W James Potter
Biographic Data
| ID | 99287 |
|---|---|
| NAME | W James Potter |
| GIVEN NAMES | W James |
| FAMILY NAME | Potter |
| SIGNATURE | POTTER W J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 169 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Cumulative Exposure: Scholarly Responses to 50 Years of Cultivation Research
This issue features the latest Scholarly Milestones essay, “Cultivation at 50” by Michael Morgan, Richard Perloff, Andy Ruddock, and James Shanahan, a meditation on the theory’s history, evolution
What Does the Idea of Media Cultivation Mean
Over the past half century, media scholars have generated a large literature of empirical studies, criticisms, and reviews that present many different ideas about what cultivation means. Those meanings are analyzed across three major components of the cultivation literature: George Gerbner’s macro theory, the Cultural Indicators Project design, and the large number of exploratory studies that have attempted to expand the explanatory ability of cu…
Media Literacy
As people spend more time with the growing variety of media and become more engrossed in their media exposures, concern about media literacy has increased. This concern has attracted a wide variety of people who have created a huge literature of ideas. Some of those ideas address conceptual issues, such as what literacy about media should mean and in what ways literacy is important. And some of those ideas are suggestions about what individuals, …
Evaluating the utility of methodological assumptions in mass media effects research on children
This essay focuses on six methodological practices that are widespread in the literature examining media effects on children and adolescents by presenting a critical analyses of the assumptions that underlie each of these practices. The first three practices deal with measurement—the use of attribute variables as surrogates, the use of behavioral self report data, and assuming the validity of measures. The remaining three practices deal with data…
A Critical Analysis of Cultivation Theory: Cultivation
This critical analysis of the "cultivation" literature reveals 3 conceptions of the term: (a) George Gerbner's macrosystem explanation of mass media processes and effects, (b) a pattern of operational practices that searches for relationships between television exposure and a wide range of cultivation indicators, and (c) a general forum of explorations of media influence where researchers break away from Gerbner's conceptualizations and boundarie…
An Analysis of Thinking and Research About Qualitative Methods
Written for social science scholars who want to learn more about the qualitative way of thinking, this book addresses the full continuum of issues about the qualitative methodologies. At one end of that continuum are the deeply philosophical concerns of ontology and epistemology. At the other -- concrete -- end of that continuum are the practical issues of what is considered evidence: How does one go about gathering evidence? Where, when, and how…
Conceptualizing Mass Media Effect
Scholars have generated evidence of a wide variety of mass media effects over almost 9 decades of research. Although each of these effects has been defined in a relatively clear manner, there has been much less conceptualizing about what constitutes a mass media effect in general. Rarely have scholars provided a formal definition of mass media effect, instead opting to provide a definition in either an ostensive or primitive manner. In this essay…
The State of Media Literacy
Media literacy is a term that means many different things to different people—scholars, educators, citizen activists, and the general public. This article reviews the variety of definitions and presents a synthesis of commonalities that most definitions of media literacy share. The review presents an overview of how media literacy has been treated as an issue in curriculum design within the institution of education, and then how it has been treat…
Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Why Do We Need a General Framework? 2. Introduction to the General Framework PART II: EXPLAINING THE MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS FACET 3. Media Media Organization Line of Thinking 4. Business Strategies 5. Marketing Strategies 6. Employment Strategies PART III: EXPLAINING THE MEDIA AUDIENCES FACET 7. Media Audience Line of Thinking 8. Audience Cognitive Algorithms 9. Audience: Filtering Media Messages 10. Audience: Meaning Matchin…
The Importance of Considering Exposure States When Designing Survey Research Studies
The purpose of this chapter is to examine how survey researchers assess information gained through exposures to media messages, particularly how they consider, or do not consider, the psychological state of the person during those exposures. The thesis of this paper is that exposure states are essential characteristics that constrain how people experience each media message and thereby limit as well as shape what they remember from that experienc…
Media Literacy
Media literacy is a term that has been used to refer to a great many ideas. It has been treated as a public policy health issue; a critical‐cultural issue; as a set of pedagogical tools for school teachers or suggestions for parents; and as a topic of scholarly inquiry from a physiological, psychological, behavioral, sociological, and/or anthropological tradition. Some writers focus primarily on one culture, such as American culture, British cult…
Theory of Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach
I. Background Chapter 1: Why Do We Need a Theory of Media Literacy? Chapter 2: Explicating the Construct of Media Literacy II. Introducing the Theory Chapter 3: Definitions and Distinctions Chapter 4: The Media Literacy Model Chapter 5: The Foundational Knowledge Structures Chapter 6: The Personal Locus Chapter 7: Competencies and Skills of Media Literacy III. Information Processing Chapter 8: The Filtering Task Chapter 9: The Meaning-Matching Ta…
Argument for the Need for a Cognitive Theory of Media Literacy
The thesis of this article is that the individual should be regarded as the locus of media literacy-not schools, parents, or the media industries. Furthermore, the article argues that it is not sufficient to educate individuals about the nature of the media and the potential harm of various messages. There is an issue more fundamental than education and that is the building of greater understanding about how the human mind works. Therefore, we ne…
Building Upon the Experimental Design in Media Violence Research: The Importance of Including Receiver Interpretations
The authors argue that the inclusion of viewer interpretation variables in experimental design and analysis procedures can greatly increase the methodology's ability to explain variance. The experiment primarily focused attention on the between-group differences, while an analysis of how individual participants interpret the cues in the stimulus material focused attention on the within-group differences. We demonstrated such an analysis in this s…
Building Upon the Experimental Design in Media Violence Research: The Importance of Including Receiver Interpretations
The authors argue that the inclusion of viewer interpretation variables in experimental design and analysis procedures can greatly increase the methodology's ability to explain variance. The experiment primarily focused attention on the between-group differences, while an analysis of how individual participants interpret the cues in the stimulus material focused attention on the within-group differences. We demonstrated such an analysis in this s…
The 11 Myths of Media Violence
Violence sells. The media industries say they are simply businesses responding to market desires, but when they are criticized for contributing to a culture of violence, they claim First Amendment protection. If anything, media violence is more prevalent today than at any other time in the past. Yet, although scientific researchers have produced a strong body of evidence demonstrating that exposure to media violence harms society, that evidence h…
Violence in Children's Television Programming: Assessing the Risks
This study investigates the nature and extent of violence contained in television programming that targets children aged 12 and younger. The measures employed in this content analysis are grounded in previous experimental research that bas identified contextual features that either diminish or enhance the risk of harmful effects associated with viewing violent portrayals. This report uses the database from the National Television Violence Study (…
Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis
The central thesis in this essay is that validity and reliability should be conceptualized differently across the various forms of content and the various uses of theory. This is especially true with applied communication research where a theory is not always available to guide the design. A distinction needs to made between manifest and latent (pattern and projective) content. Also, we argue that content analyses need not be limited to theory‐ba…
Consistency of Contextual Cues About Violence Across Narrative Levels
We focused on contextual patterns in the portrayals of television violence. Patterns are constructed by comparing contextual cues at one level of the television show, such as the macrolevel of the entire program, with the contextual cues at a more microlevel, such as the violent interaction. When the two sets of cues match on characteristics such as harm to victims and punishment to perpetrators, there is a consistent pattern of context across le…
Humor as Camouflage of Televised Violence
What is it about the portrayal of violence in comedy programs that provides cues to viewers that television violence is trivial or even nonexistent in that type of show? In this study we develop and test four content-based explanations for this phenomenon. The findings suggest that the rate of violence (especially verbal forms) is very high on comedy programs, but that the rate is largely due to high numbers of acts among the relatively minor for…
Misperceptions of Risk
Misperceptions of Risk W. James Potter W. James Potter 1Florida State University, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 4, December 1998, Pages 162–167, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1998.tb02776.x Published: 07 February 2006
Media Literacy, Media Education, and the Academy
This initial essay in the Media Literacy Symposium serves two purposes. First, we introduce the nine authors who have written the eight essays especially for this symposium. Second, we provide a broad context for the thinking expressed by those nine scholars. In building that context, we discuss a range of conceptual and application issues. The conceptual issues focus on the range of definitions for both media and literacy. The application issues…
The problem of indexing risk of viewing television aggression
Media effects research has documented that violence can have a disinhibiting effect on viewers. It has also identified a number of factors that contribute to this effect. But it has yet to address the issue of how to assemble the multiple contributing elements into a single scale that could usefully predict risk of disinhibition. This study provides an empirical test to demonstrate why this is a major problem as policymakers look to social scient…
Considering Policies to Protect Children from TV Violence
For decades, lawmakers have been debating what they can do to protect children from the harmful effects of violence on television. The debate has intensified recently with three major proposals: (a) to require manufacturers to install a V-chip into all new televisions so parents can program their sets, thus preventing their children from being exposed to violence; (b) to require television programmers to display a violence rating for each program…
Reply to Sparks's Critique
Journal Article Reply to Sparks's Critique Get access W. James Potter, W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is a visiting professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 931 06 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roger Cooper, Roger Cooper 2Roger Cooper is an assistant professor in Communications at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth. TX16129 Search for other wor…
Cultivation Theory and Research: A Conceptual Critique
Journal Article Cultivation Theory and Research: A Conceptual Critique Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is Associate Professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 19, Issue 4, June 1993, Pages 564–601, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1993.tb00313.x Published: 17 March 2006
A Critical Analysis of Cultivation Theory: Cultivation
This critical analysis of the "cultivation" literature reveals 3 conceptions of the term: (a) George Gerbner's macrosystem explanation of mass media processes and effects, (b) a pattern of operational practices that searches for relationships between television exposure and a wide range of cultivation indicators, and (c) a general forum of explorations of media influence where researchers break away from Gerbner's conceptualizations and boundarie…
The Three Paradigms of Mass Media Research In Mainstream Communication Journals
Scholars who write about the paradigms influencing mass media research differ in their speculations. This study was conducted to provide an empirical analysis by examining six characteristics of mass media research articles published in eight major communication journals. The social science paradigm was found to account for over 60% of the studies, while the interpretive paradigm accounted for about 34% and the critical paradigm less than 6%. It …
The Relationships Between First- and Second-Order Measures of Cultivation
Journal Article The Relationships Between First- and Second-Order Measures of Cultivation Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter Associate Professor 1Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 18, Issue 1, September 1991, Pages 92–113, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1991.tb00530.x Published: 17 March 2006
The Linearity Assumption in Cultivation Research
Journal Article The Linearity Assumption in Cultivation Research Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 17, Issue 4, June 1991, Pages 562–583, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1991.tb00244.x Published: 17 March 2006
Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Why Do We Need a General Framework? 2. Introduction to the General Framework PART II: EXPLAINING THE MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS FACET 3. Media Media Organization Line of Thinking 4. Business Strategies 5. Marketing Strategies 6. Employment Strategies PART III: EXPLAINING THE MEDIA AUDIENCES FACET 7. Media Audience Line of Thinking 8. Audience Cognitive Algorithms 9. Audience: Filtering Media Messages 10. Audience: Meaning Matchin…
Reply to Sparks's Critique
Journal Article Reply to Sparks's Critique Get access W. James Potter, W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is a visiting professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 931 06 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roger Cooper, Roger Cooper 2Roger Cooper is an assistant professor in Communications at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth. TX16129 Search for other wor…
Does Television Viewing Hinder Academic Achievement Among Adolescents
Journal Article Does Television Viewing Hinder Academic Achievement Among Adolescents? Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter 1W. James Potter (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1979) is an assistant professor in the College of Communication at Florida State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 14, Issue 1, September 1987, Pages 27–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-…
The Importance of Considering Exposure States When Designing Survey Research Studies
The purpose of this chapter is to examine how survey researchers assess information gained through exposures to media messages, particularly how they consider, or do not consider, the psychological state of the person during those exposures. The thesis of this paper is that exposure states are essential characteristics that constrain how people experience each media message and thereby limit as well as shape what they remember from that experienc…
Argument for the Need for a Cognitive Theory of Media Literacy
The thesis of this article is that the individual should be regarded as the locus of media literacy-not schools, parents, or the media industries. Furthermore, the article argues that it is not sufficient to educate individuals about the nature of the media and the potential harm of various messages. There is an issue more fundamental than education and that is the building of greater understanding about how the human mind works. Therefore, we ne…
Perceived reality and the cultivation hypothesis
The relationship specified by the cultivation hypothesis was elaborated by using a concept of perceived reality that included the dimensions of Magic Window, Instruction, and Identity. As in previous studies, the cultivation effect was nonsignificant after controls for demographics were introduced. However, the cultivation effect was found in certain subgroups of subjects partitioned according to their level of perceived reality.
Does Television Viewing Hinder Academic Achievement Among Adolescents
Journal Article Does Television Viewing Hinder Academic Achievement Among Adolescents? Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter 1W. James Potter (Ph.D., Indiana University, 1979) is an assistant professor in the College of Communication at Florida State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 14, Issue 1, September 1987, Pages 27–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-…
The Relationships Between First- and Second-Order Measures of Cultivation
Journal Article The Relationships Between First- and Second-Order Measures of Cultivation Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter Associate Professor 1Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 18, Issue 1, September 1991, Pages 92–113, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1991.tb00530.x Published: 17 March 2006
The Linearity Assumption in Cultivation Research
Journal Article The Linearity Assumption in Cultivation Research Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University, Bloomington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 17, Issue 4, June 1991, Pages 562–583, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1991.tb00244.x Published: 17 March 2006
The Three Paradigms of Mass Media Research In Mainstream Communication Journals
Scholars who write about the paradigms influencing mass media research differ in their speculations. This study was conducted to provide an empirical analysis by examining six characteristics of mass media research articles published in eight major communication journals. The social science paradigm was found to account for over 60% of the studies, while the interpretive paradigm accounted for about 34% and the critical paradigm less than 6%. It …
Cultivation Theory and Research: A Conceptual Critique
Journal Article Cultivation Theory and Research: A Conceptual Critique Get access W. James Potter W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is Associate Professor in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Human Communication Research, Volume 19, Issue 4, June 1993, Pages 564–601, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1993.tb00313.x Published: 17 March 2006
Reply to Sparks's Critique
Journal Article Reply to Sparks's Critique Get access W. James Potter, W. James Potter 1W. James Potter is a visiting professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 931 06 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Roger Cooper, Roger Cooper 2Roger Cooper is an assistant professor in Communications at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth. TX16129 Search for other wor…
Considering Policies to Protect Children from TV Violence
For decades, lawmakers have been debating what they can do to protect children from the harmful effects of violence on television. The debate has intensified recently with three major proposals: (a) to require manufacturers to install a V-chip into all new televisions so parents can program their sets, thus preventing their children from being exposed to violence; (b) to require television programmers to display a violence rating for each program…
The problem of indexing risk of viewing television aggression
Media effects research has documented that violence can have a disinhibiting effect on viewers. It has also identified a number of factors that contribute to this effect. But it has yet to address the issue of how to assemble the multiple contributing elements into a single scale that could usefully predict risk of disinhibition. This study provides an empirical test to demonstrate why this is a major problem as policymakers look to social scient…
Humor as Camouflage of Televised Violence
What is it about the portrayal of violence in comedy programs that provides cues to viewers that television violence is trivial or even nonexistent in that type of show? In this study we develop and test four content-based explanations for this phenomenon. The findings suggest that the rate of violence (especially verbal forms) is very high on comedy programs, but that the rate is largely due to high numbers of acts among the relatively minor for…
Misperceptions of Risk
Misperceptions of Risk W. James Potter W. James Potter 1Florida State University, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 4, December 1998, Pages 162–167, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1998.tb02776.x Published: 07 February 2006
Media Literacy, Media Education, and the Academy
This initial essay in the Media Literacy Symposium serves two purposes. First, we introduce the nine authors who have written the eight essays especially for this symposium. Second, we provide a broad context for the thinking expressed by those nine scholars. In building that context, we discuss a range of conceptual and application issues. The conceptual issues focus on the range of definitions for both media and literacy. The application issues…
Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis
The central thesis in this essay is that validity and reliability should be conceptualized differently across the various forms of content and the various uses of theory. This is especially true with applied communication research where a theory is not always available to guide the design. A distinction needs to made between manifest and latent (pattern and projective) content. Also, we argue that content analyses need not be limited to theory‐ba…
Consistency of Contextual Cues About Violence Across Narrative Levels
We focused on contextual patterns in the portrayals of television violence. Patterns are constructed by comparing contextual cues at one level of the television show, such as the macrolevel of the entire program, with the contextual cues at a more microlevel, such as the violent interaction. When the two sets of cues match on characteristics such as harm to victims and punishment to perpetrators, there is a consistent pattern of context across le…
Violence in Children's Television Programming: Assessing the Risks
This study investigates the nature and extent of violence contained in television programming that targets children aged 12 and younger. The measures employed in this content analysis are grounded in previous experimental research that bas identified contextual features that either diminish or enhance the risk of harmful effects associated with viewing violent portrayals. This report uses the database from the National Television Violence Study (…
Building Upon the Experimental Design in Media Violence Research: The Importance of Including Receiver Interpretations
The authors argue that the inclusion of viewer interpretation variables in experimental design and analysis procedures can greatly increase the methodology's ability to explain variance. The experiment primarily focused attention on the between-group differences, while an analysis of how individual participants interpret the cues in the stimulus material focused attention on the within-group differences. We demonstrated such an analysis in this s…
Building Upon the Experimental Design in Media Violence Research: The Importance of Including Receiver Interpretations
The authors argue that the inclusion of viewer interpretation variables in experimental design and analysis procedures can greatly increase the methodology's ability to explain variance. The experiment primarily focused attention on the between-group differences, while an analysis of how individual participants interpret the cues in the stimulus material focused attention on the within-group differences. We demonstrated such an analysis in this s…
The 11 Myths of Media Violence
Violence sells. The media industries say they are simply businesses responding to market desires, but when they are criticized for contributing to a culture of violence, they claim First Amendment protection. If anything, media violence is more prevalent today than at any other time in the past. Yet, although scientific researchers have produced a strong body of evidence demonstrating that exposure to media violence harms society, that evidence h…
Theory of Media Literacy: A Cognitive Approach
I. Background Chapter 1: Why Do We Need a Theory of Media Literacy? Chapter 2: Explicating the Construct of Media Literacy II. Introducing the Theory Chapter 3: Definitions and Distinctions Chapter 4: The Media Literacy Model Chapter 5: The Foundational Knowledge Structures Chapter 6: The Personal Locus Chapter 7: Competencies and Skills of Media Literacy III. Information Processing Chapter 8: The Filtering Task Chapter 9: The Meaning-Matching Ta…
Argument for the Need for a Cognitive Theory of Media Literacy
The thesis of this article is that the individual should be regarded as the locus of media literacy-not schools, parents, or the media industries. Furthermore, the article argues that it is not sufficient to educate individuals about the nature of the media and the potential harm of various messages. There is an issue more fundamental than education and that is the building of greater understanding about how the human mind works. Therefore, we ne…
Media Literacy
Media literacy is a term that has been used to refer to a great many ideas. It has been treated as a public policy health issue; a critical‐cultural issue; as a set of pedagogical tools for school teachers or suggestions for parents; and as a topic of scholarly inquiry from a physiological, psychological, behavioral, sociological, and/or anthropological tradition. Some writers focus primarily on one culture, such as American culture, British cult…
The Importance of Considering Exposure States When Designing Survey Research Studies
The purpose of this chapter is to examine how survey researchers assess information gained through exposures to media messages, particularly how they consider, or do not consider, the psychological state of the person during those exposures. The thesis of this paper is that exposure states are essential characteristics that constrain how people experience each media message and thereby limit as well as shape what they remember from that experienc…
Arguing for a General Framework for Mass Media Scholarship
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Why Do We Need a General Framework? 2. Introduction to the General Framework PART II: EXPLAINING THE MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS FACET 3. Media Media Organization Line of Thinking 4. Business Strategies 5. Marketing Strategies 6. Employment Strategies PART III: EXPLAINING THE MEDIA AUDIENCES FACET 7. Media Audience Line of Thinking 8. Audience Cognitive Algorithms 9. Audience: Filtering Media Messages 10. Audience: Meaning Matchin…
The State of Media Literacy
Media literacy is a term that means many different things to different people—scholars, educators, citizen activists, and the general public. This article reviews the variety of definitions and presents a synthesis of commonalities that most definitions of media literacy share. The review presents an overview of how media literacy has been treated as an issue in curriculum design within the institution of education, and then how it has been treat…
Conceptualizing Mass Media Effect
Scholars have generated evidence of a wide variety of mass media effects over almost 9 decades of research. Although each of these effects has been defined in a relatively clear manner, there has been much less conceptualizing about what constitutes a mass media effect in general. Rarely have scholars provided a formal definition of mass media effect, instead opting to provide a definition in either an ostensive or primitive manner. In this essay…
Computer Science (22 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Media Influence and Health (15 works) · Media studies (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Social Media and Politics (9 works) · Library science (8 works) · Pedagogy (8 works)