Robert Kubey

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Rutgers · School of Communication and Information, Department of Journalism and Media Studies

This chapter advances research on media literacy by reviewing studies that utilize media literacy in either short-term or long-term interventions. Media literacy interventions on a wide array of topics including violence, smoking, alcohol, and advertising are reviewed. Effectiveness of media literacy is discussed using various criteria: duration of...

Although the literature addresses U.S. newspaper coverage of the issue of genetically modified (GM) food, there is no corresponding literature on television coverage, in spite of the fact that television is still a primary source in the United States for information about science. This article discusses national evening news coverage (ABC, CBS, NBC...

The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is a quasi-naturalistic method that involves signaling research subjects at random times throughout the day, often for a week or longer, and asking them to report on the nature and quality of their experience. The method has been applied to an increasing number of research problems in medicine, the social scienc...

Media literacy education is at a watershed moment around the world. We are making the inevitable and gradual turn to changing what we do in classrooms to make education more student-centered and responsive to children's and society's real-world needs. In the pages ahead, the author explores the goals of media education and why it is important, how...

This article discusses the critical importance of media education to the teaching of civics and social studies and examines approaches to civics via media literacy. Useful Web site resources are also given. This article argues that in a representative democracy, people must be educated in all forms of contemporary mediated expression and well beyon...

The article considers historical, political, and sociological explanations for why the United States lags behind the rest of the English-speaking world in the formal delivery of media education. Developments in media education are examined with respect to how media, leisure, and the popular arts are conceptualized in the United States and in contra...

The Assignment: Media Literacy curriculum is a 6-module media literacy curriculum developed by Renee Hobbs of Babson College and her staff in collaboration with the Discovery Channel. There are three versions of Assignment: Media Literacy, one for elementary school students, one for middle school students, and one for high school students. Close ev...

The primary theoretical research perspectives that have informed the field of mass communication over the past 70 years are examined with regard to what each perspective has explicitly stated or implied about whether audiences and audience members are active or passive. We see these audience conceptualizations as central to longstanding debates on...

Recent research at colleges and universities has suggested that some college students’ academic performance might be impaired by heavier use of the Internet. This study reviews the relevant literature and presents data from a survey of 572 students at a large public university. Heavier recreational Internet use was shown to be correlated highly wit...

This article examines the political, economic, historic, and cultural explanations for why the United States lags behind other major English-speaking countries in the formal delivery of media education. The research relies on formal documents and newsletters, interviews with leading media education researchers and teachers from numerous nations, an...

The Professors are a blues, rock, and sometime heavy metal band made up of communication professors from a number of New Jersey schools. Formed in 1995, the band has played in clubs in New York City as well as a number of academic venues, including the annual conference of the International Communication Association in Chicago in 1996 and the annua...

This research examines the issue of diversity and cable television from a content analysis of 1,035 randomly chosen moments from four channel sources: network, cable, independent and public television. The research focuses on whether the growth in channels has changed the representative diversity of those who appear on TV in terms of race, gender a...

One hundred seven adults' family activities and experiences were studied via the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). Respondents carried automatic paging devices and were randomly signalled to fill out self‐reports over the period of one week. While some scholars have claimed that communication during television viewing is nonexistent, talking occurr...

Television viewers’ subjective experiences before a heavy and light night of television viewing were studied via the Experience Sampling Method. Respondents were supplied with radio controlled paging devices and signalled to report their mood and cognitive states at random times over the course of a week. Subjects reported significantly lower moods...

The media habits and experiences of 483 subjects whose ages ranged from 9 to 15 years were studied via the Experience Sampling Method. Respondents carried electronic paging devices and reported on their activities and subjective experiences when signaled. General descriptive findings on the use and experience of three forms of new video entertainme...

Studies of diffusion after major unanticipated news events have rarely examined what happens emotionally to people after they receive the news and how diffusion patterns interact with emotional reaction. Findings from this exploratory study of 105 college‐age respondents indicate that the need to cope with unsettling news helps drive both media use...

The decline in TV viewing and increase in music listening associated with the onset of adolescence is examined in terms of the changing social ecology of adolescents' daily lives. Fifth to 9th graders provided self-reports on random moments in their experience over one week. These data suggest that less frequent TV watching by adolescents, as compa...

One-hundred-four adult workers' affective and cognitive responses to television were studied via the recently developed Experience Sampling Method in which respondents are supplied with radio controlled electronic paging devices and signaled to report their mood states at random times over the course of a normal week. The activity of television vie...

The research literature on television and aging has grown substantially in recent years. The major questions and problems now facing the field are addressed and integrated via a complete historical review of research findings. Topics covered include: the meaning and significance of the aged's viewing habits, the economic and sociological factors un...

N. S. Endler et al (see record 1979-26949-001) incorrectly reported that 12 schools included in their top 82 US psychology departments in terms of total citations were not included in K. D. Roose and C. J. Andersen's (1970) rating of graduate departments. Actually, 19 schools were omitted in Roose and Andersen's ratings. The 7 schools Endler et al...

This study of the impact of television on the moods of adults examined responses to television in the subjects' natural habitats and compared mood states while watching television to moods associated with other daily activities. Data were gathered by the recently developed method of experiential sampling in which automatic paging devices signal sub...

Summarizes existing psychological data on TV addiction and TV addicts and presents 4 theoretical models of TV addiction. These models suggest that TV addiction is (1) based on TV's effects on imagination and fantasy life, (2) a function of TV's effects on arousal level, (3) a manifestation of oral, dependent, or addictive personality, and (4) a dis...

The diagnostic criteria for substance dependence used by psychologists and psychiatrists are applied to known features of habitual television viewing behavior. The case is made that for some persons, television viewing habits may constitute psychological dependence. Methods aimed at controlling media habits are offered as is advice for those respon...