All Academic, Inc. Research Logo

Info/CitationFAQResearchAll Academic Inc.
Document

Learning to be Prejudiced? Media Usage and Anti-gay Attitudes
Unformatted Document Text:  1 Learning to be Prejudiced? Media Usage and Anti-gay Attitudes Abstract Do people learn to be homophobic from the media? Are people with homophobic beliefs more likely to consume certain media such as political talk radio? Using Uses & Gratifications and Cultivation Analysis as the theoretical framework, the present study examines possible links between media usage and homophobic attitudes. Despite the general belief about media’s powerful influence on politics and culture, our findings suggest that media usage has a very limited relationship with anti-gay attitudes. Instead, characteristics such as strong religiosity and lower education are better predictors of one’s negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians. The only significant media related factor to homophobia is a low incidence of newspaper reading. Learning to be Prejudiced? Media Usage and Anti-gay Attitudes Media’s impact on audience beliefs and behaviors has fascinated communication researchers for decades. Some existing studies analyze media content and speculate on its potential impact, and others seek to empirically measure content’s effects. Popular subjects of studies in this tradition include media portrayals of various groups (e.g., women and racial minorities), media’s contribution to aggressive behavior, media consumption and racial stereotyping, and the connection between media usage and audience perception of environmental dangers as well as pro-environmental behaviors

Authors: Hicks, Gary. and Lee, Tien-Tsung.
first   previous   Page 1 of 20   next   last



background image
1
Learning to be Prejudiced?
Media Usage and Anti-gay Attitudes
Abstract
Do people learn to be homophobic from the media? Are people with homophobic
beliefs more likely to consume certain media such as political talk radio? Using Uses &
Gratifications and Cultivation Analysis as the theoretical framework, the present study
examines possible links between media usage and homophobic attitudes. Despite the
general belief about media’s powerful influence on politics and culture, our findings
suggest that media usage has a very limited relationship with anti-gay attitudes. Instead,
characteristics such as strong religiosity and lower education are better predictors of
one’s negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians. The only significant media related
factor to homophobia is a low incidence of newspaper reading.
Learning to be Prejudiced?
Media Usage and Anti-gay Attitudes
Media’s impact on audience beliefs and behaviors has fascinated communication
researchers for decades. Some existing studies analyze media content and speculate on its
potential impact, and others seek to empirically measure content’s effects. Popular
subjects of studies in this tradition include media portrayals of various groups (e.g.,
women and racial minorities), media’s contribution to aggressive behavior, media
consumption and racial stereotyping, and the connection between media usage and
audience perception of environmental dangers as well as pro-environmental behaviors


Convention
Convention is an application service for managing large or small academic conferences, annual meetings, and other types of events!
Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf.
Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets!
Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more!
Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering.
Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more!
Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches!
Click here for more information.

first   previous   Page 1 of 20   next   last

©2008 All Academic, Inc.