A Qualitative Exploration of Social Media Consumption and Use Among Everyday Women Who Participate in CrossFit

Introduction: Social media allows a user to be a content creator and consumer. This paper focuses on the social media engagement of everyday women who participate in CrossFit, exploring differences in how they consume and use social media content. CrossFit women are celebrated for their strength, power, and fitness in the social media community, which is not consistent for all women. Methods: This study used semi-structured focus groups with 47 participants between the ages of 18-54 who were everyday women who participate in CrossFit. The participants self-identified their level of CrossFit as recreational, semi-competitive, competitive, or high-level competitors. Results: Findings reveal two major themes: consuming corporate messaging and using social media for their own benefit, included the subthemes of social support and shifting perceptions. The findings, including supportive quotations from the participants, reveal that these women are critical consumers of social media who express disapproval of traditional media portrayals of women’s bodies. Conclusions: Women’s experiences with CrossFit seem to offer some protection from the negative outcomes associated with consumption of traditional media messaging about women’s bodies.

Contributions of Reality TV Consumption to College Women’s Endorsement of the Heterosexual Script and Acceptance of Sexualized Aggression

A prominent feature of mainstream television, especially reality programming, is a heterosexual script that outlines women’s and men’s traditional courtship roles. Although frequent media use is believed to produce greater acceptance of this script, existing analyses have not fully delineated contributions of scripted versus reality programming or tested these notions using a holistic heterosexual script scale. We addressed these limitations in two studies. In Study 1, 466 undergraduate women indicated their support of the heterosexual script and their consumption of popular reality programs, sitcoms, and dramas. Heavier viewing of reality programming predicted greater support for the heterosexual script, and heavier viewing of sitcoms predicted weaker support. In Study 2, we used longitudinal data to explore relations between viewing reality television, acceptance of the heterosexual script, and acceptance of sexualized aggression during undergraduate women’s first 2 years in college ( N = 244). We found that reality television consumption was not a direct predictor of acceptance of sexualized aggression but was a significant, indirect predictor through endorsement of the heterosexual script. These studies contribute to our understanding of unique media contributions to endorsement of the heterosexual script and illuminate one process by which women may come to normalize sexual mistreatment. Campus educational programming on sexuality, sexual assault, and healthy relationships may be able to intervene in this normalization through critique of the heterosexual script and media portrayals of dating and relationships.

Media Portrayals of Emerging and Older Adults during COVID-19: Perceptions of Bias Among College Students

This study explores media consumption and perceptions of media bias against both older adults and emerging adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of a larger study, 99 students with a mean age of 20.54 (SD = 2.97) completed an online survey in early 2020. Individuals whose media consumption had increased were significantly more likely to report that young adults have been portrayed worse, and older adults better, since the start of COVID-19. Qualitative responses demonstrated broad awareness of ageist and adultist themes in media portrayals of both age groups, e.g., that young adults are careless and reckless whereas older adults are vulnerable and in need of protection. Results suggest that the media is perceived to be perpetuating age-related biases and may be enhancing intergenerational discord at a time when generational unity is needed.

Covering Muslims

For decades, scholars and observers have criticized negative media portrayals of Muslims and Islam. Yet most of these critiques are limited by their focus on one specific location, a limited time period, or a single outlet. This book offers the first systematic, large-scale analysis of American newspaper coverage of Muslims through comparisons across groups, time, countries, and topics. It demonstrates conclusively that coverage of Muslims is strikingly negative by every comparative measure examined. Muslim articles are negative relative to those touching on Catholics, Jews, or Hindus, and to those mentioning marginalized groups within the United States as diverse as African Americans, Latinos, Mormons, and atheists. Coverage of Muslims has also been consistently and enduringly negative across the two-decade period from 1996 through 2016. This pattern is not unique to the United States; it also holds in countries such as Britain, Canada, and Australia, although less so in the Global South. Moreover, the strong negativity in the articles is not simply a function of stories about foreign conflict zones or radical Islamist violence, even though it is true that terrorism and extremism have become more prominent themes since 9/11. Strikingly, even articles about mundane topics tend to be negative. The findings suggest that American newspapers may, however inadvertently, contribute to reinforcing boundaries that generate Islamophobic attitudes. To overcome these drawbacks, journalists and citizens can consciously “tone-check” the media to limit the stigmatizing effect of negative coverage so commonly associated with Muslims and Islam.

Media portrayals of the Hong Kong Occupy Central Movement’s social actors

We investigated how two English-language newspapers – Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) and the mainland China Daily (CD) – portrayed key social actors (police, students, protesters, and governments) during the Occupy Central/Yellow Umbrella movement. We examined emotional valence, arousal, and dominance characterizations in 1,180 news articles via a multilevel, multivariate outcome regression and critical discourse analysis. The findings reveal that emotional sentiments associated with students and protesters in SCMP were generally more positive than in CD but that this was reversed for the police and the government. Whereas SCMP deployed personal stories to construct a humanized image of protesters and students, CD relied on expert authority, rhetorical questions, and imagined scenarios to convey empathy towards Hong Kong residents, creating a villainized image of protesters. Our mixed-methods approach reveals how SCMP and CD portrayed students differently via the discursive frames of “optimistic dreamers” and “powerless scapegoats,” respectively.

U.S. News Coverage of Transgender Victims of Fatal Violence: An Exploratory Content Analysis

Media portrayals of crime help shape public perceptions of victims and the demographic groups to which they belong. For transgender people, who already face heightened disparities and stigma, news coverage may reinforce negative stereotypes and minimize the wider context of transphobic violence. The present study, a content analysis of news articles ( n = 316) pertaining to 27 transgender people killed in the United States in 2016, addresses positive and negative depictions of victims, use of language affirming and delegitimizing transgender identities, and framing of transphobia as a systemic problem. Themes, implications, and future research directions are discussed.

Negative media portrayals of immigrants increase ingroup favoritism and hostile physiological and emotional reactions

Anti-immigration rhetoric in the mass media has intensified over the last two decades, potentially decreasing prosocial behavior and increasing outgroup hostility toward immigrants, and fostering ingroup favoritism toward natives. We aim to understand the effects of negative and positive discourses about immigration on prosociality at different levels of societal ethnic diversity. In two studies (student sample, nationally representative sample), we conduct a survey and a 3X3 between-subject experiment, including money-incentivized behavioral games measuring prosociality. We manipulate media representations of immigrants and the probability of interacting with immigrants (the latter measuring diversity). Results show that negative news affects prosociality as a function of the probability of interacting with immigrants. Negative portrayals increase altruism and trustworthiness in ethnically homogenous settings relative to unknown and ethnically-mixed contexts. These results are stronger for right-wing and high-prejudice respondents. Moreover, negative media portrayals of immigrants increase the testosterone-cortisol ratio, which is a proxy for proneness to social aggression. Negative news also increases outgroup-related perceived health risk, outgroup anxiety and outgroup threat less in ethnically-homogeneous contexts. Overall, negative portrayals of immigrants generate physiological and emotional hostility toward the outgroup, and ingroup favoritism in economic transactions, possibly determining efficiency losses in ethnically-diverse markets, relative to ethnically-homogeneous markets.