Volume 32, Issue 4

The amount of time that people spend on watching television is a matter of social concern. In the past, several approaches have been developed explaining why people expose themselves to television, most notably the Uses and Gratifications approach. Building on an action theoretical framework, it is argued that the influence of routinization and situational context of television viewing (including the role played by others) should receive more attention. This approach is then applied to media use in households, with an emphasis on how adolescents and parents influence each other's television viewing. Event history on data from 55 Dutch households (including 86 adolescents and their parents) show that the influence of parents and their adolescent children is reciprocal, that is, not only do parents influence their children, but children also influence their parents. This influence does, however, not increase during the teenage years, nor does parental influence diminish during those years.

Western societies are confronted with a growing number of overweight and obese (pre-school) children. Past studies have pointed to excessive television viewing as one of the causes of this phenomenon. The aim of the current study was to examine the influence of parental mediation and modeling on TV use and obesity among pre-school children. A survey conducted among 608 parents of two-and-a-half to six year olds shows that obese children watch significantly more television, show more affinity towards television and more often have a TV set in their bedroom than normal weight and overweight children. For girls, parental restrictions on television viewing are negatively associated with their BMI. For boys, no similar relationship can be found. This study suggests that taking into account possible differences in television viewing behavior between pre-school boys and girls and paying attention to a wide range of television viewing variables can be fruitful for further research.

This article reports on a study done in Sweden on how the daily press covers the theme of overweight/obesity. It deals with two questions: (1) How is overweight framed in the media? and (2) Which consequences can these framings have on public perceptions of overweight/obesity? The study is limited to media content in Swedish daily newspapers, 1997–2001. In all 1 925 articles from four different papers have been analysed. The study points out that overweight/obesity is most frequently presented as a health problem, however the dominating frame in the news papers is overweight presented as a beauty dilemma. The two ways of constructing overweight comes along with different kind of information that leaves the potential reader with diverse impressions and solutions. The first frame appeals to reason and rationality, the latter mobilizes emotions and affect. When the reporters reduce the health problem to a matter of looks they underestimate the seriousness of this social problem, which might have undesirable effects on public perception of overweight. There are considerable gender dimensions in the coverage and overweight is mostly presented as a female problem. In the articles obese people are often stigmatized and gender stereotypes are frequently reproduced. There is on top of that and abundance of paradoxes in the material, which also makes it hard for the reader to orient herself in the crossfire of messages and gives little advice upon how to solve the problem of overweight.

Previous research into film preferences and functions has looked above all at teenagers and younger to middle-aged adults. There is a lack of information in this area with respect to the behavior and preferences of older adults. In this study, for the first time, the fifty-and-older cohort was questioned in a representative sample about their film preferences. The analysis shows that the film preferences of the majority of those questioned were formed before the age of thirty. These early preferences remain relatively stable. Older people generally prefer films set in a time period or dealing with historic events that they themselves experienced and with which they therefore have a certain expertise. With increasing age, older men prefer film genres that otherwise tend to be preferred by female viewers. Women, as they are older, tend to increasingly prefer female film content.

Dhoest, A. and Van den Bulck, H. (Eds). (2007). Publieke televisie in Vlaanderen: een geschiedenis. Gent: Academia Press. ISBN 978-90-382-1058-2 (337 pp.) (Wim Vanobberghen) Thussu, D. K. (2006). International Communication: Continuity and Change. 2nd edition. London: Hodder Arnold. 384 pp. ISBN 10-0-340-88892-X (Hilde Van den Bulck) Bocij, P. (2006). The Dark Side of the Internet: Protecting Yourself and Your Family From Online Criminals. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. 253 pp. ISBN 027598575X (Jo Bauwens)