Panel presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, St. Louis, August 14, 2011.

Nicholas David Bowman, Ph.D.

Sven Jöckel, Dr. phil.Leyla Dogruel

Implications of cross-cultural differences in

moral salience for multi-national media psychology research

Session Overview

• Four main questions:– What is culture? – How does it vary?– How does morality explain this variance?– How does this variance influence media

psychology research?

• Discussion rooted in MIME (Tamborini, 2011)

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What is culture?

• “Collective programming of the mind” (Hofstede, 2001)

• Shared value structures• Learned through:

– Socialization – Narratives of our people – Non-mediated environment

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How does it vary?

• As narratives vary, so does culture

• Culture can be understood in terms of shared values

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Morality’s explanation of ∆ culture

• Different stories emphasize different values – Care/harm– Fairness/reciprocity– Authority/respect– Ingroup/loyalty – Purity/sanctity

• Different patterns lead us to a definition of morality subcultures (Zillmann, 2000)

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∆ Culture and Media Psychology

• Morality is central to understanding media consumption and production

• Both provided in MIME (Tamborini, 2011)

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MIME (Tamborini, 2011)

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Automatic Response

• Attention • Positive/Negative response to Adhering/Violating content

Automatic Response

• Attention • Positive/Negative response to Adhering/Violating content

Appraise/Rationalize

• Accept/Reject need to violate one foundation in order to conform to another

Appraise/Rationalize

• Accept/Reject need to violate one foundation in order to conform to another

Patterns of Selective Exposure

Patterns of Selective Exposure

Mass Production of

Domain-Adhering Media

Mass Production of

Domain-Adhering Media

Non-Mediated Cultural

Environment

Non-Mediated Cultural

Environment

Exposure to Domain-

Adhering Media

Exposure to Domain-

Adhering Media

Exemplar Salience

Exemplar Salience

Domain SalienceDomain Salience

Consumption ProcessConsumption Process

MIME (Tamborini, 2011)

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Automatic Response

• Attention • Positive/Negative response to Adhering/Violating content

Automatic Response

• Attention • Positive/Negative response to Adhering/Violating content

Appraise/Rationalize

• Accept/Reject need to violate one foundation in order to conform to another

Appraise/Rationalize

• Accept/Reject need to violate one foundation in order to conform to another

Patterns of Selective Exposure

Patterns of Selective Exposure

Mass Production of

Domain-Adhering Media

Mass Production of

Domain-Adhering Media

Non-Mediated Cultural

Environment

Non-Mediated Cultural

Environment

Exposure to Domain-

Adhering Media

Exposure to Domain-

Adhering Media

Exemplar Salience

Exemplar Salience

Domain SalienceDomain Salience

Production ProcessProduction Process

Evidence in support of macro

• Content-side: English vs. Spanish soaps (Mastro et al., 2011)

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Evidence in support of macro

• Content-side: English vs. Spanish soaps (Mastro et al., 2011)

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Evidence in support of macro

• Content-side: English vs. Spanish soaps (Mastro et al., 2011)

•

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Evidence in support of macro

• Audience-side: German vs. US media appeal

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German US Overall

Harm/Care* 4.65 (.62) 4.45 (.80) 4.60 (.69)

Fairness* 4.74 (.54) 4.47 (.70) 4.66 (.60)

Authority* 3.47 (.72) 4.14 (.79) 3.67 (.80)

Loyalty* 3.42 (.60) 4.09 (.83) 3.61 (.74)

Purity* 2.82 (.83) 3.64 (1.04) 3.06 (.97)

Evidence in support of macro

• Audience-side: German vs. US media appeal

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β from Nationality

β from Morality

Movies

Comedy .190 .214

Drama .131 .325(C)*

Action .215 .142

TV

Comedy .178 .199

Documentary -.122 .307(C)*

News -.312 .439* [.528(C)]

Implications

• What is culture as a variable? – Cross- national research suggests values >

nationality in explaining media appeal – Intra-national research suggests values > social

identity in explaining media content– ∆ in content = ∆ in values– Culture as value salience:

• More robust indicator• More accurate indicator• More interesting indicator?

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