Kristen Harrison

University of Michigan | U-M · Communication and Media

As media’s (e.g., television, movies, news) presence becomes increasingly prominent in individuals’ everyday lives, it is critical to consider how emerging adult men and women acquire gender norm information. Accordingly, this study explores how emerging adults’ everyday life gender norm experiences and media gender norm perceptions contribute to g...

In a culture where media increasingly permeate everyday life experiences, this study explores where emerging adult interviewees acquire gender norm information and how this information is applied to future gender norm expectations. Qualitative research has considered emerging adults’ future life expectations; however, it has not concurrently explor...

Media sensory curation theory conceptualizes sensory regulation within the built environment as a gratification of electronic media use and predictor of parent-child conflict over children’s media use. This paper replicates an initial survey of caregivers of children ages 3 to 14 with an independent replication survey of N = 754. As in the original...

Empowerment-themed advertisements are becoming an attractive marketing strategy for companies due to their popularity among female consumers, but there is no known empirical work examining their effectiveness at increasing women’s felt empowerment. The explicit narrative of these ostensibly empowering advertisements seems empowering, but the visual...

Communication research has traditionally defined its subject as language and the chief gratification of media use as the exchange of information between senders and receivers. However, information exchange falls short as an explanation for child media practices like those described in Gaming Disorder, recently classified as a disease by the World H...

Background Childhood obesity is a nutrition‐related disease with multiple underlying aetiologies. While genetic factors contribute to obesity, the gut microbiome is also implicated through fermentation of nondigestible polysaccharides to short‐chain fatty acids (SCFA), which provide some energy to the host and are postulated to act as signalling mo...

Parental mediation of screen media (e.g., television, video games) is associated with better outcomes for children. Although much research has examined parental mediation of television (TV), there is a dearth of research examining communication about mobile media (e.g., Smartphones, tablets) in the digital age. This study seeks to identify themes o...

The preschool years set a precedent for lifelong habits integral to health. This research brief investigated how familial correlates within a household context, such as television use, BMI, and feeding practices, are related to child physical activity (CPA). Parents of preschoolers (N = 278, average age 40–76 months) completed survey measures of CP...

This study investigated how emerging adult women perceive, role model, and wishfully identify with female television news personalities (TVNPs) in the contemporary climate of social media celebrity where a male-dominated newsroom persists. Participants (n = 138, M = 19.58 years) selected TVNPs and completed survey measures of exposure, personal wor...

Media sensory curation theory, introduced here, complements theories of informational, emotional, and relational media gratifications. Sensory curation theory conceptualizes media devices as tools people use to help maintain sensory regulation by simultaneously capturing and curbing sensory input within built and natural environments. This article...

Relationships with media figures—referred to as parasocial relationships—provide a means for adolescents to explore and define their romantic and sexual identities (Boon & Lomore, 2001; Engle & Kasser, 2005; Karniol, 2001). However, more often than not, adolescents’ romantic attachments to media figures are ignored or dismissed as frivolous in the...

Greater consumption of and access to screen media are known correlates of unhealthy sleep behavior in preschoolers. What remains unknown, however, is the role a child’s media use plays in this association. Parents and guardians of U.S. preschoolers (N = 278, average child age 56 months) provided information about their child’s nightly duration of s...

Although problematic media use among adolescents is of wide interest, less is known regarding problematic media use among younger children. The current study reports on the development and validation of a parent-report measure of one potential aspect of children’s problematic use—screen media addiction—via the Problematic Media Use Measure (PMUM)....

Research has connected family mealtimes with nutrition, child development, and child academic performance. However, it is not clear how television is associated with the quality of family mealtimes, especially mealtime ritualization (MR), mealtime harmony (MH), and child food intake. Parents of preschoolers (N = 278, average age 40–76 months) compl...

Low-income children are at greater risk for excess screen time and negative correlates associated with screen media use. The goal of this study is to increase our understanding of low-income mothers’ beliefs and practices around their children’s television (TV) use (parental mediation). We administered semi-structured interviews to 296 low-income m...

Sex worker experience of risk (e.g., physical violence or rape) is shaped by race, gender, and context. For web-based sex workers, experience of risk is comparatively minimal; what is unclear is how web-based sex workers manage risk and if online advertising plays a role in risk management. Building on intersectionality theory and research explorin...

Media exposure is correlated with child obesity, yet the family behaviors underlying this link remain poorly understood. Using data from a sample of U.S. parents and their preschoolers, this study assessed parent and child exposure to 5 different media along with child dietary intake. Child healthy-meal schemas were measured with the Placemat Proto...

Most studies of ideal-body media effects on body image focus on the extreme thinness of the models, not their idealness. In modern media, this idealness is often created or maximized via digital image editing. This experiment tested the effects of image editing outside the research-typical context of exclusive thinness. Original unretouched photogr...

Childhood obesity is a major public health problem in the USA, with youth at all stages of development at increasing risk (Health, 2008). Between 1976 and 2004, increases in overweight prevalence ranged from 5.0 % to 12.4 % for 2-to-5-year olds, 6.5 % to 17 % for 6-to-11-year olds, and 5.0 % to 17.6 % for 12- to– 19-year olds (Ogden, Carroll, &, Fl...

A growing body of evidence suggests that entertainment-education (EE) is a promising health communication strategy. The purpose of this study was to identify some of the factors that facilitate and hinder audience involvement with EE messages. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors introduce a construct they call experiential involvement,...

A longitudinal panel survey of 396 White and Black preadolescent boys and girls was conducted to assess the long-term effects of television consumption on global self-esteem. The results revealed television exposure, after controlling for age, body satisfaction, and baseline self-esteem, was significantly related to children’s self-esteem. Specific...

A potential barrier to healthy eating in childhood is media marketing of obesogenic foods, yet little research has linked young children's media and dietary habits. This study reports data from 423 parents and 354 2- to 4-year-old children in the Midwestern United States, from the first wave of a 3-wave prospective panel study. Variables included f...

Abstract— Overweight in childhood sets the stage for a lifelong struggle with weight and eating and raises the risk of health problems, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, sleep apnea, and heart disease. Research from multiple disciplinary fields has identified scores of contributing factors. Efforts to integrate these factors into a...

Body image and eating behavior are important factors in adolescent development because they can have grave effects, including anorexia, bulimia, and obesity. Over 36% of deaths in the U.S. have recently been linked to cardiovascular disease, which has part of its origin in poor diet. From 40% to 60% of adolescent girls and women are dissatisfied wi...

The 150 top-selling video games sold in the U.S. across nine platforms were content analyzed to study representations of female bodies. All human females in the games were captured via screenshot and body parts measured. These measurements were then compared to actual anthropometric data drawn from a representative sample of 3,000 American women. T...

The Multidimensional Media Influence Scale (MMIS; Cusumano & Thompson, 2001). Media influence and body image in 8-11-year-old boys and girls: A preliminary report on the multidimensional media influence scale. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 29, 37-44) is a child-appropriate, 3-factor scale designed to assess perceived media influence on...

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between exposure to sexual music videos and young people's sexual attitudes (i.e., premarital sexual permissiveness and endorsement of the sexual double standard). Items gauging exposure to 75 music videos ranging in sexual explicitness were used to measure sexual video viewing among a sampl...

Although the link between media consumption and eating disorders has been widely studied, relatively little is known about the development of this link in childhood. A longitudinal panel survey of 315 White and Black preadolescent boys and girls revealed that television exposure, after controlling for age, perceived body size, selective exposure to...

The development of a drive for muscularity among boys has been linked to various cultural influences, one of which is exposure to mass media depicting the muscular male body ideal. We sought to determine whether self-reported exposure to four ideal-body magazine genres (health/fitness, fashion, sports, and gaming) predicted an increased drive for m...

This study describes a content analysis of food advertisements featured in television programming popular with children. Advertisements featuring no Black primary characters were compared on the basis of character and food attributes with ads featuring at least one Black primary character. Advertised foods were then analyzed for the compliance of t...

Two experiments tested the effects of exposure to ideal-body images and text on young adults’ eating behavior. Women viewed slides depicting images of slender female models with no text, with diet- and exercise-related (congruent) text, with irrelevant (incongruent) text, or no slides (control). Men viewed slides depicting images of muscular male m...

Identity complexity has been associated with resilience, such that people with multidimensional self-concepts appear to suffer fewer emotional and physical health problems in response to stress. Adolescence is a time to build identities and manage new stressors; therefore, self-complexity is an important topic for research concerning adolescents. S...

Internalization of the thin body ideal is considered by many to account for the relationship between media exposure and disordered eating among girls and young women, but almost all supporting research has employed adolescent and adult samples. Using longitudinal panel survey data collected from 257 preadolescent girls at 2 points in time 1 year ap...

Examined the relationship between college women's media use and 2 sets of variables (disordered-eating symptomatology and a set of related variables, including body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness) and assessed the relationship between college men's media use and their endorsement of thinness for themselves and for women. 232 female and 190...

Survey data collected from 61 African American adolescent girls explored body mass index as a moderator of the relationship between girls' ideal-body television exposure and their perceptions of how same-sex peers expect them to look. For larger-bodied girls, ideal-body television viewing predicted the belief that female peers expect them to be sma...

We sought to code food (nutritional content and food type and eating occasion) and character (cartoon and live action) attributes of food advertisements airing during television programs heavily viewed by children, and to represent and evaluate the nutritional content of advertised foods in terms of the nutrition facts label. Food advertisements (n...

Objectification theory posits that Western culture socializes girls and women to self-objectify by adopting a third-person perspective on their bodies. Feminist philosopher Iris Young (1990) argued that such self-objectification accounts for “throwing like a girl” and other constrained and ineffective motor performances. The authors’ hypothesis was...

The family diet is influenced by children's attitudes toward food, which in turn are influenced by television. In a panel study involving 134 children in 1st to 3rd grade, television viewing, nutritional knowledge, and nutritional reasoning were measured 6 weeks apart. Television viewing predicted subsequent decrements in nutritional knowledge and...

To more fully address the media's influence on girls, in this chapter we unite and summarize evidence indicating a link between media use and girls' attitudes about gender roles, their bodies, and sexual relationships. Focusing on TV and magazine content (media on which the three literatures are based), we examine the findings of 129 studies compil...

Two studies were conducted to (a) examine the gender-role stereotypical, counterstereotypical, and gender-neutral messages contained in a sample of first- and second-grade children's favorite television programs; and (b) to link the results of the content analysis to the children's gender-role values and interpersonal attraction to same- and opposi...

This chapter extends our reviews of theory and research concerning media influences on weight and body shape in girls and women. There is no doubt that mass media are important sources of what we think about, how we evaluate what we think about, what we overlook and ignore, and how we interact with important people in our lives. There is also no do...

The community of sport is a pervasive, influential, complex, and restricted community comprised not only of participants such as coaches, athletes, and referees, but also of spectators at both live and mediated sporting events. Additionally, sports media, amateur and professional sports organizations, sport governing bodies, and fan clubs occupy te...

This study examined whether the relationship between exposure to sexually oriented television and sexual expectations differed by gender, controlling for several key variables including characteristics of past or current romantic relationship, perceived reality of television, and the motivation to watch television to learn about the world. The resu...

Recent surveys have suggested that sports media exposure may be linked to adolescents' body perceptions. This study tested this relationship from the perspective of objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) by surveying and experimenting with 426 adolescent females aged 10–19. Sports magazine reading predicted greater body satisfaction a...

Recent surveys have suggested that sports media exposure may be linked to adolescents' body perceptions. This study tested this relationship from the perspective of objectification theory (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997) by surveying and experimenting with 426 adolescent females aged 10-19. Sports magazine reading predicted greater body satisfaction...

Dozens of studies have linked ideal-body media exposure to the idealization of a slim female figure, but none have examined the proportions of this figure. College women's and men's exposure to ideal-body images on television was correlated with their perceptions of the ideal female bust, waist, and hip sizes and their approval of surgical body-alt...

Research has shown that exposure to thin-ideal media is related to eating disorder symptomatology, yet little is known about the processes underlying this relationship. Following self-discrepancy theory, it was predicted that body-specific self-discrepancies would mediate the relationship between thin-ideal media exposure and disordered eating. A s...

A survey of 303 first- to third-grade children measured relationships between (a) television viewing and interpersonal attraction (IA) to television characters and (b) fat stereotyping, body shape standards, and eating disorder symptomatology. Television viewing predicted an increased tendency among males to stereotype a fat female target and also...

The aim of this study was to replicate survey research demonstrating a correlation between adults' thin-ideal media exposure and eating disorders (Harrison & Cantor, 1997) with a sample of 366 adolescents. Measures included interest in body-improvement media content, exposure to thin-ideal television and magazines, exposure to fat-character televis...

This study was conducted to examine enduring fright reactions to mass media via recollective self-reports of a sample of undergraduates (average age 20.6 years) from two universities. Ninety percent (138 of 153) of the participants reported such a reaction. Most experiences occurred in childhood or adolescence, with 26.1% of the participants still...

This article has two goals. The first is to consider what the social-psychological literature on social identity, ingroup-outgroup perception, and prejudice contributes to the understanding of AIDS-related stigma. The second is to address ways to make the world more comfortable and compassionate for people with AIDS (PWAs). At the core of AIDS-rela...

A study was conducted to examine the link between college women's interpersonal attraction to female media personalities of various body sizes, and several indices of disordered eating symptomatology. Interpersonal attraction to thin television characters and magazine models, operationalized as a combination of liking, feeling similar to, and wanti...