodness-of-fit test reveals a significantly different distribution of comments by comment type, χ2 (8) = .655.3, p < .001. Comparing to an expected distribution of 53 comments per category (i.e., a null effect of comment category on observed comments) we see that exam review and administrative questions were by far the most prominently-posted comments, with the other seven categories falling under what might be expected by chance. Comparing these two categories against each other, we see a significant difference in that exam review questions occurred far greater than change, χ2 (1) = 21.01, p < .001). A few patterns in here are interesting, and deserve some further investigation, mainly (and we note the purely descriptive nature of this analysis; in fact we are open to analysis suggestions as we work this data set:
  • Students initiated exam review questions at a nearly 2:1 ratio as compared to instructor-initiated exam review posts, yet the number of comments generated did not differ from each other. This suggests students on the Facebook page to be proactive in their studying. 
  • Students engaged in posts related to general humor as well as expressing support for each other and the professor of the class. of the 477 posts, only one was found that expressed dissent with the course (a student upset about an exam being perceived as too difficult). 
  • What else are you seeing in here? 

RESULTS: 

Course engagement. Students who were members of the class Facebook group submitted more attendance assignments (M = 5.23, SD = 1.79) than students who were not in the group (M = 4.43, SD = 2.07), t(319) = -3.69, p < .001. No significant difference was found between the groups for completing extra credit assignments, t(319) = 1.70, p = .571; both groups completed an average of M = 3.55 extra points, SD = 1.61. For students in the Facebook group, they posted an average of M = 6.88 post, SD = 9.05.

Cognitive assessment. Students who were members of the class Facebook group scored significantly higher in the class (M = 78.55%, SD = 8.54) than students who were not in the group (M = 72.64%, SD = 13.60), t(319) = -4.71, p < 001. For students in the Facebook group, there was no significant association between the number of times an individual posted in the Facebook group and their attendance (r = .124, p = .144) or their course grade (r = .158, p = .061). This data suggest that membership in the group was the primary influence on the witnessed effects rather than increased active involvement in the group. Some support for this finding can be found in looking at the distribution analyses of Facebook posts per user, which showed a heavy positive and leptokurdic skew (skewness = 4.09, kurtosis = 26.23), suggesting a few super-users providing the majority of Facebook content with many users lurking from this.

So, there you have it. Early, quick and dirty analysis -but something to get the conversation going! Some very early and preliminary data to suggest that encouraging students to use Facebook to supplement the mass lecture can be an effective way to get them engaged in class and, if you can get them posting, to enhance their learning of course material. We of course acknowledge limitations of the current study, including a rather base approach to cognitive learning qua exam grades and a potential self-selection bias such that engaged students are more likely to join a class-related Facebook than non-engaged students - both should be investigated further in replication. Yet, we feel strongly that our data suggest that using Facebook as a persistent and cost-effective supplemental space for which to continue discussions in the university mass lecture can significantly enhance student learning. And we look forward to your comments!