Volume 37, Issue 4 - Volume 37, Issue 4 (2012) Communications

Sexual depictions were analyzed in 139 episodes of seven drama serials on British mainstream television over a four-week period in November–December 2006. Scenes that depicted sexual behavior and talk about sexual matters were counted separately. Further distinctions were made on the basis of the levels of intimacy and the graphic nature of portrayals. A total of 506 sexual scenes were found that occurred at the rate of 6.5 per hour across the seven soaps, but this figure was inflated by one late-night serial that averaged 16.0 scenes per hourly episode. Nearly two-thirds of these scenes were restricted to talk about sexual matters, while the others contained overt depictions of sexual behavior. Sexual intercourse was relatively rare and restricted in terms of overt depictions to the late-night serial. Passionate kissing was far more prevalent throughout these programs regardless of the time of day the program was transmitted. When sexual intercourse was featured, this was generally in the context of loss of virginity or of infidelity.

This study examines the potential role of morality subcultures in mediating the relationship between one’s nationality and the preferences for three movie (drama, action, horror) and three TV (comedy, news, sports) genres in a sample of US and German students ( N = 453). Morality subcultures were derived from research on Moral Foundation Theory (MFT), which conceptualizes morality as being shaped by first intuitive processes and later moral reasoning. We proposed a dual mediation model with two latent domains of morality: individualizing foundations indicative of a more liberal perspective and binding foundations indicative of a more conservative outlook. Although direct effects of one’s nationality on media genre preference were found, moral salience of these two moral foundations partially mediated this relationship for the genres action, drama, news, and sports. These data support emerging research on the importance of using morality subcultures to understand the appeal of various forms of media entertainment.

This paper tests the comparative effectiveness of spokes-characters, both ‘celebrity’ and ‘non-celebrity’, in promoting healthy versus non-healthy foods. An experimental study among 6- to 7-year-old children in Belgium demonstrates that adding a spokes-character (i.e., a gnome) to a food product increases the appetite, the wished-for frequency of consumption and the expected number of purchase requests for that product. This finding holds true for healthy foods (apples and grapes) as well as for unhealthy foods (cookies and chocolate). The effect of the celebrity spokes-character exceeds that of a similar (but unknown) gnome. Nevertheless, the latter is also capable of promoting the healthy and unhealthy products. These findings suggest that using ‘celebrity’ spokes-characters to promote healthy foods to children might indeed be an effective strategy to change children’s diets. Even the use of similar, non-celebrity (and thus cheaper) spokes-characters could be quite fruitful.

Television regulation is increasingly Europeanized. While the transposition of community law into national legislation in EU member states has been widely discussed, scholarly attention is less frequently devoted to the Europeanization of non-member states. This paper investigates how television regulation in non-EU members has been influenced by European audiovisual policy since the liberalization of broadcasting. Focusing on the case of Switzerland and putting it into a wider context, changes in television regulation and their connection to the European level were analyzed by performing a qualitative document analysis. Results indicate that the degree of Europeanization in Switzerland differs remarkably from other non-member states like Norway. While advertising regulation was brought in line with less-strict EU directives, a public value test or compliance with state aid rules were not even discussed. Yet similar to other non-members, rules were adopted without having a say in their development.