Jan Van den Bulck

Jan Van den Bulck
University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Communication Studies

Ph.D., D.Sc.

About

150
Publications
72,396
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
4,898
Citations
Introduction
I am interested on the effects of the mass media in issues regarding violence and health. A TEDx talk summarizes much of my work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s52urYmITY). As a media researcher I have a particular fascination for cultivation theory (which studies how the media influence our perceptions of the real world). As an epidemiologist I am interested in the effects of the media on sleep, eating behavior, obesity and risk taking.
Additional affiliations
January 1991 - August 2016
KU Leuven
Position
  • Professor (Full)
January 2017 - present
University of Michigan
Position
  • Professor
Description
  • Comm 121 Quantitative Skills
January 2017 - present
University of Michigan
Position
  • Professor
Description
  • Comm 490: Celebrity Influence
Education
January 2005 - December 2006
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Field of study
  • Epidemiology
January 1991 - December 1996
KU Leuven
Field of study
  • Social Sciences
September 1988 - August 1989
University of Hull
Field of study
  • Political Science

Publications

Publications (150)
Article
Full-text available
The relationship between sleep and media use is well established, as is the effect of sleep deprivation and fatigue on decision-making. Our paper connects these disparate literatures to consider the ways in which a combination of sleep and media use affect sociopolitical attitudes related to risk and/or threat perception. Using novel data from a la...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives Adolescents are the most prominent users of social media, and their exposure to different contents, platforms, and types of use continues to develop. At the same time, sleep deprivation is on the rise, which may contribute to worsened health. Therefore, this cross-sectional study set out to examine the relationships among several social...
Article
Full-text available
Communication scholars have found varying levels of support for cultivation theory in the United States and abroad. Using a multilevel modeling approach and data from 27 countries (N > 51,000) from the fifth round of the European Social Survey, we found that the country in which a study is conducted explains a significant amount of the variance in...
Article
Full-text available
This article investigates the relationship between exposure to overall television content and television news on the one hand, and public crime seriousness perceptions, including the two main components of perceived crime seriousness, i.e., perceived wrongfulness and harm severity, on the other hand. Drawing on cultivation theory and additional lit...
Article
This study examined the association between social media use and first-year college students’ academic self-efficacy in two large, research intensive universities in Flanders (N = 513) and the United States (N = 431). Given cultivation and social cognitive theories’ premises that consistent media messages can shape attitudes and beliefs about self...
Article
Full-text available
Media researchers have studied how parents and children influence and guide each other’s media use. Although parent and child socialization and influence are thought to be bidirectional, they are usually studied separately, with an emphasis on parental socialization, influence, and guidance of the child’s media use. In this article, we present resu...
Article
Full-text available
Sleep experts have raised concern over the effects of electronic media use on sleep. To date, few studies have looked beyond the effects of duration and frequency of media exposure or examined the underlying mechanisms of this association. As procrastinatory media use has been related to lower well-being, we used data from two survey studies (N1= 8...
Article
Full-text available
Nowadays it is easier than ever before to produce films and videos and make them available to a worldwide audience via platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, among others. The European Space Agency (ESA), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other similar organisations cons...
Article
Full-text available
While existing content analyses have provided insightful information in terms of contextual factors and frequency of sexual behaviors, not much is known about the relational context in which sexual depictions generally occur. The current study addresses this void by employing content analytic methods to measure the frequency and context of depictio...
Article
Full-text available
Shuteye latency (SEL) refers to the time spent performing activities in bed before attempting sleep. This study investigates (a) the prevalence, duration and predictors of SEL, (b) its association with insomnia symptoms (sleep onset latency [SOL], sleep quality and fatigue), and (c) the activities engaged in during SEL. A representative sample of 5...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: Sleep insufficiency has been related to self-control failure: people fail to go to bed in time and end up sleep deprived. The role of state self-control in predicting bedtime and sleep duration has not yet been investigated. Based on an overlap between depleted self-control resources and fatigue, self-control depletion may foster earlier...
Article
Compared to parental mediation research, much less is known about how children influence and guide their parents’ media use. This study examined whether children also mediate the television use of their parents. Measures of an existing television mediation scale were reversed to the perspective of the child guiding the parent’s television use. A sa...
Article
Full-text available
While most studies on attitudinal media effects are concerned with a comparable scientific question they do not always coincide in their theoretical approach. In the present paper, we show that this state of affairs has caused controversies about the meaning and testability of specific types of attitudinal media effects – in particular, framing, cu...
Article
Full-text available
Based on cultivation theory, this study examines whether individual’s exposure to romantic media contents would be significantly related to their fear of being single. Analyses on a cross-sectional sample of 18- to 25-year olds (N = 821) did not show a significant overall relationship between exposure to romantic media contents and fear of being si...
Article
Shuteye latency (SEL) refers to the time spent performing activities in bed before attempting sleep. This study investigates (1) the prevalence, duration, and predictors of SEL, (2) its association with insomnia symptoms (sleep onset latency (SOL), sleep quality and fatigue), and (3) the activities engaged in during SEL. A representative sample of...
Article
Full-text available
This article responds to calls for conceptual clarification in the media effects domain by providing a definition for attitudinal cultivation effects. Our definition contains 5 core characteristics: the (a) linear effects of (b) repeated media exposure on (c) the evaluation as given by memory associations (d) strengthened by and (e) valenced in lin...
Article
Full-text available
Study objectives: To investigate the prevalence of binge viewing, its association with sleep and examine arousal as an underlying mechanism of this association. Methods: Four hundred twenty-three adults (aged 18-25 years old, 61.9% female) completed an online survey assessing regular television viewing, binge viewing, sleep quality (Pittsburgh S...
Chapter
This chapter traces the development of communication sciences as a research discipline in Flanders, the Northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, combining an analysis of structural elements with that of the role of individuals. The study reveals the relevance of key structural and institutional factors and trends that have played an important part...
Article
Full-text available
This study argues that going to bed may not be synonymous with going to sleep and that this fragmentation of bedtime results in a two-step sleep displacement. We separated bedtime (i.e. going to bed) from shuteye time (i.e. attempting to go to sleep once in bed) and assessed the prevalence of electronic media use in both time slots. A convenience s...
Article
Full-text available
Based on the premise that children are active agents who influence their parents’ media use, this study investigated child–parent digital media guidance. Children often introduce new media into the family and influence parents’ media adoption and use. This study also investigated whether this child–parent digital media guidance is associated with m...
Article
Images of Law Enforcement in Flanders have actually moved away from culture-specific stereotypes, which may have been typical of Flemish storytelling or myth, towards storylines and ways of telling the story which resemble the mainstream of what is internationally distributed.
Article
Full-text available
There is ample evidence that media use displaces sleep, but little theory about the mechanism that explains this. We studied sleep displacement as a self-control issue: People postpone going to bed because they have trouble ending their media exposure. We therefore modeled television viewing (habitual viewing, deficient TV self-regulation, and view...
Article
Full-text available
The average amount of sleep people of all ages get has declined sharply in the past fifty years. The detrimental health effects of sleep deprivation are well documented and substantial. Even though electronic media use often takes place in the hours before sleep, the extent to which media use may interact with sleep is understudied and not well und...
Article
Many people today are immersed in media similar to fish in water. Electronic devices provide virtually unlimited access to media. Although people consume media during their waking hours, the media they consume might also affect their dreams during sleeping hours. The media often contain violence and sex. On the basis of cognitive neoassociation the...
Article
Full-text available
Many people today are immersed in media similar to fish in water. Electronic devices provide virtually unlimited access to media. Although people consume media during their waking hours, the media they consume might also affect their dreams during sleeping hours. The media often contain violence and sex. On the basis of cognitive neoassociation the...
Article
When people are confronted with a potentially life-threatening disease such as cancer, they are likely to feel an urgent need for information about the disease and support from peers. Studies have shown that the mass media contain a lot of experiential information (i.e., peer stories) about cancer, either from real individuals or from fictional cha...
Article
Background: The mass media have held an ongoing debate about stem cell research. However, few studies have investigated how individuals obtain information on stem cell research and whether this affects their knowledge and perspectives on stem cell research. Objective: This study aims to investigate whether (i) cancer-diagnosed and non-diagnosed...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines how college students’ family communication environments influence their adjustment during the first year of college in two distinct cultures: Belgium (n = 513) and the United States (n = 431). Three structural equation models were tested to determine the mediating effects of (a) perceived family support, (b) quality of academic...
Article
Full-text available
While the issue of method bias is a well-known threat to the validity of self-reports, it has seldom been addressed in empirical media effects studies. This may be problematic because independent and dependent variables are often measured using similar methods. Thus, reported correlations may not only reflect common variance between the constructs...
Article
Full-text available
The literature on cultivation processes assumes that second-order judgments (e.g., attitudes) are repeatedly updated during viewing (i.e., on-line) and can be reported when asked. In this article, we propose this reasoning only holds for people high in their need to evaluate (NTE). Low-NTE individuals do not update their opinions on-line and have t...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The few studies that have investigated the relationship between mobile phone use and sleep have mainly been conducted among children and adolescents. In adults, very little is known about mobile phone usage in bed our after lights out. This cross-sectional study set out to examine the association between bedtime mobile phone use and sl...
Article
Most studies on the uses and effects of media and communication by parents and children have focused on how parents influence their children. Socialization theory generally describes how children internalize the rules and norms from their parents, teachers, siblings, media, and others. Socialization is, however, a bidirectional process in which chi...
Article
Full-text available
The potential impact of mass media has been virtually neglected in the study of adolescent fear of crime. This is remarkable, given adolescents’ heavy media consumption and developmental vulnerability. Music videos and soap operas have been completely overlooked in the TV-fear association, even though they have a large adolescent audience and conta...
Article
Both media use and cancer knowledge have been identified as important predictors of a healthy lifestyle. However, little is known about the interplay between these two variables, and about differences between cancer diagnosed and non-diagnosed consumers of media and knowledge. This study investigated the relationship between media use (television a...
Article
Full-text available
Over the years, criminological research has identified a number of risk factors that contribute to the development of aggressive and delinquent behavior. Although studies have identified media violence in general and violent video gaming in particular as significant predictors of aggressive behavior, exposure to violent video games has been largely...
Article
Background Nowadays, there is an abundance of health and cancer information in the mass media. Because of this high amount of information, it is possible for individuals to find or incidentally encounter cancer information, but it is also possible to be overloaded by this information and, consequently, to avoid it. Previous studies have indicated t...
Article
Full-text available
A sample of 844 adults, aged 18-94 years old, was queried about media habits and sleep behavior in face-to-face interviews with standardized questionnaires. A substantial proportion of this sample reported using books (39.8%), television (31.2%), music (26.0%), Internet (23.2%), and videogames (10.3%) as a sleep aid. The use of media as sleep aids...
Article
Few studies have explored the impact of mass media on fear of cancer levels. This study investigates whether television and Internet use are associated with fear of cancer, and whether this association is different for cancer diagnosed and nondiagnosed individuals. A quantitative, standardized survey was used and administered to 2008 respondents in...
Article
Full-text available
Most literature on the relationship between video gaming and sleep disturbances has looked at children and adolescents. There is little research on such a relationship in adult samples. The aim of the current study was to investigate the association of video game volume with sleep quality in adults via face-to-face interviews using standardized que...
Article
Introduction When the world is faced with a new potential pandemic outbreak, the media report heavily about it. Media are an important disseminator of health threat information. This study examined potential media effects during the 2009 outbreak of A/H1N1 influenza. Hypothesis To examine the relationship between media reports of the swine flu and...
Article
Public cooperation with the police is essential for successful crime control. Police can particularly benefit strongly from adolescent cooperation, since young people have a disproportionally high chance of police contact. The current study examines how media use relates to adolescents willingness to assist police. Using survey data collected from...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the present study is to determine whether (1) adolescents' music television viewing at baseline was associated with their smoking behavior 2 years later, and (2) to examine whether respondents' gender and school year moderated this relationship. A prospective cohort study with a 2-year follow-up of 1,147 (baseline non-smoking) adolescent...
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of the current study is to examine whether adolescents’ playing of racing and drive'em up games predicts unlicensed driving in Flanders. A longitudinal panel survey (2006, 2008) was executed among a sample of 1,104 adolescent boys and girls (17–18 years old at baseline measurement) in the Flemish region of Belgium. Logistic regression a...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the study is to examine whether the playing of driving games and the viewing of music videos during adolescence predict crash involvement in emerging adulthood. A prospective cohort study (ND 471) with a five-year interval was used to measure ado- lescents’ gender, media use, personality characteristics (baseline measurement), and crash...
Article
This study investigates the relationship between adolescents' exposure to news, fictional police/crime shows, and reality police shows and their perceptions of the performance, distributive fairness, and procedural fairness of the police and the link with their overall attitude toward the police. Based on the literature, a hypothetical model of med...
Chapter
The objective of this content analysis was to assess the depiction of health content in Flemish entertainment television programs. The quantity and context of health content messages was investigated in a sample of 266 program episodes which were recorded during one month. Based on theories and research, a number of context variables were assessed...
Chapter
Cultivation theory was developed by George Gerbner of the Annenberg School for Communication and his colleagues in the late 1960s. The theory argues that by overemphasizing certain aspects of social reality (such as violent crime) and underrepresenting other aspects, television drama affects people's perceptions of reality. Even though it has attra...
Article
Full-text available
Starting point of this study was the assumption that Alzheimer's disease is made worse for the person who has the disease by the negative regard in which the illness is held by society. The aim was to test by means of a campaign advertisement whether more nuanced counterframes could have an impact while remaining credible and comprehensible to the...
Article
Full-text available
The current study focused on a singular serial killer and rapist case which received a lot of media attention in Belgium. We examined whether exposure to news about this case (case news exposure) was related to personal fear of sexual assault, altruistic fear of crime, and attitudes regarding young adolescents’ safety (ATAGO-score) in a random samp...
Article
This study examined whether the availability of the Internet and TV in the bedroom and overall Internet use and TV viewing were related to sleep variables in a sample of 711 residents of Flanders, Belgium. Although the relations were small, there was some evidence of time shifting: Internet access in the bedroom predicted later bedtime (β = .12, p...
Article
Full-text available
Even though sexual violence has become more prevalent on television and is the crime women fear most in real life, the association between viewing and fear of sexual violence has received scant attention. Structural equation modeling of data from a random sample of 546 Flemish women supported a model in which fear of sexual violence was predicted b...
Article
This study analyzes the depiction of the procedural fairness with which police officers in fictional police shows exercise their authority. This study uses the relational model of procedural justice to examine whether and to what extent police officers in CSI Miami, NCIS, Without a Trace, and The Mentalist provide opportunities for participation fo...
Article
This study has two main objectives. First, it is examined whether the frequent exposure to music video viewing is associated with driving after the consumption of alcohol. Second, it is examined which theoretical framework, a combination of Cultivation Theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior or the Problem Behavior Theory, is suited best to expla...
Article
Both news media and entertainment fiction may lead to short-term and enduring fright reactions. Even TV programs, movies and news made for children may trigger fear. Preoperational children (3 to 7 years of age) are most afraid of fantasy characters, transformations and interpersonal violence. Operational children (8 to 11 years) are more afraid of...
Article
Traffic crashes remain an important cause of injury and death among young people. The aim of the current study was to examine whether adolescents' viewing of particular television genres predicted later risky driving. Data were collected with a two-wave panel survey (N = 426); structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships betwe...
Article
Considerable differences exist in the size and direction of the relationship between television viewing and fear of crime found by previous studies. This article argues that different types of fear exist and that fear should not be confused with perception of risk. A distinction was introduced between dispositional fear of crime and situational fea...
Article
The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between exposure to television news messages about cervical cancer and women's vulnerability perceptions and fear. Five-hundred women aged 18-85 years were randomly recruited to participate in a survey-interview. A standardized questionnaire assessed risk perception, fear of cervical cance...
Article
Previous research on the relationship between television viewing and fear of crime has not paid much attention to explanatory processes and has concentrated mainly on socio-demographic variables and direct experience. This study looked at personal risk perception and ability to cope as predictors of fear most likely to be influenced by the vivid im...
Article
Both news media and entertainment fiction may lead to short-term and enduring fright reactions. Even TV programs, movies and news made for children may trigger fear. Preoperational children (3 to 7 years of age) are most afraid of fantasy characters, transformations and interpersonal violence. Operational children (8 to 11 years) are more afraid of...
Article
Purpose: Music video viewing is a very popular pastime among adolescents. The publiccriticism of music videos has encouraged researchers to examine the effects of music videoexposure. Although an association between music video exposure and several health riskbehaviors (e.g. drinking) has been found, the relationship between music video viewing and...
Article
This study explored the impact of adolescents' playing of racing and drive'em up games on their risky driving behavior. Participants were 354 adolescent boys and girls who took part in a longitudinal panel survey on video game playing and risk taking attitudes, intentions and behaviors. In line with cultivation theory and theory of planned behavior...
Article
Traffic crashes are an important cause of injury and death among young people.It has been argued that there may be an association between media depictions ofrisky driving and adolescents' driving behaviour. However, the actual depictionof driving on television has remained largely unexamined. In the current study,content analysis was used to examin...
Article
This study aimed to explore the relationship between adolescents’ viewing of docu soaps and their career aspirations. The results show that among a sample of 369 adolescents in their last year of secondary education, regular viewing of a docu soap about midwives, veterinarians or para-commandos was a significant predictor of more positive perceptio...
Article
The media are an important part of young people's lives, but television, computer games, Internet use, cellular phone use, and even book reading threaten healthy sleep. Adults do not fully comprehend the ways in which young people use various media. Media use is a type of behavior that may displace sleep time or shorten it. Media content may lead t...
Article
The aim of this experiment was to examine the differential impact of a narrative and a non-narrative skin cancer message on health promoting actions and information-seeking behaviors. Participants were 230 Flemish university students aged 18 to 25 years who participated in a web based experiment in February 2009. Students were randomly assigned to...
Article
Full-text available
Traffic crashes are an important cause of injury and death among young people. It has heen argued that there may be an association between media depictions of risky driving and adolescents' driving behaviour. However, the actual depiction of driving on television has remained largely unexamined. In the current study, content analysis was used to ex...
Article
To investigate the relationship between adolescents' frequency of watching semi-explicit sexual television content and their fear of getting AIDS. A longitudinal cohort study was conducted to test whether fourth grade students (N = 733) who regularly watched sexually semi-explicit content at baseline were less likely to be afraid of getting AIDS on...
Article
The aim of this study was to construct a closed-end measure of moral reasoning on interpersonal violence (CEMRIV) and to explore the relationship between television exposure and children's use of moral reasoning strategies. Participants were 377 elementary school children in fourth to sixth grade who completed questionnaires containing measures on...
Article
To examine whether television viewing, computer game playing or book reading during meals predicts meal skipping with the aim of watching television, playing computer games or reading books (media meal skipping). A cross-sectional study was conducted using a standardized self-administered questionnaire. Analyses were controlled for age, gender and...
Article
The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is widespread, even among people who use conventional medicine. Positive beliefs about CAM are common among physicians and medical students. Little is known about the beliefs regarding CAM among the general public. Among science students, belief in CAM was predicted by belief in the paranormal...
Article
Full-text available
A pandemic outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza is believed to coincide with large-scale panic. Even without an outbreak fear of infection may be widespread. Mass media coverage of the risks of a pandemic may lead to higher levels of fear. An ecological study looked at data from 23 member states of the European Union and controlled for population size,...
Article
To examine the prevalence of visiting pro-anorexia websites by 13-, 15- and 17-year old adolescents and to explore correlates of visiting such websites and predictors of anorexia nervosa (AN). Questionnaire in a sample of 711 secondary school children from the 7th, 9th and 11th grade in Flanders, Belgium. 12.6% of the girls and 5.9% of the boys had...
Article
To determine whether the ratio of television-to-exercise predicted overweight in adolescents. Prospective cohort study with two years of follow-up of 1276 thirteen and sixteen year olds in Flanders, Belgium. Self reported weight, height, and the television-to-exercise ratio were registered in 2003. The main outcome measure was being overweight in 2...
Article
Full-text available
This chapter demonstrates the influence of the socio-emotional quality of small-group functioning in a collaborative learning setting. It reports a case study from a sophomores’ class at a Belgian university. The subjects were 142 undergraduates sub-divided into 12 project-groups of 12 students each. Following a description of the collaborative lea...
Article
This study assessed the relationship between exposure to breast cancer content in television news programs and fear of breast cancer. A quantitative standardized Health and Media Interview Survey was administered to a random sample of 500 Flemish women aged 18-85 years in 2007. The survey contained closed measures on demographics, breast cancer fea...
Article
In a sample of 2193 adolescents the impact of racing games and drive'em up games on the intention to engage in risky driving was examined. The results indicated that playing video games is a small predictor of attitudes (standardized total effect of .171), which in turn, predict fun riding intentions (R(2) = .555).
Article
Volgens de cultivatietheorie ontwikkelen zware televisiekijkers geleidelijk aan een beeld van de wereld dat gaat lijken op de versie van de werkelijkheid die door televisie wordt verspreid. "Television viewing cultivates assumptions about the facts of life that reflect the medium's most recurrent portrayals" (Morgan & Shanahan, 1997, p. 8). Sommige...
Article
There are recurring stories about children dying by accident after imitating an act or behavior they saw in the media. Reliable data to ascertain whether and to what extent this is a serious problem are largely absent. The potential for media to act as a vector for risky behaviors is a topic subject to epidemiologic inquiry.
Article
Traffic crashes are a major cause of injury and death. Although it has been argued that a skewed estimation of personal risks may be partly attributable to news representations of mortality causes, the manners in which traffic crashes are covered in the news have not received much attention in the literature. The current study used content analysis...
Article
This study explored the relationship between adolescents' viewing of specific television genres (action movies, news and music videos) and the intention to take risks in traffic. Participants were 2194 adolescent boys and girls who completed a questionnaire on television viewing, risk perception and the intention to speed and drive after consuming...
Article
Full-text available
To assess the prevalence of the use of mobile phones by adolescents after lights out and its relationship to tiredness levels after one year. Prospective cohort study with self-reports and follow up questionnaire after one year. Second- and fifth-year secondary school children in 15 schools in Flanders, Belgium. 1656 school children; 52.1% boys. Av...
Article
This study aimed to explore the relationship between adolescents' viewing of docu soaps and their career aspirations. The results show that among a sample of 369 adolescents in their last year of secondary education, regular viewing of a docu soap about midwives, veterinarians or para-commandos was a significant predictor of more positive perceptio...
Article
A review of the literature reveals that the possibility of lunar influence on various aspects of human health and behavior has long been taken seriously in established scientific journals. The purpose of this article is to extend this perspective to media research by focusing on the relation between lunar cycles and television viewing behavior. In...
Article
To describe the use of media as a sleep aid in adolescents and relate this to their sleep routines and feelings of tiredness. A questionnaire about using media as a sleep aid, media presence in bedrooms, time to bed and time out of bed on average weekdays and average weekend days, and questions regarding level of tiredness in the morning, at school...
Article
Drawing on uses and gratifications research on the one hand and structural factors explanations on the other hand, this study looked at 4 types of news viewing: intentional news exposure, unintentional news exposure, unintentional news avoidance, and intentional news avoidance. News exposure and news avoidance were analyzed using both a single ques...
Article
This study examined self-reported meal skipping and eating faster than usual with the goal of watching television or playing computer games. Respondents reported their media use and indicated how often they skipped a meal to watch a favourite television programme or to play a computer game, and how often they ate faster than usual in order to watch...

Network

Cited By