No description available.

Video game advertising is a major venue for game industry to promote its products. As a form of advertising, game advertising reflects national cultural values. It also manifests game cultural values which gamers are able to identify with. Millions of people, youth and children in particular, are being exposed to game advertising. Video game advertising may not only influence viewers' purchasing decisions, but has the potential to influence their attitudes and perceptions of important societal issues such as gender roles, violence and sex. However, few studies have examined the information content and messages of game advertising. The purpose of this study is to begin to fill the gap. This study examined the content of 1,021 print game advertisements in four popular game magazines published between December 2006 and May 2008 in China and the United States. The study was built on a variety of theoretical backgrounds and game studies. First, built on Resnik and Stern's (1977) classification of information cues and conceptual differences between advertising service and tangible products, the study found that Chinese game advertisements used more information cues than U.S game advertisements. Second, built on a variety of cross-cultural frameworks including Hofstede's ─ individualism vs. collectivism, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck's human and nature relationship and time orientation, the study found that that U.S. game advertisements used more individualistic appeals, manipulation-of-nature appeals and future-time-orientation appeals than Chinese game advertisements. It was found that Chinese game advertisements used more collectivistic appeals, oneness-with-nature appeals and past-time-orientation appeals than U.S. game advertisements. Third, the study, on the basis of synthesizing game literature, examined gender representation, sex and violence, and major game cultural values in Chinese and U.S. game ads. The study found that in both Chinese and U.S game advertisements, males were more likely to be featured (83.5% in U.S. ads and 55.9% in Chinese ads) as primary characters than females (12.4% in U.S. ads and 42% in Chinese ads). Female characters were sexualized when presented. The study also found 29.8% of Chinese advertisements contained sexual content and only 4% of U.S. game advertisements contained sexual content. It was found violent content was common in U.S. game advertisements and 61% of U.S. game advertisements contained violent content. U.S. game advertisements contained more violent words than Chinese game advertisements. The study examined three online game cultural characteristics reflected in game ads. Compared with U.S. ads, Chinese game advertisements used more character progression, virtual item accumulation and socialization appeals. Limitations of the study and directions for future study are discussed.

The purpose of this essay is to examine both the questions that are asked, and the answers that are given in two episode of Tänk till- våga fråga? These questions and answers will first be thematized and then analyzed based on the concept of religious literacy. The goal is to be able to broaden the knowledge about which levels of religious literacy are shown in the program. The methodological approach is qualitative content and thematic analysis which codes and thematizes questions and answers from young people in the episode. The essay analyze a program called ”Tänk till-våga fråga” from UR. The research questions for this study are: What recurring themes can be identified in the viewer`s questions and the participants answers, in the series ”Saker du aldrig vågat fråga”? How can these themes be understood as expressions of the three levels of religious literacy described by Löfstedt & Sjöborg? The theoretical starting points used to answer the study's purpose and reserach questions were Löfstedt and Sjöborg (2019) descriptions of religious literacy (religionslitteracitet). The results showed that the viewer's and the participants factual knowledge differed, as the viewer had an outsider's perspective on the subject versus the participants who had an insider's perspective on hijab and Jehovah's Witnesses. The results also showed that factual knowledge influenced the understanding and ciritical ability in young people.

No description available.

There is a movement to promote naloxone adoption by law enforcement and other stakeholders in the state of Mississippi. The purpose of this study is to understand how local media are framing the conversation about naloxone products, and to better understand how it might affect naloxone adoption among law enforcement. We searched for news articles published in Mississippi from January 2012 to July 2018 mentioning the words Narcan® and/or naloxone. Four main themes emerged from 25 articles: (a) positive and informative discussion of naloxone, (b) full articles persuading readers to use and/or advocate the use of naloxone, (c) government or organizational effort to increase the availability and use of naloxone products, and (d) negative or misleading information about naloxone. Better efforts to disseminate correct and persuasive information about the drug will have a profound and positive effect on the opioid epidemic in Mississippi and in the United States.

No description available.

No description available.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak, mostly affecting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, is the largest ever recorded. The Ebola response encountered resistance in some affected communities, where some residents accused relief agencies from the Global North of denigrating local cultures. This thesis examines mainstream Western media and health experts’ representation of culture in the Ebola-affected region and employed Foucauldian analysis of discursive power to discuss the impact of such a representation on the concerned communities. Through a content analysis of selected journal and news articles by Western scholars and media and official reports by some relief agencies involved with the Ebola response, the study discovers evidence of culture bias. There was a use of significantly negative words in describing aspects of culture in the Ebola-affected region. Western media and health experts also largely associated the epidemic with African “backwardness.”

This content analysis examined the 60 most popular teen movies from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to determine how older people (those over 55) are portrayed. This study found that some portrayals of older people in teen movies were favorable. For example, the most positive finding of the current study was the physical portrayal of older characters. The overwhelming majority of older characters were portrayed as active and healthy and rarely portrayed as sick or ugly. The negative physical stereotypes associated with children's media, such as “toothless/missing teeth" and older characters' reliance on physical aids were mostly absent from teen movies. The marginalization of older characters, their lack of significance to the plot, and the use of negative personality traits and stereotypes, however, were notable in the teen movie sample. Older characters were extremely under represented in teen movies; only 7% of characters in teen movies were old despite those over 55 comprising at least 21% of the total U.S. population. Similarly, older characters were marginalized in terms of plot and were likely to be featured only as background characters. Older characters were often portrayed with negative personality traits and in an overall negative manner. Fewer than 50% of older characters were portrayed positively. About a third of older characters were portrayed negatively overall, while 35% of older characters were portrayed as angry. Older characters were often portrayed in a stereotypical manner and a full 20% of older characters only exhibited negative stereotypes. The stereotypes that adolescents today hold toward older people were reflected in older character portrayals in these popular teen films. Given the negative representations of older people that adolescents are exposed to in their teen years, it is no wonder that they express negative attitudes toward older people. After years of exposure to media that negatively depict older adults, adolescents may have been cultivated to stereotype older people. This has the potential to influence the quality of their interactions with older people, and also influence the way they come to view the prospect of getting old.

Many ethical studies have focused on advertising; however, they have yet to focus specifically on Super Bowl advertisements. This thesis examines the ethical issue of portraying deceptive acts within the storylines of Super Bowl advertisements from 1988-2008. Results indicate that 196 of the 2,172 advertisements studied, contain deceptive storylines. Most often the advertisements depicted white males, ages 30-64, using deception. Also, deception was usually done out of self interest at the expense of others. The deception often led to negative social, material, and emotional consequences for the person being deceived, with mostly positive outcomes being shown for the person doing the deceiving. These, and other actions, provide a model of behavior that may have a negative impact on society, which warrants future research on this subject.