Adolescents’ Modern Media Use and Beliefs About Masculine Gender Roles and Norms

2021 ◽  
pp. 107769902110354
Author(s):  
Erica Scharrer ◽  
Stephen Warren

In the current study, cultivation theory is used to examine associations among amount of time spent with television (including Netflix or other streaming services), video games, and YouTube and beliefs about masculine roles and norms within a diverse sample of 307 13- to 18-year-olds from the United States. Heavy users of television, video games, and YouTube outscored lighter users on endorsement of views of masculinity that favor emotional detachment, dominance, toughness, and/or avoidance of femininity among boys and girls in the sample. For boys only, heavy exposure to violence in favorite games also played a role.

Author(s):  
Sara Moslener

For evangelical adolescents living in the United States, the material world of commerce and sexuality is fraught with danger. Contemporary movements urge young people to embrace sexual purity and abstinence before marriage and eschew the secular pressures of modern life. And yet, the sacred text that is used to authorize these teachings betrays evangelicals’ long-standing ability to embrace the material world for spiritual purposes. Bibles marketed to teenage girls, including those produced by and for sexual purity campaigns, make use of prevailing trends in bible marketing. By packaging the message of sexual purity and traditional gender roles into a sleek modern day apparatus, American evangelicals present female sexual restraint as the avant-garde of contemporary, evangelical orthodoxy.


Author(s):  
Christopher J. Ferguson

The issue of video game violence continues to attract attention from the legal and policy communities, particularly in the wake of mass shootings. However, focusing on video game violence has generally not resulted in successful legal or public policy. In part this is because the science upon which beliefs of “harm” in video game violence are based remains inconsistent and heavily disputed. The current article examines several issues. First, the article examines the current evidence about video game violence influences on negative outcomes in players. Second, the article concerns itself with the application of video game science to several recent legal cases, involving both criminal prosecutions and attempted regulation/censorship of video game violence in the United States. Finally, the manuscript addresses several common talking points used in legal cases and by policy makers and examines whether these talking statements survive careful scientific scrutiny. It is advised that, consistent with the legal decisions and government reviews in the United States, Sweden, Australia, and elsewhere, current evidence does not support the regulation of violent video games, and legal or policy attempts to connect video game violence to specific crimes are unlikely to survive careful scrutiny.


2021 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Jaye Johnson Thiel ◽  
Karen Wohlwend

This special issue continues a two-year conversation about a #playrevolution in literacies research, theory, and practice. The juxtaposition of play and revolution is intentional, highlighting the tension between play's prosocial benefits and collaborative production and the rapid change, uncertainty, and violence in today's schools, where we desperately need more humanizing elements that build people's connections to one another. The #playrevolution calls educators and researchers to explore the (un)predictable, (un)expected knots emerging through the coalescence of play and literacies, while also considering the possibilities play holds for educational equity in contemporary times. Bringing together twelve educational researchers across the United States, Canada, and Australia, this #playrevolution special issue explores the lively ecology of play-literacies in a variety of spaces—traditional writing and storytelling workshops, digital dialogues, video games, teacher-education courses, makerspaces, and playgrounds—with learners from preschools and kindergartens to high schools and universities.


Author(s):  
Carmen Van Ommen ◽  
Barbara S. Chaparro

According to a survey conducted by the CDC, it is estimated that 26% of Americans are living with a disability. Of those with disabilities in the United States, it is estimated that 33 million play video games. People with disabilities face many barriers in gaming, which is likely to impact game satisfaction. Measuring game satisfaction among this population can be problematic if the scale is not adapted to their needs, which can vary significantly based on the disability. To understand how best to assess game satisfaction among these populations, we discuss the issues people with cognitive, sensory, and/or motor disabilities may face when completing assessment scales and then use the validated Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS) as a framework for understanding the game design issues that may impact satisfaction.


Author(s):  
Verónica Castillo-Muñoz

This chapter examines the impact of Mexican migration to the United States during the era of the Bracero Program (1942–64). It addresses the question of why migration to border towns increased during the 1940s in spite of U.S. immigration restrictions. Existing oral histories collected by the Bracero History Archive of migrant and local Baja families enriched the author's understanding of the ways in which families migrated and looked for work and performed gender roles in Mexico and in the United States. The memories of braceros provided a window into the daily lives and struggles experienced by millions of Mexican workers who migrated to the United States, stories often suppressed in official records.


Author(s):  
Motoe Sasaki

This chapter shows how the notion of modern science brought to China by American New Women missionaries in the form of medicine and nursing generated concrete responses from their Chinese counterparts. The notion of science as a universally applicable and fundamentally egalitarian element for the development of a modern society and its constituents was increasingly influential in both the United States and China during the early twentieth century. Consequently, American New Women missionaries were able to establish their status as scientific professionals whose expertise could contribute to China's modernization process. At the same time, however, their faith in the new notion of science brought with it the idea of “separate but equal” gender roles, which brought them into conflict with many of their male counterparts from the United States who wanted to compete with other imperial powers to gain influence in China.


Author(s):  
Allen Copenhaver

The United States has a well-documented history of violence. School shootings are a contemporary social problem which raise much concern, as children and young adults are killed on school grounds. After such tragic events there is public debate as to what causes such horrible events to occur. When looking for a source of such shootings, violent video games are often named as a source of such unconscionable violence. However, it is argued here that blaming violent video games constitutes a moral panic when violent video games are unfairly scapegoated as the source of school shootings. This chapter also points to other sources of violence which may be identified as potential causes of school shootings once the scapegoating of violent video games is acknowledged.


2002 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Caputo

This essay explores the roles of social justice and the “ethics of care” as animating forces for social change in light of the near universal ascendance of the principles of market-based economics and of their extension into nonmarket areas of social concern, particularly in the United States. The main argument is that linking the “ethics of care,” social justice, and power makes possible the development of a democratic political and social agenda that can respectively aid in meeting the caregiver needs of the nation and contribute to the transformation of gender roles associated with care.


Author(s):  
Manuel G. Avilés-Santiago

Developments in contemporary Latina/os media are the result not only of an exponentially growing Latina/o population in the United States but also of the synergy between transformations in the global political economy and the emergence of new media platforms for production, distribution, and consumption. To reflect upon the emergence of the industry is to consider the politics of the labeling of the Latina/o community and the eventual configuration of a market audience. It also requires a confrontation with the cultural history of representations and stereotypes of Latina/os, particularly in radio, TV, film, and the internet, and the transnational aesthetics and dynamics of media produced by and/or for Latina/os in the United States. If the notion of media revolves around a technological means of communication, it also encompasses the practices and institutions from within which the Latina/o communities are imagined, produced, and consumed. At the start of the 21st century, the idea of Latina/os in media revolved around a handful of Latina/o stars in Hollywood who often performed stereotypical representations, a racialized and marginal Spanish-language radio industry, and two Spanish television networks, Univision and Telemundo. A more complex constellation of representations has evolved in both mainstream and Spanish-language media, among them new platforms for production and resistance, including social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat), radio podcasts and streaming services (e.g., Hulu and Netflix), and a more active and engaged audience that consumes media in Spanish, English, and even Spanglish.


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