Television and Risk Behavior - Contemporary Perspectives

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the special issue of Journal of Children and Media. This special issue has chosen television, not because it is the only medium in the contemporary media space which deserves continued attention. The articles featured in this special issue demonstrate that television remains a potentially potent source of risk for young people. In the first article, the authors examine relationships between television viewing and US adolescents' beliefs about alcohol, and whether such cultivation effects may be moderated by trait reactance. In the second article, the authors investigate a strategy to diminish the effects of television exposure on excessive alcohol consumption in the Netherlands. In the third article, from a content analytical perspective, the authors examine sexual portrayals of the main characters in popular television shows in the United States and relate this to questions about sexual effects on adolescent viewers. In the fourth article, the authors argue in favor of paying more attention to youth's cultural production and tests the efficacy of such an approach by conducting a US-based qualitative analysis of teen-produced parody videos of the MTV show 16 and pregnant. In the final article, the authors present the results of a longitudinal study of music television viewing and smoking in Belgium and identify younger adolescents as a distinct risk category. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).