Content analysis of prime time television situation comedies examined body weights of female central characters, negative comments made by male characters about their weight or bodies, and audience reactions. Below-average weight females were over-represented in the programs. The heavier the females, the more negative comments made to or about…

Focus groups with young Maltese children investigated how they perceived adult-rated material on television and how this related to their understanding of how adulthood differs from childhood. Contends that younger children's understanding of adult is often created from disjointed, commodified fragments that inform their attempts to distance…

Finds that women are underrepresented in all five television networks' promotional announcements (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and UPN), and that stereotypical portrayals of women in these announcements varied due to the television network's target audience: announcements on networks seeking a younger male audience contained more stereotypical female…

Defines the video essay as a genre, offers suggestions for using it as a teaching tool, and discusses its merits as an alternative means of news presentation. (SR)

This study focuses specifically on teacher verbal behaviors that foster interaction in a two-way interactive television classroom. Studies research on taxonomies of teaching styles and discourse analysis to determine which components would comprise the most practical and useful set of behaviors for the distance education teacher and researcher.…

Examples of ways to use themes and characters from television shows in classroom activities for organizational behavior courses are provided, related to need theories of motivation, perceptual biases and errors, and equity theory. Six appendices provide sample activities and test questions. (SK)

When reporters from the Arabic news channel Aljazeera International traveled on assignment to Crosby, North Dakota, they did not receive a warm welcome from locals. Instead, someone called the sheriff, who then reported possible terrorist activity to the U.S. Border Patrol. After a brief interrogation, agents confirmed that they were American…

Objective : To assess the impact of televised alcohol commercials on adolescents' alcohol use. Methods : Adolescents completed questionnaires about alcohol commercials and alcohol use in a prospective study. Results : A one standard deviation increase in viewing television programs containing alcohol commercials in seventh grade was associated…

As Taiwan is striving to become an integral part of the global community, the dissemination of international news and the diversity of its representation are increasingly vital in shaping people's knowledge of the world. This paper serves as a first-hand account of the work of a television news translator--a reflection on the author's five years…

Investigating the costs of instructional media systems necessitated that those systems be identified and analyzed, and that a methodology be formulated for estimating their costs, with reference to their area of operation: local, city, metropolitan, state, or regional school areas. Costs are broken down into cost per student per year, according to…

Amy Jordan addresses the need to balance the media industry's potentially important contributions to the healthy development of America's children against the consequences of excessive and age-inappropriate media exposure. Much of the philosophical tension regarding how much say the government should have about media content and delivery stems…

This study examined the relation between early television exposure and parental interaction style during infant-directed television programs on 2 outcomes: infant looking time and infant responsiveness. By quasi-experimental design half of the 12- to 18-month-old infants had prior exposure to the program content and the other half did not. Cluster…

This project posits that incorporating political humor into the classroom can have a positive effect on learning in higher education. Specifically, we present preliminary findings from a quasi-experiment in which a humorous, "mock" textbook titled America (The Book) (Stewart, Karlin, and Javerbaum 2004) was incorporated into Introduction to…

Over the last decade the daily experience of adolescents has been transformed by developments in electronic media, including the computer, the Internet, and cell phones. Relative rarities only a generation ago, they are the daily tools of communication, information, and amusement for a majority of adolescents. Beyond access, content and…

Described here is a study on the efficacy of a media-rich curriculum based on the idea that children can learn best from "media synergy," that is, when children have opportunities to learn a focused set of skills by engaging in repeated practice with them in many different formats and media. Participants in this study were low-income…