Culture and Media Uses and Effects
Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
Final Report Abstract
As a shared system of meanings and values that are transmitted across generations, culture constitutes cognitive schemas, influencing the ways in which individuals use the media and the ways in which the media affect individuals in return. The literature on the relationship between culture and media uses and effects is highly fragmented, however, and terms and findings have been limited to the confines of single subdisciplines of either communication or psychology, with little crossdisciplinary exchange. The current young scholars network aimed to initiate a dialog between these disciplines and to develop more integrative theories and methods on the topic. It therefore brought together media psychologists, diaspora communication researchers, and cross-cultural psychologists, to carry out cross-cultural studies on media uses and effects by paying special attention to the methodological challenges involved. The specific objectives of the network were (1) to collate, synthesize, and integrate the existing scholarship that focuses on culture in the context of media uses and effects research, to date with little collaboration. (2) to identify and test important process variables (moderators and mediators) that impact the relationship between culture and media uses and effects. Objective (3) was methodological integration. The network aimed to (a) critically evaluate and synergize the methodologies of existing research traditions, and (b) integrate the methodological know-how of (cross-)cultural psychology into existing approaches. Finally, in line with all of the above, the network aimed to develop fruitful international collaborations for studying the influence of culture on media uses and effects sustainably beyond the lifetime of the current funding scheme (objective 4). To reach these objectives, the network zoomed in on a current global topic, i.e. the association between political engagement and media use. Across five consecutive two-day workshops over the course of 3 years, the network discussed this topic from three different angles: The first angle comprised a discussion of the link between political identity and entertainment media and explored whether entertainment media are conducive to the development of a political identity in various cultures. The second angle examined the association between media use and collective action in more detail and studied whether the use of social media has the potential to get individuals engaged with politics more actively across the world. The third angle of the network explored the effects of yet a further global phenomenon on young social media users: hate speech and counter-speech on social media. All three angles of the young scholars network aimed to collate existing conceptual definitions as well as empirical research, to develop cross-culturally comparative research designs on this basis. 15 young scholars, comprising scholars from Belgium, Croatia, Germany, Serbia, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, The Philippines, and the USA subsequently developed cross-culturally comparative research designs, worked on pilot projects in the above areas in their respective home countries, prepared funding applications for future research, and initiated a special section on cross-cultural approaches to media use and political engagement in the International Journal of Communication. Taken together, the project’s initial goal, i.e. to discuss media uses and media effects across cultures and initiate not only cross-disciplinary but also mixed methods designs, was fully accomplished.
Publications
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(2018). Culture and media entertainment: A cross-cultural exploration of hedonic and eudaimonic entertainment motivations. International Communication Gazette, 80(7), 637–657
Odağ, Özen; Uluğ, Özden Melis; Arslan, Hilal & Schiefer, David
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(2018). Media - Bridge - Cultures: Exploring Mediated Cultural Encounters. Special Issue in the International Communication Gazette, 80(7)
Bozdağ, Çiğdem & Odağ, Özen
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(2018). Revisiting Culture: A Review of a Neglected Dimension in Media Psychology. Journal of Media Psychology, 1-14
Odağ, Özen & Hanke, Katja
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(2019). Reviewing the role of the Internet in radicalization. Journal for De-Radicalization, 21
Odağ, Ö., Leiser, A., & Boehnke, K.
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(2021): How Universal Is Media Entertainment, Really? On the Enriching Potential of Cross-Cultural Approaches for Existing Entertainment Scholarship. In: Peter Vorderer, Christoph Klimmt und Özen Odağ (Hg.): The Oxford Handbook of Entertainment Theory: O
Odağ, Özen
