DePaul Research Methods for the PRAD Pro Class

This group blog is a project of professor Matt Ragas and his Research Methods for the Communication Professional graduate seminar (PRAD 585) in the College of Communication at DePaul University. This blog analyzes recent scholarly research and award-winning communication campaigns. We welcome your feedback and comments. We may be reached via e-mail at: [email protected]. Please Note: The opinions expressed on this blog do not represent the views of DePaul University or the College of Communication.  

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Review of “Form or Function? An Examination of ESPN Magazine’s ‘Body Issue’”

Authors: Kevin Hull, Lauren R. Smith, and Annelie Schmittel

Source: Visual Communication Quarterly, “an international, peer-reviewed journal of theory, research, practical criticism, and creative work in all areas of visual communication.”

Date Published: June 2015                                           

Summary of Article

This research study reviewed photographs and written content from the annual ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue during its first five years in publication, 2009-2013. Its focus was to compare the framing of male and female athletes and analyze if the framing changed over this five-year time period. The study introduces this special publication as a challenger to the highly popular Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.                                                                                

Research Questions                                                         

Some context on past research results regarding the coverage quantity and quality of male versus female athletes provided in an in-depth literature review informed the following hypotheses and research questions. Since Title IX was introduced, the amount of female athletes has increased dramatically, but media coverage of women’s sports has not seen a comparable increase.          

H1: Overall, males will be framed in a more active manner than females.         

RQ1: Will there be a difference in how male and female athletes are framed by individual sport?

RQ2: How has the framing of male and female athletes evolved over the past five years?           

H2: Male athletes will use more masculine language to describe their experience posing for “The Body Issue” than females.                                    

Methods                 

Researchers used content analysis to analyze photographs and captions in five issues and while they point out the limitations of this method in not providing background on intentions of producers, they argue it was the best method to quantify this type of data. Elements in the photographs, such as gender, sport and photo angle, as well as descriptors in the captions, such as talent, experience and attractiveness, were coded into categories. Chi-square analysis and distribution frequencies were then employed to determine any differences between male and female athletes and change over time.

Key Conclusions

A total of 32 different sports were identified in the five years of issues examined. Water polo had the most occurrences with 13 photographs, followed by track with 12 and basketball with 11. A total of 139 photographs were analyzed, 63 men and 76 women. Other key conclusions included:

86 percent of photo angles were straight on.

62 percent of photos showed athletes in a passive pose.

90 percent of athletes were photographed completely nude.

The research revealed that “There was no significant difference of males being framed in a more active manner than females overall,” which disproved the first hypothesis. In addition, to answer RQ1 and RQ2, analysis showed that there was no significant difference in framing of genders by sport and the percentage of active versus passive photos varied without an identifiable pattern from year to year. The second hypothesis was also disproved, as there was no significant difference in masculinity and femininity of caption language between the genders.  

One interesting conclusion researchers reached after examining the fluctuations in female versus male photographs over time was that the number of female athletes featured tended to increase during Olympic years. The researchers suggested that, “...the numbers of the females may be driven by the Olympics, which is when female athletes typically garner the most media attention (Hull, Reichart Smith, & Schmittel, 2014).”

My Opinion

Overall, I thought this research was conducted thoroughly and completely. The quantitative methods used to analyze the content of each issue and the detail the researchers provided regarding coding methods (overall reliability was reported to be upwards of 93 percent) afforded the study automatic ethos. However, I felt that in the discussion section the researchers were far too harsh and over exaggerated their feelings. It seemed as if they were disappointed to see the findings contradict past research, which they referenced in the beginning of the article.                                    

The researchers expressed “Though ESPN has moved toward a more level playing field with respect to gender representation, the claim of a celebration of the athletic form is nothing more than a cleverly designed marketing campaign for athlete eye candy,” and felt that “the majority of the athletes are not only framed in a passive manner but that they are framed in a manner that has nothing to do with their sport.”                            

I think this conclusion is absolutely false. Though the analysis may have concluded that a majority of photos were coded as passive rather than active, a majority of photos do portray the sport the athlete participates in. These are not just athletes, they are also real people with real personalities. I analyzed the photos from past issues myself, and while I think ESPN has increasingly chosen a direction of photographing the athletes actively participating in or representing their sport, some also take photos with more personality. These athletes include Von Miller and Rob Gronkowski and I think these particular athletes tend to exhibit this humorous personality within their sport as well.                                                                                                                                   The researchers went on to say, “Though ESPN does an excellent job of showcasing a variety of sports, and a variety of non mainstream sports, that may be the only positive one can take from the Body Issue with respect to its promotion of athletics.” This negative attitude toward findings that show a mutual respect toward male and female athletes by ESPN deeply upset me and it felt like the researchers were offended by what I see as tasteful nudity. I would have rather seen the researchers use these findings to start a discussion in the sports world about efforts toward gender equality.

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Review of “Where Do I Belong, from Laguna Beach to Jersey Shore? : Portrayal of Minority Youth in MTV Docusoaps”

Summary of Article

This study focuses on the portrayal of minority women and men on MTV reality television shows. Research was performed to measure visibility, personal agency, social relatedness and romantic involvement of ethnic characters on five reality shows. Results indicated that lack of diversity on television is still a major issue and the depiction of different races and gender continues to be skewed.

Research Questions 
 This study seeks to answer the following questions:

RQ1. How visible are ethnic/racial minority women and men among the characters of MTV docusoaps?  RQ2. How common is it for ethnic/racial minority women and men characters to play central roles in MTV docusoaps?  RQ3a. How common is it for racial/ethnic minority women and men characters to be popular among casts in MTV docusoaps?  RQ3b. How common is it for racial/ethnic minority women and men characters to be hated among casts in MTV docusoaps?  RQ4a. How common is it for racial/ethnic minority women and men characters to be in a steady romantic relationship in MTV docusoaps?  RQ4b. How common is it for characters to be in a steady relationship with someone from a different ethnic or racial group in MTV docusoaps?  RQ4c. How common is it for racial/ethnic minority women and men characters to be romantically desired in MTV docusoaps?

Methods

Shows Selected: “The Real World:”, “Newport Harbor: The Real Orange County”, “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County”, “The Hills” and “Jersey Shore” were selected for this study because each show lasted more than one season and were the highest rated TV shows on the network. A total of 91 episodes were used to answer the research questions listed above.

Coding Variables:

To measure gender visibility, characters were categorized as man or women. 

Skin color, facial features, hair texture, attire and other information provided during an episode helped to measure race visibility.

how frequently and favorably the character was discussed among others, number of visitors at the house and having more than three friends helped determine popularity of characters on the show.

If a cast member was the target of verbal attacks and negative comments, they were deemed hated. 

Information collected from the episode was used to determine if characters were in a steady relationship or not. 

Race and ethnicity was examined when a character was found to be in a steady romantic relationship different than their own. 

When more than one person found a character attractive, they were considered desirable.

Three graduate students were trained to calculate intercoder reliability scores. A statistical comparison between the percentage of the U.S. general public (collected from the census data)  and the cast of a reality show was performed to answer RQ1. For RQ2 - RQ4c no statistical information could be found, therefore percentages of cast members were used without further testing.

Characters with examined attributes were compared to those who did not have them to measure intergroup differences. Individual cast members were used as a unit of analysis for this study: 622 characters were selected, 60 percent were women and 40 percent were men.

Key Conclusions RQ1: Whites are still overrepresented on television at a whopping 88 percent, while Blacks made up only 7 percent, Latino’s made up 2 percent and Asians don’t show up at all. Gender imbalances were found in reality based programming with more Black men appearing than women and more mixed-race women appearing on TV than men. 

RQ2: Non-Hispanic White characters made up 89 percent of central characters on television, while 7 percent were Black, 1 percent Latino and 3 percent were of mixed-race. Black men were more likely to be central characters instead of Black women and there were no such gender differences in other groups, particularly White men and women. 

RQ3a: Whites represented 94 percent of popular characters on reality television, mixed-race characters represented 3 percent, Blacks were found only  2 percent of the time and Latinos were not represented at all.   RQ3b: Whites were among the most hated characters on television at 89 percent along with Blacks at 11 percent. There were no notable gender differences either. 

RQ4a: Whites were deemed mostly likely to have a stable relationship at 94 percent, mixed-race characters were second most likely to have relationship stability at 4 percent, while Blacks were less likely to have a stable relationship at all.

RQ4b: Less than 1 percent of all character were in intergroup (same race) relationships, while 3 percent were in mixed-race relationships. 

RQ4c: 92 percent of desired cast mates on MTV reality shows were White, 6 percent were mixed-race characters and 2 percent were Black.  Surprisingly, White men were deemed more desirable than White women. 

This study found that minority viewers were less likely to relate to reality show characters than Whites suggesting it helps to perpetuate the lack of diversity in mainstream culture. Although media representation of Blacks improved significantly, their roles on TV were reduced to being a villain, or unattractive by other cast mates on the show. Mixed-race people were seen as more desirable, more visible on TV and just as popular as Whites. Although Latino women and men are the largest minority groups, they are practically invisible on MTV reality shows. Producers of MTV reality programming was accused of subscribing to negative stereotypes about Asians being physically inactive, social isolated, and not fun to be around, which led to their absence on the shows listed above.

My Opinion I found this study to be interesting and somewhat accurate.  The statistics provided gives credibility to the conclusions drawn about the lack of diversity on reality TV. On the flip side, I disagree with the findings that these shows were un-relatable to ethnic viewers. Growing up and watching shows like “The Real World”, “The Hills” and “Jersey Shore” taught me what to look forward to in my 20’s. I learned how to stand up for myself and manage relationships with my peers. I never saw race/skin color as being an issue or a reason I couldn’t relate to someone on a reality show. Before drawing conclusions about the effects of reality programming on viewers, human subjects should've been interviewed or given a survey to determine key findings and conclusions for this article. To conclude I would’ve broadened the scope of shows analyzed to see if the lack of diversity on MTV reality programming varied across a wide range of shows.

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The Review of Tracking Protests Using Geo-tagged Flickr Photographs

Summary of Article

There has been an increase in coordinating events via social media as a way to organize. Online forums have created new data to analyze and measure human behavior. There has also been a shift on these platforms from text reports to visual reports using photo and video. The goal of this research article was to see if it is possible to identify protest outbreaks through quantitative analysis using photographs uploaded to Flickr in 2013. This is an example of the study of human behavior using online platforms on a global scale.

 Materials and Methods

Researchers collected 29,944,764 geotagged photographs uploaded to Flickr between January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2013. They collected details from the photographs such as: information about the photographer, title of photo, url where a user could download it, location where the photograph was taken, the time it was taken and tags that were used to categorize it. All the photographs collected used the tag word “protest”. They translated the tag “protest” into 34 different languages to account its global scale. They then broke down the research into weekly (Monday thru Sunday) segments and then separated them by their respected countries. There were 244 countries and regions. To account for Ground Truth, a term used to refer to information provided by direct observation rather than information provided by inference, the researchers collected articles related to protests. They collected 178,730 articles from The Guardian online edition for all of 2013. Articles were collected using the same rules as the collected Flickr photographs. They separated articles based on their country and region, used the tag word “protest” (which was also translated into 34 different languages) and separated articles into weekly segments. The Guardian uses a different tagging system than Flickr for the UK and the US, therefore researchers separated articles based on the tag: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for the UK and for the US they used the tag US News. The goal was to see if there was a relationship between Flickr user activity and protest outbreaks and to see whether there was an outcome variable between The Guardian articles and the Flickr photographs.

 Key Conclusions

Researchers found clear differences between Flickr and The Guardian online articles but also similarities such as an increase in protests in Brazil and Turkey in June 2013. They found that there was a greater number of protests Flickr photographs in a given week related to a specific region or country corresponded to a greater proportion of The Guardian articles that were tagged using the word “protest” in those same areas. This meant that if they were to fix the tagged Flickr photographs at 0.1 it would increase the number of protest themed articles by 34%. Researchers found that they could not rule out the possibility that Flickr users were posting photographs as a direct result of a published article relating to protests, however with geotagging it made it was less likely a cause.

 My Opinion

This article failed to follow through in the research. The authors did not analyze the data in detail such as: describing similarities and differences between The Guardian articles and Flickr photographs, what accounted for these differences or similarities, any discrepancies between the data and how they got to a 34% increase. The tagging system used for The Guardian articles differed to Flickr but only in regards to location. I was confused as to if that changed the data. I would assume that readers could access what country or region was being discussed just by reading it. This then leads to questions such as: Does the tagging systems matter if you are referring to location? Was it just another data asset to add? Could it have changed the accuracy of the data?  This research did however give valuable insight into how it can be used to measure human behavior at a global scale using free and cheap sources.

 In conclusion, I believe that more research could be done using this type of data collection. However, it needs to be properly vetted and analyzed to come up with more key takeaways.

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Review of “The Effect of the Experience Recommendation on Short and Long-Term Happiness”

Summary of Article:

Research has shown that to become happier, consumers should prefer experiences over material objects. That said, previous research has only focused on how experiences and material items are connected to short-term happiness. The researchers in this study were interested in the effect of experiences on long-term happiness. Additionally, they wanted to test their hypothesis that adding a material component to an experience would have the best effect on long-term happiness. This research was conducted by Maria Sääksjärvi, Katarina Hellén and Pieter Desmet. It was published in Marketing Letters: A Journal of Research in Marketing in 2016.  

Research Methods:

A 6-week study was designed to understand the effect of experiences on long-term happiness. The participants were 97 volunteering students enrolled in a major university in the Netherlands and were given a 20-euro gift voucher and informative booklet on happiness as a thank you. Participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 32 (Mage = 23) and included 47 men and 50 women. The students were broken into five groups:

1)     Experience condition group (daily): These students were presented with happiness-enhancing activities that were printed on pieces of paper. They were asked to complete one activity per day each week.

2)     Experience condition group (weekly): These students were presented with happiness-enhancing activities that were printed on pieces of paper. They were asked to complete all activities for one week during the same day each week.

3)     Experience with a material component condition group (daily): These students were given happiness-enhancing activities on colored key tags made of hard plastic. They were asked to complete one activity per day each week.

4)     Experience with a material component condition group (weekly): These students were given happiness-enhancing activities on colored key tags made of hard plastic. They were asked to complete all activities for one week during the same day each week.

5)     Control Group: Participants in the control group were asked to reflect on a daily event and write about it in a journal.

Each week, participants in the condition groups performed six mood enhancing activities out of the fifty activities provided. They were advised to spend as much time as they wanted on each activity but could only do each activity once.

Examples of Tasks Provided:

1)     Write a letter to thank someone you have never properly thanked and send it.

2)     Look up (at the sky, the clouds, and high buildings), discover something new, and make a drawing or photo of it.

3)     Find a picture that brings back fond memories, print it out and hang it on the wall or set it as your computer background image.

Measures:

Participants were given questionnaires daily that asked which activities they performed and how they felt based on a three-item scale (happy, content and pleased). Additionally, at the end of each week participants were asked to reflect on all the activities they had performed that week. The researchers measured long-term happiness on a weekly basis using the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS) (Diener et al. 1985; Pavot et al. 1991), as long-term happiness is not expected to fluctuate daily.

Key Conclusions:

This study centered around experiences and examined the experience recommendation in the context of long-term happiness. The results showed that participants in the experience group with a material component condition who engaged in spread out tasks reported the greatest level of happiness, and that their level of happiness, in general, increased over time (Figure 1).

 Figure 1

My Opinion:

I agree that people tend to seek experiences that will cause them to maximize their level of happiness. For example, some people may choose to go to a concert after a rough day at work. As marketing professionals, it is important for us to think about how we can create campaigns to increase consumer happiness long term to build brand loyalty. In experiential marketing, this research shows that we should include a material component to our events and create campaigns with multiple activations on a recurring basis. Also, including activities that promote happiness and well-being could be a fantastic addition to any experiential marketing campaign.

I would like to see research on how this topic relates to experiential marketing with brands. The researchers only used small feel-good activities, so it made sense that people doing these activities daily would have more long term happiness over the study. I would like to know which activity specifically caused the most happiness and the psychology behind that. It would also be interesting to know if there is a specific type of promotional item that people tend to hold onto long-term to remember their experience. This information could help with building future promotional marketing campaigns.

Link to Article: https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.depaul.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs11002-015-9382-x#Sec9

Citation: Sääksjärvi, M., Hellén, K. & Desmet, P. Mark Lett (2016) 27: 675. doi:10.1007/s11002-015-9382-x

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Review of Talking About What Provokes Us

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Review of The role of  FoMO within TV Consumption

THOMAS BARWICK VIA GETTY IMAGES

Summary of Article 

Time-shifting vs. appointment viewing: the role of fear of missing out within TV consumption behaviors was written by Lindsey Conlin, Andrew Billings and Lauren Averset in 2015. This research article focused on the concept of TV viewership and if the fear-of-missing-out (FoMO) is the source. Conlin et al. wants to discover if a particular genre or mega-event was viewed more because of viewers FoMO or not. FoMO, coined by Fox and Moreland in 2015, is described as the feeling that missing some sort of interaction or entertainment will exclude you from a discussion about it. Conlin et al. states that FoMo’s related mostly to technology based behavior. With the use of previous research in TV viewership, these researches describes the uses of technology is to engage and how it has led to the use of FoMO. Conlin et al. discusses new ways to view TV such as Netflix and Hulu and how this has started the last term of “binge-watching”, which is a concept used in understanding the correlation of FoMO and viewings. According to Conlin et al., binge watching is the act of consuming multiple episodes of a show in one sitting. This helps to understand the concept of FoMO and what the reality of TV viewership today. The history of TV viewership is briefly discussed to allow the reader to understand how technology, which tied to FoMO, has changed over time. Conlin et al. seek out the answer to their research theory and if FoMO is a concept used to watch television.

Research Methods 

Conlin et al. uses an online survey and two theoretical underpinnings: self-determination theory and uses and gratification to understand the results. Self-determination theory (SDT) was chosen based off a previous researcher’s investigation into FoMO. Moreover, SDT focuses on motivations and their satisfactions. Lastly, the researchers will combine SDT with the uses and gratifications approach because it helps to further explain and understand psychological needs.

Sample Size

The researchers employed a survey using Amazon Mechanical Turk, that they posted online. The survey was received by non-students from across the nation and they were offered a $2 incentive. There wasn’t a set demographic requirement so anyone of any age, race or gender could participate. There was a total of 160 people ranging from the ages of 21 to 71. Out of the 160 people 80 percent of them white and 82 of the surveyors were men.

Survey Design 

The survey was designed using the 10-item scale and asked to rate their level of agreements on a 9-point Likert scale.  Following the questions, the respondents were asked to choses the shows they have watched from a pre-determined list, separated by genres. The list included popular shows in drama, reality TV and comedy. From their selections, a list of questions were asked about one show, chosen randomly, that the respondent had indicated that they had watched.  Next, the respondents were asked about megaevents viewership within the last year broken down in 4 categories: sporting events, entertainment events, political events and awards shows. Lastly, the respondents were asked to state if they posted on social media about these megaevents.

Research Questions

Below are the RQ’s for the first step in the survey.

RQ1a: Will FoMO predict the manner in which a person will watch a dramatic TV series?

RQ1b: Will FoMO predict the manner in which a person will watch a reality TV series?

RQ1c: Will FoMO predict the manner in which a person will watch a sitcom TV series? 

RQ2a: Will FOMO predict how likely a person is to watch one-time sporting events?

RQ2b: Will FOMO predict how likely a person is to watch one-time entertainment events?


RQ2c: Will FOMO predict how likely a person is to watch one-time political events?

RQ2d: Will FOMO predict how likely a person is to watch one-time awards shows?

Below are the RQ’s about the randomly selected show.

Watched week-by-week using a DVR to record the episodes. 


Watched week-by-week as the episodes came on TV, live or within seven days. 


Watched old episodes on DVD or Blu-Ray, then watched new episodes as they came on TV, live or within seven days. 


Watched old episode on DVR, then watched new episodes as they came on TV, live or within seven days. 


Watched old episodes online, then watched new episodes as they came on TV, live 
or within seven days. 


Watched the entire series at once on DVD or Blu-Ray. 


Watched the entire series at once using a DVR to record the episodes. 


Watched the entire series at once, online using a streaming service such as Netflix or Hulu Plus. 


Watched a marathon of episodes as they came on TV. 


Other. 


Key Conclusions

Conlin et al. discovered that when it came to FoMO overall there was no correlation when watching a certain genre or how fast someone watched a TV show. Increased FoMO didn’t not factor into when someone watched a new episode of reality TV or comedy shows. It did show a correlation with drama on the other hand. An increased FoMO was shown when using a week-to-week basis. When a new drama episode airs, FoMO is the reason that individuals will watch within the first week it premieres. They also found that at least one entertainment megaevent was watched within the past year due to FoMo. In regards to all other megaevents, there was no correlation to FoMO. Lastly, it was founded that individuals are likely to post on social media about a one-time sporting event.

My Opinion 

The research was lacking in effectively uncovering the use of FoMO and TV viewing. Overall drama shows are more likely to have a correlation to FoMO than any other show, mostly because spoilers are more likely to happen. I thought this would be a fun article to read but a lot of the article focused on repetitive statements and became a little incohesive as I continued. The article states that it wanted to use SDT to address the psychological aspect of FoMO and TV viewing but none of the questions actually asked a why they watched the programs they chose. By randomly selecting one show for each respondent to answer a question on it takes away from the overall picture of the survey. What happens if the respondents used FoMO with several shows, but the one show you random selected wasn’t the one that motivated them through FoMO? I think that this research wasn’t done as effectively as it could have been, to truly understand if there is a correlation of FoMo and TV viewership. The researchers also used questions that made the survey less cohesive and included shows that would more likely receive a specific result. For example, Friends has been off for years but when asked how to you stream this will obviously lead to more of an accelerated case because the show is over. Lastly, I believe that adding the use of social media is key to helping figure out FoMO but it was tied to the wrong aspect. I believe that social media usage could have been tied to scripted shows more so than the megaevents to get a clearer picture of the power of FoMO.

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Review of “Breaking Binge: Exploring the Effects of Binge Watching on Television Viewer Reception”

Summary of Article

   The term ‘binge-watch’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013, as it became common in everyday vernacular. Labeled as a verb, binge-watching refers “to watching multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession, typically by means of DVDs or digital streaming,” (“Oxford Dictionaries,” 2013). As a cultural phenomenon, binge watching also known as binge-viewing or marathon viewing offers audiences the option of instant gratification allowing the viewer to watch what they want, whenever they want to, and however they want it.

   This review considers the research and exploratory experimentation of Lesley L. Peña’s research article published in 2015 as her thesis dissertation for an M.A. in Media Studies at Syracuse University. The article entitled “Breaking Binge: Exploring the Effects of Binge Watching on Television Viewer Reception,” made strides in understanding binge watching by examining its effect on the viewer – more specifically, how it affects their reception towards a television show. The study sought to answer three research questions:

   RQ1: To what extent does binge watching affect a viewer’s reception towards a show (as compared to appointment viewing)?

            A.    To what extent is opinion towards the show affected?

            B.    To what extent is enjoyment of a show affected?

           C.    To what extent is satisfaction with a show affected?

   RQ2: To what extent does binge watching affect a viewer’s reception of an individual episode (as compared to appointment viewing)?

   RQ3: To what extent does binge watching affect a viewer’s gratifications obtained (as compared to appointment viewing)?

Methods

     For this study, Peña gathered data using preliminary and post questionnaires collected on SurveyMonkey.com during a two-pronged experiment conducted over the duration of about five months. Short episodic diary surveys were also amassed, as well as measure reception factors such as opinion, enjoyment, and satisfaction. There were 212 participants split into two groups: appointment viewers (viewers with scheduled times to watch a show at the time of original broadcast) and binge-watchers (viewers with the option to watch any episode at any time). Both groups were assigned to watch a half season of a television show.

Design

     The study recruited students from a private Northeast university and used two popular and serialized drama series for the viewing content: Scandal and The Walking Dead. These two shows were chosen because of their popularity among binge watchers, as well as having ratings that demonstrate a strong live broadcast audience. There were two condition groups: appointment viewers (n=111) and binge-watchers (n=101); and two show groups: Scandal viewers (n=101) and The Walking Dead viewers (n=110). The subgroups were: Scandal appointment viewers (n=51), Scandal binge watchers (n=51), The Walking Dead appointment viewers (n=60), The Walking Dead binge watchers (n=50).

Key Conclusions

    The primary finding of this research experiment was that the effect of binge watching on viewer reception is contingent on the show. The experiment highlights that content and story line of the TV show still matter in viewer reception even amid new services and technology. Binge watching delivers an escape gratification for viewers better than appointment viewing and accelerates the consumption of a television series, making some shows more enjoyable. On the other hand, the study shows that other shows may be better received when given enough time to digest.

     The study found a correlation between the ritual of gratification obtained by appointment viewing and being able to talk to others about the show that just aired. Having a connection with another individual fulfills the social interaction gratification, which is the foundation of appointment viewing. The immediate social interaction when binge watching is not easily attainable because people can’t be sure when their friends have watched a show or how far along they are.

     This study discovered that the effect of binge watching depends on the show, but could not answer why. With the potential of alleviating the limitations this experiment had and by investigating different types of shows, future studies have the possibility to find characteristics of a show to make it better suited for binge watching.

My opinion

       This experiment was simple yet effective to answer the research questions planted at the beginning. However, I think that is because the answers were highly expected and predictable. The research questions were too broad and the content of television programs is too diverse to generalize or fit into one box. The author did a good job at explaining the limitations of the experiment and sharing what in her opinion is the potential of future studies on this subject, especially when it comes to experimenting the hypothesis with a more diverse and gender equal participant pool. I would like to see a more in-depth research study that takes on the task of understanding the science behind binge watching tendencies by categories and/or segments such as age, gender, geography, social status, and race.

Reviewed by Oscar Carrillo

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A Review of “Does Being Social Matter? Effects of Enabled Commenting on Credibility and Brand Attitude in Social Media”

Summary of Article

With a digital shift in traditional advertising, social media influencers are becoming increasingly popular with time. Publicists and corporations are turning to influencers who have a large following to help raise brand awareness and increase product sales. Because influencers provide a unique perspective through personal connection and credibility, companies are willing to provide big bucks for sponsored content. As time has progressed it has become more common to see influencers restrict comments from the public in an attempt to remain in control of what is displayed and to rule out any negative communication. With social interaction being highly important for influencers to build a following base, shouldn't remaining social and encouraging interaction amongst users be a top priority for influencers?

The research article “Does Being Social Matter? Effects of Enabled Commenting on Credibility and Brand Attitude in Social Media” takes a look at the difference between blog content that encourages user socialization versus content that restricts it. Guided by the warranting theory which addresses how online information is viewed as more credible when it is immune to other sources of influence, the researchers seek to understand if enabled comments on posts affect brand attitudes, influencer credibility, and purchase intention. 

Methods

The researchers used a nationally representative sample of 527 individuals to test 4 hypotheses which include:

H1: Blogs that exhibit socialness are perceived of as more credible than blogs that do not. H2: Blogs that exhibit socialness are perceived of as having more expertise than blogs that do not. H3a: A blog’s credibility has a positive effect on the valence of attitude regarding the product being reviewed. H3b: A blogger’s expertise has a positive effect on the valence of attitude regarding the product being reviewed. H4a: A blog’s credibility has a positive effect on purchase intention. H4b: A blogger’s expertise has a positive effect on purchase intentions

The respondents were widely distributed geographically and included 64% females with a mean age of 23.62.  Of Respondents who disclosed ethnicity 83% were white, 6% African-American 10% Asian or Asian-American, and 2% were multiracial.

Procedure

Participants were asked to log onto a website which automatically assigned them to one of two experimental conditions, either asocial or social review of a digital camera. The social review of the digital camera included a blog post with both text and photos to showcase the product. Comments were left on and the blogger enthusiastically responded to a user who shared her sentiments and wanted to know a little more information about the camera. The asocial review included the same blog post however the comments feature was nonexistent. Participants were instructed to thoroughly read the blog post and immediately following complete a questionnaire.

Measures

To measure blog credibility a 5 item Likert-type scale was used with statements in regard to how believable, fair, accurate and in-depth they believed the blog to be. The scale ranged from 1(not at all) to 5(very) and the mean score was used to gauge perceived credibility. 

To evaluate blogger expertise the mean score was calculated from a 5 item semantic differential scale used with anchors including “ Expert/Not An Expert,” “Experienced/Inexperienced,” “Knowledgeable/Unknowledgeable,” “Qualified/Unqualified,” and “Skilled/Unskilled.” 

Finally to assess both brand attitude and intent to purchase, the researchers used a 12 item Likert-type scale. For brand attitudes they asked participants to indicate their agreement with certain statements such as “I think this digital camera is an excellent product,” “I would use this camera at a sporting event,” and “I would recommend this camera to my friends.” To measure purchase intention three 7-point Likert-type items were used.

Key Conclusions

Overall the researchers concluded that although socializing did increase perceptions of brand attitudes, blogger expertise, and purchase intention surprisingly it did not increase the perception of credibility. They mention that the failure of increased perception of credibility could be due to limited exposure to only accurate information on the product which caused participants to only evaluate expertise as credibility occurred naturally. While all of the remaining 3 hypotheses were supported, the researchers believe that there were a few limitations that could have impacted their results. Some of these limitations include the lack of certain capabilities such as commenting directly on the blog and displaying only positive comment exchange between the blogger and users.

The researchers go on to note how their findings are important to the industry and can be used to help practitioners strategize influencer use for their clients. While controlling the brand image is of high importance it is also important to note the positive impact socialization can have on brand attitude and purchase intention as well. 

My Opinion

I was so excited to find this article as I’ve always been interested in influencer relations and intrigued by the power influencers hold in advertising and PR. In my opinion, the study was very well thought out and did a good job in setting out to answer the question at hand. While I did like the study, I do believe that there is room for improvement. Although the researchers note that the participant base was reflective of the US population, there should've been a wider range of representation in both gender and ethnic background. It would have been great to know that the findings were equally representative of people in the US.

In terms of limitations, I agree with the researchers that the study should've displayed both negative and positive social interactions in the comment section. Providing both would have been more realistic to an actual situation and assisted in guiding the participants to provide unbiased feedback.

I believe that this study is useful to those in the field who rely heavily on influencer advertising. From experience, I have seen the positive effects that social media influencers can have on brand awareness and purchase intention. Finding information and research on specific aspects is very helpful for future use.

It will be interesting to see how influencers are utilized in the coming years and if their impact is still as substantial as it is today.

Reviewed By: Valencia Seuell

[depaulresearchmethods]

A Review of “What Makes Brands’ Social Content Sharable on Facebook? An Analysis that Demonstrates the Power of Online Trust and Attention”

Summary of Article

Due to the rise of the internet age over the course of several decades, it’s no wonder that social media has become the dominate way in which individuals and brands reach their intended audiences. For many users, this involves liking, posting, and sharing content that we create or find interesting. For brands, especially brands looking to promote their message, social media can be used as a tool to spread the word. A main component of this tool is everyday viewers who deem specific brand content worthy of sharing to their circles.

This review focuses on a research article published in 2015 in the Journal of Advertising Research entitled, “What Makes Brands’ Social Content Sharable On Facebook? An Analysis that Demonstrates the Power of Online Trust and Attention”

The main objective of this research article is to have a clearer understanding of what psychological drivers might increase the likelihood of social sharing for brands on Facebook. Specifically, brands who are trying to reach a certain demographic and gaining a better understand of social sharing trends effect consumer attitudes.

Methods

The author chose to create a framework of research based around the “STEPPS” model (Berger, 2013) which outlines six drivers of viral content to establish a set of research questions.

Social Currency:  how you are perceived by other individuals.

Triggers: stimuli that reminds people to think/talk about certain things.

Emotion: content that makes people feel something.

Public: showing that other people are using a product.

Practical Information: crafting content that is useful to the viewer.

Stories: integrating your message into a narrative.

With the “STEPPS” model as the precursor, a set of research questions were asked via Survey Monkey. The survey began on August 30, 2014, and ended on September 20, 2014. The total count of participants was 10,083 who lived within the United States. Prior to answering any questions, responders were asked basic background information like age, gender, and income.

Research questions were broken down into four key themes: social currency, emotion, usefulness, and storytelling. Each survey respondent was asked to view a single Facebook post before answering 10 questions about what they just saw. Respondents were not able to see likes or shares of the post but were able to identify the brand who was responsible for the post. Also, Facebook was the only social media platform used due to it’s all-encompassing reach among all demographics. 

The 10 research questions were viewed with a 5 point scale that could be circled. 1 being most negative and 5 being most positive. All questions are seen below.

“Sharing this post on Facebook would make the sharer ‘look funny’.”

“Sharing this post on Facebook would make the sharer ‘look good’.”

“Sharing this post on Facebook would make the sharer ‘look intelligent’.”

“Sharing this post on Facebook would make the sharer ‘look like a trendsetter’.”

“How angry would this post make the average Facebook reader feel?”

“How excited would this post make the average Facebook reader feel?”

“How happy would this post make the average Facebook reader feel?”

“How sad would this post make the average Facebook reader feel?”

“How useful would the average Facebook reader find this post?”

“To what degree does this post tell a story?”

Key Conclusions

The current studies’ objective was, in part, to identify and validate the drivers that make content sharable. As mentioned previously, the author wanted to break down the themes of the study into four parts; social currency, emotions, usefulness, and storytelling. With these themes in mind the research questions helped the author gain a clearer understanding of what an average consumer finds important.

Social Currency - When it comes to social currency, the main takeaway was that “looking good” was the strongest driver with 52% across all respondents. Taking up the rest of the bulk was “looking intelligent”, with 36%. “Looking funny” and appearing “in the know” were the least important to responders.

Emotion - When crafting content, 47% of respondents across all segments agreed that happiness is the most significant emotion most likely to be shared. Second after happiness was excitement, but far less significant with only 24%. Other emotions like anger and sadness did not register as a typically favorable thing to share.

Usefulness - Usefulness was a common driver of shared content as age demographics got older. The highest importance of usefulness was recorded in respondents in the 55+ bracket. This would included things such as recipes, discounts, and tips for home and garden. Among younger viewers the importance of usefulness was much lower.

Storytelling - For responders between the ages of 18-35, storytelling was not a primary need for share-ability. Although people older than 35 found more importance in sharing personal stories rather than brand stories.

In addition to these four themes, there was some difference apparent between the genders. For example, there was a divide in the desire to “look intelligent”. Most women felt this was a very important driver but most men found it to be far less important. Also, men didn't put as much weight into usefulness and much rather favored things that “seemed funny”.

My Opinion

I felt that the research study did a comprehensive job with the information gathered. Elements of the research could change the way brands look at engagement with future consumers. In many ways I believe the study is really just scratching the surface of what can be achieved for brands with social media.

In the future, I believe it would be wise to not tell the respondents the brand in which they are using for the survey. Although that may be difficult, I believe this would eliminate any preconceived opinion of the brand. I also think that with the rise in popularity of other social media platforms, maybe consider comparing share trends across multiple platforms.

To further the research, I think it would be interesting to see how these share trends can correlate into sales. Researchers and brands could analyze the data and compare sales figure between age demographics as well as themes to have a better understanding on the connection between social media shares and profit.

Reviewed by Andrew Keller

Yuki, Tania (2015) What Makes Brands’ Social Content Sharable on Facebook? An Analysis that Demonstrates the Power of Online Trust and Attention. Journal of Advertising Research - December 2015 (DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2015-026)

http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/55/4/458

[depaulresearchmethods]

A Review of “The Indirect Association between Television Exposure and Self-Protective Behavior as a Result of Worry about Crime: The Moderating Role of Gender”

Summary of Article

“If it bleeds, it leads,” is an age-old term in journalism which means if it’s enough violence in the news or a TV show, the ratings will likely soar. The news can sometimes make a crime bigger than what it is for ratings and researchers have seen the effect on society because of that. Research has proven the cultivation theory, in which the more TV one watches, the more he or she believes the real world is similar to the programs they are watching. One of the main components of this theory is the “mean world” syndrome, in which TV makes people think the world is more dangerous than what it actually is. 

This research has proven that there’s a significant relationship between television exposure and fear of crime, but not much has been researched on research of the relationship between television exposure and self-protective behavior. The figure below shows three cognitive components of fear of crime as related to television exposure from the Mediated Fear Model which will be used in this study: perceived seriousness, perceived risk and perceived control. It hypothesizes the indirect relationship between news and crime drama viewing and self-protective behavior.

Past studies in criminology have shown that increased perceived risk of becoming a victim can lead to restrictive and self-protective behavior. Unsurprisingly, women have more self-protective behaviors than men because they have higher levels of fear or crime especially undergraduate female students. This study extends the cultivation theory in three ways: One, by establishing whether there is a relationship between TV exposure, fear and behavior; second, it will be specific to crime drama and television news instead of overall television; and third, examine how important gender is in these processes. It extends he mediated fear model by incorporating behavioral element.

Based on this information, there are three research questions:

RQ1: Does the hypothesized mediated fear model including avoidance and defensive behaviors as additional outcomes fit the observed data for males and females? RQ2: Are there significant gender differences regarding the (a) direct and (b) indirect paths of the mediated fear model? RQ3: Are there significant gender differences regarding the indirect associations between news and crime drama viewing and (a) avoidance and (b) defensive behavior? 

Method

For the research, 392 undergrad communications students from a Midwestern university ages 18 to 25 were asked to complete and online survey hosted by Qualtrics and were given a small amount of class credit to do so. Of all the participants, 179 were male and 213 were female. Almost 70 percent of them were white and 62 percent were single. The research showed the participants watched a little over 15 hours of TV a week excluding binge watching, and over 24 hours including binge watching. They were also asked how often they watched local television news, national television news, crime drama shows and crime drama movies. They watched crime dramas between once a month and a few times a month.

They were then asked a series of questions of how likely they felt they would fall victim to crimes in the next twelve months, to what extent they felt they could control a crime in the next twelve months, how affected they would be in their lives if they became a victim and how worried they were that they would be a victim in the next twelve months. The crimes they used were: being mugged on the street; physically attacked by a stranger in the street because of your skin color, ethnic origin, or religion; and being sexually assaulted. The response categories raged from (1) the least likely to (5) the most likely that something could happen. They were also asked how often they avoided activities they feel may lead to an assault and how often do they do certain things as a defense to prevent an attack. These behaviors included: locking your door while you are not at home, notice and avoid a suspicious looking person, staying alert as you walk through parking garages or lots, keeping your cell phone close for safety reason, and walking with your keys in your hand.

Results

The researchers found that there were no significant differences between men and women in how much TV they watched as a whole or crime dramas, but there was a difference in exposure to news programs in which men watched more than women. Women perceived greater risk and seriousness of crimes but had less control than men after watching the news and crime dramas. Furthermore, female participants had a higher worry about crime, defensive behavior and avoidance behavior than male participants. They also found that increased news exposure increased females’ perceptions about the risk of becoming a victim of crime and the impact of victimization on their lives. In females, news viewing and crime drama viewing did indirectly relate to worry about perceived risk of criminal victimization. Higher news exposure prompted both men and women to increase perceived risk and avoidance behaviors but perceived seriousness between news viewing and avoidance happened only with females. In a nutshell, exposure to crime dramas and news increased perceived victimization, seriousness and worry in women, while men showed more control over victimization because they took more measures in defensive behavior like carrying a weapon.

Conclusion

This study was important to research in the cultivation theory because instead of focusing on the relation to television exposure as a whole it, focused specifically on crime drama and the news. Furthermore, research up until this point didn’t take gender in account, maybe because it may have seemed obvious women would feel more risk than men. But why do women indirectly feel that way after watching TV? The researchers say that women learn expected behavior and attitudes based on their gender group from a variety of places including the media. In essence, women are trained to fear more because women are usually the victims on television and the news. Men don’t see themselves as victims as often, so they feel they’re less likely to become a victim. Women see crime more serious than men because they have they feel more vulnerable physically than men.

My Opinion

While I thought this a good study based on the cultivation theory, there were somethings I thought could be better. I think the participants needed much more diversity because the majority were white and I think there could be a difference in the findings in there were people of different races involved. I think binge watching should have been a part of a different study or have further research because it’s such a concentrated amount of exposure I feel it can exaggerate the feelings of fear and worry more. I think it was obvious women would have more fear than men because women are victimized significantly more than men in media. It’s important to understand how much the media affects us in our daily lives and how negative the impacts can be. From learning about the cultivation theory and the mean world syndrome, I realize I act upon it too. I don’t think every time I go outside someone will hurt me, but I definitely use avoidance methods like never going outside alone after a certain time of night. I don’t think there are too many women who don’t feel that way, so this shows that that theory is correct.

[depaulresearchmethods]

Think about it–can portrayals of homosexuality in advertising prime consumer-perceived social connectedness and empathy?

Summary of Article Extensive research has been conducted to show the effects of minority representation in advertising. However, this research usually focuses on any damage that could be done to a brand by alienating an audience or the damage that could be done to the populations in question that are unable to find themselves reflected in their world. Åkestam, Rosengren, and Dahlen set out to discover what beneficial social effects minority representation might have. In this study they focused on homosexuals as a sexual minority group. The researchers have 3 hypotheses: H1: That the use of homosexuality in an ad will increase “consumer-perceived social connectedness”. The main theory behind this hypothesis is that portrayals of minority populations will challenge the self-categorization of the consumer viewing the ad. H2: Similar to H1 this hypothesis suggests that the use of homosexuality can increase consumer-perceived empathy. This is important as empathy is often considered “one of the most fundamental personality traits for facilitating social coordination in a society”. H3: Finally the researchers hypothesize that the use of homosexual portrayals will be affected by the existing opinions on homosexuality that preexist within the consumer. In order to answer these questions, the researchers conducted three studies using different respondents in each study. Study One was conducted using a mock advertisement for potato chips. They created one ad featuring a heterosexual couple and another featuring a homosexual couple. The results of Study One found that consumer-perceived social connectedness was higher for the homosexual condition than the heterosexual. There was a similar increase in empathy in the homosexual condition as well and that ad facilitated more thoughts about others in the respondents. The researchers list the limitations of Study One (the effect of previous opinions on homosexuality and a desire to test for traditional advertising aims) and create Study Two to address them. Study Two was identical to Study One except the respondents are asked about their opinions on homosexuality and the product being featured was changed to a travel agency. It was felt that the low commitment item in Study One did not allow them to adequately test for brand perception and opinions on the ad itself so the higher price point of a travel agency was selected for all ads moving forward. Study Two found consumer-perceived social connectedness was significantly higher for the homosexual condition. However, there was no significant difference in empathy. A t-test showed those exposed to the homosexual condition documented significantly more thoughts about others than the other group. Finally, the homosexual portrayal created more positive attitudes about the ad itself but showed no difference in general brand attitudes. The researchers noted a limitation in Study Two, mainly that in both of the previous studies featured male homosexual pairings. With this in mind, the researchers conducted Studies 3A and 3B. Studies 3A and 3B are again identical to Study 2 except the respondents are now asked how similar they feel they are to the couple in the ad in order to highlight the identity fluidity suggested by the consumer-perceived social connectedness. Study 3A found that the respondent's felt significantly more similar to the homosexual condition. The study also supported the previous studies’ findings, and those exposed to the homosexual condition showed in increase in social connectedness and empathy. The homosexual condition also significantly increased positive feelings about the advertisement and brand attitudes.   Study 3B was identical to Study 3A except the homosexual couple was now portrayed by a lesbian couple. Interestingly, the respondents found this pairing to be significantly “more homosexual” than the heterosexual couple (as opposed to how they found the male pairing). Again a higher sense of social connectedness and empathy were reported for the homosexual pairing although this time this did not lead to an increase in thoughts about others. The homosexual condition leads to a significantly more positive advertisement and brand attitudes but did not seem to alter purchase intention.

Key Conclusions

The researchers explain why the use of a minority couple may increase feelings of empathy and connectedness. They state that a member of a majority never needs to identify themselves using that title since it can be to some extent ‘assumed’. But when faced with a portrayal of someone who is not a member of that majority, it primes more abstract social categories in the individual. If I do not share a race or sexual orientation with a model I can choose to identify in other ways in order to find similarities, (as a woman, as a Latina, as a writer…). 

The researchers also note that while there has been research done about the inclusion of minorities in advertising it is often attempting to prove a negative (a lack of representation is harmful, the inclusion of minorities can hurt brand perception etc.). They feel this is one of the first studies to show a possible social benefit in the use of minorities even beyond the group being represented. Additionally, it is noted that these studies of representation often do not look at traditional efficacy models for advertising. I feel the studies should be replicated using different minority populations. The researchers note that older studies on the inclusion of homosexuality showed a negative response among heterosexuals. The researchers note however that attitudes towards homosexuality have evolved considerably in the last few decades. With this in mind reconducting the study with racial or gender minorities could prove enlightening, either in what they reveal about our ability to identify with others or what they show us about our prejudices. 

My Opinion I was surprised that a study that focused both on social effects and effects on consumer behavior and brand opinions had not been conducted in the past. The lack of previous research highlighted the importance of this study in particular. I was also concerned that the researchers only mentioned that the homo and heterosexual couples were similar in age, race, and clothing in order to control for perceptions unrelated to their sexual orientation. I would like to know how the couples were portrayed. This study, while proving it’s hypotheses regarding sexual minorities, may have benefitted from a white or upper-class portrayal easing some of the discomfort of the homosexual condition. Intersectionality is an important aspect of identity politics and an exploration of how the public responds to specifically black gay men or Indian lesbian women could facilitate much-needed conversation in advertising about the way we identify and utilize minority models. Finally, in every class that I have attended in the PRAD program, the question of social obligation of the advertiser has been asked. Knowing what we do about the power and danger of advertising on the way people view themselves and others what could it mean to behave ethically as an advertiser?  Armed with new data on the power of advertising for social change the answer to this question becomes clearer. This study shows a small but fantastic opportunity to create strong positive perceptions of our companies and their products while also working towards a more inclusive world.

Reviewed by Melanie Decelles 

Åkestam, N., Rosengren, Sara., Dahlen, Micael. (2015). Think about it can portrayals of homosexuality in advertising prime consumer-perceived social connectedness and empathy? European Journal of Marketing, 51, 81-98.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/EJM-11-2015-0765

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/EJM-11-2015-0765

[depaulresearchmethods]

A Review of What Are Likes Worth? A Facebook Page Field Experiment

Facebook advertising has become increasingly popular over the years.  Eighty-four percent of Fortune 500 companies have Facebook pages.  Looking at the recent survey conducted by the CMO, the social media budget is expected to rise to 23.8% over the next five years.  

The American Marketing Association conducted a study to see if there is a correlation in behavior of Facebook page likers and nonlikers. They tested this experiment on Discovery Vitality, an incentive-based wellness program that is affiliated with Discovery Health, a large private health insurer in South Africa.  

 Summary of Article

Vitality sent an email to invite new customers to participate in the study. All new customers between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013, who had an email addresses were asked to join the study.  New customers were the target in the study because they were less likely to have already liked the company’s Facebook page. On February 18, 2014, an email was sent out to complete an online survey about the relationship between Facebook and health behavior. Customers who did not fill the survey out were sent reminders on February 20 and 25th.

Customers were first asked if they had a Facebook.  The study found that 18.5% of participants did not have a Facebook. As a result, they were thanked for participating and were given no further instructions. For the participants that did have a Facebook, they were asked if they had already liked the Vitality Facebook page.  The 27.3% who liked Vitality’s Facebook page were not permitted to continue past this portion of the survey. The remaining group of 4,054 customers were assigned randomly to either the treatment or controlled conditions. Customers who were assigned the controlled condition were not invited to like the Facebook page. Their survey ended after they filled out the first two questions.  The treatment group was divided into two groups. Each group was given two different messages. The first group was provided a link and directed to like the Facebook page. The content of group one’s message was focused on improving health. The objective of the first group was to find out if they like the page because of interest in improving health.  The second group’s message was focused on rewards they could gain through Vitality programs. The purpose of the second group was to find out if they liked the page because of the benefits or trying to avoid losses.

The groups were monitored for six months to see if Facebook likes encourage offline brand engagement. During the first four months after the interaction with the customers, there was little interaction organically with the Facebook page. In the last two months, Vitality paid to boost two posts per week on Facebook. The study predicted that if the Facebook page influenced behavior by providing a platform for customer initiated social interactions, then they could observe effects on offline customer behavior (i.e., earning Vitality points) during the organic period (Mochon, 309). During this period, customers could use the page for word-of- mouth information, but were not likely to be exposed to the company’s messages.  This is due to Facebook content filters. The organic period is supposed to represent the other potential social effects of liking a page, in which the article interpreted the data to mean brand loyalty or brand engagement.

 Key Conclusions

 The data represented comes from three areas:

1. Customers’ responses to the invitation survey

2. Aggregate Facebook activity date on Vitality page recorded by Facebook   Insights

3. Points activity in the Vitality program

The study discovers that customers were more likely to accept the invitation when focused on Vitality rewards rather than the health benefits. Customers were more likely to accept the invitation when it was explained in terms of benefits rather than losses. However, the rewards were more affective when explained in terms of losses.

The results lead to the suggestion that Facebook pages are most successful when used as a platform for firm-initiated promotional communications. There were no results of having any effect of page likes on subsequent behavior when the Facebook page acted as a platform for customers to engage in social interaction. Facebook word-of-mouth did not seem to effect offline behavior in this study. Facebook was most effective when Vitality paid to reach the customers with the organizations information. Facebook page likes were found to be most successful to online users who are not heavy Facebook users. This indicates that the possibility that news feed clutter has become an obstacle to reach customers. Those who spent more time on Facebook and tend to like other Facebook pages, showed little effect on liking Vitality’s page. This was the case when the Facebook page was boosted too.

Sixty-nine percent of active customers liked the Facebook page. This shows how easy it is to obtain Facebook likes. If firms gave an incentive to like their Facebook page, the study shows that many customers would do so. Reward-based focus effect was increased by explaining the page likes to avoid a missed opportunity. This shows that framing manipulation are easy to apply and will increase the amount of responses.

 My Opinion

Overall, I noticed that the study was just touching the surface of discovering the impact of Facebook page likes and the long-term effects of Facebook promotional usage during the boost time frame. The results did show that the boost time frame was the most successful. The article revealed that a Facebook like is easy to attain. In addition, providing incentives and benefits to the customer would help achieve more page likes.

Altogether, I was hoping to find more information on whether or not liking a Facebook page would have any influence on in-store behavior. It would be helpful if they included this in the study to show if likes lead to an increase in the Vitality membership.  Further, it would be interesting to look at organizations with low Facebook page likes and low social media presence. In addition, I believe it would be beneficial to use a social media monitoring tool such as Crimson Hexagon to monitor when emails were first distributed and to see the long-term affect. This would show if asking people to like their Facebook page would lead to online engagement and an increase in purchasing decisions.

 Reviewed by Elizabeth Romano

Mochon, D., Johnson, K., Schwartz, J., Ariely, D. (2017). What Are Likes Worth? A Facebook Page Field Experiment. Journal Of Marketing Research (JMR),54 (2), 306-317.

 Article: http://bit.ly/2qlXCsL

[depaulresearchmethods]

Review of “Does Race Matter? Implicit and Explicit Measures of the Effect of the PR Spokesman’s Race on Evaluations of Spokesman Source Credibility and Perceptions of a PR Crisis’ Severity”

Summary of Article    

     Why don’t public relations (PR) practitioners in the U.S. reflect the racial makeup of the population? One reason could be the public might have a hard time trusting minorities serving as the face of an organization.    

     In “Does Race Matter? Implicit and Explicit Measures of the Effect of the PR Spokesman’s Race on Evaluations of Spokesman Source Credibility and Perceptions of a PR Crisis’ Severity”, Seoyeon Hong and Maria E. Len-Riós conducted a within-subject design experiment to see how race impacts public perception during crises. Their study was published in the January 2015 edition of the Journal of Public Relations Research.    

  Data shows minorities are not represented in the PR industry. A spokesperson is chosen to enhance an organization’s image and reputation and their credibility is crucial, the authors state. But there is no significant research looking at how the PR spokesperson’s race affects their credibility during a crisis situation. 

     The authors argue situational factors need to be considered when examining an issue like this, such as the organization’s overall performance history, the severity of the crisis and implicit bias. So the authors designed an experiment that documented and gathered empirical data on all participants’ responses using explicit, or self-reported, and implicit, or unconscious, tests.     

     The research questions and hypotheses for this study are: 

H1: Participants will rate Black spokesmen in a crisis story as less credible than White spokesmen. H2: Participants will rate crises with a previous performance history as more severe than crisis news with no performance history. RQ1: How will the race of the spokesmen, performance history, and crisis type influence perceived credibility of the spokesmen? RQ2: How will the race of spokesmen, performance history, and crisis type influence perceived severity of the crisis? H3: Participants will respond quickest to stereotypical descriptions for Black spokesmen compared to stereotypical descriptions for White spokesmen. RQ3: Will performance history influence response times of stereotype activation? RQ4: How will the race of spokesmen, performance history, and crisis type influence response latency?

    Sixty-four students, whose ages ranged from 18 to 58, at a Midwestern university participated in the experiment. Nearly 72 percent of the participants were women. About 81 percent identified as Caucasian/White, 13 percent of African-American and 6 percent as Asian.   

     Participants viewed pictures of 16 spokesmen followed by a brief story of their organization’s crisis (university sports scandals or product recalls). The participants rated the source credibility and crisis severity for each story. Then, one by one, the participants were shown pictures of the spokesmen and decided if stereotypical words were good descriptions of the men. The words appeared on a computer screen in random order one at a time. Eight of the 10 words, chosen during a pretest using different volunteers, included the following stereotypes: ambitious, leader, rich, good speaker (White men) and poor, something to prove, athletic and violent (Black men). Participants’ reactions were measured by how quickly they responded to each word.  

      The ratings for source credibility and crisis severity are explicit measures because they were self-reported. The reaction times, or response latency, are an implicit measure because the authors wanted to see how quickly participants responded to stereotypes for two targeted groups. 

Key Conclusions and Implications    

     For the explicit tests, data addressing H1 found participants rated Black spokesmen as slightly more credible than White spokesmen. The findings for RQ1 showed, in the absence of performance history, Black spokesmen were perceived as more credible than White spokesmen. But when the organization had a performance history, no significant difference existed between the two. For H2, performance history did not impact crisis severity. However, university sports crises were rated as more severe than product recalls. The data for RQ2 found participants rated crises with performance history and a White spokesman as more severe. For Black spokesmen, the crisis was rated more severely when there was no history.    

      For the implicit tests, response times under H3 show participants rated stereotypical words much faster for Black spokesmen then White spokesmen, meaning they associated stereotypes for Black men more quickly than they did for White men. Data for RQ3 found respondents reacted quicker to the stereotypes of men for crises with no history, meaning in the absence of information, people relied on stereotypes in crises. Results for RQ4 show the fastest response times for Black spokesmen were in a sports story with no crisis history. For White spokesmen, people reacted fastest to product recall stories with no history. The authors believe this implies negative stereotypes were strongly associated with Black spokesmen with sports crises. 

My Opinion    

      Given the issues of race in our country, I am not surprised to learn individuals reacted more positively to Black men on the explicit tests yet responded strongly to stereotypes in the implicit tests. I generally agree with the findings because it seems to mirror the racial tension in our society, but feel more research needs to be done. For example, researchers should consider including females and individuals from Latino backgrounds in future studies. I’d be very curious to see how gender mixed with race plays a role in this topic. Researchers should also include adults who are not in college because I believe that demographic would have strong (negative) attitudes on this topic. I would also include stereotypical words that are balanced for both groups.    

      I assumed the spokespeople used in the study were traditional public relations practitioners. Over the years, I have observed public relations professionals prepare their CEO’s to represent the company during severe crises. I think it would be beneficial to include CEOs serving as the crisis communication in future studies as well.    

     This research shows that race matters, which is important for public relation practitioners to know. I only hope that it doesn’t deter organization from hiring minorities for these kinds of roles.  

– Reviewed by Jennifer Delgado

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Review of “Social Media Policies within NCAA Member Institutions”

Summary of Article

Student athletes are watched with prying eyes on college campuses. Tie that into their highly visible social media usage and they become representative tools for a university, whether good or bad. There have been few studies that consider how universities athletic departments approach social media policies given that the technology is so new and ever changing which is what this research article aims to fix.

The research examines 244 social media policies from Division I, II, and III universities. The schools were selected based on how representative they were of the NCAA policies. For example, they chose schools from the “Power Five” division I conference because of an increase in autonomy the conference was awarded over their own rules and regulations. The data was all downloaded directly from each school’s athletic department’s website, meaning if an electronic version of the handbook was not available the school was not used in the study. Then, the data was textually analyzed and coded so quantitative data could be gathered from the handbooks.

There were multiple research goals but the two main questions focus on how schools frame their social media policies, and how they frame future implications of social media usage.

Key Conclusions

There was no significant difference between Divisions in terms of their policy framing. Only a small handful of Division II and division III schools, and zero Division I differed from the following trend: Athletic department social media policies are restrictive and focus on all the negative aspects of social media use. While the level of restrictiveness of course varies across each school’s handbooks, only three schools (all Division III) had any policy at all that enabled student athletes in their social media usage. When we then look at how the policies frame a student athlete’s social media usage as it affects their future the results were very similar. Again, the framing was overwhelmingly negative which is interesting when you consider all the potential positives that come out of good social media usage and branding.

Of the 244 schools, 214 had restrictive policies in place while only 3 schools had enabling policies. In terms of how the schools framed social media usage, 135 policies viewed social media usage as negative while only 1 school framed social media usage as a positive tool.

This study shows how outdated many of these social media policies are. 96 of the 244 policies mention MySpace, and a few even mention defunct Friendster and Xanga. Only 5 policies mention the popular picture and video sharing service Snapchat which is surprising considering how damaging a mistake on that service could be for an athlete or university.

My Opinion

The school selection used in this study was clearly reasoned and strong. By picking schools from some of the top athletic conferences in the country, the study ensured that the social media policies were relevant to a larger audience. For example, many student athletes from these schools are relatively famous and have large social followings making what they post extremely visible. The assumption is that schools that have these sort of superstar athletes are exactly the type of institutions that will be more likely to have technology impacted policy. Because some of these athletes have such large following and engagement rates, I can understand why these social media policies are overly restrictive as to attempt to avoid any PR blunders. Since most policies are restrictive but also state that an athlete is solely responsible for their posting leads me to believe the policies are in place more for the school’s protection rather than the athletes. I agree with the article’s reasoning that policies might be purely instructive but actual discussion within athletic departments might frame social media usage in a better light. This is certainly my personal experience as a Division 1 student athlete where our student athlete handbook also frames social media usage as dangerous and restrictive. However, we are constantly reminded to develop our own personal brands and all the positive benefits of strong social media usage.

The researches only obtained handbooks that were downloadable online. This is an enormous research flaw in my opinion as the large amount of schools not posting their policies online represents a huge gap in data. While impossible to say, I would assume that schools not savvy enough to have downloadable policies might be even more restrictive or outdated in their policies. Of course, they might also wish that information to be private to their own student athletes but we can’t know unless the study had requested hard copies from these institutions.

I would agree with the author’s assessment that these schools could do a better job of painting social media as a strong networking and promotional tool. Social media is not a fad and restricting player’s usage will be detrimental in their social and professional development.

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Review of “Are Business Students Ready for Multicultural Marketing?”

Summary of Article

Experts estimate that by the year 2050, the demographic makeup of the United States is going to look far more diverse than it does today. In fact, it is widely believed that by 2050, “the country will become a nation of minorities,” states authors Dr. Sonja Poole and Dr. Ja’Nina Garrett-Walker. Some believe this change in racial demographic may come even sooner. 

The following review is on the research article published in Summer 2016 in the Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy entitled “Are Future Business Professionals Ready for Multicultural Marketing? An Empirical Investigation.” 

With that said, businesses are slowly but surely learning that their marketing practices have to change with the times as well. More companies are paying attention to multicultural marketing and are tailoring their ads more frequently to reach and retain target subcultures.

The authors argue that while there is a “surge in multicultural marketing programs, there is dearth of multicultural expertise within organizations.” This means that while the interest and intent is there for companies to reach out to target markets outside of their norm, the manner in which they do it could use much improvement. Without “credible expertise in multicultural marketing,” businesses often fail by resorting to stereotypes and generalizations in their marketing efforts.

How does one even gain credible expertise on this subject? The authors argue that it can be attained in three ways — educational background, diversity training/awareness programs and business experience. As a result, they credit the youthful employees in marketing firms and their lack of business experience (and overall life experience) as contributors to this flaw, thus creating a shallow understanding of diversity.

Taking all of this information into account, the purpose of this study is to look at university students — being that this environment may be the first “where people may have the opportunity to be exposed to multicultural topics” — and ascertain how different majors view multiculturalism (including race, gender, religion, sexuality).

The study used surveys as their research method and collected answers that were given on a 6-point Likert scale. The surveys included 296 women and 85 men in a socially liberal college in the west coast. Measurements included students’ knowledge of social inequalities, social justice engagement, color-blind racial attitudes and privilege. Specific research tools that were used for measurements included the Color-blind racial attitudes scale (CoBRAS), Privilege and oppression inventory (POI) and Class privilege awareness scale (CPAS).

Lastly, this study focused specifically on how Business students differed in these multicultural thought patterns compared to students who majored in Arts/Humanities, Nursing, Social Sciences and Science.

Key Conclusions

The results of the study showed a general trend that business students were “less aware of racial and other kinds of privileges compared to students in other disciplines.” More specifically, these students were least aware of blatant racial issues, demonstrated significantly higher colorblind-racial ideologies, were less aware of class privilege, were less likely to confront class privilege and were less aware of heterosexism, male privilege and Christian privilege.

The authors put it best when they summed up their findings by saying “business students reported higher levels of social dominance than all other majors.” As a result, this study indicates that business students are “less culturally competent” than their peers.

Why does this matter? Given the climate of our country, its changing demographics and growing cultural complexity, it’s important to note that these business students, upon graduation and finding jobs in the marketing field, will be the ones to “develop and direct multicultural marketing communications and strategies.” The authors argue that these students are ill-prepared to take on these challenges and their lack of “frame of reference” could be damaging.

While the working world has seen a rise in multicultural marketing, the authors suggest that business schools don’t adequately prepare students for this challenge and inevitable necessity. Poole and Garrett-Walker credit this reality to the lack of research that has been done on this intersection.

With that said, they suggest a two-pronged approach to create more culturally-competent business students — 1) widen the business school curriculum to encompass multicultural marketing and 2) place a priority on research done on multicultural marketing. In terms of practical relevance, companies will lose out to competitors who are more culturally competent and due to their ignorance, could alienate the exact people who they may be trying to target.

My Opinion

This study provided me with a stronger understanding of how our biases are shaped and how it is transferred into the workplace in part due to our education or lack thereof. I agree with the findings and conclusions drawn as the research methods provided several quantitative statistics to fortify the authors’ claims. I would like to see this study replicated in more universities and regions as the conclusions can only be fortified with more evidence. The authors clearly acknowledged their study’s limitations as those involved in the surveys were mostly White or Asian, female and come from upper-to-middle classes.

This study confirmed my belief that multicultural biases can be rectified, but also reaffirmed depending on how one’s program views multiculturalism as a priority.   Professionals can and should use this research to begin building upon the foundation of diversity training and prioritize the need of having a more nuanced understanding of multiculturalism to more effectively serve their increasingly diverse audiences. 

- Review by Ragel Thys (@ItsRagel)

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Review of “Instagram Unfiltered: Body Image, Selfies and Negative Relationships”

[depaulresearchmethods]

Review of I’m Going to Instagram it!

Summary of Article

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players… one man in his time plays many parts…” It is strange to think that a quote from a 16th century Shakespeare play applies to a research article about social media. Lauren Reichart Smith and Jimmy Sanderson’s article, I’m Going to Instagram it! An Analysis of Athlete Self-Presentation on Instagram, is all about how athletes play various parts and use Instagram as a medium to show their followers the different (traditionally unseen) part of being a professional athlete. This article is found in the Journal of Broadcast & Electronic Media and was published in 2015. 

Smith and Sanderson begin their article by defining “self-presentation” using Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, where Goffman states that people are similar to performers in that they use both verbal and non-verbal messages to “display the most credible image to audiences” (Smith & Sanderson 2015). Self-presentation, Goffman states, is a continuous process that involves a balancing of frontstage (filtered and reserved) and backstage (less filtered, more free) performances.

Traditionally, the presentation of athletes was dictated by how the media presented them to their audience. A player could be considered the best teammate by his team, but if sports reporters wrote or said he was selfish, he would generally be portrayed as selfish by the fans. With the rise of blogs and social media, athletes now have more control over their presentation. Smith and Sanderson use Curt Schilling, a former Major League Baseball pitcher, as an example. Schilling was once accused of faking an injury and criticizing a fellow player. Schilling used his blog to refute these accusations and present himself as a committed individual and an accountable person.

While previous studies have been done on the self-presentation of athletes, Smith and Sanderson say that these studies were text-based and social media is trending to more visual-based structures. This is why they chose to use Instagram, a primarily visual-based social media platform. Smith and Sanderson had three questions that guided their analysis: How were Goffman’s gender displays shown through Instagram photos by athletes as a form of self-presentation, what were the differences between the gender displays in the self-presentation behaviors of the athletes and what themes emerged from the captions used by the athletes in their Instagram photos?

Smith and Sanderson used a mixed methods approach for their study. A content analysis was used for the Instagram photo of the athletes, while a textual analysis was used for the captions in order to detect themes and patterns. The content of a picture does not always match the subject of the caption, so the two were not analyzed together. For sampling, Smith and Sanderson chose athletes who played in sports that had prominent gender opposites. They chose two male and two female athletes from basketball, soccer, tennis, track, golf, swimming, baseball and softball. Athletes were chosen based on “popularity/name recognition, their activity level on Instagram and the number of followers on Instagram” (Smith & Sanderson 2015). Tennis was the only sport that was represented by one male athlete. Smith and Sanderson started on March 8, 2014 and went back and collected data from 50 recent photos of the athletes. Memes, gifs and other graphics were not counted.

Key Conclusions

After analyzing a total of 1,352 photos and captions, Smith and Sanderson found a few interesting points. One interesting find is that the majority of photos showed the athlete’s entire body. In the past power was portrayed through how a photo was framed. This led to male athletes framed with close headshots while female athletes were framed in a distant perspective. Smith and Sanderson attributed athletes showing their entire body in photos to their vanity. “Most have physical physiques that they are proud of and work hard to attain. An athlete may be more likely to go against past research findings in this vein and be more likely to show off their entire body” (Smith & Sanderson 2015). This would also help determine why the widely popular photo style, the “selfie”, was the least used in athletes’ Instagram accounts.  

Another interesting find is that female athletes broke with past research findings on how female athletes were photographed. Traditionally, female athletes were shown in passive positions and on the sidelines. In this study the majority of photos with the subject in an active sports position belonged to the female athletes. This would suggest that when given control of their self-presentation females may be taking the opportunity to present themselves as athletes first and foremost.  

In analyzing the captions of the photos, Smith and Sanderson found six themes emerged equally among male and female athletes. The themes were humanitarian, family driven, personality traits, dedicated athlete, endorser and socialite. The captions help demonstrate the athlete’s “backstage” personality. Smith and Sanderson say that this helps them build a parasocial relationship with their fans, which can have both negative and positive consequences. Having these parasocial relationships leaves the athletes open to criticisms, which Smith and Sanderson wonder if followers would be less inclined to send if the athlete was more strategic instead of social on Instagram.

My Opinion

Smith and Sanderson’s study was interesting and informative, but I believe they only scratched the surface on this topic. Their study, while it included both male and female athletes from different sports, could be expanded to include how athletes of different races present themselves and if athletes in the U.S present themselves differently from athletes in other countries. The sampling of the athletes could also be improved by making their selections more random. Smith and Sanderson’s study used a convenience sampling based on the athlete’s popularity and activity level on Instagram. The photographs selected could also be more randomized. Smith and Sanderson chose the 50 most recent photos and a more randomized sample would select photos from different points in time.

A qualitative study could also benefit this subject. Studies could determine whether athletes’ social media actually affects how they are perceived by fans. For example, last season Colin Kaepernick was a point of controversy for the NFL because of his protest during the national anthem. There was a mixed reaction to his protest and to how people viewed him. It would be interesting to see how he was viewed by people who follow his social media before and after the protest.

A final suggestion to further research on this topic is to interview players on their use of social media. Is their approach strategic or do they just post things that they think fans would be interested in? Do they prefer text-based social media over visual-based? Do they believe their self-presentation is in line with how fans perceive them? Answering these questions could help shed more light on what our favorite athletes are like off the field.

- Reviewed by Emmanuel Salazar

Article: http://ow.ly/deuw30aZGhC 

Smith, L. R., & Sanderson, J. (2015). I'm Going to Instagram It! An Analysis of Athlete Self-Presentation on Instagram. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59(2), 342-358. doi:10.1080/08838151.2015.1029125