James D Ivory

Virginia Tech | VT · School of Communication

Increasing awareness of the “replication crisis” has prompted discussion about replicability and reproducibility in social and behavioral science research, including in communication. As with other fields, communication has seen discussion about concerns with the interpretation of existing research. One response has been the piecemeal adoption of “...

While psychology and other scientific fields may not always live up to the ideal of self-correction, retractions are one effective mechanism to address flawed entries in the scientific record once they have already been published. Despite their utility, retractions are steeped in stigma for authors, and information about the role of authors in the...

This article presents a synthesis and interpretation of research on character portrayals in digital game content using a systematic review of existing studies (N = 30) based on a larger database search (N = 1,127). Character sex and gender has been the most frequently studied dimension, followed by character sexualization and character race and eth...

The question of whether screen time, particularly time spent with social media and smartphones, influences mental health outcomes remains a topic of considerable debate among policy makers, the public, and scholars. Some scholars have argued passionately that screen media may be contributing to an increase in poor psychosocial functioning and risk...

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low re...

Social and behavioural scientists have attempted to speak to the COVID-19 crisis. But is behavioural research on COVID-19 suitable for making policy decisions? We offer a taxonomy that lets our science advance in ‘evidence readiness levels’ to be suitable for policy. We caution practitioners to take extreme care translating our findings to applicat...

Psychological scientists have attempted to speak to the COVID-19 crisis. Psychology research on COVID-19, we argue, is unsuitable for making policy decisions. We offer a taxonomy that lets our science advance in Evidence Readiness Levels to be suitable for policy; we caution practitioners to take extreme care translating our findings to application...

The Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) has drawn significant interest from the popular press and academics alike. One of its primary constituting methodologies is the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ), a self-report instrument aimed to assess the use of five sets of moral intuitions when making moral judgments. The proposed universality and modulia...

Hostility among players is an ongoing problem for many types of online games, where the competitive, “high stakes” nature of ranked competitiveness may foster anti-social behavior among game players. Not all games are created equal, however, as more online games now afford players with the opportunity to either play as characters with cooperative g...

The effects of violent media on aggression-related outcomes is an ongoing debate, often focusing on the effects of violence portrayals that are sanitized for the viewer. However, narratives that focus on the real world consequences of violence are also known to receive critical acclaim and broad exposure. Do unpleasant portrayals of violence affect...

Despite a lack of research linking school shootings to video games, video games are frequently associated with school shootings carried out by White perpetrators. Because there is a stereotypical association between racial minorities and violent crime, it is possible that people often look toward video games as a cause for school shootings committe...

Virtual reality (VR) is a popular subject of scientific study across a variety of academic fields. In the present study we evaluate methodological trends in behavioral research on VR with respect to data collection practices, statistical reporting, and data availability. In line with this goal, we conducted a meta-scientific analysis of 61 articles...

Virtual reality (VR) is a popular subject of scientific study across a variety of academic fields. In the present study we evaluate methodological trends in behavioral research on VR with respect to data collection practices, statistical reporting, and data availability. In line with this goal, we conducted a meta-scientific analysis of 61 articles...

Professional advocacy associations such as the American Psychological Association (APA) and American Academy of Pediatrics commonly release policy statements regarding science and behavior. Policymakers and the general public may assume that such statements reflect objective conclusions, but their actual fidelity in representing science remains lar...

Among the range of approaches and topic areas encompassed by the broad and interdisciplinary field of communication, research on the effects of communication technology is prominent and long-standing. Given the attention that research on the effects of communication technology receives from the scholars, the public, and policymakers, it is imperati...

As digital games become increasingly ubiquitous via mobile applications and other widely-used media platforms, game-based health applications and mobile health monitoring technologies are promising tools for eHealth and mHealth. Given the importance of older people as an audience for eHealth and mHealth applications, it is problematic that much res...

While the virtual environments of online games can foster healthy relationships and strong communities, some online games are also marred by antisocial and offensive behavior. Such behavior, even when relatively rare, influences the interactions and relationships of users in online communities. Thus, understanding the prevalence and nature of antis...

We explored how game-based learning (GBL) can influence environmental awareness in undergraduate college students using an original 3D application. GBL approaches posit that learners who interact with educational materials with playful and dynamic tasks will learn better. In a two-condition laboratory experiment, participants (N = 84) interacted wi...

. While there is extensive literature exploring the possible negative effects of video games, and many such studies using college student samples, there is little research on how video game use impacts the unique risk environment of college students. This study focuses on the unique risk aspects of the college and university environment with a prer...

Extensive research has examined the prevalence and potential effects of potentially harmful video game content produced by game developers, such as violence, profanity, and sexualized portrayals, but much less research has systematically examined the large range of potentially problematic content produced by players in increasingly popular online g...

Typically, research on enjoyment motivations for media selection has centered on hedonic, or pleasure-seeking, motivations. Recently eudaimonic, or truth-seeking, motivations have also received attention. Most investigations into hedonic and eudaimonic motivations for media consumption have conceptualized these motivations as traits, rather than as...

The term “online game” describes any digital game that can be played online using a computer network, typically the → Internet. Since the first decade of the twenty‐first century, most popular commercial digital games released have incorporated online play features. Considering that online games are defined by the characteristic of being played onl...

The term “online game” describes any digital game that can be played online using a computer network, typically the → Internet. Since the first decade of the twenty‐first century, most popular commercial digital games released have incorporated online play features. Considering that online games are defined by the characteristic of being played onl...

Digital games have become a popular form of media entertainment. However, it remains unclear whether a canon of accepted knowledge and research practices has emerged that may define an independent field of research. The present study is a collaborative effort to analyze the outlines of digital games research (DGR) through a survey among the members...

We appreciate the efforts of Bushman, Gollwitzer, and Cruz (2015) to provide new data describing parents' and professionals' opinions regarding effects of media violence. Unfortunately, we feel it is necessary to call attention to apparent errors and inaccuracies in the way those data are interpreted and represented in their article. The article in...

Interactions in online environments are influenced by many of the same gender and sex-role stereotypes that people use in offline interactions. However, less research has examined systematically how the traits of an avatar and the avatar's user interact to influence stereotypical responses in virtual spaces. A field experiment manipulated avatar at...

This entry presents an overview of online games research. It defines online games, examining different types and presenting data on who plays online games to provide the groundwork for the nonspecialist or newcomer to the field. It traces the origins of online games to nondigital games and multi-user dungeons (MUDs), noting the particular influence...

Recent advances in commercial gaming technology include stereoscopic 3D presentation. This experiment employed a mixed factorial design to explore the effects of game display format (2D; 3D), frequency of game play (weekly; non-weekly), and participant gender (male; female) on feelings of presence and arousal among participants playing a handheld r...

Articles in U.S. newspapers about demonstrators during the 2011 Egyptian revolution mention social media more frequently than do articles in Egyptian newspapers, and they also describe social media more often as an effective tool in the revolt.

Recent research has attempted to describe meaningful experiences with entertainment media that go beyond hedonic enjoyment. Most of this research focuses on noninteractive media, such as film and television. When applied to digital games, however, such research needs to account for not only the content of the medium, but also the unique dimensions...

Based on previous research indicating that character portrayals in video games and other media can influence users’ perceptions of social reality, systematic content analyses have examined demographic trends in the way video game characters are portrayed. Although these studies have extensively documented character portrayals in traditional console...

A field study compared the click-through rates of box and banner web ads with red and blue color schemes using data from more than 1.5 million ad impressions from 12 months of traffic on a popular news website. For box ads, a red (versus blue) color scheme generated substantially higher click-through rates, but for banner ads the effect of color wa...

The catalyst model suggests that adult criminality arises from the interaction of genetic and proximal social influences such as family influences, but that distal social influences such as media exposure have only negligible influence. This article uses data from a 13-year longitudinal study of adolescent health to examine the catalyst model. As e...

Trends in quantitative communication research are reviewed. A content analysis of 48 articles reporting original communication research published in 1988-1991 and 2008-2011 is reported. Survey research and self-report measurement remain common approaches to research. Null hypothesis significance testing remains the dominant approach to statistical...

Research involving the uses and effects of video games has been published for nearly three decades. Despite the medium’s rich potential for a broad range of societal applications and effects, the bulk of communication research dealing with video games has focused on a relatively narrow range of conceptual problems. This chapter presents an analysis...

While much research examines the effects of celebrity endorsements in commercial advertising, scholars have only recently sought to investigate the effects of celebrity endorsements of politicians on voter perceptions and behavior. This study expands existing research on celebrity political endorsement effects via an experiment exploring effects of...

To assess how claims of “green” advertising influence consumers, this study examined whether argument strength and imagery used in environmental claims on product packaging affected participants' perceptions of the claims' credibility, perceptions of the products' “greenness,” attitudes toward the product, purchasing intent, and general attitudes t...

Purpose – Video game violence has historically been offered by policy-makers and some scholars as one contributing factor to mass homicides, particularly with shooters who are young, male, and white. However, the evidence for or against such beliefs has not been closely examined. Approach – The current chapter examines the research exploring violen...

This book is the THE source for information on virtual worlds, covering every aspect of this intriguing and fast-changing social practice and the technologies upon which it rests. Virtual Lives: A Reference Handbook describes the history, development, and role of virtual worlds, also known as virtual environments and immersive virtual environments....

Recent scholarship suggests that virtual environments can serve as effective proxies in battling implicit stereotypes. However, existing experimental research has rarely examined the effectiveness of virtual simulations of mental illnesses in inducing empathy to combat stereotypical responses. We report results from a 4-condition, between subjects...

The video game market has grown enormously and sales revenue now exceeds that of the movie industry. Research on the effects of video games on youth finds both potential problems and benefits. It is difficult to summarize the effects of video games because technological advancements that permit them to become ever more realistic can be put to favor...

Despite the rising popularity of video games, the majority of the medium's audience continues to be male. One reason may be that character representations in video games are geared toward male players. This content analysis used video game re- views from a heavily trafficked Internet site to investigate the prevalence and por- trayal of male and fe...

We report results from three experiments that broadly examined Web users' psychological responses to search results featured on a mock search engine. Study 1 examined the interplay between search result relevance and ad relevance and showed that the former is the critical variable in affecting user attitudes toward both the search engine and the ad...

A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. This innovation enabled the results to be analyzed in...

Although violent video game content and its effects have been examined extensively by empirical research, verbal aggression in the form of profanity has received less attention. Building on preliminary findings from previous studies, an extensive content analysis of profanity in video games was conducted using a sample of the 150 top-selling video...

Portable media consoles are becoming extremely popular devices for viewing a number of different types of media content, both for entertainment and for educational purposes. Given the increasingly heavy use of portable consoles as an alternative to traditional television-style monitors, it is important to investigate how physiological and psycholog...

Although intimate heterosexual couples often exhibit power imbalances in gender role behaviors, with one partner more dominant and the other more submissive, it is unclear whether the same is true for homosexual relationships. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that television portrays both heterosexual and homosexual couples as gendered. This c...

This study explores whether people's perceptions of violent video games' potential for negatively affecting others and their support for censoring such games are influenced by whether people consider specific or abstract content and persons. In a 2 (content abstraction) Â 3 (person abstraction) between-subjects experiment, 122 undergraduate student...

The possible impact of technological advancement on video games’ effects—particularly in the case of violent games—has often been discussed but has not been thoroughly explored by empirical research. The present investigation employed a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial experiment to examine the interplay of technological advancement and violence by...

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has historically enjoyed a degree of romantic sympathy from many supporters in the United States. To explore speculation that this patronage is mirrored by favorable IRA depictions in the entertainment media, this study describes a content analysis of trailers for 18 movies that feature the IRA in their plots. A comp...