Sexual Content in Indian TV Commercials

The Emerging Trends in Global Advertising Varsha Jain & Subhadip Roy 175

‘Rural Informatics’: Use of Information and Communication Technologies for the Rural Poor – From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity in Rural India

Rajesh Kumar 183

Sexual Content in Indian TV Commercials Meraj Ahmed Mubarki 191

Accumulating Japanese Popular Culture: Media Consumption Experiences of Malaysian Young Adults

Yamato Eriko 199

Gender Stereotyping in Television Commercials Aimed at Children in India M. Anuradha 209

A Two-Wave Panel Investigation of the Influence of Viewing Prosocial Behaviour on Television on the Sociality of Elementary School Children in Japan

Mari Hasegawa, Yukiko Horiuchi, Kanae Suzuki, Makiko Sado & Akira Sakamoto 216

Volume 39 Number 4 2012

VOLUME 39 NUMBER 4 2012

FEATURES

Editorial .................................................................................................... 174

ARTICLES

The Emerging Trends in Global AdvertisingVarsha Jain & Subhadip Roy ...................................................................175

‘Rural Informatics’: Use of Information and CommunicationTechnologies for the Rural Poor – From Digital Divide toDigital Opportunity in Rural IndiaRajesh Kumar ............................................................................................183

Sexual Content in Indian TV CommercialsMeraj Ahmed Mubarki ............................................................................191

Accumulating Japanese Popular Culture: Media ConsumptionExperiences of Malaysian Young AdultsYamato Eriko .............................................................................................199

Gender Stereotyping in Television Commercials Aimed at Childrenin IndiaM. Anuradha .............................................................................................209

A Two-Wave Panel Investigation of the Influence of ViewingProsocial Behaviour on Television on the Sociality of ElementarySchool Children in JapanMari Hasegawa, Yukiko Horiuchi, Kanae Suzuki, Makiko Sado& Akira Sakamoto ....................................................................................216

an Asian Mass Communication Quarterly

MICA (P) No: 102/04/2012ISSN 0129–6612

Media Asia

MEDIA ASIA is published quarterly by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University (WKWSCI–NTU). The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of AMIC, WKWSCI–NTU or of the organisations with which they are associated.

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Editors in ChiefSundeep R. MuppidiMaria Mercedes F. Robles

Associate EditorSidney Yap Yee Lan

CopyeditorKathleen Fields

Editorial Advisory CommitteeAlan KnightAng Peng HwaDaya ThussuJaved JabbarJohn LentSrinivas MelkoteVinod Pavarala

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EDITORIAL

This is my last issue as Editor-in-Chief. I am happy to hand over the responsibility to Dr Cherian George, who will be the Editor-in-Chief from

the next issue, while I have agreed to assist as the Editor (Research) for some more time. In this issue, the articles are on various themes of interest to communication scholars. In the first article, ‘The Emerging Trends in Global Advertising’, the authors Varsha Jain and Subhadip Roy explore the global advertising scenario and the factors that need to be considered while designing a global advertisement, including how they enhance global brand performance and ensure advertising success. The authors point out that adopting a global advertising strategy is a challenging task for advertisers, as different societies follow different sets of rules and regulations especially in a multicultural consumer community. In the next paper by Rajesh Kumar, ‘Rural Informatics’: Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for the Rural Poor – From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity in Rural India’, the author analyses ICT policy for the rural poor people in India and discusses the possibilities of evolving an integrated approach for participatory rural development where the participation of the local community and an inclusion of a traditional knowledge system is taken into consideration. In his paper, ‘Sexual Content in Indian TV Commercials’, Meraj Mubarki analyses 365 TV commercials for sexual content. While his results found that a quarter of all Indian TV commercials contain sexual information, he notes: “Sex or sexual content is not just limited to advertisements where the dominant advertising appeal is sexual. On the contrary, sexual content has ‘spilled’ over in TV commercials where the dominant appeal of the advertisement is emotional or argumentative.” Not surprisingly, his data attests that women play more leading roles than men in TV commercials with sexual content

and body display is the primary form of sexual expression followed by sexual referents and sexual behaviour. Yamato Eriko’s paper, ‘Accumulating Japanese Popular Culture: Media Consumption Experiences of Malaysian Young Adults’, explores media consumption of Japanese popular culture among Malaysian young adults. This paper discusses the ‘accumulation’ of Japanese popular culture as part of media consumption experiences and emphasises that without a sophisticated depiction of ‘an essential human aspect’ to which young Malaysians could relate, Japanese popular culture would not be well liked. M. Anuradha’s paper, ‘Gender Stereotyping in Television Commercials Aimed at Children’, explores the nature of representation of boys and girls and their association with activities and products while analysing and measuring gender stereotypical representation in children’s television commercials using social learning theory and cultivation analysis perspectives. The final paper, ‘A Two-Wave Panel Investigation of the Influence of Viewing Prosocial Behaviour on Television on the Sociality of Elementary School Children in Japan’, is written by Mari Hasegawa, Yukiko Horiuchi, Kanae Suzuki, Makiko Sado and Akira Sakamoto. This paper investigates the influence of television viewing on the attentive awareness and actual prosocial behaviour of elementary school children using a causal analysis of data from a two-wave panel survey administered to 487 children, first in the fourth grade and again in the fifth grade. The results reveal that simply viewing large quantities of prosocial behaviour scenes does not encourage prosocial behaviour but are influenced by other factors like contextual information and empathy. I wish to thank AMIC, my research team and all Media Asia readers for your support during my term as Editor-in-Chief and hope that you will continue your support to the journal and the incoming team in the future. Thank you, happy holidays and a very happy new year!

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Varsha Jain is Research Fellow, Head Division of Integrated Marketing Communication, at Mudra Institute of Communications Research, India. Subhadip Roy is Assistant Professor in IBS, Hyderabad.

Globalisation is a driving force for advertising in today’s interconnected world. Such a scenario provides an opportunity to marketers to develop standardised advertising that delivers a consistent brand image over the globe. However, advertising as such on the larger scale requires global integration and local responsiveness. This is important as the consumer profiles vary across the world and need to be addressed through advertising messages. Marketers need to know about a country’s background and the local market to develop the long-lasting association. This paper highlights the global advertising scenario with its changing trends and macro-micro environmental factors that need to be considered while designing a global advertisement. These parameters effectively enhance the global brand performance and ensure advertising success. Moreover, it also stresses that adopting a global advertising strategy is a challenging task, as different countries follow unique sets of rules and regulations apart from multicultural consumer community.

Varsha JainSubhadip Roy

The Emerging Trends in Global Advertising

Advertising plays a crucial role in the lives of the consumers (Cheema, 2002). The global advertising segment is growing by 5 percent

(Rosenberg, 2007). The USA is growing at a much slower pace as compared to the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) countries. Many agencies have segmented the countries on the basis of their growth rate such as BRIC nations in the first segment; the US and Germany in the second; the UK, Italy, France and Spain in the third; and in the fourth segment, Japan. In all these countries consumers are very vigilant about the products and the brands they buy. Therefore, advertisements are thoroughly grounded by their desires and expectations (Shah, 2011) and thus in a mature market, such as the US, advertising focus is on product information, whereas in the less mature market it emphasises on lifestyle of the consumers (Narayanan and Srinivasa-Raghavan, 2011). Moreover, geographical expansion has taken place in many countries. Eventually, new media has taken a new shape in the advertising world. Usage of mobiles and Internet has increased exponentially, providing a wider platform for the advertisers and marketers. Consumers

are accessing the Internet even from their mobile phones (Shah, 2011).

Emergence of Global AdvertisingSince the nineteenth century, advertisers realised that needs could be created in the minds of the consumers by well thought-out advertisements. Once the needs were developed, companies manufactured products to fulfil these perceived needs and wants. Subsequently, catchy taglines and slogans were developed by the organisations. Even trademarks and logos were created so as to inform and differentiate the brands. Therefore, it can be stated that the earlier twentieth century focused on concept, content and graphics in advertising. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the consolidation in the global advertising industry took place through mergers and acquisitions. Mega agencies were created such as WPP-Omnicom group and Euro RSCG worldwide. These agencies provided comprehensive services to the clients. The dramatic impact of globalisation and consolidation were observed even on the companies in terms of size, reach and character. Moreover, media industry also consolidated and helped the advertisers to purchase various marketing packages. Online tracking technology was developed to help in understanding the effectiveness of the advertisements. However, in mid-2000s, the marketers focused on quantitative results,

“To be successful on a global scale, companies need to focus on three critical success factors: global visibility, global mindset and global capability. What differentiates the world’s most ad-mired global companies is their standing commitment; these companies do not retread from the global race at a mere blip in the economy – they play for the long term.”

– Wisdom of the CEO, Price Waterhouse Coopers, February 2000 (Scott, 2001)“If so many of our customers are operating globally, shouldn’t advertising follow them?”

(Hallberg, 2006)

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and demanded for more accountability and figures for return on marketing investments which were difficult for the advertising industry. Broadly, it can be stated that in the last 50 years of advertising, multi-country brands have shown a phenomenal growth. Global branding and advertising have gone through different phases: the first phase started from the 1950s through 1980s and global branding was known as ‘glocal’. In this era, many large multi-national companies expanded their presence in other parts of the world and had complete freedom of selecting the brand names and positioning strategies to sell their products. The next phase started in early 1990s and global brands were created with the vision of delivering the same characteristics and associations along with delivering the consistent experience to the customers of different countries (Global Industry Overview: Advertising Agencies, 2006). Thus, the companies either went for standardised communication or adopted different strategies for different countries as the promotional mix along with the media variation. For example, Asian countries were more collectivistic in culture. Brands have used outdoor advertising, with the objective of creating good word-of-mouth in a tactical way (Case Study 1), whereas in Western countries, the same brands have used traditional media such as television and print.

Global ScenarioGlobalisation is a driving force for advertising (Wilkins, 2002). The marketplace is changing dramatically as each national economy embraces the global economy (Chow and Sarit, 2006). During the early 2000s, “one of the worst industry downturns” happened in the advertising industry. The revenue of the agencies was badly affected and they were unable to reach the pre-2001 level. Advertisers became conscious about the cost and started focusing on targeted advertising. They even included Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to increase the return on the advertising. CRM helped advertisers to integrate the information about market trends, sales, marketing effectiveness, customers and consumer behaviour perspectives. The advertising market turned a corner in 2004 and it began an upward trend, with the Asian region growing steadily (“Global Industry Overview: Advertising Agencies”, 2006).

Global AdSpend ScenarioGlobal advertising gained success when it was perceived to be semantically equivalent to multi-cultural consumers (Domzal and Kernan, 1993). Global advertising spending in 2010 grew by 10 percent whereas in 2009 it showed a fall of 10.5 percent. In BRIC, there was a strong growth of

The ‘Impossible is Nothing’ campaign by Adidas started in 2003 in Japan, with a stunt that involved two footballers suspended on bungee cords dribbling a ball on an artificial football field made on the backdrop of a billboard (Figure 1). The advertisement known as ‘vertical football’, was developed by TBWA/Japan, and won six international awards including the Cannes Golden Lion 2003-2004 for Best Use of Outdoor. Regarding the global campaign, Adidas started in 2004 with a year-long brand-building campaign that focused on one of the chief factors that ties Adidas with athletes around the world in a common thread – the ability to surpass limits, zeal to enhance performance and achieve the impossible. The integrated marketing communication campaign involved TV, print and outdoor executions, as well as point-of-sale promotions and PR activities, and was supported by a special Internet site. It featured 22 ‘Adidas athletes’ from various disciplines of sports and different geographical regions, including boxing legend Muhammad Ali, his daughter Laila Ali, long-distance runner Haile Gebrselassie, soccer star David Beckham and NBA star Tracy McGrady, all of whom challenged the impossible (in the ads) by taking risks, setting new records and changing conventions in reality. Adidas followed up to its award-winning ‘vertical football’ stunt not only for literal heights, but it also hoped to turn the attention-grabbing marketing event into an actual sport. The ‘world’s first vertical track event had ‘racers’ suspended on cables scaling 100 metres up the 32-storey sides of buildings decked out with eight regulation lanes. The event was developed by TBWA/Japan and executed with the support of Carat and Adidas.

Case Study 1Adidas: ‘Impossible is Nothing’ Campaign in Japan

The vertical football outdoor advertisementSource: www.asiapacificadfest.com

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The emerging Trends in global adverTising

advertising spending in 2010, in the US and the European market the growth was only one to two percent (Adstats: Adspend in 2010, 2010). In markets such as the UK, US and Germany, consumers had a “prove-it-to-me” attitude as the focus was more on the targets and results. Innovative technologies and digital media were used in advertisements. Two broad markets need special mention here, which have shown reasonably high growth rates. Asia, as a region, is worth mentioning and China, as a country, since it has generated a lot of interest of late among brands from the West.

AsiaThe Asia-Pacific advertising market grew by 17 percent in 2008. The Asian market is diverse, having different cultures (even within one country), political and economic structures. There are differences in language, religion and race. However, consumers who reside in developed Asian countries such as Japan and Singapore, responded in similar manner towards advertisements whereas the consumers in the Philippines, Indonesia and India did not follow any predictable pattern as there are many economic, geographic and cultural differences (Phillips, 2004).

ChinaThe Chinese advertising market had gone up by eight to nine percent in 2009 (Jones, 2010). China is a developing advertising market which has primarily middle-aged consumers with mixed traditional values and modern characteristics. The Chinese economy was ranked third after the US and Japan. It has ranked fourth in the global advertising spending and has a double-digit growth for the past 20 years. It has become world’s second largest advertising market. Revenue of advertisements increased by 17 percent in 2006 which was five times the advertising amount as compared to its figure in 1995 (Moffatt, 2008).

Factors Influencing Global AdvertisingGlobal advertising needs to have an appropriate environment to succeed in the business. Internal and external factors play a key role for the advertisers to design the global advertising strategy. Advertisers can modify advertisements for different countries along with time period. The external factors are macro-environmental issues that are faced by every advertiser whereas micro-environmental factors are unique to the advertiser. The macro and micro factors are:

Macro factorsEconomic factorsThe state of the economy and its development play a crucial role in developing advertisements (Wilkins, 2002). The major differences in the national markets affect the economic differences and the variations could be in population, income and wealth as it directly affects the purchasing power of the consumer. Various countries could be at different stages of economic development

(Hollensen, 2007). Geography has a direct influence on the marketing and communication strategy. For example, the region that had no rains earlier has heavy rainfall now. There is indirect influence of geographical conditions on the marketing activities. Organisations develop marketing strategies according to the differences in the market. There are also changes in prices in different markets. Non-tariff barriers are present to support the price differences. For example, Colgate Palmolive adopted a one-price system for its toothpaste for all the countries in Europe. Earlier, the product was sold at different prices in a different market. In the same way, Beddedas shower gel was priced at medium range in Germany but for the UK market it had a premium price. This difference in pricing worked very well until the product from the lower-priced market was unable to move to the higher-priced market. However, at present, after the implementation of European Union (EU) rules, standardisation of prices has been applied in many countries. Because of this implementation, consumers benefited since they could get the best bargain in a short period of time. Additionally, EU regulations have affected the advertising and marketing strategies of various companies. For example, Nestle downsized from three yogurt brands to one when these regulations came into force. Similarly, Unilever had 1,600 brands and it reduced them to 400 core brands and developed master plans for certain markets (Cateora et al., 2008).

The mediaAlong with global media, global markets do have local media landscapes. This affects media penetration and consumption of the consumer (Wilkins, 2002). An advertiser has to consider media availability, cost, coverage and habits of the target audience in the case of international advertising. Companies can also develop specific strategies for a particular market. For example, Colgate uses 85 advertisement vans to reach rural markets (Cateora et al., 2008). Global media need to deliver messages to local consumers in a way that the target audience can understand why a particular product is useful to them. It is important to be flexible and relevant in the type of message and content that is being delivered (Scott, 2001). The media selection needs to be carried out along with the message theme that is created for the advertising campaigns. The selection of the media also depends on the demographic and psychographic profile of a target audience, target group, media characteristics, objective of the advertisement, reach, frequency and impact. The reach needs to be high when the product awareness is created in the market (Hollensen, 2007). There are different types of media used by the global marketer, encompassing both traditional and other media. Television is the most commonly used media by advertisers. Besides traditional media, out-of-home media and the Internet have become important vehicles of communication. Internet is used also for business-to-business marketing and for targeting young consumers. Recently, sports events have become an arena for effective

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innovative media for brand communication (see Case Study 2). Direct mail mode is an innovative media that is used by advertisers where traditional media is not so effective. For example, in Japan, Nestle had used direct-mailing method comprised of a Japanese-style pasta recipe booklet for the consumers and it had worked very well, as the consumers were able to relate to the recipe easily.

Regulations in advertisingThere are different regulations for advertisements in different countries and some advertisements are prohibited for some products or to a specific target audience. For instance, in Sweden advertising targeted at children is forbidden and in many countries cigarettes are not advertised (Wilkins, 2002). The national advertising division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus (US CBBB) created regulations for its advertising industry in 1971. It focused on self regulation to decrease government interference in the industry. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) examines advertising in the country. This regulation even bans the campaigns of tobacco, alcohol and drugs in all types of media. In Europe, tobacco campaigns were banned in the EU since 30 July 1998 (Global Industry Overview: Advertising Agencies, 2006). For food products, regulations are related to the content and approach of advertising. According to the US CBBB, there were 17 advertisers such as Burger King, Mars, Kraft, etc. that were asked to modify their advertising in promoting their products to be healthy, as almost 50 percent of their targeted audience was children (Hampp, 2011). Additionally, some amendments related to the testimonials and endorsements by the FTC, for example, clearly stated that the claims of “Your results may vary” or

“Results not atypical” cannot exempt advertisers from the scrutiny and action by the regulator. For example, Acme heating and cooling claimed in their advertisement of saving US$125 in a monthly bill, a claim which consumers later comprehended and rejected (Feldman, 2009). Furthermore, although alcohol brands are not allowed to advertise directly to the consumers their approach appear to be very aggressive in digital media. For example, Beam Global Spirits spent 35 percent of their media budget on a digital medium. There are self-regulatory measures by the FTC for all companies so that the brands are known only to adults. In 2008, it was found that all the companies that followed self-regulatory measures to advertise their brands, adopted some forms of strategies. For instance, on Facebook, brands can easily figure out the date of birth of a person from their profile, and once it is captured the advertisements are broadcast accordingly. Similarly, on Twitter, the date of birth is asked before a person can follow a brand (Schultz, 2011).

Consumer differencesThere are differences in culture, values and habits, perception and reaction towards the creative approach in advertising in different countries. Consumption of snacks such as crisps is different in the UK as compared to in France. In the UK, crisps form part of a main meal, whereas in France they are always a snack. Every country has different social habits along with differences in facial expression, body language, expression of emotion and verbal communication. It is equally important for advertisers to understand how consumers interact and use a brand, along with their overall brand experiences (Wilkins, 2002). When a diverse consumer profile exists, top managers of advertising agencies need to consider different forces for global integration and local

FIFA World Cup is a worldwide recognised sports event. It has a unique identity of its own and can be distinguished from the Indian Premier League (IPL) ,the National Basketball Association (NBA) or the National Football League (NFL) Superbowl. The popularity of this event gives marketers a platform to host communication activities for its brand to a diverse population at once. The marketers involved are of either multi-national or of national brands. FIFA’s partners were Adidas, Coca Cola, Emirates, Hyundai, Sony and VISA, sponsors included Budweiser, Castrol, Continental, McDonald’s, MTN, Mahindra Satyam, Seara and Yingli Solar. National brands included British Petroleum Africa, FNB, Neo Africa, Prasa, Aggreko and Telkom. For example, an Italy versus New Zealand match had sponsors like Emirates. Such sporting events have attracted huge interest from marketers and it is the same with any other big sporting events such as the IPL , the Cricket World Cup or the NFL in the US. Global media is crucial in advertising a brand globally as it helps in the local marketing activities while maintaining the global standards of the brand. There are three components

that are very important for global advertising, namely: global visibility, mindset and capability. Global media is interwoven at all the parameters to develop effective global advertising (Scott, 2001). Global media is used by different companies to increase effectiveness. For example, HP positions its brand effectively among the top management, decision makers and opinion leaders primarily in Canada, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Africa by advertising its brand as ‘clear fuels’. Similarly, Star Alliance mentioned that they used global media to launch their brand, as they believed that by using global media, the message advertised would be well perceived by frequent flyers and top management personnel. Additionally, 3com also used global media to make their brand relevant to the decision makers of small-to-medium businesses particularly in Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Therefore, it can be stated that global media is supplement to the local marketing activities, and develops the brand and environment to reach out to consumers in a universal way (Scott, 2001).

Case Study 2The New Media of Brand Communication

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responsiveness. Global integration forces are economies of scale, benefits through learning, competition, homogeneity in consumer preference, investment and technology intensity and pressure of reducing the cost. The forces of local responsiveness are consumer preference, infrastructure differences which include media and distribution network, laws and restriction, transportation, composition of market and prices, government policies and administrative cost (Porter, 1986; Prahalad and Doz, 1987; Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989). Moreover, it was identified that there is a need to understand the similar attitudes and behaviour across countries for global advertising, as segmentation on the basis of geographical regions do not help the advertisers. For example, in Europe the markets were segmented on the basis of local markets, cultural commonalities and stage of brand development (Wilkins, 2002).

Socio-cultural DifferencesInterpretation of symbols depends on the individual perception which derives from a culture that includes education, religion, attitude and social condition. Colours are used in advertisement according to the culture of the target audience. For example, in parts of Asia, the colour white is not used in detergent advertisements as this colour symbolises grief (Hollensen, 2007). The cultural heritage, values and habits of consumers vary within a country. The perception and reaction of the consumers directly affect the creative styles, usage of humour, casting and campaign in totality. Every country has its own social habits and values that affect the articulation of words, emotions, gestures, body language and facial expressions. Therefore, it may be stated that the consumers use the same brand in different ways and even their interaction with the brand differs leading to a different level of engagement and experience with the brand (Wilkins, 2002). A comprehensive approach pertaining to the origin, namely history, politics, economy, technology, geography, etc., along with the elements of culture, rituals, belief, value, symbol and thinking is important to develop by the global marketing strategy. Marketers have control of the product, price and promotion but they cannot control the cultural environment under which the strategies will be implemented. Therefore, they need to anticipate the effect in order to achieve the objectives. They can develop the changes in such a way that the consumers are able to accept the communication rapidly. They can even generate empathy for the culture of that country where they want to market their products. Additionally, the emphasis should also be given to the customs of business, legal and political culture (Cateora et al., 2008). Global advertising has an effect at different levels of culture such as national, industrial, company, organisation or individual culture. National culture is the comprehensive framework of business activity, industry culture is related with the competitive framework of the industry, company culture is associated with the different functions, beliefs and behaviour of the people present

in the company and individual culture is the consumer’s individual cultural framework. Furthermore, Hall (1960) developed the concept of high context culture and low context culture. In high context culture the interpretation of the message depends on the cues surrounded by it, where social importance and the knowledge of the individual is crucial. In low context culture, spoken and written language are very important. The messages are encoded assuming that the receiver will decode the message accurately. This affects the strategies of global advertising. For example, Asian consumers are high context consumers and Western consumers are low context in the cultural style. Therefore, Asians prefer symbols and indirect ways of communication, whereas Western consumers prefer direct and assertive ways of communication.

Micro factorsVisualsAdvertising visual strategies are developed for global brands and could be divided into two groups based on the cultural context: low-context Western cultures (US, UK or Germany) and high-context Eastern cultures (Japan, China and Korea) (Hall, 1973). In low-context cultures, the literal meaning of the advertisement would be more important, whereas in a high-context culture there would be more symbolic visuals (“association” and “association with the character or celebrity”). In low-context nations consumers prefer advertisements to be direct, that have factual information about the product, price and quality through visuals. Photographs are the primary source for low-context Western advertising. However, in the high-context nations, a soft-sell approach is used. The advertisements focus on lifestyle, image of the product and symbols and imagery that relate more to the emotional mind of the consumer rather than the rational mind (Callow and Schiffman, 2002). Many researchers have proposed that an individualistic culture such as in the US, consumers are more likely to understand achievement-oriented metaphors, whereas a collectivist-oriented country such as the Philippines, is more likely to understand affiliation-oriented metaphors (McClelland 1987; Church and Lonner, 1998). When visual images are used in print advertisements, high-context culture consumers are able to understand the hidden meaning in the visual image and are able to extract metaphorical meanings as well. Therefore, complex visual images can be used for a high-context audience. Emotional appeal can also be developed with the complex visual image. Consumers internalise the information and interpret the message. In the international high-context, a communication market advertising strategy can be standardised by selecting a complex visual image and customising the appeal. However, a low-context audience may not be able to understand the complex visual approach and therefore, explicit clues need to be provided by the advertisement copy (Callow and Schiffman, 2002).

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Emotions and brand feelingsHuang (1998) found that basic emotion is universal in all demographic groups. Advertisements with basic emotions such as love, happiness and sadness were able to generate a similar emotional response globally as compared to context specific emotions such as humour. Therefore, basic emotional appeal could be used to capitalise the similarity that exists among the consumers. Social emotional appeal could be helpful for capitalising on the unique characteristic of the consumer. Brand-person relationship is equally important in developing the advertisement. It also helps in increasing consumer commitment and connection towards the brand (Cramphorn and Phillips, 2005).

Message and likeabilityAdvertising messages can use two approaches namely: bottom-up and top-down. In the top-down approach, the advertiser can develop a few country-specific advertisements of good quality that share a universal theme. This approach is based on an open mindset, flexibility and habit for searching for similarities. The top-down approach is based on a universal-to-local approach, whereas global ideas are used and localised on the basis of culture or tradition. It affects the persuasion level in the advertisements as well as increases the recall factor, strengthening the advertising appeal and increase likability of the advertisement. In the UK, US, Italy and France, likeable advertisements help the advertisers to develop brand preferences (Wilkins, 2002).

Use of models and English brand nameThe usage of Western models and English brand names in an advertisement helps in enhancing the perception of globalness of a brand. It also helps a consumer to understand that the product was originated from a developed country. The product with a global image or, the product’s place of origin signals the prestige, technological advancement and workmanship. The Western model also enhances the perceived quality of the product. In Taiwan, 46.81 percent of magazine advertisements use

Western models to promote their products and 53.90 percent of advertisements use English as the medium to communicate. However, perception and importance may vary in different product categories. (Chang, 2008).

MusicCross-cultural advertisements use music as the backbone in TV commercials. Music is considered the carrier of the culture (Albers-Miller & Gelb, 1996; Cheng and Schweitzer, 1996) as it has congruity with cultural meaning (Burner, 1990). Music improves consumers’ advertisement memory when it is consistent with the message (Kellaris et al., 1993). All these factors can be used comprehensively by the companies to increase the advertisement effectiveness even in developing countries (Case Study 3).

Allocation of the advertising budgetThere are a number of methods on allocating budget for advertising. The most common method is “percentage of sales”. It is based on the sales of a product or a brand (Belch and Belch, 2004). Many countries even use judgement-based methods such as those adopted by Chinese firms. Some advertisers work on objective and task methods. The key variable that influences advertising-to-sales are changes in the advertising creative strategy, expenditure of the competitors and other profit objectives. In allocating advertising budget, it was found that between 2002-2005 advertisers spent 30 percent of their total adspend in foreign countries. In many cases, profit margins are the key drivers of allocating the advertising budget and in some cases price becomes an important driver on allocating adspend.

Challenges of Global AdvertisingIt is very difficult to identify consumer and market communities and develop advertisements that can deliver good results nationally. Therefore, advertisers undertake market segmentation to achieve appropriate financial returns. Segmentation is carried out within

The global leader in athletic footwear, Nike, has presence in the global market with its own brand, Nike. The company Nike has subsidiaries such as Cole Haan, Hurley International, Umbro and Converse. It has highly recognised trademarks Just do it and the Swoosh logo, representing the brand. Nike is associated with many high-profile sports personalities and sports teams around the world. Ilie Nastase was the first sports personality who became the brand’s ambassador. In the US, European countries and most parts of Asia, the most popular sports include football and athletics. This ensured that Nike could use a single brand ambassador (e.g. Tiger Woods, David Beckham, etc.) for promoting their products across these continents. However, the problem Nike faced with promoting its products in India was completely unique.

Apart from cricket, there was no sport on which Nike could depend to promote their products. They decided to spend 44 million US dollars to become the official kit supplier to the Indian cricket team. This ensured that they could use the Indian cricket players as their brand ambassadors, a huge boost for them to promote the sportswear range in India. Nike’s first cricket-related television advertising campaign paid tribute to the love and passion for cricket among the Indian people. The advertisement portrayed the rugged, raw enthusiasm and support behind India’s cricket team. The advertisement included energy, great visuals,and wonderfully matching music, it succeeded in capturing the spirit of the Indian street cricket with superb realism and gripping drama.

Case Study 3Nike’s Problem in India

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the local market (Wilkins, 2002). Marketers can make alliances and partnerships with good local companies who can increase their understanding about the local market (Sarfin, 2001). Apart from these, there are a few more challenges facing global advertisers, such as the objective of global advertising that needs to be developed with the help of global and local teams, wherein clear understanding about global positioning, brand concept, global competitors and growth drivers of the market need to be considered. The other challenge is the alignment of local team with global teams. They should develop a culture of teamwork and trust. Senior managers are to be role models themselves for their team. There has to be a regular training programme for global, regional and local teams so that they can enhance their skills. Another challenge in global advertising is the disconnection between the local team and global headquarters that in turn, badly affect cultural advertisement. When the global headquarters feel that the creative team is brilliant in creating an advertisement, the local team may not admit it, as they may fear losing the brand messaging authority. Furthermore, it is important that the local team should be free to express their concerns and issues and to propose solutions to problems. Global teams need to be confident on their local agenda and adopt a local condition. Therefore, companies such as McDonald’s have developed a new approach for its global advertising “freedom within framework”. This has helped McDonald’s’ team to discuss the brand very comprehensively and develop strategies that consider the global standards of the brand, but with a local approach. Additionally, different tools can be developed to identify similarities and differences in the market, considering the global brand concept and cultural differences. These tools need to be developed by the global, local and regional teams. Additionally, rearrangements of words in the local market can entirely change the meaning of an advertisement. If there are slight changes in the headlines, scripts or advertisement copies, there might be changes in the brand perception, sales and market share. It is because of the words used in the advertisement are related to the consumer’s mindset. For example, Levi’s spend money and time in continental European markets to make them understand its slogan“Levi’s engineered jeans” because the consumers did not understand that “engineered” meant “made by”. Furthermore, the pictures that are used in advertisements are very important for global advertisements. Cultural context of the picture may also differ from market to market. There are many constraints related to media that are used in global advertising. The unavailability of appropriate media, results in a limited delivery of a communication message. For example, in the US there are only two newspapers that are open for advertising, while Japan has five. Additionally, some media channels have restrictions on air time. For example, in France, advertisements can only be broadcast for 18 minutes in total daily (Cateora et al., 2008). There are advertising laws and self-regulation standards that may affect creative

advertising. Restrictions on advertisements that targeted children have also increased. There are restrictions on using lifestyle elements to sell alcohol, but in countries like France, alcohol is sold through sexual appeal.

The Road AheadGlobal advertising plays a key role in developing a global brand. In many industries, globalisation has ushered in new trends, especially in high technology and fashion-driven industries. Zou and Cavusgil (2002) proposed Global Marketing Strategy (GSM) theory in order to get a boarder view of global advertising. The GSM goes beyond global advertising, apart from standardisation (message, visuals and media) and it also includes two new dimensions: coordination (planning and execution) and integration (campaign object and its strategy). In the present era of media fragmentation and customer empowerment, such an integrated theory of globalisation is required to understand the outcomes of global advertising. A multi-national company needs to fit itself in both external (consumer demand, advertising laws and regulations, media, competitors and competence of advertising agencies) and internal (orientation towards globalisation, experience in international market, autonomy in subsides and competence in brand-building parameters to achieve global success. When internal and external frames are integrated and a synergy is generated, then it leads to the success of marketing communication. Advertising approaches and strategies need to be restructured and redesigned specially in the digital arena for the markets of the future. Global advertising agencies will have to develop a global digital advertisement network that can create many versions of commercials. These networks can be made with the help of consumer databases and computer algorithms. These networks will decide on the type of the advertisement and its timing according to the consumers’ needs. These customised advertisements can be displayed when a consumer uses any media platform such as a mobile, television, computer, etc. In the US, there are 4,000 versions of advertisements for a single brand. This may amplify further as the technology enhancement takes place. There are gigantic revolutions in the consumers’ perception, thinking and lifestyle which need to be captured by the companies and the advertising agencies. If they are able to comprehend the thinking process of the consumer, then it would be easier for the agencies to develop personalised advertisements. In the future, the major chunk of advertisement revenue will come from the BRIC countries as the economies are booming (Rosenberg, 2007). It is identified that China and India will be the key players in the global advertising industry. These markets will grow immensely from 2011 to 2016 (Narayanan and Srinivasa-Raghavan, 2011). In these markets advertisements will be directly displayed on mobile phones and the Internet (Rosenberg, 2007). On top of that, global advertising will be on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites (Shah, 2011). The markets will be more diversified, media will be

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further fragmented andtechnology will change rapidly, but the core purpose of advertising will never change (Narayanan and Srinivasa-Raghavan, 2011).

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Rajesh Kumar is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Doon University, Dehradun, India.

ICT has great potential to bring in the desired social transformations by enhancing access to people, services, information and other technologies. ICT applications can enhance poor people’s opportunities by improving their access to markets, health and education. India is striving to come up with innovative ICT support for the rural community. Creation of affordable ICT facilities and investment in training to maintain and expand computer networks in rural areas is on policy agenda of the government. However, incorporation of ICT in a national development agenda must involve public and private sector together with the local community for effective creation, expansion and diffusion of ICT applications and also for better e-governance. This article is an attempt to analyse the ICT policy for the rural poor people in India and discuss evolving an integrated approach for participatory rural development where the participation of the local community and an inclusion of a traditional knowledge system is taken into consideration.

Rajesh Kumar

‘Rural Informatics’Use of Information and Communication Technologies for the Rural

Poor – From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity in Rural India

Direct or indirect application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the rural development sector has also been referred

to as ‘Rural Informatics’. ICT is an integral part of development strategies of both developing and developed countries. It has great potential to bring in the desired social transformations by enhancing access to people, services, information and other technologies (Dutton et al., 2004). ICT applications can enhance poor people’s opportunities by improving their access to markets, health and education. Moreover, ICT can empower the poor by expanding the use of government services and reducing risks by widening access to micro finance (Cecchini and Scott, 2003). The uses of ICT for development are actively promoted for economic development, job-creation, rural development and poverty-alleviation. In the rural context, development involves the use of physical, financial and human resources for economic growth and social development of the rural economies (Burkey, 1993). Three quarters of the world’s poor, about 900 million people, are in rural areas, and the millennium poverty target, set by Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), cannot be met unless rural poverty is addressed. Sustainable Rural Development can make a powerful contribution to four critical goals, viz.: poverty reduction, growth with equity, food security and sustainable natural resource management. Hence, worldwide, there is a growing emphasis on development of the rural economy of the countries. Any improvement, in the social or economic status of rural areas would not just directly benefit the

rural poor but would also bring down the migration-pressures on cities and contribute a positive ripple effect in global stride towards development. Different experiments show that intervention of ICT in rural development initiatives are capable of development, but have not been successful to the desired level. Lack of community participation, absence of an integrated approach and non-inclusion of traditional knowledge systems (TKS) in the project designs are the major impediments. Therefore, a system-based approach in the design of e-governance projects, based on a participatory approach with inclusion of relevant TKS with a bi-directional Citizen to Government (G2C2G) interface and a feedback mechanism, is needed. This paper makes an attempt to analyse and interpret ICT initiatives/policies/strategies for the rural poor in India, and talks about evolving an integrated approach for participatory rural development where the participation of the local community and inclusion of a TKS is taken care of. Finally, the discussion presents a possible future direction to e-governance for rural development.

E-governance for Rural EmpowermentApplication of ICT in processes of governance can be considered in two categories, viz., for improving government processes and for building interaction with and within civil society. The examples of the former category are: dissemination of public information grievance redressed, mechanisms, utility payments and billing services (Mitra and Gupta, 2003). This intervention of ICT in public domain, managed by the government, is referred to as ‘e-government’. Secondly, ICT improves civil society participation in the governing process, which

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is also referred to as ‘e-governance’. E-governance has a greater scope and connotation than e-government, even though ordinarily the terms are used interchangeably (Andersen and Henriksen, 2006; Sahu, 2004). Rural e-governance can provide timely information to the citizens and have the potential to spawn innovative means of a wealthy generation in rural context (Singh, 2004, Malhotra et al., 2006). ICT can improve living standards in remote and rural areas by providing important commercial, social and educational benefits (Share, 1993; Madden et al., 1997). Electronic service centres have a pivotal role to play, especially in reaching out to the marginalised sections living in remote areas. A study by Wilson (2000) concludes that in a developing economy like India, ICT has development applications in education, governance, environmental monitoring, health, human rights promotion, economic growth and other areas. A research by Annamalai and Rao (2003) confirms that transaction costs have substantially reduced by adopting automated supply chain management models for selling agriculture produce. Another study by Kaushik and Singh (2004) shows that e-government projects are successful in rural India, as they act as an intermediary between government and recipients, while pursuing commercially sustainable objectives. However, given the high incidence of poverty in rural India, e-governance implementation to cover 135 million rural poor, is an increasingly complex process. Jhunjhunwala et al. (2006) states that success stories of e-governance in rural India are isolated cases, and that “sum total of the Indian experience in terms of two important parameters, viz., villages connected and lives transformed are yet too minimal”. Although there are more than 50 grassroots projects currently using modern ICT for development in India, Keniston (2002) despairingly notes that since no systematic study or evaluation has been conducted on ICT-based projects, “opportunities to learn the diverse creative Indian experience so far remain almost entirely wasted”. Investigation undertaken by Cecchini (2004), of an e-governance initiative Gyandoot, shows that though it is supposedly popular, its usage is still low and that it is not effective for the poorest of the poor in rural regions. Existing e-governance models are more technology-centric, which have been applied from the West (Jauhari, 2004) and thus do not completely assure rural development in context of developing countries like India (Bhatnagar & Schware, 2000). Such observations for ICT interventions in the rural context are generally true for other developing countries too. Emerging studies show that many of the claims that are being made about the potential of ICT for development are not supported and point to the possible counter-productive effects of the use of ICT (Gomez et al., 1999). A study by Wilson (2000) says that a purely technology-centric approach widens the digital divide between developed and underdeveloped. Ray (2005) summarises that some of the good governance initiatives for poverty alleviation have not translated into social good due to slack institutional mechanisms. Wolfram (2004) suggests that to resolve the rampant

“institutional disequilibria”, there is a need to supply globally competitive products, emerging from traditional knowledge of the region. Annamalai and Rao (2003) point out that there are several gaps associated with deployment of the information village projects where the larger goals of empowerment, dignity and “preservation of traditional technologies” are not considered. In view of such limitations, it is important to propose some alternative approaches to rural e-governance projects.

Experiments and ExperiencesA number of ICT-driven development projects have come up in different states of India. Prominent among them are as follows.

Gyandoot, Dhar, M.P.Gyandoot is an Intranet-based Government to Citizen (G2C) service delivery portal commissioned in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh (a state in central India) in January 2000. Gyandoot aims to create a cost-effective, replicable, economically self-reliant and financially viable model for taking the benefits of ICT to the rural masses. This is expected to lead to enhanced participation by citizens/government in community affairs through creative uses of ICT while also ensuring equal access to emerging technologies for the oppressed and exploited segments of the society (Rajora, Rajesh, 2002). The services offered by Gyandoot encompass a wide range of government departments (Zilla Panchayat, Civil supplies, Regional transport office, etc.) and can be accessed from any Gyandoot kiosk (soochanalaya) by any citizen, on payment of a nominal transaction fee. However, a study by the centre for e-governance, IIM Ahmedabad (June, 2003), observed that Gyandoot has not been very successful and the project experience says that ICT alone cannot improve the service delivery to the rural poor. Significant re-engineering of backend processes and introduction of services that directly contribute to poverty alleviation, are needed to make such initiatives sustainable.

Gramdoot, Aksh Optifiber, RajasthanThis is the only true broadband ICT project consisting of a fibre-based broadband network solution connecting 400 villages in the district of Jaipur in Rajasthan. The connectivity provided is 2-6 Mbps, scalable up to 10 Mbps. The key applications/ services provided include Cable TV at homes, Telephone services/ Web conference/ STD booths at home and at a kiosk, E-services, horoscopes, photo shop, games, Internet access, movie projection, etc. Other benefits are computer education, e-governance including land records querying and transaction initiation. This is a model with high capital cost per kiosk, largely because of the technology option. This raises the breakeven revenues of the kiosks to 20,000-25,000 per month. Moreover, employees (not private entrepreneurs) man the kiosks. The main revenue driver of the kiosks is cable service. However, only 120 of the 400 kiosks are

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‘RuRal InfoRmatIcs’: use of InfoRmatIon and communIcatIon technologIes foR the RuRal PooR

operational due to low revenues, administrative and business problems. Due to lower costs of optical fibre, the model is now being considered viable for high-income villages that are close to cities.

DrishteeDrishtee is an organisational platform for developing IT-enabled services to rural masses through a kiosk-based revenue model. Through a tiered franchise and partnership model, Drishtee facilitates the creation of a rural networking infrastructure. With nodes at the village, district, state and national level, Drishtee enables access to worldwide information as well as local services using its proprietary state-of-the-art software. Drishtee’s business model is driven by a village entrepreneur, who acts as the gateway to valuable information and services for villagers. Drishtee enables this entrepreneur to operate a self-sustaining, profitable kiosk that provides various services at nominal costs. Drishtee has successfully demonstrated its concept in over 300 kiosks across six Indian states. The various services are available at the Drishtee portal:

(a) Government : government schemes, online applications, stamp vendor license, public grievances, certificates, ration card and driving license

(b) Private: Rojgaar, training, Gram Haat, Gram Mandi, Vaiavahiki, e-commerce

(c) Corporate: rural employment, computer education, insurance and agri-business

However, Drishtee faces constraints like connectivity, lack of rural focus of corporate, delay due to backend processes of Government, limited research, etc.

n-Logue, Chennain-Logue was incubated by the Telecommunications and Computer Network (TeNeT) Group of the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras as part of the institute’s strategy for developing and disseminating innovative, affordable communication technologies to the rural poor of developing countries. Formed by a group of like-minded professors at the IIT, Madras, the TeNeT Group has conducted extensive research on the issues involved in providing connections to small towns and rural areas. The huge and largely unfulfilled need in this area led to the setting up of n-Logue Communications. TeNeT is focused on meeting the technology needs of developing countries like India. Its research has led to the design and development of appropriate technologies for these markets as well as the incubation of several companies including Midas Communications and Banyan Networks. One of the significant outputs of its research is corDECT, a Wireless in Local Loop system designed jointly by TeNeT, Midas and Analog Devices, USA. The cost-effective access technology provides simultaneous voice and Internet connectivity and is faster and more reliable than conventional technologies. WLL systems have been successfully implemented in India as well as in several other countries around the world including

Brazil, Argentina, Madagascar, Fiji, Yemen, Kenya, Tunisia and Iran.

Akshaya, KeralaThe state, Kerala, of the Indian union, in an endeavour to “bridge the Digital Divide” and to propel Kerala as India’s foremost knowledge society, embarked on ‘Akshaya Project’ on the 18th of November 2002. The initiative started in the district Mallapuram with a vision to ensure that every family (urban and rural) in the district should have at least one family member who is computer literate. With this purpose, the government set up a number of computer training centres with both capital funding (part and full funding) and revenue guaranteed to enable such kiosks to be set up in each and every village in the district. The project covers 560 villages in the district. The centres are connected by 16 Kbps, which is upgradeable to 4 Mbps as per the agreement with Tulip, the connectivity provider.

Bhoomi Project, KarnatakaUnder the prestigious Bhoomi E-Governance project

of

the Government, all 20 million land records of 6.7 million landowners in 176 taluks (sub-divisions of a district) of Karnataka have been computerised. This system works with the software called BHOOMI designed fully in-house by National Informatics Centre, Bangalore. While the government of India has largely funded the project, State government also funded some critical components of this project. This software provides for printing of land records as and when required. It incorporates the process of online updating to ensure that the RTCs (Record of Rights, Tenancy and Crops) provided to the farmers are in sync with the times. The manual land records in operationalised taluks have been declared illegal. All the mutations to the land records database are done on the computer itself so as to ensure that data on the computer remain current with the time. A computerised land record kiosk (Bhoomi centre) is operational in 140 of the 177 taluks in Karnataka. At these taluka offices, a farmer can obtain a copy of an RTC online by paying Rs.15 (US$0.27). A second computer screen faces the clients to enable them to see the transaction being performed. Copies can be obtained for any land parcel in the taluka by providing the name of the owner or the plot number. A village accountant is available all the time at these kiosks.

The Information Village Research Project (IVRP)The IVRP, initiated in 1998 by M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), aims to provide sustainable food security in rural areas of Pondicherry, in south India. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, supports the project. The concept is based on the needs of farmers for information on sustainable agricultural practice, credit and marketing of produce. The IVRP centres were originally designed to provide information and technical assistance to farmers through packagers, prepared locally, making use of both indigenous knowledge and modern science. The project

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aims to add value to villagers’ generic information to render it more location and context-specific by using ICTs. Nevertheless, the project has set for itself a wider range of objectives. First, it plans to set up village information kiosks that enable rural families to access a basket of modern ICTs. Second, these kiosks are also used to train educated youths, especially women, in rural areas to operate the information centres. Training is aimed to empower the youths in the organisation and maintenance of a system that generates locally relevant information from generic information. Third, the project aims to take up maintenance, updating and dissemination of information on entitlements to rural families by providing access to various governmental schemes and programmers from departmental websites and other governmental sources. The fourth objective is related to the action research priorities of the project, such as conducting impact assessments based on surveys, participatory rural appraisals and so on. Finally, the project aims to show that it serves as a replicable and sustainable model in information dissemination and exchange in rural areas that use advanced ICTs.

The TARAkendraThe TARAkendras in Bundelkhand (Uttar Pradesh) and Bhatinda (Punjab) were launched by TARAhaat, an Internet portal that supports a network of franchised computer kiosks. It aims to deliver a wide spectrum of services through ICTs and expects to earn revenues by pricing these services as well as by levying membership fees and commissions. One of the striking features of TARAhaat is that it was not conceived as a voluntary venture from the very beginning, although its sponsoring agency, Development Alternative ( DA), is a civil society organisation (CSO) operating in Bundelkhand. The concept of TARAhaat took shape in 1998, although it became functional only in 2000. The first few kiosks were established in Bundelkhand, a region where the DA has been active for several years. The DA was founded in 1983 with the objective of developing models for sustainable livelihood for the rural poor. The formulation as well as the implementation of the concept of TARAkendra materialised as a result of a group of young professionals committed to the cause of social development coming together in the region. It is a for-profit venture and pays taxes. Nevertheless, the progenitors and functionaries of the organisation do not attach much significance to its profit orientation other than for demonstrating that such market-based ventures from civil society foundations are commercially viable. It is a business model with a relatively strong emphasis on the social economy of the region (Peterson et al., 2001). Moreover, the organisers hope that TARAhaat’s NGO roots and an ownership structure that allocates a 51 percent share to the non-profit Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, will ensure that social objectives are not overlooked (Peterson et al., 2001, p. 4). The TARAhaat follows a ‘business model’ different from the MSSRF model, which depends on voluntary, unpaid labour and

free access to scarce rural resources. Nevertheless, the process of setting up a TARAkendra is quite similar to the processes and patterns that underlie the launching of kiosks by non-profit initiatives like the MSSRF. Identifying small towns or villages in Bhatinda where TARAkendras can be set up was initially undertaken in collaboration with the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDA). But this alliance ran into problems owing to some administrative reasons. Despite the lack of support from the DRDA, the TARAhaat expanded its operations. However, the process is quite complicated and requires constant interaction with a wide spectrum of individuals and institutions in the small towns or villages. The TARAhaat sends its business managers to tackle the initial problems related to the setting up of a rural kiosk.

Need for an integrated approachAn assessment of the performance of all ICT initiatives and experiments in India and particularly, the two civil society organisations (CSO), the MSSRF’s Information Village Research Centres (Pondicherry) and the DA’s TARAkendras (Bhatinda), shows a wide chasm between the expectations and actual benefits of CSO initiatives in rural India. Contrary to popular belief, these social enterprises are not rooted in the resources of the local economy. Moreover, their prospects of evolving into developmental models capable of drawing on local community resources for sustenance appear bleak. Their ability to contribute to local economic regeneration through such claims as job creation, development of local services and markets, enhancing local skills to inculcate entrepreneurship and building social capital, is yet to be materialised. That is why an integrated approach involving technology, local needs and resources, traditional knowledge and community participation coupled with good governance should be evolved and executed. Social processes in rural regions need to be integrated in a holistic manner with the prevalent governance model to ensure development (Kanungo, 2004; Pande, 2003). Establishing linkages with local strengths and encouraging indigenous development of e-governance initiatives (Heeks, 2002) would positively contribute towards achievement of development objectives of a country. Instead of importing or aping existing e-governance models, the interfaces of ICT interventions deployed in rural areas should be customised and the content duly localised to deliver the intended benefits to the rural beneficiaries. Jhunjhunwala et al. (2006) underline that the business model for rural development should be based on collective partnerships and must incorporate the traditional knowledge available within the local community. Incorporation of traditional knowledge systems (TKS) would also ensure involvement and ownership of the rural beneficiaries themselves. The need to integrate inputs from indigenous systems is important not just because of their richness but also because these systems have evolved over millennia preserving the social balance in that area. In the Indian rural context,

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there are already several encouraging examples such as “Honey Bee Network” which is a database of grassroots innovations and technologies and serves as an effective solution to problems of local development. International development circles too, have adequately stressed incorporation of indigenous knowledge in prevailing models of governance. In their study, Garai and Shadrach (2006) say that there is an urgent need to recognise the role of local knowledge in sustainable development. They also argue that interactions between community-based local bodies and development workers need to be enhanced to ensure success of the development process. Since communities are the closest to grassroots problems, they are the best judge to evaluate technology alternatives and provide innovative solutions for the problems of their respective areas. This “from the inside out” and “bottom up” perspective to technology has been supported by several socialists (for instance, Lee, 2001). Such form of governance has always been a preferred one and is referred to as ‘community governance’. Community participation has been found to be a key component of success of telecentres in ushering development and social change in rural areas. Galperin (2005) examines the success of collective action by business owners in rural context of Scotland. Konstadakopulos (2005) points out through a case study of artisan development in Vietnam that formulation of clusters helped to avail benefits of technology for small-scale entrepreneurs in Vietnam. Misra and Vijayadita (2006) also bring out

the importance of a community-focused approach for ensuring success to ICT initiatives for rural governance. Taking a cue from all such studies, we can presume that there is a necessity of a community-driven approach for sustained and successful e-governance systems. Review of literature points out that the majority of e-governance systems have been developed only from the perspective of trends, institutions or administrators. This kind of ‘limited-perspective-approach’, based on reductionism, tends to ignore the cascading nature of consequences on other stakeholders and subsystems. To design successful and sustained ICT-based projects for rural governance with equal participation of the stakeholders especially the community, it is important to consider the system as a “whole” rather than dismembering it in isolated units. This would require an inter-disciplinary systems approach where interests and inputs of all, especially the citizens, are considered in harmony with other stakeholders. Therefore, an integrated framework for ICT interventions in rural areas is required, that could amicably blend community needs, knowledge and inputs along with inputs of other stakeholders. Charu Malhotra et al. (2007) have proposed a framework keeping all these factors and inputs as indicated in Figure 1. The main variables of the framework, indicated in Figure 1 are: ICT initiatives, Community Participation and Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS), interlinked with others using systems approach. ICT initiatives can benefit all the components of Rural Development (RD) directly

FIGURE 1TKS-based G2C2G e-government framework for rural development

Source: Charru Malhotra et al. (2007): ICT for rural development: An inclusive framework for e-governance

ICT initiatives

Community participation

Traditional knowledge

systems

Self-organising feedback for continuous improvement

Good governance

Rural development

An integrated self-evolving

e-governance

OutputInput

Processes of governance

Policy

Information

Processes

Institutions

PeOPle

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or indirectly. Direct ICT initiatives for rural-development refer to the front-end use of computing, networking and Internet technologies for rural communities. Examples are database systems, web portals or community service centres (CSC) at block or village level to address rural concerns such as local governance issues, land records management, supply-chain management, augmenting processes of rural markets or agriculture, and so on. Indirect ICT initiatives for the rural sector would be using ICT in the background as a tool for education, weather forecasting and so on. All ICT initiatives, direct or indirect, in rural context have to be designed using an integrated and self-evolving approach. The ultimate beneficiaries (end-users) of ICT initiatives in rural areas are rural communities. Therefore, ICT initiatives for rural areas ought to be people-centric. The design of ICT initiatives should ref lect community needs, aspirations, prevalent resources and knowledge. To capture the same, Community Participation is an important input to ICT initiatives for design of sustained rural e-governance projects. To make Community Participation a meaningful design input, indigenous knowledge available with these communities needs to be integrated with ICT initiatives. Such indigenous or community knowledge is also referred to as Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) that represent the prevalent practices, systems, techniques, indigenous knowledge or components existing at grassroots. Acceptance of TKS in ICT-based initiatives would customise these initiatives as per the local needs. This framework has therefore, a strong feedback loop and flexible boundaries.

Summary and SuggestionsInformation technologies should be introduced when they constitute the most effective available way of meeting basic human needs and fulfilling fundamental human rights. Therefore, if a few aspects like, better coordination between local and national machineries and factors, creation of a minimal infrastructure in areas like education, health, transport, etc. are addressed, ICT may prove to be a potent tool for rural development and poverty alleviation. If two trends, the IT revolution and the advancement of globalisation are guided into productive channels, a social revolution will take place on the heels of the current revolutions in technology and economies. There will be an unprecedented explosion in the personal and economic freedom enjoyed by humans around the globe. Two groups that can play an important role in this revolution and will be among its main beneficiaries are, women and youth. Civil society organisations’ (CSO) initiatives are not universally replicable models for configuring social enterprises projects based on ICTs. The incremental values created by such experiments in India’s rural setting are nevertheless important given the extreme deprivation and social degeneration in the rural areas. Nonetheless, they do not constitute a case for adopting techno

determinist models of social development. Therefore, this paper emphasises adoption of a more systematic approach for integrating Traditional Knowledge Systems (TKS) and ICT inputs to ensure sustainability of rural e-governance projects. The study of literature related to rural development and e-governance has indicated various issues impeding success of such initiatives. The main issues are lack of localisation of content for rural communities and inadequate participation of rural communities in design of rural ICT initiatives. The study therefore, suggests the use of the systems-approach to integrate the relevant TKS along with ICT initiatives in the design of e-governance systems for rural development. This participatory approach can lead to creation of more acceptable and sustainable e-governance projects. The variables to quantify success of an e-governance initiative could be the popularity of the initiative measured by the number of visitors to the e-governance set-up in the rural area. The impact of an e-governance initiative could also be measured by using aforementioned indices, on a control group, before and after introduction of the e-governance initiative or by comparing the economic status between one cluster with the initiative and another one without the e-governance initiative. There are indeed, larger lessons to be learnt from the brief history of the Internet in rural India. The social enterprise models depend heavily on direct and indirect subsidies and are effectively controlled by the local elites. This tends to reinforce, rather than bridge, the existing social divides in the villages. The economic sustainability of the projects, on the other hand, rests on the potential for enhancing the rural network society to reap the benefits of economics of scale and the network effect. It is evident that the development of ICTs in resource-poor regions and nations cannot be based on the over-hyped narratives of rural e-topia now pervading the discourses on new technologies and their potential.

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Meraj Ahmed Mubarki is Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, India.

The aim of this study was to examine sexual content in Indian TV commercials. For the purpose, a content analysis was carried out and 888 Indian TV commercials were recorded from 15 TV channels available across India over two phases with a gap of three months in between. After repetitions were weeded out, the remaining 365 TV commercials were coded and measured for sexual content. Results show that a quarter of all Indian TV commercials contain sexual information. Sex or sexual content is not limited to advertisements where the dominant advertising appeal is sexual. On the contrary, sexual content has spilled over on TV commercials where the dominant appeal of the advertisement is emotional or argumentative. Data shows that women play more leading roles than men in TV commercials with sexual content. The most preferred operationalisation of sex in TV commercials takes place through body display, followed by sexual behaviour and sexual referents. English TV commercials have higher sexual content compared to Hindi TV commercials. Sexual content was not just limited to the ‘usual suspects’ like beauty- and appearance-enhancing products, but was also found in a wide range of products categories such as those of household, electronic, housekeeping, food, automotive and accessories product and services, etc. This article provides several implications for policy makers, as TV commercials with sexual content are often shown throughout the day, exposing the content to a young audience.

Meraj Ahmed Mubarki

Sexual Content in Indian TV Commercials

In a small village in Kullu, in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, family members either watch TV alone or do not watch it at all. Like an item of

personal use, TV sets are not to be shared. If a grandfather is enjoying some spiritual programme, neither his son nor grandson will enter the TV room. This is the same when his son or grandson is watching their preferred programmes. Other family members will not disturb them. This initiative is much appreciated by many people of the valley (Sharma, 2011). Villagers think it is against their morals to watch TV along with their family members on account of pornography being shown, even in family programmes. Village head Seema Devi pointed out that this initiative was taken in view of the immodest clips (advertisements) that were being shown on television. But this concern is not limited to families alone. In May 2011, the Indian government issued a statement asking TV channels not to broadcast lascivious and risqué TV commercials noting that the content of some deodorant TV commercials was brimming “with messages aimed at tickling the libidinous male instincts and portrayal of women as lustily hankering after men under the influence of such deodorants” (Nelson, 2011). In 2008, a TV commercial for men’s deodorant was taken off air as it showed a ‘chocolate man’ being nibbled at, at various places, by ravenous women (The Observer, 2008). In 2007, India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting

prohibited the transmission or re-transmission of television advertisements of two brands of men’s under garment ‘Lux Cozy’ and ‘Amul Macho’ on all broadcasting stations with immediate effect considering them as indecent, vulgar and suggestive, and thus violate Rule 7 of Cable TV Network (Regulation) Act of 1995 (Chauhan, 2007). Sex and nudity on American television go back to the 60s sitcom, ‘I Dream of Jeannie’, (Cooper, 1966–1969) which showed the lead actress Barbara Eden in a bikini, and CBS produced ‘Steambath’ (Brinckerhoff, 1973) which gained notoriety for showing a bare female nipple and a man’s bare bottom for the first time on American television. In India, a two-piece bikini clad Karen Lunel bathed under a waterfall for a bathing bar back in 1985. It was only in the mid 90s that the Indian public space witnessed a proliferation of “representations of erotics” (Mankekar, 2004, p. 403). The ‘sexualisation’ of the Indian Television took place in the context of “feverish commodity consumption precipitated by the expansion of mass culture, the liberalisation of the Indian economy and the introduction of global capital” (Mankekar, 2004, p. 408). A rise in sex in advertising coincided with a rise in disposable income and rising standards of living, and greater perpetration of TV across urban and rural households. Sex began to be used to sell commodities not traditionally associated with sexual appeal such as mineral water, shoes, soft drinks and coffee. Though the Indian state exercised control over television content right through the medium’s inauguration in 1959, this ‘statist monopoly’ built

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assiduously through strict bureaucratic control began to unravel from around the mid 90s as the Indian economy liberalised and the Indian skies opened to unregulated and uncensored transmission from abroad. Seeking to regulate the airwaves over which it was steadily losing control, and also amidst the clamour for protecting Indian culture from the alleged pernicious effects of creeping Western influence, the Indian parliament passed the Cable TV Network Act of 1995, on the grounds that in the absence of proper regulation, “lots of undesirable programmes and advertisements are becoming available to the viewers without any kind of censorship” (Ambez Media & Market Research, 1999). Apart from making its registration compulsory for the cable TV operators they were also required to comply with Rule 6 and 7 of the Act specifically dealing with TV programmes and TV commercials respectively. Rule 7 of the Act dealing specifically with TV commercials read:

No advertisement shall be permitted which projects a derogatory image of women. Women must not be portrayed in a manner that emphasises passive, submissive qualities and encourages them to play a subordinate, secondary role in the family and society. The cable operator shall ensure that the portrayal of the female form is tasteful and aes-thetic, and is within the well-established norms of good taste and decency (Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India).

All of these point to a growing awareness about sex in advertising on Indian television. The issue of sex on TV has dominated the debate in the United States for some time and key findings of the RAND health research of 2005 shows that “teens who watch a lot of television with sexual content are more likely to initiate intercourse in the following year” (Collins et al., 2004, p. 280). Premature sexualisation can also lead to pressure to look a certain way, encourage anorexic eating habits and may promote premature sexual activity (Egan & Hawkes, 2008, p. 309). In India, apart from banning a few TV Indian commercials now and then that seemingly cross the line into the undefined territory of indecency and ‘sexual suggestivity’, there is no formal mechanism either to define sexual content or to measure it on Indian TV. Government regulations are more often than not directed at sex, not ‘sexual’. Because of public outcry, social policing and various government regulations which monitor advertising practices across countries, including India, sexual appeal is no longer operationalised through nudity alone and has diversified to include more subtle means: sexual behaviour and sexual referents. It is through these means that sexual suggestiveness is often made functional in an advertisement. Despite concerns raised, the fact remains that no such research has been carried out to measure sexual content on Indian television. While Mallika Das’ research examines “gender role portrayal in Indian television advertising” (Das, 2010) and is a substantial gain in the insight of gender representations, it does not cover sexual content.

Defining Sex in AdvertisingCourtney and Whipple describe sex in advertising as “sexuality in the form of nudity, sexual imagery, innuendo and double entendre … employed as an advertising tool for a wide variety of products” (Reichert, 2002, p. 243). Past research in the field has often equated sexually oriented appeals or sexual appeal in advertising with nudity and physical attractiveness (Reichert & Ramirez, 2000). But while nudity is easy to define, sexual appeal is not always functionalised through body display. TV commercials can make ‘sexual appeal’ without resorting to nudity. Again, physical attractiveness may also not be the sole means through which sexual appeal is introduced. On the contrary, physical attractiveness may not connote ‘sexy’ at all and attractive models can be shown in a completely ‘de-sexualised’ context. Sexual appeal and sexual content may not go concurrently, and sex may be present in TV advertisements even when the dominant advertising appeal is otherwise i.e. emotional, argumentative, etc. Seeking to define the means through which sexual appeal is functionalised, Carolyn A Lin speaks of physical characteristics such as body type, cloth revealment and sexually-oriented conduct measured in terms of the presence/absence of physical innuendo, verbal innuendo and physical contact, model’s sex appeal, measured in terms of physical attractiveness, sexiness and status as a sex object (Lin, 1998). Fully-clothed models may indulge in sexual behaviour characterised as flirting behaviour and courtship. “Unbuttoned clothing, rolling the pelvis, titling or cocking the head to expose the neck, and preening behaviours” (Reichert & Ramirez, 2000) have been identified as some of the means through which sexual behaviour is operationalised in TV advertisements. ‘Sexual referents’ on the other hand are the most subtle means of inserting a sexual appeal in advertising without resorting either to nudity or sexual behaviour, and are defined in advertising literature as “having or possessing sexual stimuli that triggers or arouses ideas about sex in a person’s mind” (Reichert & Ramirez, 2000). Sexual referents can be operationalised through a range of subtle aural and or visual means that can be considered “sexually suggestive”, ranging from a “key being entered into a keyhole” to “water spurting out from a hosepipe”, to “creaking sound coming out from behind closed doors” to “a car heaving gently in the wilderness”. In 2006, Kamasutra condom brand released a series of TV commercials that made use of sexual referents but not nudity or sexual behaviour. In one TV commercial, a young man in a waiting room is shown squirming in his seat as he sees a young woman unzip her satchel. In another, a bed-ridden patient being examined by a doctor feels squirmy as he sees a young nurse putting her pen ‘in and out’ of its cap. In another campaign for a mango soft drink aptly labelled ‘Aamsutra’, the female model caresses and fondles the mango suggestively, with extreme close up shots of the model’s lips.

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Sexual Content in indian tV CommerCialS

Theoretical PerspectivesRepeated words, visuals and cues play an important role in the way viewers’ shape their perceptions and attitudes about the world and their responses will be influenced by what they see in the world as shown on television. Television provides people or viewers with ‘slice of events of ordinary lives’ that not only supply norms for conduct but also beliefs for a wide range of real life situations. Cultivation theory has served as an important theoretical rationale for stereotypical gender representation in advertising and portrayal of people on TV commercials. Through constant exposure and consistent incorporation, the mass media is able to transcend the barriers of time, space and social grouping. The cultivation theory of George Gerbner, introduced in 1969 in Towards “Cultural Indicators”: The Analysis of Mass Mediated Public Message System, posits that the more a person spends time consuming media the closer his or her views are going to be about the world as portrayed in the media (Zhang, Harwood et al., 2006, p. 265). Subsequently, expounding the social cognitive theory and the media’s role in influencing behaviour, Albert Bandura contends: “A vast amount of social learning occurs either by design or by intent from models in one’s immediate environment. However, a vast amount of this information about human values, styles of thinking and behaviour pattern is gained from the extensive modelling in the symbolic environment of the mass media” (Bandura, 2002). A heavy exposure to this symbolic world may eventually make the televised image appear to be an authentic state of human affairs. Bandura explicitly points out that the effect of the media may not be direct and can take place through a variety of means and degrees. There’s no single pattern of social influence. The media can imply an idea either directly or through adopters. In other instances, the effects of media may be entirely socially mediated. That is, people who had no exposure to the media are influenced by adopters who have had the exposure and then, themselves, become transmitters of the new ways. Within these differing patterns of social influence the media can serve as originating, as well as reinforcing influences (Bandura, 2002, p. 113).

Objectives of the StudyThe current research based on these theoretical foundations considers the merit of examining content [representation] itself rather than examining its effect

significance. The major objective of the study was to find the presence of sexual content in TV commercials broadcast in India measured in terms of identifiable variables and used as indicators of the presence of sex in advertising. The research questions are:

RQ1 What is the percentage of TV commercials carrying sexual content?

RQ2 What is the distribution of sex content across lead actor category?

RQ3 What is the percentage of advertisements with sexual appeal as the dominant advertising appeal?

RQ4 What is the distribution of sexual content across product category?

RQ5 What is the distribution of nudity, sexual behaviour and sexual referents across lead/principal role category i.e. male, female, child or elderly?

MethodEmpirical research using content analysis has been the preferred choice of research methodology on advertising with the process accounting for 38.2 percent of the research conducted in the stream (Wolin, 2003). Generalisations about what is on the TV require observable and objective evidence. When the depiction of certain tangible categories is under debate, then the frequency and meaning of identifiable visual content becomes imperative. The current research, exploratory in orientation, sought queries through the formulation of research questions (RQs).

SampleContent analysis has a well-established tradition in media studies, since it “provides a credible picture of denotative meanings within advertising and remains popular for monitoring advertising’s representation of, for example women, minorities and the elderly” (Leiss, Kline, Jhally, Botterill & Leiss, 2005, p. 163). The usual limitations that accrue to this approach also apply to the present research. Five categories of TV channels were devised viz., General Interest channel, Movies channel, News channel, Music channel and Cartoon channel. To ensure better quality and freedom to select channels, a DTH (Direct-to-Home) connection was preferred over the network provided by a cable operator. Regional Indian languages were excluded and could be used in the future

TABLE 1List of channels selected, language-wise split

Category General News Movies Music Cartoon TotalHindi channels 3 0 1 3 1 8English channels 0 3 2 0 2 7Total 3 3 3 3 3 15

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for cross-cultural analysis. Two languages were selected: Hindi, spoken by 41.3 percent of India’s population as per the 2001 census (Ministry of Home Affairs. GOI), and English, because advertisements in English tend to be from larger national/international firms with a pan-national appeal. Three channels were randomly selected from each category. A total of 15 channels were selected. Channels were recorded between 10 am to 12 midnight, following Furnham and Voli’s suggestion (Furnham & Voli, 1989, p. 176). A total of 888 TV commercials were recorded. Public service broadcasts, non-commercials, film trailers and repeat advertisements were excluded. TV advertisements depicting animals or cartoon characters only, which were wholly animation with no human character, stills with voice-overs or in which no humans appeared were also excluded. All TV commercials in which humans played primary/principal roles were coded. Following the precedent set by Lin (Lin, 1998, p. 466), in cases where a group of models appeared together displaying similar behaviour, then all the models were coded as one single unit. After filtering all repetitions, animations advertisements, the corpus consisted of 365 ads.

Coding reliabilityCoding was carried out after training two independent coders: one male and one female. They were given a coding book that contained all the variables, their values and their definitions. Coders were trained on TV commercials, not part of the main sample. Instructions given to the coders included written descriptions of all variables, visual examples of sexual behaviours and the researcher was present to discuss the definitions. Coders worked independently. Inter-coder reliability after the first training session was 0.78. After the second training session, it had reached 0.86. Finally for the third session, both the coders coded around 10 percent of the TV commercials (n = 36) independently of one another, and the inter-coder reliability was 0.97. This was followed by the actual coding of the TV commercials. Disagreements between coders were resolved through discussions without the researcher’s intervention. Banerjee et al. (Banerjee et al., 1999) have recommended that Kappa

value below 0.40 should be unacceptable, while that between 0.40 and 0.75 should be fair to good beyond chance. All the coding reliability decisions were well within the acceptable limits defined by Banerjee et al.

Coding instruments and variablesAdvertisements were first coded on the basis of language in which they were broadcast: Hindi and English. In the case of advertisements in which both the languages were used, attention was paid to the number of words spoken in each language and then coded. Models playing the principal role were selected on the basis of maximum number of visual exposures i.e. the number of shots a character appeared in. The principal role category in the TV advertisements were categorised into gender and then into children, elderly and the intermediate age group. Lead actors of the age of 12 and below were coded as child lead actors; those of the age of 60 years and above were coded as Elderly. Following Swayne and Greco, elderly characters were judged on the basis of subjective criteria including their appearance of retirement, grey hairs, wrinkles and the use of aids like wheel-chairs, hearing aids and canes, and shown as parents of middle-aged people or in the company of grandchildren or the like (Swayne & Greco, 1987, p. 47). The lead actors, in between the age group of children and elderly, were coded as male or female based on their gender. Only lead characters selected were observed for nudity, sexual behaviour and sexual referents. Advertising appeals were measured in terms of behavioural variables. The extent to which an advertisement used a type of appeal marked its dominant appeal. To measure the type of advertising appeal present in commercials, all TV commercials were divided into the five types of advertising appeals. Commercials that appealed mainly to reason, logic and reliance on objective evidence were marked as argumentative appeal (Tellis, 2004, p. 135). For an elaboration of the various types of advertising appeal see Tellis, 2004. TV commercials in which persuasion occurred primarily through the arousal of emotions through the inclusion of drama and story, rather than through the force of any rhetorical questioning, refutation, or argument and which sought to connect with the audience through feelings such as pride, courage, dedication, honour, elation, jubilation, etc, were coded as motional appeal. When the predominant appeal in the TV commercial was through endorsement by a celebrity (sports, films personality, etc.) or an expert endorser (such as a dentist, doctor, etc.) it was labelled as an endorsement appeal. When the persuasive appeal contained sexual information integrated within the overall message or had any representation that portrayed or implied sexual interest or behaviour or motivation it was coded as sexual appeal (Reichert, 2002, p. 243). TV commercials employing humour tactics, parody, satire, pun, slapstick and sophisticated humour, or those in which the comic factor predominated were coded as humorous appeal.

TABLE 2Coding reliability across variables

Variables Cohen’s kappaLanguage of ad 0.92Product category 0.96Principal role 1.00Advertising appeal 0.86Sex content 1.00Body display 1.00Sexual behaviour 0.84Sexual referents 0.65

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Product categoryProducts were divided into 11 categories such as: 1. Foodstuff products, 2. Health and Personal Hygiene products, 3. Beauty and Appearance enhancing products, 4. Electronic products, 5. Financial products, 6. Automotive and Accessories products, 7. Fashion, Clothes and Jewellery products, 8. Medicinal and Pharmaceutical products, 9. Housekeeping products, 10. Services, and 11. Others.

1. Foodstuff items included edible items such as cooking oil, noodles, biscuits, breakfast cereals, chewing gum, chocolates, as well as those that had to be processed before consumption such as tea leaves and coffee. Gutkas and pan masalas were also included under the edible category.

2. Personal Hygiene products included products such as deodorants, toothpaste, soaps, dental floss and mouth gargles, female sanitary napkins, condoms, shaving razors, shaving cream, hand wash, body wash, face wash, children nappies and shampoos.

3. Beauty and Appearance enhancing products included fairness creams, anti-ageing creams and lotions, spot reducing gels, dark circle removing creams and gels, etc.

4. Electronic products included all items that run on electricity/battery and have to be recharged regularly, like laptops, cell phones, refrigerators, heaters, ACs, inverters, home theatres, VCD and DVD players, video games, washing machines, fans, grinders, toasters, vacuum cleaners and other home appliances.

5. Financial products included mutual funds, bonds, shares, debentures and financial publications.

6. Automotive and accessory products included all types of vehicles, including two wheelers and their accessories like engine oil, car tires, car fresheners, etc.

7. Fashion, Clothes, and Jewellery products included shoes, watches, optical instruments like frames and contact lenses, clothes items included all under-garments for men and women.

8. Medicinal and Pharmaceutical products included products relating to medicinal treatment like cough syrups, pain relief balms and lotions, itching creams, emergency contraceptive pills, etc.

9. Housekeeping products included utensils, cookers, pots and pans, non-electrical water purifier, bed sheets, detergent soaps, detergent gels, detergent liquids, toilet cleaner, paints, fabric softeners, etc.

10. Services included those provided by DTH network, airlines, websites, fast food centres like Dominos, McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, matrimonial services, telephony services and hospitality services, etc.

11. Products like cement and iron bars, which could not be coded in any of the categories were coded as Others.

Sex content was measured in terms of the presence or absence of body display, sexual behaviour and sexual

referents, in combination or singularly. Body display meant revealing clothes, women in short skirts, or in inner wear, cleavage revealing low cut blouses, men in underwear or shirtless (Reichert, 2002, p. 244). Explicit nudity being rare in Indian TV commercials, scenes in which characters were shown with bare shoulders and bathing, or wrapped in towels, topless or in various stages of undressing, were considered as ‘implied nudity’ and coded. Suggestive clothing which revealed or exposed the upper body, such as an unbuttoned blouse or thigh revealing a micro mini were also included in body display (Reichert, Lambaise, Morgan, Carstarpheu & Zavoina, 1999, p. 11). Following Reichert’s description, sexual behaviour included moving and talking in a manner that communicated sexual interest or in a manner that was intended to evoke the viewers’ sexual interest (Reichert, 2002, p. 245). Sexual contacts such as kissing, simulated foreplay, flirting behaviour such as pouting, winking, fleeting glances, biting lips, flying kisses and exposing neck, were also considered as sexual behaviour. Models or characters talking in a sensual languorous vocal tone were also taken as sexual behaviour. Sexual referents were defined as verbal elements or the mix of verbal and visual message elements that included sexual innuendos and/or double meaning dialogues that carried sexual connotations (Reichert, 2002, p. 246).

ResultsRQ1: What is the percentage of TV commercials carrying sexual content?About 26.3 percent (n = 96) of the TV commercials contained sexual content, that is one in every four commercials contained some form of sexual content. But a language-wise split showed different results. Within this, only 39.6 percent (n = 38) of Hindi TV commercials contained sexual content compared to English TV commercials where sexual content reached 60.4 percent (n = 58). Thus sexual content was higher in English TV commercials than Hindi TV commercials.

TABLE 3Percentage of sexual content, language-wise split

Language of ad % of sex

English 60.4% (58)

Hindi 39.6% (38)

Total 100% (96)

RQ2: What is the distribution of sex content across lead actor category?Females play more lead roles 58.3 percent (n = 56) in TV commercials with sexual content than men. No child or elderly was found playing lead role in advertisements with sexual content.

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TABLE 4Sexual content in TV commercials, distribution-

lead category wise

Sexual content PercentageFemale 58.3% (56)Male 41.7% (40)Child —Elderly —Total 100% (96)

RQ3: What is the percentage of advertisements with sexual appeal as the dominant theme?Sexual appeal as the dominant advertising appeal and theme accounted for 10.4 percent of all advertising appeals. The most common of all advertising appeal appeared to be Emotional 34 percent (n = 124), followed by Argumentative –29.9 percent (n = 109), Endorsement –14 percent (n = 51) and Humour at 11.8 percent (n = 43).

RQ4: What is the distribution of sex content across product category?Health and hygiene products make the most of sexual appeal (28.1 percent; n = 27), followed by the beauty and appearance enhancing products 22.9 percent (n = 22). Sex content is distributed across all product categories being highest in health and hygiene products, and the lowest in medicines and pharmaceutical products. No sexual content was found for financial product advertisements.

RQ5. What is the distribution of nudity, sexual behaviour and sexual referents across lead/principal role category i.e. male, female, child or elderly?Compared to male leads, female leads tend to show more flesh, exhibit more instances of sexual behaviours. Women also tend to play more lead roles in TV commercials that make sexual references but do not show ‘sex’.

DiscussionThe findings of the study suggest the ubiquity of sexual content, across language and advertising appeals. Sexual content varied only in degree across Hindi and English language TV commercials. English TV commercials make greater use of sexual content than Hindi. This could be because English TV channels cater to upwardly mobile urban Indian households who may have more liberal attitudes towards sexual content and its manifestations. Women outnumber men significantly in commercials having sexual content, hinting at a stereotypical sexual objectification of women, but men are not lacking behind either. Yet, while American advertising pushed the envelope with commercials that put very young male and female models in provocative postures, most notable, Brook Shields for the Calvin Klein Jeans in the

TABLE 6Sexual content distributed across product category

Product category %Health and hygiene (27) 28.1Beauty/appearance enhancing (22) 22.9Electronic products (12) 12.5Fashion, clothes, jewellery (10) 10.4Housekeeping products (09) 9.4Foodstuff products (04) 4.2Services (05) 5.2Automotive and accessories products (04) 4.2Others (02) 2.1Medicines and pharmaceuticals (01) 1.0Financial products —Total (96) 100.0

Numbers in bracket represents frequencies

TABLE 7Distribution of body display, sexual behaviour, sexual referents across male/female leads

Body display Sexual behaviour Sexual referentsMale lead 33.3% (26) 43.0% (28) 44.4% (16)Female lead 66.6% (52) 56.9% (37) 55.5% (20)Total 100%* (78) 100% * (65) 100% * (36)

* Rounded off to 100%

TABLE 5Distribution of advertising appeal and sex content

within advertising appeals Advertising appeal % of total ads

(365)% with sex

content (96)Emotional (124) 34.0 12.5 (12)Argumentative (109) 29.9 21.9 (21)Endorsement (51) 14.0 19.8 (19)Humour (43) 11.8 06.3 (06)Sexual (38) 10.4 39.6 (38)Total (365) 100 100 (96)

Number in bracket represents frequencies

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1980s, “nothing comes between me and my Calvins” (Media Awareness Network, 2010); and in 2007, Virgin Money’s new home loans multi-platform advertising titled ‘Everlasting Love’ showed an elderly male cupping the breasts of an elderly woman (Vallejo, 2007). Indian commercials so far have refrained from such practices and children or elderly do not appear in sexually charged commercials. All sexually appealing Indian TV commercials have sex; not all sex is present in advertisements with sexual appeal. Sexual appeals accounted for 10.4 percent (n = 38) or the least of all the advertising appeals on TV commercials. However, quite surprisingly the number of advertisements with sexual content was significantly higher (n = 96), which points out that sex content has ‘spilled’ into advertisements where the dominant advertising appeal is not sexual. Sex is present even in TV commercials that are making Argumentative and/ or Emotional appeals. Sexual content is also spread out across product categories and is not just restricted to the ‘usual suspects’, like Fashion and Accessories products or Beauty and appearance enhancing products. With the exception of the financial products, all varieties of products advertised on Indian TV make use of sex. While overt nudity is not possible because of public outrage and legal action from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Indian TV commercials nevertheless often show implied nudity (women shown with bare shoulders, and/ or wrapped in towels, a tilt shot showing a towel dropped around a woman’s ankle, men in bathrooms with their torsos blurred out to imply nudity). Again, commercials with women in the lead role have higher body display, sexual behaviour and sexual referents than commercials with men in the lead. Body display remains the principle means through which sexual content in TV commercials is operationalised. Recent research effects studies show that sexual content is associated with sexual behaviour patterns (Manganello, Franzini & Jordan, 2008), and since Indian TV commercials are repeated often throughout the day, it is safe to assume that the adult and sexual content reach a young audience whose idea of sexuality and its attendant responsibilities may be wholly derived from the media.

Further Research DirectionIt is reasonable to expect that TV commercials in other Indian regional languages may reflect a different amount of sexual content and manifestations. It is important to remember that in all likelihood the findings are restricted to the English and Hindi TV commercials. However, the study establishes the everyday use of sexual content. Representations in advertisements are contextual and the meanings produced by and through them cannot be separated from the discursive and the social structures of the society within which they operate. Since representations are instrumental in creating images and social realities, such TV commercials merely highlight

the importance of critical media studies and media literacy in India. Empirical research is necessary to find out how these advertisements are being read by various social groups, particularly children, the most vulnerable section. The study may eventually be used for longitudinal studies on sexual content in Indian advertisements and for further debate on sexual content in TV commercials.

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Yamato Eriko is a senior lecturer at Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). She has completed her PhD in Mass Communication focusing on media consumption of Japanese popular culture.

The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of media consumption of Japanese popular culture among Malaysian young adults. Such a study is important in order to understand the consequence of the consumption of foreign cultural products since the development of information and communication technology has brought changes to media entertainment consumption styles, especially among the younger generation. This article discusses the ‘accumulation’ of Japanese popular culture as part of media consumption experiences. Through the interpretation of some young Malaysians’ experiences, the accumulation was found to be an important part of media consumption in developing the young Malaysians’ mindset towards specific formats, genres or products from Japan despite the differences that exist between the lifestyles of the Japanese and the Malaysians. The paper highlights that the contents of Japanese popular cultural products are crucial. Without a sophisticated depiction of ‘an essential human aspect’ to which young Malaysians could relate, Japanese popular culture would not be well-liked.

Yamato Eriko

Accumulating Japanese Popular CultureMedia Consumption Experiences of Malaysian Young Adults

The Internet enables people to obtain digitalised media contents from all over the world. The consumption of popular cultural products used to

be a topic of discussion within a domestic context. In the era of the Internet, digitalised popular cultural products easily cross national, geographical and cultural borders. According to studies conducted outside of Japan, the major overseas distribution of Japanese popular culture had not been initiated by Japanese copyright holders, despite its increasing export. Okamura (2005, p. 4) remarked that the authors of famous manga or anime were not very interested in battling against pirated distribution of their copyrighted products in Asian regions. Leonard (2005, pp. 282–283) reported in his historical study that anime gained public recognition in the United States through the efforts of enthusiastic fans. He argued that the unofficial distribution had functioned as a ‘prerequisite service’ for the licensing of anime materials in the US. In other words, the anime market in the US was not cultivated by any Japanese production companies even though anime industry had been mainly targeting the US as a potential export market. Nakano (2002, p. 247) and Hu (2005, p. 184) also reported that the spread of J-dramas (Japanese dramas) was initiated by Asian youths, widely in the form of pirated VCDs (video compact discs) and lately through the Internet. The unauthorised distribution expanded because of its advantage over legal distribution in terms of choice, cost and time. J-drama fans empowered

themselves to challenge existing distribution channels with the assistance of new technologies. It appears that these phenomena present a view of globalisation from a different angle. They are not about the cultural imperialism of Japan or ‘Japanisation’. They suggest a more comprehensive examination of the global flow of popular cultural products or their contents. This globalisation is not a one-way process from the sender to the receiver or from the centre to the periphery. The above studies of Japanese popular culture indicate that the different interests of the people inside or outside the original production can influence the circulation of the cultural products worldwide. The Internet and self-copied media files emerged as new medium of J-drama as well as anime even in Malaysia. These unauthorised distributions led to uncontrolled consumption of Japanese popular cultural contents. The Malaysian Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications reported that broadband penetration was only at 18 percent in September 2008. However, according to a survey conducted by the Nielsen Company at that time, 53 percent of the Malaysian respondents downloaded or streamed full-length movies, movie clips, TV shows, music videos or video games from the Internet over a month (Lourdes, 2009, p. 24). It seems that if someone has a computer or the latest cell phone with wireless connectivity, it is not necessary to have a high-speed broadband connection to obtain media files since these files can be easily passed around. According to Hu (2005), various visual contents, such as TV programmes and films, began to be circulated for free following the innovation of a peer-to-peer (P2P) transfer protocol. Nakano (2002, pp. 231–233) pointed out that Japanese popular cultural products were accepted by the younger

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generation in the Asian region. These young people grew up watching anime or reading translated manga even before J-drama became popular in the 1990s. However, past studies conducted in Asian countries have not focused on the continuing consumption of Japanese popular culture. According to the author’s daily observation at the university, in Malaysia, young adults have been consuming Japanese popular culture since their childhood. Accordingly, the study was carried out from September 2009 to August 2010 with the purpose of understanding media consumption of Japanese popular culture among Malaysian young adults through their description of lived experiences.

Japanese Popular CultureAccording to Okamura (2005, pp. 7–13), Japanese popular cultural products have been constructed as products representing the Japanese nation even though they are hybrid in nature or greatly influenced by American popular culture. For instance, the ‘J’ in the word ‘J-pop’ (Japanese pop music) indirectly indicates a sort of national pride among the people who produce and consume ‘J-pop’ in Japan. The English term ‘anime’ was adopted by people who consumed anime outside Japan to distinguish and praise Japan-made products (Okamura, 2005). As Anderson (1991) argues, ‘the nation’ has been constructed as an ‘imagined community’; Japanese popular culture has also been constructed as a ‘national product’ not only by people within the national borders but also by those outside of Japan. Sakai (1996, p. 22) pointed out that culture has no inherent national label, but our obsessive discourse on nationality makes culture a representation of the nation. In the same way, there would be a certain discourse or implication if the popular culture were identified as ‘Japanese’. In fact, as Iwabuchi (2002, p. 448) argued, what is ‘Japanese’ about Japanese popular culture is not easily answered. Despite the fact that both Sakai and Iwabuchi were fully aware that nation and national culture are constructed historically. Sakai (1996, p. 22) gave one exceptional example in popular cultural products: the Nintendo computer game as a non-national product. He wrote that children in the US had been enjoying the game without noticing its origin. Iwabuchi (2001a, pp. 22–33) also listed computer games, manga and anime as ‘culturally odourless’ products. His term ‘culturally odourless’ means there is no sense of Japan in the product even though it is made in Japan. He claimed that this ‘culturally odourless’ aspect is a major reason for the wide acceptance of Japanese computer games and anime outside Japan. On the other hand, Allison (2003, p. 384) remarked that American children knew the origin of their favourite Pokémon (originally created as a role-playing game for Gameboy in 1996) products. Napier (2007, p. 210) also discovered from a series of surveys of American anime and manga fans that the ‘Japanese-ness of anime and manga was an essential aspect’. She reported that a considerable number of fans studied the Japanese language, read about

Japanese history or travelled to Japan. The fans enjoyed the opportunities to be introduced to other cultures through anime and manga. Napier also pointed out that knowledge of Japanese culture, which is different from their own, and experiences in that culture are important aspects of fan activities. Leung (2002) and Lee (2006) raised questions about Iwabuchi’s ‘culturally odourless’ aspect in terms of the reception of J-dramas among Hong Kong and Taiwanese women. Leung (2002, pp. 74–75) concluded that the female viewers of J-drama in Hong Kong read ‘Japanese-ness’ in the dramas despite romantic and trendy elements that may be ‘culturally odourless’ to them. According to Lee (2006, pp. 122–123), J-drama has the advertising effect of promoting positive images of Japan. Taiwanese viewers had constructed an image of Japan as a fashionable consumer culture because of the dramas. Despite the fact that they have had the chance to visit Japan as tourists, this image would not be changed easily. ‘Cultural proximity’ is another term used to explain the popularity of J-dramas, especially in Asian regions. As Iwabuchi (2001b, p. 205) pointed out, however, the explanation about the trans-national consumption of J-drama was not simple as it was attributed to similarities in figure and cultural value. MacLachlan and Chua (2003) found that there were differences in proximity by age groups and social positions. In their study, the older participants were more interested in talking about a character, the wife of a married man, who did not appear in the episode viewed for discussion, because that position was similar to their own positions as a married woman. In contrast, the younger participants showed a deeper empathy with the leading female role, who was a young working woman like them. A study in an urban area of China (Nakano & Wu, 2003) indicated that university students viewed themselves as ‘petty bourgeois’ and shared many things and activities depicted in J-dramas. The aspect of ‘cultural proximity’ in J-dramas found among the viewers was not solely attributed to a physical feature, value, belief or costume. Leung (2002, pp. 65–75) further pointed out that, in addition to their similar appearance as Asians, their similar economic status with Japan helped the viewers to easily identify with the characters in the dramas. The empathy shown by the viewers of J-drama can be attributed to their social context. ‘Cultural proximity’ is one of the elements Chinese viewers can feel empathy with the characters in J-dramas. However, J-dramas have adapted stories from manga and been influenced by the ways manga is depicted. Manga is a main source of anime production. If the formats of Japanese popular culture are interrelated, one questions whether the ‘cultural proximity’ is a key factor for people to empathise with the contents of cultural products, in relation to the term ‘culturally odourless’ which is often used to explain popularity of anime and manga. ‘Reality’ is another term found in reception studies on J-drama. ‘Reality’ should be something that is actually experienced or seen, although this may differ from person to person. According to Ko (2003, pp. 170–176), however,

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AccumulAting JApAnese populAr culture: mediA consumption experiences of mAlAysiAn young Adults

the ‘reality’ found by Taiwanese viewers of J-dramas was different from that based on their experiences or the actual happenings around them. Their ‘reality’ was a reflection of their daydreams in their daily lives. For instance, Tokyo, the setting of the dramas, was not the real Tokyo. The image of Tokyo represented their desire for freedom, love and career. Leung (2004) explained this situation as ‘co-evalness’ by comparing Japanese and Korean TV dramas. She remarked that ‘in terms of co-evalness as a function of identification, the preference of Hong Kong audience towards J-dramas could be explained by the similar socio-cultural milieu that is entailed from their similar economic development’ (Leung, 2002, p. 69). In this sense, ‘reality’ is attributed to the economic development of each country. In any case, some genres of popular culture tend to depict people’s longings regardless of their origins. A longing for ‘Tokyoites’ life style is an element of popularity among Japanese people, as shown in the manga Yūkan Club (Tsurumi, 2000, pp. 184–185). The balance between the readers’ and viewers’ expectations of what is ‘real’ and what is ‘longing’ or ‘dream’ may not be exactly the same even among viewers who live in Japan. What is depicted in J-drama is not totally ‘real’ for all Japanese viewers. Napier’s (2007, p. 178) findings about American anime fans also discussed the sense of reality. She highlighted the comment: ‘anime is more realistic (than Hollywood products)’. She explained that those fans referred to the anime storyline and characters when they talked about ‘reality’. Many American anime fans preferred fantasy

and science fiction genres that seemed to be in contrast with reality. Reality and fantasy, foreign and everydayness coexist in the world of anime and manga, which has inspired American youths (Allison, 2008, p. 102). In Malaysia, the people consume various foreign popular cultures, including those from Japan, in their everyday lives. According to Yamato et al. (2011), young Malaysians who had watched Japanese TV programmes for children on local TV channels currently use the Internet as a main source of Japanese popular cultural products. Their knowledge and skills in ICT are reflected in the way they consume Japanese popular culture in their everyday lives. Even though their consumption seems to be driven by the consumerism cultivated in other countries, it was also found that they consume Japanese popular cultural products by their own choice. With this background, this article discusses how young Malaysian adults accumulate Japanese popular culture over the years, focusing on cognitive aspect.

The Hermeneutic Phenomenological StudyThe hermeneutic phenomenological approach aims to understand and interpret an individual’s experience in relation to a particular context. Specifically, a crucial part of this approach is the concept of the ‘hermeneutic circle’, which refers to the balancing of the ‘parts’ and the ‘whole’ in an analytical process. There are various pairs that can be considered as ‘parts-whole’: ‘a specific account

TABLE 1Background of the participants

Name* Birth Race Gender Field of study/Position at work Types of product consumed**Ayu 1989 Malay Female English major Anime, manga, J-drama, song, variety

showChun 1987 Chinese Female Nutrition & community health

majorManga, anime, J-drama, game

Farah 1990 Malay Female Accounting major Variety show, song, J-drama, manga, anime

Gadin 1985 Indian Male Software engineering & game design major

Anime, manga, song, J-drama

Huan 1987 Chinese Female Sports science major Takarazuka (musical), anime, manga, light novel

Jun 1987 Chinese Male Petroleum chemistry major J-drama, anime, mangaLok 1987 Chinese Male Management and IT major Anime, song, filmManaf 1977 Malay Male IT security researcher Anime, manga, songRosila 1985 Malay Female Engineering lab technician J-drama, anime, mangaWen 1986 Chinese Female Mathematics major J-drama, song, animeYong 1984 Chinese Male Public relations officer Anime, manga, song, gameZaki 1985 Malay Male Digital media major Anime, manga, light novel, J-drama,

game

Note: *Pseudonym **Types are listed according to each participant’s preference at the time of the interviews

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in a description-the whole description’ or ‘description of a specific personal experience-background of the person/a person’s life/the social context’. Consumption is an everyday human experience that makes sense to those who are directly involved in it. Starting with the interaction between a researcher and participants who have rich experiences of the phenomenon under study, this approach can guide us towards interpreting these experiences comprehensively. A media text and individual consumption are socially constructed. This is the case with Japanese popular culture in Malaysia; multiple social contexts should be considered, such as Japan, from which the media texts originate; Malaysia, where the consumers live; and cyberspace, where many products are circulated as digital files. Twelve Malaysian young adults were selected based on specific criteria: (a) regular consumers of Japanese popular cultural products at the time of the interviews, (b) willing to talk about his or her experiences in English and (c) able to engage in participatory research procedures without much burden. Towards the end of data generation, the diversity in terms of the types of the Japanese popular culture consumed and gender was taken into consideration. Ethnic groups were also considered for additional participants because Malaysia is a country that consists of three major ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. With regard to hermeneutic phenomenology, the diversity of the participants is not intended for generalisation of the findings but rather for enhancing ‘possibilities of rich and unique stories of the particular experiences’ (Laverty, 2003, p. 29). The background of the participants are shown in Table 1. The first phase of data generation was solely done by in-depth interviews to describe and understand individual experiences. Second interviews were conducted as part of the reflective process and member checking to build shared understanding between the researcher and the participant. The researcher also kept a reflective journal throughout the study in order to document her reflections and changing understanding. Information about specific Japanese popular cultural products was obtained through the Internet in order to better understand the participants’ descriptions of their consumption experiences. Most of the Japanese popular cultural products mentioned by the participants during the interviews were also viewed or read partly. According to studies related to media consumption within cultural studies, consumption is part of a process interrelated with other meaning-making processes of cultural texts: production, representation, identity, and regulation (du Gay et al., 1997). Thus, other documents related to the production, representation, identity, and regulation of Japanese popular culture, such as journals, magazines, and newspaper articles, were obtained from both Japan and Malaysia as supporting data. The data analysis was conducted concurrently with the data generation. The interviews, which lasted between 50 minutes and three hours, were recorded, transcribed verbatim and sorted using a qualitative data management software programme. The analysis was guided by van

Manen’s thematic analysis, which involves integrating and reporting the participants’ viewpoints, the researcher’s reflection and data from other sources (van Manen, 1990). Themes were formulated and refined throughout the data generation, analysis and interpretive writing processes. Following three sub-themes of ‘accumulation’ of media consumption are discussed in this article: ‘affection towards made in Japan’, ‘defining taste’ and ‘expectation of sophisticated content’.

Accumulation of Japanese Popular Culture in MalaysiaAll the participants have been consuming Japanese popular cultural products since their childhood. They had also been collecting media files of their favourite Japanese popular cultural products since they knew how to download media files online. However, what they had accumulated were not only physical products. They had a special affection for these Japanese popular cultural products.

Affection towards ‘made in Japan’Wen’s media file collection included old dramas from the end of the 1990s, like ‘GTO’ (‘Great Teacher Onizuka’, 1998) and ‘Majo no Jouken’ (‘Witch’s Requirement’, 1999). Rosila also downloaded old dramas at the time of the first interview. She said about these old dramas: “I watched it first in secondary school … but when I downloaded it last year and watched it, I still laughed.” Wen and Rosila already knew the storylines of these old dramas, but they still found them interesting enough to re-watch all 10 to 12 episodes for seven to eight hours. With reference to the old anime that Wen had collected through the Internet, Wen said: “The old anime I like, can maybe recall back my childhood, my memories when I was a child. So I like it.” When Japanese popular cultural products are viewed one after another, the memories of the older stories fade away from the viewers’ minds. However, an ambiguous yet positive feeling towards Japanese products could remain through the accumulation of media consumption. The feeling is such that the viewers’ interest in Japan-made products also continues or is revived. Some participants indicated that they tended to re-watch old titles that they had watched before or that they opted to watch the titles related to the ones they were familiar with. At the time of the interviews, Zaki was watching a parody of tokusatsu shows (a live-action drama film using special filming techniques that features a superhero, robot or monster), which he had first watched as a child. As Japanese popular cultural products for children were not altered for broadcast on Malaysian TV, the participants had watched and appreciated them as the original versions of Japanese-made products. Even though some of these products were dubbed in the Malay language, the participants still had a liking for Japanese products. Malaysia was one of the Asian countries that experienced occupation by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Nevertheless, the Malaysian

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government implemented a policy of cooperation with the Japanese government and corporate sectors in 1981 to aid its own nation-building efforts. By the time the participants began to view Japanese popular cultural products in the 1990s, the bitter memories of the war had been eased (Yamato et al., 2011). Thus, there is not much obstruction in showing Japanese programmes on local television channels. As the participants viewed and collected physical products, they also developed a special link of affection with these Japanese products. Certainly, they do not express their affections blindly, but if they have found good or inspiring products in the past, which they knew to be made in Japan, then they would begin to have a liking for similar products. Ayu, who has been exploring manga, anime and J-dramas since her childhood due to the influence of her older siblings, remarked:

I was impressed by manga actually… because as a typical stereotype, people said manga is for kids; actually, more than that, manga is more complicated than normal Malay drama and so on, so I think [pause] it’s really interesting how they perform this, [pause]... cartoons are for children, but manga contains very adult-like ideas.

She likes some manga and anime at first because of their cute characters, but the storyline is what gets her interested to continue reading the series of stories to find out what happens next. She also explained about J-drama: “It’s more on philosophy.” Compared to dramas from other countries, the mature content of J-drama is an important factor why it can easily steal the viewers’ affection. Even with J-idols, physical appearance does not seem to be the only reason for winning their viewers’ affections. Farah commented on her favourite boy band: ‘they are really known for their tight bond together, their closeness; I really love them as a group’. What this idol group represents, especially in their variety shows, are ‘closeness’, their attitude of having fun together and friendship. Ayu pointed out that, actually, Korean actors are hotter than Japanese ones. Yet she prefers Japanese artistes because ‘we can see different kinds of actors … their bodies are not tough like Korean actors’, and they ‘are handsome, but they have little bit of disadvantages; maybe they are a little bit skinny, a little bit fat and all, so it’s more like the real thing, not so fake’. Ayu’s view is similar to one of the findings of Lee (2008) about female Korean J-drama fans. Korean artistes represent perfect masculinity, which Ayu described as ‘hot’. On the other hand, J-idols derive their appeal from their more realistic representation, which can only be appreciated after a certain amount of products have been consumed. In fact, Ayu praised some Korean TV drama series, especially some romance genres, but she said “Korean entertainment is still new” to her. In terms of affection towards Japanese popular cultural products, there are two contradicting arguments. The Italian sociologist Marco Pellitteri (2008) argued that there is a difference in perceptions between some Japanese and European scholars about the acceptance of Japanese

popular culture. Japanese scholars have pointed out that the popularity of anime and manga outside Japan is attributed to the ‘culturally odourless’ representation of Japanese popular cultural products. On the other hand, Pellitteri insisted that Italian fans of Japanese popular culture have been exposed to sophisticated knowledge on Japan besides consuming anime and manga. Their consumption of Japanese popular culture does not stop with the actual product viewing or reading, which Japanese scholars consider to be ‘culturally odourless’. Most people extend their interest to various aspects of Japanese culture, which are not limited to the traditional culture. Similarly, what the participants in this study perceived in Japanese popular cultural products are samples of ‘Japanese-ness’, such as the magical powers depicted in the anime ‘Sailor Moon’, the hi-tech machinery and vehicles used in Ultraman shows, and the untypical school teacher depicted in the GTO drama series. These products represent concrete ‘Japanese-ness’ in the eyes of young Malaysians, who have been accumulating positive feelings towards this aspect of ‘Japanese-ness’ depicted in the media format. Pellitter (2008) and Napier (2007) also highlighted that anime and manga fans in the US and Europe enjoyed the typical Japanese culture or ‘Japanese-ness’ of Japanese popular culture to a certain extent. As for the participants in this study, their consumption might not have been continued or expanded without their knowing the origin of the products. The ‘Made in Japan’ label was their first criterion for obtaining the products online. Their affection was aroused when the products are identified as Japanese. Nevertheless, what is ‘Japanese-ness’ may vary for each person; for instance, Lok particularly appreciates the representation of ‘Techno-Japan’ (Napier, 2007), which is related to Japanese advanced technology, while some other participants appreciate the quality of certain formats or genres presented as ‘Made in Japan’. Normally, the Japanese words ‘manga’ and ‘anime’ are used to identify Japanese products, distinguishing them from animation and comics from other countries. The distinction is easily found in the style of the drawings, which is generally described using such English words as ‘cool’ and ‘cute’. The style may be imitated easily, as Chun described Malaysian comic artists who drew their characters in manga style. Huan also pointed out that lately, American animation is being influenced by anime in terms of drawing style. However, if Japanese popular cultural products are collectible items, they would have a higher collector’s value compared to similar products. It was discovered that the participants’ high evaluation of the products was due to the content of manga/anime/J-drama as well as to J-idols’ more realistic representation. Clearly, these values cannot develop from consuming just a few prominent products. They are discovered through accumulative consumption of such materials. Defining TasteJapan-made products, but not all kinds, arouse the affection of all the participants to some extent. Some of the

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participants explored different products from different countries but ended up choosing Japanese products. When Lok recalled his past media consumption on TV, he mentioned Chinese and Bollywood films in addition to anime. He explored a range of products from different countries, but his taste in entertainment started to be defined when he started viewing Ultraman shows on TV. He preferred action scenes involving combat machineries or vehicles, but he also viewed different kinds of stories on TV. He explained the dramas or films from Chinese-speaking countries: ‘mostly, Taiwan movies are more towards love stories, Hong Kong more towards politics or business and China more towards army stories’. He also noted about Western films: “Most Western films are more towards sex … I will say that the Western movie is not so suitable.” When asked what he meant by ‘Western’, he explained: “Not only American movie, like Russia I also watched some of it before. I found that it is also more towards those kinds of sex things so I don’t like it.” Generally, it is not fair to say that Japanese products include less sexual depictions compared to Western ones. Lok liked stories related to war or the distant future, especially the ones that featured futuristic machinery such as robots and vehicles. Those genres in anime and Japanese films do not normally focus on love relationships. It is normal to consume various entertainment forms from different origins in Malaysia. All the participants agreed that Japanese popular cultural products are not predominant in Malaysia. Some of them were influenced by their siblings or friends at the beginning, but their continuing consumption was their own choice, and they themselves defined their own tastes. Gadin described his experience of consuming anime as follows:

[I]t started being defined slowly, when I entered university, and started being defined explicitly when I joined the EMiNA (anime club) so it’s like I like anime but I didn’t know what kind of anime I like, so I got this choice and I started to specialise … OK, I like something that took the self seriously, or I like something that has … very good comedy timing … .

He had a strong impression on an animated film before, but as he stated above, his preference was the result of the continuous consumption of products from the same origin. Gadin bought ‘Ghost in the Shell’ VCDs (a cyberpunk anime series that centred on the investigation of technology-related crimes, the first anime film released in 1995) at age 14, but his taste began to be defined five years later at the university. In his case, his first impression of this animated film changed his perception of anime:

I was like, [pause] wah, I was shocked. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was amazing actually, because of the story, because of the atmosphere, because of the music, because of the detail in the world… My definition of anime was ‘Doraemon’ (anime. 1979), ‘Robotech’ (anime, 1985), whatever was shown on TV2 (Malaysian local channel), which was all cute, cute, kiddy, kiddy stuff, and then I watched ‘Ghost in the Shell’, and I was wow,

ya. At that moment ah…, changed my perception of what anime was, because here was a movie that had a very, very serious story … .

This impression might have had an impact on Gadin’s feeling towards anime, but the most important incidents that changed his media consumption were the opportunities to explore more products from the same origin. When the participants looked for something new, they could still find items that suited their taste from among other Japanese products. Apparently, their accumulation of consumption defines their taste, but if the products do not satisfy them sufficiently compared to previous ones, then their consumption may stop there. Each participant had a different preference in Japanese popular culture, although common major factors can be found across specific genres or formats. Chun explained that she liked a wide range of genre for anime and manga, such as ‘magic or unrealistic story’; the stories ‘have a lot of good-looking guys’, fighting, and horror. She also described her favourite storyline as a ‘special synopsis’ that included a variety of topics in one series. For example, “for Skip Beat (manga, 2002), got a lot of handsome guys … storyline is very funny and quite meaningful also; it is about friendship… they have the moral values”. Zaki explained his favourite stories in a way similar to Chun’s account. However, his preference was a different genre: “Even if it’s a human drama, or it’s fantasy, or it’s science fiction… what I really, really watch is, the one that combine human drama and science fiction very well.” He also added: “I look for good balance.” All participants would not be satisfied with a pure love story or a serious human drama. Ayu said: “I like little bit complicated story.” They started with a genre for children, which tended to be simple. Then, their tastes were further defined as they consumed more Japanese popular cultural products. While growing up in Malaysia, all the participants were greatly exposed to entertainment products from various countries. However, they opted for Japanese products, utilising the Internet by their own choice. Their taste in entertainment products has been defined more clearly with their increased liking for Japanese popular culture. Entertainment is intended for passing free time or as a means of relaxation. Nevertheless, the participants have defined their particular tastes towards selecting some meaningful contents for themselves from Japanese popular cultural products. Basically, what they pointed out as meaningful are universal values inherent in human beings, such as friendship and moral values, which are considered to be desirable human characteristics. Lok said that Japanese popular cultural products make him think of some world issues seriously:

Like ‘Gundam 00’ (anime, 2007–2009) and also ‘Code Geass’ (anime, 2006–2008), this both movies; I found that if you look at them, actually like war movies, fight each other, but their communication … is to try not to have war in the world.

The director of one of Lok’s favourite anime, ‘Gundam 00’, explained that this anime depicted war as

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something that existed in the viewer’s real life and not as pure imagination (Yamamoto, 2008). The messages are basically targeted at young people in Japan who have never experienced a real war. In Lok’s case, a particular Malaysian in the same situation realised the same message. He explained that the message behind the anime reflected his thinking.

Expectation of Sophisticated ContentFor the three main formats of Japanese popular cultural products, that is, anime, manga and J-drama, the storyline is an important element that, besides the style of expression and background effect, contributes to continuous consumption. What the participants really expect to view is the sophisticated content of Japanese popular culture and this prompts them to look for similar products. There are various types of Japanese popular cultural products available online, and so far, they have not disappointed the consumers’ expectations. Gadin commented about one anime series he found inspiring: “There’s quite a number of very complex relationships between all the characters here, he and his boss, he and his colleagues, he and … rookie colleagues … I enjoy … watching or reading about complex human relationships” (about ‘Planetes’, anime 2003–2004; adapted from manga). This anime depicted how the main character was torn between his dream and reality as he dealt with his everyday work of collecting debris in space. At the end of the story, he finally took the necessary step to fulfil his dream. The setting of the story was not real, but the depiction of a ‘complex human relationship’ made Gadin reflect on his own life: “The story goes until here, what will happen next, how you take the story and apply it to your life, it’s like are you gonna be scared, or are you gonna be inspired by him and do your own thing.” The participants do not feel empathy with a character or situation if they look upon the content as totally fiction or fake. What Wen and Jun mentioned as ‘touching’ scenes when they described details of their favourite J-drama or film storylines are also realised by the detailed depiction of human relationships, for instance, between a teacher and a student, a doctor and a patient, parents and their child, and a male and a female. A case in point is found in Wen’s explanation of one film: “She wrote all … 10 or more letters, and asked her friend to send them slowly, one by one, to the guy after she died, so very touching” (about ‘Tada Kimi o Aishiteru’; film, 2006). Actually, Wen does not like tragic love stories, but the relationship that developed between the two students in the film and how the female protagonist lived her short life were inspirational to her. The message that Wen took from this story was that ‘everybody dies someday, it’s just how you spend your life-time before you die’, and she gave credit for the depiction of the progress of human relationships. Therefore, how human beings’ relationships with one another are depicted in the story is a key factor that contributes to arousing a feeling of empathy wherever the story takes place, whether in deep space or in Japan.

Even though most of the stories are not directly related to the participants’ lives in Malaysia, some participants pointed out that the stories, or at least parts of the stories, are related to them. According to Zaki:

‘Genshiken’ (anime, 2004 & 2007; adapted from manga) is definitely my favourite of all time, be-cause ‘Genshiken’ is a story about an anime club in Japan, … so it’s a story about, this guy, …, he is a closet otaku (geek), … and he finds otaku as well in the same circle, so it’s a story about university students, they fall in love, they have exams, they have to submit assignments.

Zaki and Gadin were able to relate what was depicted in the story of Genshiken to their own lives because they had been running an anime club in their university. The story was realistic to them because of the depiction of university life and the portrayal of people. Gadin said:

You can imagine if these people were real, this is what … they do, because I can identify with them I can actually see some of their personalities in some of my friends … because … it’s so, [pause] it feels real that’s why I like it … it’s not forcing yourself to be something …

Certain aspects of the participants’ life were parallel to what was depicted in the anime series. The characters were Japanese people living a campus life in Tokyo, although what Gadin described as ‘real’ was the portrayal of people who were fans of anime, manga and games because his friends and even he himself did things similar to those done by the characters in the story. During the first interview, Wen also said, “This one is talking about friendship, all this can apply in normal, daily life, it has a very … close relationship with me.” Their life in Malaysia may not be exactly the same as that described in the story, but they have their own families, they have been to schools and university, they hang out with friends who have the same interest, and some of them have gone on dates with members of the opposite gender. If the storyline, words and expressions are not sophisticated enough, they might not be moved by the depiction of good human relationships. They might not find similar scenarios in their daily life. Besides human relationships, the participants highlighted the description of specific professions. Both Jun and Rosila referred to the medical drama ‘Iryu’ (‘Iryu: Team Medical Dragon’, 2006, 2007 & 2010; adapted from manga). Jun said, “You get to know, what is the doctor doing.” When presented with the argument that the story might just be fiction, Jun claimed that he actually asked a Malaysian doctor about the operation skills he came to know about from Iryu. Jun said the doctor was surprised that he knew about such operation skills. Other participants did not take the necessary actions to confirm certain facts depicted in the story, but the detailed depiction nevertheless made them believe. Rosila said: “One thing I love about Japanese drama is the detail of things … ‘Nodame Cantabelle’ (TV drama, 2006 & 2008; anime 2007, 2008 & 2010; adapted from manga), it gives

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us a lot of information about orchestra … I really like the details in that drama’. In this story, the comical storyline centring on two music college students was blended with the depictions of European classical music and the people involved in the students’ orchestra. The sophisticated content from Japan can be the result of years of development in a competitive society. In fact, 2009 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of major manga magazines in Japan (Shinoda, 2009). The development of the manga business has been inter-related with that of other popular cultural contents, such as anime and J-drama, since the contents of manga are often adapted to other formats of popular cultural products. Japan’s economic development has supported the talented creators of Japanese popular culture. The people’s purchasing power has also assisted the growth of the market and provided initiatives for new creations. The content of manga, especially for adults, developed in Japan in the 1980s. The creators of adult manga normally refer to facts by observing real settings close to the stories they create. They also interview people who are involved in related fields, and they conduct studies of related documents (‘Watashi no Manga’, 2009). It can be said that the creators’ efforts to understand reality is the reason why some stories depict authentic details about the specific professions of the main characters. The participants increased their expectation of sophisticated contents in Japanese popular culture as a result of the increase in their consumption capacity. The sophisticated contents that are highlighted here are universal aspects of human beings. The participants continuously anticipated viewing other human dramas that were in line with their tastes.

ConclusionAspects of accumulation had not received much attention in past studies regarding media consumption of Japanese popular culture. However, the findings of this study suggest that accumulation is an important part of media consumption of Japanese popular culture. The accumulation of media consumption refers to both the physical practice of collecting popular cultural products and the cognitive process that occurs over the years as one engages in consumption. The consumption of Japanese popular cultural products did not become part of the participants’ daily lives overnight. It was observed that the participants were not only collecting products but also developing a feeling or mind-set towards specific types, genres or products over the years. In reality, the nations that are capable of producing large numbers of high-quality popular cultural products are limited to a few economic forces in the world. Inequality in the flow of cultural products exists in the world. Thus, it cannot be totally denied that young people in Malaysia tend to yearn for popular cultures from developed nations or are attracted to the consumerism in these cultures. By revealing a cognitive aspect of continuing consumption, however, this study provides evidence that the participants were not blindly addicted

to or yearning for Japanese popular culture. They did not consume products solely because of the origin: ‘made in Japan’. Rather, the origin of the products was just a starting point towards selecting products that they really wanted to view or read. In other words, while all Malaysians have had opportunities to be exposed to media contents from Japan at a younger age, these particular Malaysian young adults who appear to be addicted to Japanese popular cultural products had further opportunities to explore a variety of products from Japan while they were growing up. The accumulation of media consumption experiences was necessary to define their taste for specific products from Japan. In terms of the content, what the participants expected to view was sophisticated content that depicts universal aspects of human beings. That is, that despite economic and cultural differences, there are no drastic differences between Japan and Malaysia in terms of the fundamental activities in the lives of people; for example, they fall in love, study at school or university, work, and go shopping. The aspect of ‘co-evalness’ (Leung, 2004) is behind ‘reality’ that the participants conceived in the works from Japan, but the economic development of the nation was not absolutely contributory. The human aspects of the characters that inspired or impressed them or those with whom they empathised are universal. Their admiration of Japanese popular culture was due to ‘an essential human aspect’ of the stories. Therefore, young people’s consumption of Japanese popular cultural products does not show the grounds of yearning for Japan as a nation. Rather, it provides opportunities for them to reflect on their lives or explore the world they live in. The results of Otmazgin’s study (2008) indicated that the consumption of Japanese popular culture facilitated the development of a positive image of Japan among young East Asians but this positive image did not ease the negative image of Japan associated with its military history. The appeal of Japanese popular cultural products is not simply translated into ‘soft power’ for the nation (Nye, 1990), which is supposed to enable it to influence people in other countries without the use of ‘hard power’, military power or economic enforcement. This study could give a possible reason why Japanese popular culture does not serve as ‘soft power’ for the nation based on the investigation of what consumers accumulate throughout their continuing consumption. The consumers’ empathy with the depiction of fundamental lives, human emotions and human relationships is ‘culturally odourless’ and, eventually, is not attributable to a culture of one particular nation. Despite the fact that there are some young people who follow local idols and local television shows, the influence of foreign products is still noticeable in Malaysia. Japanese popular cultural products are among these foreign products, which also include those from the US and South Korea. Because this study focused only on a limited number of Malaysian young adults who consume mostly Japanese popular culture in their daily lives, the results cannot be generalised to include other foreign popular culture disseminated in Malaysia. What is certain

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is that the consumption behaviour of the participants in this study is the result of their accumulation of media consumption of Japanese popular culture. They have enough experiences to explore a variety of products and define their tastes, and critical experiences that cause them to be inspired or have deep empathy for certain characters. Allison (2008) argued that American youths have the capacity to perceive ‘Japan’ differently through popular culture even though older generations perceived the country as foreign. In terms of this argument, how young people deal with foreignness and what foreignness is in a particular context should be questioned. In another paper, I shall discuss this point in relation to the way Japanese popular cultural contents are read or understand by young people in Malaysia. Lastly, the discussion in this paper implies that a heavy consumer of Japanese popular culture would not become or desire to be like the ‘Japanese’ as associated with the nation ‘Japan’. On the premise that the practice of consumption expresses taste and lifestyle, and the meanings are produced while the product is being used (du Gay et al., 1997), it is also important to address the identity issue based on the empirical findings. Ethnic differences were not considered in this study since the justification for comparing different ethnic groups was not found at the beginning of this study. In future research, this point should be examined, especially with relation to identity development of young people.

AcknowledgementThis research was supported by the Research University Grant Scheme (RUGS) 2009, Universiti Putra Malaysia [No. Project: 06-01-09-0838RU].

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M. Anuradha is Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Periyar University, Tamil Nadu, India.

The study tries (a) to identify the nature of representation of boys and girls and their association with activities and products in three categories viz., boys only, girls only and girls and boys in television commercials, (b) to analyse whether there are sex-role differences in the representation of girls and boys in television commercials aimed specifically at children, (c) to examine the features of the television commercial content designed for children as to whether it is gender-stereotypical in nature and (d) whether children understand the gendered nature of commercial content and measure the level of their understanding of the same. This is a descriptive study. This study was embarked upon to contribute to an understanding of how gender is portrayed in television commercials aimed at children and whether it is stereotyped. The study is based on Social Learning Theory and Cultivation Analysis. The findings proved that television commercials are gender stereotyped.

M. Anuradha

Gender Stereotyping in Television Commercials Aimed at Children in India

Today, children dominate the advertising scenario both as direct and indirect consumers. More and more advertisements are being designed to target

at children and this changing situation forces us to re-look at advertising. It is important to find out whether such well-designed images contribute to the formation of gender identity and self-image among children. One of the important functions of advertisements is to make the audience relate and respond to those images and underlying commercial messages; so it is possible that such features of advertising might lead to identity formation either consciously or sub-consciously. Children invariably encounter information about gender roles on television, both in the content and the commercials. As children move through childhood and adolescence, television is an important influence on their gender role socialisation. Their exposure to television commercials, which are stereotypical in style and content, may establish gendered preferences for particular traits (Swallow, n.d.). Although recently television portrayals have been seen to change, it still refuses to adapt fully to the changing world and continues to reflect traditional, stereotyped roles for males and females in many areas, especially advertisements. Studies have indicated that television and television advertising still adheres to sex-role stereotypes presenting women as dependent, emotional, domestic care-givers, while men are the supporting ‘bread winners’. Depicting a society in this way has disturbing implications of what kind of world children believe they are living in. When they see the sexes depicted in commercials as always playing their role in the society, they are unaware that what they are observing is a biased and distorted view of the

world. This becomes more significant because children do not have fully developed reasoning abilities and they cannot evaluate the conveyed message, which could contain non-rational or unrealistic information that could be deceptive. Hence, it becomes crucial to investigate the portrayal of gender in television commercials directed at children.

ObjectivesThe study tries to identify the nature of representation of boys and girls and their association with activities and products in three categories viz., boys only, girls only and girls and boys in television commercials; and to analyse whether there are sex-role differences in the representation of girls and boys in television commercials aimed specifically at children. It also examines the features of the television commercial content designed for children as to whether it is gender-stereotypical in nature and whether children understand the gendered nature of commercial content and measure the level of their understanding of the same.

Research DesignThis study is descriptive, the conceptual framework is based on Social Learning Theory and Cultivation Analysis. This investigation was embarked upon to contribute to an understanding of how gender is portrayed in television commercials aimed at children and whether it is stereotyped. At the same time, it also tried to analyse how young children interpret media text. At the basic level, this investigation can be reduced to the two major elements of text and audience. The quantitative methodology of content analysis was selected to explore the commercials and focus group interview was used to measure the understanding levels of the children.

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Content AnalysisThe purpose of the study was to find whether there are any patterns in terms of the production techniques and the overall presentation with reference to gender portrayal in television commercials specifically aimed at children; and, content analysis seemed the most appropriate approach. It is an analytical approach based on the coding and quantification of various elements of a commercial in television (Nzegwu, 2000). It involves establishing categories and counting the number of instances when these categories are repeated within a text (Barcus, 1997). At the basic level, the purpose of the method is to identify the nature of the relative patterns within and between sets of data. This nature of content analysis has made this method suitable and applicable to the identification of possible gendered stereotyping in the commercial sample used in this investigation.

Focus GroupFocus group research involves organised discussion with a selected group of individuals to gain information about their views and experiences on a topic. Focus group interviewing is particularly suited for obtaining several perspectives about the same topic. The main purpose of focus group research is to draw upon respondents’ attitudes, feelings, beliefs, experiences and reactions in a way in which it would not be feasible using other methods. These attitudes, feelings and beliefs may be partially independent of a group or its social setting, but are more likely to be revealed via the social gathering and the interaction which being in a focus group entails. A focus group enables the researcher to gain a larger amount of information in a shorter period of time (Gibbs, 1997). In order to measure children’s understanding of television advertising and information about gender behaviour in particular, the researcher conducted a focus group study. The sample for focus group consisted of 60 elementary school children of age group 5–6, boys, girls, ratio being 60:40. Each student was from a different school within the city of Coimbatore and they all were basically from a middle class background. They all have television sets at home and have the habit of watching television in the evening, especially the children programmes in the regional channel. The children were divided into two groups and shown a television programme along with the sample commercials. Directly after watching the television programme, a conversation was initiated among the children to discuss about the commercials they had just watched. The discussion was regarding the relationship between gender and the various other variables like activities, interactions, settings, etc. in television commercials. Their responses were noted down carefully.

HypothesesH1 Television commercials positioned at boys and

television commercials positioned at girls have different production features.

H2 Television commercials targeting girls and television commercials targeting boys use different editing techniques.

H3 Gender roles are stereotyped in television commercials aimed at children.

H4 There are more advertisements aimed at boys than at girls or for both.

H5 Children aged five and six years are able to distinguish between programmes and commercials and comprehend the messages (gender stereotyping) in advertisements.

Sample SelectionThe sample was a convenient and purposive sample of children’s commercial programming videotaped between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. covering a composite week, for one year. This was in line with Doolittle and Pepper’s study, which was called as representative of a typical weekend in that it did not occur near a major holiday and was within the prime viewing season (Doolittle and Pepper, 1975). Thus, although the sample was not random, all seasons of the year were included in the sample. In this way, the commercials were not biased in favour of summer-related products or winter-specific items.

Findings and DiscussionGeneral findingsThe study analysed 118 television commercials aired during children programmes during the weekdays at prime time from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m, 91 of the 118 advertisements (71 percent) were positioned at specifically one gender (n = 91), either boys or girls. The rest targeted at both boys and girls. Among single gender commercials, less than one fourth of the advertisements were directed only at girls (20 percent) and the other 80 percent of the advertisements were aimed at boys. This supports the findings of many of the previous studies. With regard to the products advertised during children’s programmes, 50 percent of the advertisements were targeted directly at children and the other 50 percent were targeted at parents through children. There were also commercials for adults’ products that were neither used by children nor did have any child model in

TABLE 1

Product type Number PercentageSweets 20 16.95Biscuits 10 8.47Health drinks 10 8.47Food and groceries 20 16.95Home appliances and automobiles

12 10.17

Personal hygiene 12 10.17Others 34 28.81Total 118 100.00

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Gender StereotypinG in televiSion CommerCialS aimed at Children in india

them like in the case of Hair Dye (Godrej) and Shaving razor (Gillette). One of the salient features was that the traditional categories (toys, candies, snacks, food & cereals) constituted only 50 percent of the total sample and the toys category completing missing. Twenty percent of the advertisements were for products in which the decision makers were parents: but children influenced them in the decision-making process. This was revealed during the focus group interaction with the children. They said that they asked their parents for many products they saw on television, which may or may not be useful for them. Thirty percent of the products belonged to the category that was not related to children, but utilised child models to influence children as well as parents. Their target audience was both children and parents. This very big ‘others’ category was another important finding in the study. Service institutions like banks had used child models. There were commercials for four banks and seven detergents during the period of the study and all those had child models as the main character/s. It may be argued that the presence of children and their activities in commercials make those attractive and interesting to watch and get the attention of the viewers quickly. Children, by singing the jingles or enacting the commercials, might also act as reminders for the parents and indirectly influence their decision making. With reference to products and gender association, it was found that majority of the commercials for food items (67 percent) were associated with boys. Even in other categories like groceries and home appliances, more than 50 percent of the advertisements were targeted at boys. A few advertisements targeted both the genders. Only in the personal hygiene category, girls’ commercials were higher in number (58 percent) than boys’ (42 percent). Moreover, no single product in this category was targeted at the mixed gender. More cars were positioned towards girls than boys. Commercials for bicycles had only boys (Hero Ranger). The only advertisement for a bicycle for girls was obvious from the brand name (Lady Bird), which in fact did not show the girl riding the bike. These arguably imply that girls should be safe and protected so they have to travel by car whereas boys are brave and adventurous and can travel in bicycles and motorcycles. This is another idea associated with masculinity. All the commercials of banks and detergents (100 percent) featured boys as the main characters. Boys did a lot of things in the commercials like instructing their mothers, advising others and demonstrating a variety of things in which generally adults are engaged in. Taking care of the house and the girls seemed to be the responsibility of the boys, by looking at the commercials.

Production featuresSettingWith regard to settings, girls were found to be primarily in domestic settings by previous studies. The present study also revealed the same result with the girls only advertisements featuring them at home, playing inside

or outside the house more than boys only or mixed gender advertisements. Girls were found to be indoor in almost half the number of total advertisements. Boys’ advertisements had more screen shots with various backgrounds. This was evident from the fact that the dominant setting in boys’ advertisements was ‘no dominant setting’ (37 percent). They were captured in so many different locations, that one could not decide a particular setting as the dominant one. These places were shops, swimming pools, cricket grounds, streets, etc. The second dominant setting in boys’ commercials was outdoor (35 percent). Overall, boys seemed to be outside the house most of the time. They were primarily seen away from home. For them, indoor accounted for only 23 percent of their locations.

TABLE 2

Audience Indoor OutdoorBoys 9 13Mixed 17 2Significant difference: c2 = 10.36 (df = 1)p < 0.001 = 10.83

Audience Indoor FantasyBoys 9 7Mixed 17 0Highly significant difference: c2 = 9.44 (df = 1)p < 0.01 = 6.63

Advertisements aimed at mixed gender, too, had more of ‘no dominant settings’. This implies that when girls were together with boys, they go out of the house and have fun; but when they were alone, they spent time inside the house playing with dolls. Fantasy setting seemed to be more common for the female gender. Twenty-seven percent of the advertisements for girls featured them in fantasy settings, whereas it was a mere seven percent and six percent in the case of boys only and neutral advertisements respectively.

InteractionWith regard to interactions featured in children’s advertisements, the most obvious finding was that the interactions of girls were always almost cooperative. A majority of the girls (83 percent) either in girls only commercials or neutral advertisements, were engaged in cooperative play. Boys, on the other hand, were portrayed as independent (35 percent) and competitive (27 percent). These kinds of portrayal associated with masculinity become role models for boys to follow. Only in one commercial, the girl was shown to be independent. Thus, the study clearly showed that there was significant difference in the interaction pattern of male and female gender in advertisements aimed at children.

ActivityIn terms of activities associated with children, playing was the main activity of girls (72 percent). Playing here

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referred to playing with a toy/doll or game. Though boys were also associated with playing, it was found in less than 50 percent of the advertisements. Eating and stealing were found to be the activities of boys alone. No commercial showed girls eating or stealing. At the same time, very few advertisements captured boys in a productive activity like reading. But it was common in commercials for the mixed gender (20 percent). To sum up, girls were associated with playing with toys or games; boys were associated with all types of activities and boys and girls together were involved in productive activities as well as playing.

Analysis of camera work and editing techniquesShotsThere were 1,256 shots in 73 boys’ commercials; 211 shots in 18 girls’ commercials and 398 shots in 27 neutral commercials. The average was found to be 17 shots in boys’ advertisements, 12 shots in girls’ advertisements and 14 shots in mixed gender commercials. It was evident from the above data that boys’ advertisements had more shots compared to girls’ only commercials. It was followed by mixed gender commercials and the girls’ only commercials were the last with fewer number of shots.

Shot durationWhen comparing the girls’ advertisements with that of the boys’ and mixed gender advertisements, there resulted a highly significant difference between the three categories with regard to shot duration. The overall average length of shot was found to be 1.39 seconds. The average duration of a shot was found to be 1.25 seconds in boys-only advertisements, 1.74 seconds in girls-only advertisements and 1.18 seconds in neutral advertisements. Ninety-one percent of the commercials targeting boys had more shots with duration below the average of 1.39 seconds. Similarly in most of the advertisements positioned neutrally (81 percent), the shot duration was below average. On the other hand, in commercials positioned at girls, the duration of more than half the number of shots (55 percent) was above average (>), meaning that the shots were longer. This meant there was obviously more number of shots in boys’ advertisements compared to that of girls’ advertisements. Shots in boys-only and neutral commercials were shorter than the girls-only advertisements. In other words, boys’ commercials were fast paced when compared to girls’ advertisements. This pace was an important feature that a casual viewer would not have noticed because it was not obvious. At the same time, it would make a difference while watching. This rapid cutting style in the boys’ commercials when compared to girls’ or mixed gender commercials is considered to be a stereotypical feature relating to masculine gender. This fast pacing was not only used to attract children’s attention according to Morgan, 1982; Welch et al., 1979; Wright et al., 1984, but also build moods like excitement and tension. On the other hand, slower cutting rates develop calmness and relaxation.

With regard to specific types of shots, all the categories of commercials had more number of mid shots, then long shots, followed by close-ups, except in the case of neutral advertisements where the number of mid shots was equal to close-up shots. There was a highly significant difference (x2 = 33.7, p < .001 [df = 4]) between the boys’ advertisements and girls’ advertisements in terms of long shots. The former had a greater percentage of long shots (32 percent) than the latter (14 percent), that is, double the number of long shots when compared to girls’ advertisements. The same difference was observed between neutral commercials (33 percent) and girls’ only advertisements (14 percent). Long shots are otherwise known as establishing shots meaning they establish the place of happening or activity. In any commercial, more use of long shots might suggest more space, which was common in boys’ advertisements. The boys’ commercials were also significantly different from the mixed advertisements by making much less use of close-ups. In relation to the use of close-up shots of people, although the difference between the boys’ advertisements and the girls’ commercials was not very significant, the percentage in girls’ advertisements was much closer to that in the mixed commercials than in the boys’ advertisements. There was significant statistical difference between the boys and the girls’ advertisements in the use of mid shots also (x2 = 28.21, p < .001 [df = 2]). Commercials positioned towards boys had 37 percent of mid shots, while girls’ only commercials had 45 percent and mixed gender advertisements had 31 percent of mid shots. There was again a difference between the two categories in their use of close-up shots. Boys’ advertisements used 30 percent of close-up shots whereas the other gender used 40 percent of the same.

Camera anglesAnalysis of camera angles revealed highly significant differences between the three categories of commercials, though level angle had been used more almost equally and overhead had been used the least by all the three different groups.

Comparison of camera anglesWith regard to shot angles, the dominant angle in all the commercials was found to be the level shot. The differences in the use of high, low and level shots in the advertisements aimed at boys and those aimed at girls emerged as extremely significant (x2 = 15.20, p < .001 [df = 4]). Boys’ advertisements turned up as significantly not different from the neutral advertisements. Boys’ commercials were different from girls’ advertisements in relation to the use of low angles (six percent and two percent respectively) and level angles but not in relation to high angles (boys’ advertisements – 11 percent, girls’ advertisements – eight percent). Boys’ advertisements used level shots slightly less than the girls’ advertisements (87 percent in girls’ advertisements and 76 percent in boys’ advertisements). Low angle shots were used in even fewer numbers in both categories.

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There was no significant difference between boys’ and neutral advertisements in relation to level shots (76 percent and 74 percent respectively) or low shots but only in relation to high angle shots. Boys’ advertisements used high angle shots slightly less than mixed advertisements. Girls’ advertisements were significantly different from neutral advertisements (x2 = 14.61, p < .001 [df = 4]) in relation to each of the three types. Level shots were used more often than high angle shots; low shots were used sparingly. In addition to the normal camera angles, two special angles were also studied. ‘Skew’ camera angle was used equally in both boys’ and girls’ advertisements. The obvious difference was in the usage of ‘overhead’ angle, which was negligible in girls’ advertisements (.007 percent) but was four percent in advertisements for boys. They were found more often in the advertisements aimed primarily at boys than in those for girls. These differences between the two single gender advertisements were significant with (x2 = 15.20, p < .001 [df = 4]). But mixed gender advertisements had double the number (six percent) of skew angles as that of boys (three percent). A highly significant difference emerged between the boys’ advertisements and the neutral advertisements. Comparing the five types of transitions, cuts have been used widely in all categories of commercials. But 96 percent of boys’ advertisements have used cuts only. Use of other types of transition was negligible. Though cuts were common in commercials aimed at girls also (76 percent) it was not as high as in advertisements for boys. Only one percent of the boy’s advertisements had used dissolves. On the other hand, girls’ advertisements had used dissolves for 20 percent, which was very high compared to the advertisements of the other gender. Next to cuts, dissolves were used more in girls’ advertisements whereas swirls were used more in boys’ advertisements: fades were used by commercials targeting girls and boys equally. Comparing the transition effects used in boys’ advertisements with that of boys and girls revealed that cut was the major form of transition. Boys’ commercials had 96 percent of cuts and neutral advertisements had an even higher cutting rate that is 97 percent. The difference between the commercials for boys and girls was highly significant with x2 = 80.85 p < .001 [df = 3]. Dissolves were used very rarely in advertisements aimed at boys ( one percent) as well as in mixed gender (0.7 percent) commercials. Millerson (1985) suggested that the abrupt and direct instantaneousness of cuts denoted rapid action while softness, gentleness, predictability, and slow gradual changes of dissolves connoted passivity. Thus, activity was associated with boys and passivity was associated with girls in commercials using the editing techniques.

Camera and lens movementsOne of the significant findings regarding the camera and lens movements like panning, pedestalling, tilting and zooming was that in all the three categories of commercials, these were used very minimally and there

was no significant difference between the commercials in this aspect.

VoiceoverRegarding the voice over in the commercials, it was obvious that male voice over was used invariably by all categories of advertisements. Commercials for boys did not use female voice over even in a single case. But 39 percent of advertisements positioned towards girls used male voice over. Neutral advertisements also predominantly used male voice over (74 percent). Welch et al. found that voices in boys’ advertisements and mixed audience advertisements were largely male; female voices were largely limited to female commercials. They suggested ‘that males are portrayed as the authorities in most content areas except in that small domain reserved solely for females’. Thus, male gender occupied a dominant position in terms of voice over in children’s advertising, too.

TABLE 3

Audience Male voiceover

Female voiceover

No voiceover

Boys 42 0 1Girls 3 27 13Mixed 26 1 4Boys 42 0 1Girls 3 27 13Extremely significant difference: c2 = 71.08 (df = 2)p < 0.0001 = 18.42 Audience Male

voiceoverFemale

voiceoverNo

voiceoverGirls 3 27 13Mixed 26 1 4Extremely significant difference: c2 = 46.42 (df = 2)p < 0.0001 = 18.42

Focus group resultsThe results of the focus group clearly proved that children of the age group 5–6 liked to watch television and television commercials specifically. They regularly watched children programmes and they knew many of the advertisements even before the study. During the conversation it was understood that they keenly watched television commercials with children in particular and often tried to imitate those characters they saw on the screen. All of them were able to reinterpret the messages of television commercials (especially the promotional messages). They could differentiate between the commercials and the programme. Though some of them were not able to understand the selling motive of advertisements, most of them could understand that the commercials were for selling things. In other words, commercials gave information about products that children could buy. They were clear about what products were designed for whom. They were sure about

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commercials targeted at girls, those positioned towards boys and common advertisements. With regard to gender, all the children were very particular about what they considered as proper gender behaviour and they had definite ideas about what boys and girls really liked. Gender was judged based on the stereotyped portrayals they saw in the media, especially television. More importantly, children accepted these stereotypes as natural and perceived the visual images also in the lines of the stereotypes. Girls believed that the portrayal of boys in commercials as active, naughty, mischievous and aggressive was true. Boys, too, accepted the depiction of girls as caring, gentle, dependent, and so on, was correct. However, they were confused regarding the gender positioning of products, especially products used by both girls and boys. Since products like sweets, biscuits and health drinks were consumed by both genders, they did not know why boys alone were shown eating/chewing /drinking them. Though girls definitely knew that the products were for them also, they did not object to boys alone being portrayed like that. At the same time, boys believed the products were for them and using them would make them stronger, taller, brighter, and so on. They believed in those commercials that showed boys being promised extra power for them. They were really interested in those kinds of commercials. In the case of products of personal hygiene, girls perceived certain products to be for them. Similarly, soaps like Dettol and Life Buoy were perceived by both boys and girls to be only for boys. With regard to the settings of the commercials, except for two girls, others believed home (indoor) was the place for them because it was clean and tidy. They did not want to mess themselves up by playing outside like the boys and what they saw on television was correct. At the same time, they did not mind playing with the boys outside once in a while. This response exactly coincided with the depiction of girls in the commercials in that girls play inside the house in girls’ only commercials and they were portrayed outside along with boys in mixed gender commercials. When it came to fantasising, both were equally excited. Both the genders enjoyed fantasy settings. Their imagery was far more elaborate than what was there in those commercials. They wanted more of such commercials, especially with animation. They were able to attribute gender to the animated characters they saw in the commercials spontaneously. They were able to justify their actions based on the appearance, traits and activities of those characters that had clear distinctions. In terms of the activities of children, they unanimously agreed that boys were associated with more activities and sound. They were associated with fighting, running, jumping, etc. more than playing. Girls believed strongly that they should not/would not involve themselves in activities like stealing whereas boys believed that it was a challenge, it needed bravery and only boys could do such things. They said that it would be thrilling to engage in such activities. It was thrilling even to just watch it. However, there was a difference between the opinions

of children and their portrayal with regard to ‘eating’ in commercials. Girls did not seem to be hesitant to eat or to be portrayed as eating. But no commercial for girls alone showed them eating. That was missing in mixed gender advertisements, too. It was found to be the activity of boys alone. With regard to interaction pattern, all the children strongly felt that their interaction would change according to the situation. Depending on whether it was boys alone, girls alone or boys and girls together situation, they could act independently, competitively or cooperatively irrespective of the gender. Always portraying boys alone as independent and competitive did not seem to be agreeable even to boys. They believed that the girls could act smart when the occasion deemed it. However, with regard to the production and technical aspects of the commercials like shot size and duration, camera angle, transition, voice over, etc., the children were not even aware of those terms. Some of the studies in developed countries that investigated these formal features of commercials had come up with results highlighting the knowledge of children in these variables. But in the present study they were completely in the dark, unable to continue and the conversation coming to an abrupt end. To sum up, we can conclude that children were aware of the production features of commercials and perceive them as being intended by the advertiser. They did not object to those kinds of portrayal. For them, it was natural and common in day-to-day life. But they neither notice the technical features nor understand them. To sum up, though television commercials alone could not be blamed for creating stereotyped images for each gender in the minds of children, they definitely reinforced stereotyped roles for girls and boys starting from a young age. Their influence on children was confirmed by the discussion with them who believed that commercials showed the reality in terms of gender. In addition, they accepted that they not only imitated the characters on the screen, but asked or pestered their parents to buy those things that they see on television and in most cases they succeeded. This confirms the notion of social learning theory, which emphasises the socialisation through the imitation and cultivation theory that is concerned with television as a powerful mass media.

ConclusionThe present study clearly shows stereotyping in children television commercials. Advertisements on television seem to be insensitive and hold on to the traditional and stereotypical images of not only women but even girls. They still perpetuate the dominating male as the voice of authority and the invisibility of women in media and society. The findings clearly establish that stereotypical gender images and roles are predominant in children’s television commercials. The domination of boys over girls is clearly established in several areas of these commercials. The message such commercials aim at children carry, continue to be gender biased.

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The data show that media portrayal of the female child in India is limited in the view it presents to children. Taking into consideration the quantity of time children spend watching television programmes, and the fact that their gender behaviours have been shown to be influenced by television, the absence of a ‘total’ female image (human) is of relevance for those concerned with challenging gender-based stereotypes in their search for equality among the sexes. Children have become an integral part of the decision-making process in today’s family setup in the society. Since they are tech savvy, more comfortable with the television/new media and have more access to these media, advertisers have to be more wary of the images that they present to these impressionable minds.

ReferencesBarcus, F. E. (1977). Children’s television: An analysis of

programming and advertising. New York: Praeger.Doolittle, J., & Pepper, R. (1974). Children’s TV ad

content: 1974. Journal of Broadcasting, (19), 131–142.

Gibbs, D. A. (1997). Focus groups. Social Research Update, (19). Retrieved from Social Research Update website, sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/SRU19.html.

Morgan, M. (1982). Television and adolescents’ sex-role stereotypes: A longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, (43), 947–955.

Millerson, G. (1985). The technique of television production. London: Focal Press.

Nzegwu, U. (2000). Gender in toy commercials. Women and Technology.

Swallow, A. L. (n.d.). Images of female children in TV commercials. Retrieved from people.wcsu.edu/mccarneyh/acad/swallow.html.

Welch, R., Huston-Stein, A., Wright, J. C., & Plehal, R. (1979). Subtle sex-role cues in children’s commercials. Journal of Communication, 29(3), 202–209.

Wright, J. C., Huston, A. C., Ross, R. P., Calvert, S. L., Rolandelli, D., Weeks, L. A., Raeissi, P., & Potts, R. (1984). Pace and continuity of television programs: Effects on children’s attention and comprehension. Developmental Psychology, (20), 653–666.

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Mari Hasegawa is Associate Professor at Yokohama City University, Japan. She received her PhD from Ochanomizu University, Japan. Yukiko Horiuchi is graduate student at Ochanomizu University, Japan. Kanae Suzuki is Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. She received her PhD from Ochanomizu University. Makiko Sado is graduate student at Ochanomizu University. Akira Sakamoto is Professor at Ochanomizu University. He received his PhD from Tokyo University, Japan.

To investigate the influence of television viewing on the attentive awareness and actual prosocial behaviour of elementary school children, a causal analysis of data from a two-wave panel survey administered to 487 children in the fourth grade and again in the fifth grade was conducted. Measures of viewers’ attentive awareness included contextual factors such as depictions of reward and punishment, perceived reasons for behaviour and the amount of contact with televised prosocial scenes. The influence of contextual factors relative to viewer empathy was also investigated. The results reveal that simply viewing large quantities of prosocial behaviour scenes does not encourage prosocial behaviour. However, prosocial depictions influence the behaviour of children with attentive awareness of rewards after behaviour and those who attribute reasons for behaviour in accordance with their own developmental levels, suggesting that such contextual information does not uniformly influence viewers, but is adjusted through empathy.

Mari HasegawaYukiko Horiuchi

Kanae SuzukiMakiko Sado

Akira Sakamoto

A Two-Wave Panel Investigation of the Influence of Viewing Prosocial Behaviour on Television on the Sociality of Elementary School Children in Japan

In human society, being considerate of, sharing with and helping others are viewed as desirable social behaviours. Children are supposed to develop such

prosocial behaviour. Prosocial behaviour is defined as voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998) and may have either selfish or altruistic motives. The development of prosocial behaviour is encouraged by parents, friends, teachers and similar role models who assist in socialisation, and the mass media, is said to play a large role as well (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). Elementary school children in Japan view, on average, 134.7 minutes of television on each weekday (Educational Research & Development Centre, 2007). Content analysis research has shown that there are around two incidences of prosocial behaviour depicted per hour on Japanese television (Hasegawa, Horiuchi, Suzuki, Sado & Sakamoto, 2008). Therefore, it is possible that children who watch television as a part of their daily life learn desirable social behaviour

from television programming. This study, therefore, investigates the influence of television viewing on the prosocial behaviour of children. Prior research has used experiments and surveys to investigate the relationship between television and prosocial behaviour. According to Mares’ (1996) meta-analysis, much of the prosocial content children witness on television is altruistic. Additionally, studies on viewers of programsmes such as Lassie have revealed that prosocial content can have a strong influence on prosocial behaviour (Sprafkin, Liebert & Poulos, 1975). Furthermore, a meta-analysis of 33 studies (Mares & Woodard, 2005) showed that watching television programmes with prosocial content influences children to a moderate degree. Taken together, these studies consistently show that prosocial programmes influence prosocial behaviour. However, such a conclusion does not necessarily indicate that the influence is uniform across different types of depictions and for viewers in different age groups. For example, watching altruistic prosocial behaviour on television programmes has been shown to have a positive influence on the reciprocal social action of children (Mares & Woodard, 2005). However, according to Silverman & Sprafkin (1980), children who see conflict factors, such as obstacles to prosocial behaviour, do not evince much prosocial behaviour. This suggests that, in addition to depictions of the behaviour itself, the context of the depictions is also important. A study by Thakkar, Garrison and Christakis (2006) showed that television viewing by infants and children

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A Two-wAve PAnel InvesTIgATIon of The Influence of vIewIng ProsocIAl BehAvIour on TelevIsIon on The socIAlITy of elemenTAry school chIldren In JAPAn

who had not yet entered school did not have a significant effect on prosocial behaviour. However, other research showed that television viewing affected at least part of the prosocial behaviour of children too young to attend school (Huston-Stein, Fox, Greer, Watkins & Whitaker, 1981). The results of a meta-investigation (Mares, 1996) revealed that the effect of television viewing on prosocial behaviour is the strongest among children prior to entering school and among elementary school children, and that the effect, while weaker for teenagers overall, is stronger for teenage boys than for teenage girls. Thus, the diagnoses for children prior to them entering school are mixed and the results suggest that television viewing has a strong influence, particularly among children who have not yet reached their teens. Japanese elementary school children watch more television than those in junior high schools (Educational Research & Development Centre, 2007), and therefore it is important to investigate the influence of television viewing during childhood. Why does television viewing promote prosocial behaviour? Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) suggests one mechanism. In particular, it proposes that modelling is not limited to prosocial behaviour, but instead includes a wide spectrum of learning. The awareness processes of an observer are central in modelling. It is hypothesised that the process of modelling particular scenes or models comprises several conditions. The first of these conditions, initial awareness, is called Attention: observers prudently choose which behaviours to pay attention to. The second condition, Retention, involves the observers deducing meaning from the observed behaviour by decoding and understanding the behaviour in alignment with their levels of cognitive development. The third condition is Reproduction and the final condition is Motivation. The multiple processes associated with these conditions correspond to levels of behavioural development and are hypothesised to constitute social learning. Investigating social learning, therefore, involves examining not only contact time and objectively measured scenes but also requires taking into account the awareness processes of observers. Contextual factors are also important for modelling. According to Eisenberg and Fabes (1998), effective models include models that receive rewards, models in valued scenes, models with skills and nurturing models. Thus, behavioural learning is influenced by the presence or absence of rewards after the behaviour and the characteristics of the model. Prior research thus suggests that when investigating the learning of prosocial behaviour through television viewing, it is necessary to investigate not only contextual factors such as the particular characteristics of the depictions but also the viewers’ awareness of these factors. Therefore, examination of the viewers’ awareness processes is necessary as well. However, such awareness processes can vary with individuals and individual levels of development. As investigations have repeatedly shown, these are important factors in prosocial behaviour, as are prosocial moral reasoning and empathy. Prosocial moral reasoning

refers to development from the stage in which one is directed by self-interest, through the stage of noticing the needs of others and the stage in which deep insight into others is possible, until finally moral standards are internalised and become the basis for reasoning. This developmental progression has been confirmed in Japan (Munekata & Ninomiya, 1985). Furthermore, children have been shown to have difficulty understanding standards of reasoning at levels higher than their own. In addition, empathy has been shown to attach motives for prosocial behaviour. Empathy can be thought of as a multi-dimensional construct (Davis, 1983). According to Davis (1983), empathy is comprised of four separate aspects: empathic concern (EC), other-oriented feelings of sympathy and concern for unfortunate others; perspective taking (PT), the tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others; personal distress (PD), self-oriented feelings of personal anxiety and unease intense interpersonal settings; and fantasy (FS), the tendency to transpose imaginatively into the feelings and actions of fictitious characters in books, movies and plays. It has been suggested that PT and EC (emotional empathy) increase prosocial behaviour, while PD decreases it (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998). FS is a concept that is difficult to place but within the limits of media viewing, it can be seen as promoting prosocial behaviour. According to Hoffman (2000), egocentric pain is shown in early development, and role taking and empathy with others’ intentions emerges during the final juvenile period. Hasegawa, Horiuchi, Suzuki, Sado and Sakamoto (2009) have shown that PD and PT are specialised during the middle years of elementary school and this finding can be integrated with Hoffman’s (2000) theory. As described above, a number of results concur that television viewing influences children’s prosocial behaviour. However, this prior research has several limits. First, contextual factors have not been sufficiently investigated. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the influence of viewed media is not determined solely by the amount of contact, but also depends on contextual factors such as the content of the depictions. Important factors in modelling include the characteristics of the model, the model’s rewards for behaviour and the model’s type of behaviour. However, the influence of these factors in everyday television viewing is not yet sufficiently understood. Furthermore, almost no research includes levels of prosocial moral reasoning as a contextual factor. Second, little research has investigated factors of individual differences. It is necessary to consider not only the degree of media contact, but also individual recognition factors in modelling processes, such as how children recognise certain content, in addition to other individual differences. We do not yet sufficiently understand individual differences in how empathy, thought to be connected to prosocial behaviour, regulates viewers’ cognition. This study investigates the influence of television viewing on elementary school children’s prosocial behaviour. Using a longitudinal study carried out over two years, we examined the awareness processes of child

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viewers by investigating whether viewing prosocial scenes on television promoted prosocial behaviour among children, whether any contextual information from the prosocial scenes depicted promoted prosocial behaviour among children, and what sort of individual differences mediated these influences. To gather data for this study, we used a questionnaire to survey a group of elementary school children when they were in the fourth grade of elementary school and again a year later when they were in the fifth grade. We then investigated the effect of age differences, suggested by prior research as the most influential factor.

HypothesesHypothesis 1 is the amount of television viewing is not directly related to prosocial behaviour, and recognition of viewing prosocial scenes promotes prosocial behaviour. According to social learning theory, directing attention towards something indicates it is considered important. Therefore, we hypothesise that not simply the amount, but to what degree children are aware of seeing prosocial behaviour influences their subsequent prosocial behaviour. Hypothesis 2, in two parts, concerns the factors promoting modelling. Hypothesis 2.1 is viewing the depiction of rewards promotes prosocial behaviour, and viewing the depiction of punishment suppresses such behaviour. Hypothesis 2.2 is viewing depictions of prosocial behaviour by positively portrayed or sympathetic characters promotes prosocial behaviour, and viewing depictions of prosocial behaviour by negatively portrayed or unsympathetic characters suppresses such behaviour. Hypothesis 3 concerns prosocial moral reasoning. Depictions of prosocial conduct based on moral reasoning in line with developmental standards are easier for children at the relevant developmental level to understand and will promote learning. Elementary school children are usually at level 3, ‘approval and interpersonal orientation’ (Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998), and their reasoning is based on the role acquisitions of suitable others. Therefore, it is possible that attending to behavioural depictions in which reasons for behaviour are based on a secondary relationship with a sympathetic character influences prosocial behaviour. Hypothesis 3 is therefore attending to depictions of prosocial behaviour based on reason-attribution through a secondary relationship with another person promotes prosocial behaviour. Hypothesis 4 concerns individual differences among viewers. Fluctuations in empathy may mean that, even for the same depiction, learning may vary. Therefore, hypothesis 4 suggests that when viewing prosocial scenes, prosocial behaviour will be more strongly promoted among people who have strong empathic concern (EC), perspective taking (PT) and fantasy (FS). However, when viewing prosocial scenes, prosocial behaviour will be suppressed among people whose personal distress (PD) is strong.

MethodsParticipantsThe participants consisted of 487 Japanese children (255 boys and 232 girls at 5 schools) who took part in both rounds of the survey. The first round of the survey was administered when they were fourth graders and the second round of the survey was administered when they were fifth graders.

ProceduresThe teachers in charge distributed and collected the questionnaires. Each survey took about 45 minutes to complete and was carried out at the convenience of each school. The first round of the survey took place in 2004, from the end of the second term through the third term. The second round took place in 2005, from the end of the second term through the third term. The class teacher explained the purpose and procedure of the study to students, and all participants provided informed consent.

Questionnaire itemsQuestions concerning frequency of media viewingRespondents were first asked to rate their television viewing experiences according to how many programmes they watched over the course of one month on a scale of 1 to 3 (3 = watched a lot, 2 = didn’t watch a lot, 1 = didn’t watch at all). Those who answered ‘didn’t watch at all’ did not answer the following questions on how many hours they watched on weekdays and on the weekend. They were then asked to rate their television viewing time on weekdays and on weekend days. During the first round, they gave open-ended answers, and during the second round, they gave their answers in terms of 30-minute segments on a scale of 1 to 9 (1 = one 30-minute segment and 9 = nine 30-minute segments). For analysis, the answers for the first round were also recorded in terms of 30-minute segments. The question on weekend viewing was answered in the same way as the question on weekday viewing.

Questions concerning awareness of the media’s depictions of prosocial behaviourAwareness of the media’s depictions of prosocial behaviour was measured through presenting seven scenes depicting representative Japanese prosocial behaviour (e.g. a scene of someone helping an elderly or disabled person, a scene of someone returning a lost item or talking to a lost child), which respondents rated on a scale from 1 to 4 (1 = didn’t see at all, 4 = often saw). These scenes were based on seven behaviour types (Takagi, 1982) that covered and categorised prosocial behaviour that Japanese people frequently exhibit in their daily lives. Particular awareness of actors carrying out prosocial behaviour was measured by rating eight types of actors (‘bad person’, ‘good person’, ‘a person I liked’, ‘a person I disliked’, ‘child’, ‘adult’, ‘male’ and ‘female’) along a scale of 1 to 4 (1 = didn’t see at all, 4 = saw often). Awareness of rewards and punishment after prosocial behaviour was

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TABLE 1Means (and standard deviations) for responses about media viewing

Time 1 Time 2Total Boys Girls Total Boys Girls

1. Television viewing Television viewing 2.70

(0.47)2.73

(0.45)2.67

(0.48)2.67

(0.48)2.68

(0.47)2.66

(0.49) Average hours of viewing on weekdays 4.51

(1.88)4.54

(1.81)4.49

(1.96)4.17

(1.89)4.11

(1.92)4.24

(1.86) Average hours of viewing on weekends 5.14

(2.17)5.08

(2.18)5.22

(2.15)5.19

(2.26)4.97

(2.29)5.43

(2.21)2. Awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour Amount of awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour (total) 13.48

(4.06)13.08(4.12)

13.92(3.96)

13.28(4.06)

13.02(4.18)

13.57(3.92)

Awareness of contribution and service behaviour 1.49(0.65)

1.51(0.68)

1.47(0.60)

1.60(0.65)

1.61(0.70)

1.58(0.61)

Awareness of distribution and lending behaviour 1.80(0.83)

1.79(0.86)

1.81(0.79)

1.77(0.79)

1.73(0.85)

1.81(0.73)

Awareness of aid in emergency situations 2.58(1.00)

2.54(1.03)

2.62(0.97)

2.27(0.85)

2.22(0.88)

2.32(0.82)

Awareness of aid necessary for assisting effort or labour 1.97(0.89)

1.90(0.92)

2.04(0.84)

2.00(0.85)

1.93(0.86)

2.08(0.83)

Awareness of assistance to lost children or people who lost something 1.77(0.88)

1.72(0.86)

1.83(0.89)

1.69(0.81)

1.68(0.81)

1.71(0.81)

Awareness of assistance to the socially weak 1.89(0.90)

1.83(0.90)

1.95(0.90)

1.94(0.90)

1.89(0.93)

2.00(0.87)

Awareness of small acts of kindness 1.96(0.94)

1.79(0.89)

2.15(0.96)

1.96(0.88)

1.92(0.91)

2.01(0.85)

3. Actors Bad person 2.00

(0.91)2.11

(0.99)1.87

(0.81)2.08

(0.96)2.21

(1.03)1.94

(0.87) Good person 2.96

(0.96)2.93

(0.99)2.98

(0.92)3.05

(0.92)3.09

(0.93)3.01

(0.90) Person you like 2.69

(1.03)2.76

(1.03)2.61

(1.03)2.72

(1.02)2.73

(1.05)2.72

(0.99) Person you dislike 1.84

(0.89)1.87

(0.90)1.80

(0.86)1.85

(0.83)1.88

(0.90)1.82

(0.74) Child 2.46

(1.02)2.39

(1.05)2.54

(0.98)2.33

(0.97)2.32

(1.02)2.34

(0.92) Adult 2.75

(1.02)2.67

(1.08)2.84

(0.95)2.85

(0.98)2.78

(1.03)2.92

(0.92) Man 2.65

(1.04)2.73

(1.08)2.56

(1.00)2.73

(0.98)2.77

(1.00)2.69

(0.96) Woman 2.47

(1.04)2.25

(1.04)2.71

(0.98)2.47

(0.98)2.27

(0.99)2.69

(0.92)4. Reward and punishment Reward 2.57

(0.86)2.53

(0.89)2.62

(0.82)2.67

(0.83)2.57

(0.86)2.77

(0.79) Continuous reward 2.23

(0.88)2.18

(0.90)2.29

(0.85) Punishment 1.96

(0.92)2.05

(0.98)1.85

(0.83)1.97

(0.87)2.04

(0.93)1.91

(0.78) Self-focus 0.41

(0.49)0.43

(0.50)0.38

(0.49)0.32

(0.47)0.36

(0.48)0.28

(0.45) Goodwill or love towards others 0.60

(0.49)0.60

(0.49)0.60

(0.49)0.60

(0.49)0.55

(0.50)0.65

(0.48) Reciprocity and compensation 0.68

(0.47)0.72

(0.45)0.63

(0.48)0.69

(0.46)0.69

(0.46)0.69

(0.46) Demand from others 0.76

(0.43)0.74

(0.44)0.77

(0.42)0.75

(0.43)0.73

(0.45)0.78

(0.41) Social approval or conventions 0.61

(0.49)0.64

(0.48)0.58

(0.49)0.60

(0.49)0.62

(0.49)0.57

(0.50) Empathy 0.64

(0.48)0.65

(0.48)0.64

(0.48)0.62

(0.48)0.62

(0.49)0.63

(0.48) Social norms or propriety 0.49

(0.50)0.51

(0.50)0.47

(0.50)0.43

(0.50)0.46

(0.50)0.39

(0.49) Other 0.22

(0.41)0.24

(0.43)0.20

(0.40)0.17

(0.38)0.22

(0.41)0.13

(0.33)

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measured for three items—rewards after the behaviour, the continuation of rewards after the behaviour and punishment after the behaviour—which were rated on a scale of 1 to 4 (1 = saw very rarely, 4 = saw very often). In the second round, the ‘continuous rewards’ item was removed because of time limitations. Awareness of the reasons for prosocial behaviour demonstrated by an actor (the subject) towards another (the object) was measured by asking respondents to select one of seven reasons, such as ‘it was useful for the subject, the subject will be able to expect something in the future’ or ‘because the subject likes the object’, along with an eighth option, ‘does not fit’, as ‘the reason I saw the most’ or ‘frequent reason’. Only one selection was possible for the reason seen the most, but multiple choices were possible for ‘frequent reason’. Egocentric and self-oriented reasons were ‘self-focus (because it helped the subject)’ and ‘goodwill or love towards others (because the subject liked the object)’; other-oriented reasons were ‘reciprocity and compensation (because the object treated the subject kindly)’ and ‘demand from others (requested out of necessity)’; stereotyped reasons were ‘social approval or conventions (because it is good)’; and reasons based on internalised norms were ‘empathy’ and ‘social norms or justice’. These reasons were composed based on a content analysis in Japan (Hasegawa et al., 2008) of prosocial moral reasoning as theorised by Eisenberg & Mussen (1989). Answers were scored by giving 2 points to the choice for ‘the most frequent reason’ and 1 point to each of the reasons selected as occurring frequently.

Questions concerning the respondents’ prosocial behaviourProsocial behaviour was measured using Shuto’s (1987) prosocial behaviour scale to which we added four items, giving a total of 17 items. The adequateness and reliability of the scale were examined using a test questionnaire, which confirmed sufficient reliability (α = .90). For the 17 items, including ‘sending money to help starving children in the world’ and ‘helping the elderly’, answers

were rated on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = never have, 5 = have often), yielding 17 to 85 points.

Questions concerning respondents’ empathyIndividual factors that mediate prosociality and tendencies in viewing media were examined using Hasegawa et al.’s (2009) Multidimensional Empathy Scale for children. This scale uses four subscales, based on Davis’ (1983) theory of the four dimensions of empathy: perspective taking (PT), empathic concern (EC), personal distress (PD) and fantasy (FS). Answers for the 30 items were ranked from 1 to 5 (1 = doesn’t fit at all, 5 = fits well).

Questions concerning social desirability (round 1 only)In order to examine the validity of the answers to the questionnaire items, Sakurai’s (1984) Social Desirability Scale for Children (SDSC) was used to assess the social desirability of the answers. The questionnaire also included items with research goals different from those examined here, and discussion of those items is omitted.

ResultsDescriptive statisticsAs Table 1 shows, the average television viewing time over the two-year period was 2 to 4 hours on weekdays and 3 to 5 hours on weekend days. Overall, girls tended to have higher awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour than boys. ‘Awareness of aid in emergency situations’ was the most frequently noted prosocial behaviour over the two-year period. Attentive awareness of the particular characteristics of the actors performing prosocial behaviour was the highest for ‘good person’ over the two-year period. For post-behaviour rewards, awareness of rewards after the depiction of behaviour was higher than for the continuation of rewards after the depiction. Post-behaviour punishment was relatively unrecognised. In both rounds of the survey, ‘demand from

TABLE 2Means (and standard deviations) for prosocial behaviour, empathy and social desirability

Time 1 Time 2Total Boys Girls Total Boys Girls

Prosocial behaviour 50.22(13.56)

47.89(14.30)

52.80(12.21)

53.16(12.55)

51.56(13.10)

54.94(11.68)

Perspective taking (PT) 31.06(6.77)

29.59(7.10)

32.68(6.00)

33.13(6.28)

31.99(6.42)

34.39(5.89)

Empathic concern (EC) 22.68(5.44)

21.47(5.03)

23.96(5.58)

24.28(5.48)

22.90(5.55)

25.82(4.98)

Personal distress (PD) 17.79(5.81)

17.69(5.88)

17.90(5.74)

18.65(6.02)

18.54(5.92)

18.78(6.15)

Fantasy (FS) 20.09(6.54)

19.68(6.73)

20.54(6.30)

21.09(7.01)

20.61(7.27)

21.61(6.71)

Social desirability 38.32(5.66)

36.76(5.44)

40.05(5.41)

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TABLE 3The influence of media variables

Standard partial regression coefficient

Media variable Total Boys Girls1. Television viewing Television viewing .07 + .06 .08 Average hours of viewing on weekdays .02 .02 .03 Average hours of viewing on weekends .06 .13 * –.02 2. Awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour Amount of awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour (total) .00 –.02 .02 Awareness of contribution and service behaviour .04 .03 .04 Awareness of distribution and lending behaviour .05 .01 .12 + Awareness of aid in emergency situations .00 –.01 .00 Awareness of aid necessary for assisting effort or labour –.02 –.07 .04 Awareness of assistance to lost children or people who lost something –.01 .02 –.05 Awareness of assistance to the socially weak .02 –.02 .05 Awareness of small acts of kindness –.05 –.02 –.093. Actors Bad person .00 .01 –.01 Good person .02 .12 + –.10 Person you like –.00 –.01 –.01 Person you dislike .05 .07 .05 Child .05 .08 .01 Adult .05 .12 * –.04 Man .07 .15 ** –.04 Woman .05 .11 * –.02 4. Reward and punishment Reward .08 + .11 + .04 Continuous reward .11 ** .13 * .09 Punishment .02 –.02 .05 5. Reason for behaviour Self-focus –.02 –.06 .01 Goodwill or love towards others –.00 –.04 .05 Reciprocity and compensation .10 * .08 .12 * Demand from others .03 –.01 .07 Social approval or conventions .03 .04 .02 Empathy .00 .00 .01 Social norms or propriety –.02 –.07 .02 Other .03 .08 –.02

*p < .05, ** p < .01Decision variable (proportion explained) R2 = .26 – .37

others’ was the most frequently noted basis for prosocial behaviour, followed by ‘reciprocity and compensation’. Table 2 shows that the scores were higher on round 2 of the survey than on round 1 for prosocial behaviour and all dimensions of empathy, and girls had higher scores than boys in all cases.

Causal analysisUsing the data that differed between the two rounds of the survey, the causal relationships between the media

variables in round 1 and the prosocial behaviour in round 2 were examined. Following the analytic model displayed in Figure 1, a multiple regression analysis was carried out using ‘prosocial behaviour’ from round 2 as the dependent variable and ‘prosocial behaviour’, ‘gender’, ‘social desirability’ and ‘media variables’ from round 1 as the independent variables. A multiple regression analysis was repeated for each of the media variables (television viewing experience, hours of television viewed on weekdays, hours of television viewed on weekend days,

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awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour, particular awareness of the actors of prosocial behaviour, awareness of depictions of rewards and punishment after prosocial behaviour and awareness of the reasons for behaviour). In order to exclude differences between schools from the analysis, the average scores for each school were used. The influence of the media variables on prosocial behaviour was examined in order to exclude the influence of interactions of gender and social desirability. Analysis was carried out for both the boys and the girls, and the gender variables were eliminated from the independent variables in the analysis. Table 3 displays the results.

FIGURE 1Analysis model to test the causal relationship

Prosocial behaviour

Independent variables (Round 1)

Dependent variables (Round 2)

Gender

X

Socialdesirability

Mediavariables

Examination of the causal relationship between media contact and awareness (Hypotheses 1, 2 and 3)The relationship between media-viewing time and the number (total) of depictions of prosocial behaviour that respondents were aware of viewing was not significant but awareness of viewing prosocial behaviour that was followed by continuous reward and that was based on reciprocity and compensation was related to prosocial behaviour. Next, an analysis of gender differences was carried out, revealing, for boys, a positive relationship between prosociality and average weekend-viewing time, ‘continuous reward’, ‘adult’, ‘male’ and ‘female’. A positive relationship between prosocial behaviour and ‘reciprocity and compensation (reason)’ was revealed for girls.

Examination of the causal relationships of the individual difference variables (hypothesis 4)We examined the influence of the media-viewing experience on prosocial behaviour based on respondents’ levels of empathy (PT, EC, PD and FS) using the same procedures outlined in the analytic model in Figure 1. The median values of the above four empathy variables were used to divide the respondents into two groups, and

an analysis was carried out on both the high score group and the low score group for each of the four dimensions of empathy. The influence of the experience of media contact on prosociality depending on the individual difference variables was investigated using this method of analysis.

Perspective takingTable 4 shows the influence of media variables on PT. Awareness of depictions of ‘reward’ was significant for the group with low PT scores and awareness of those of ‘continuous reward’ were significant for the group with high PT scores. Awareness of ‘reciprocity and compensation (reason)’ was significant for both groups.

Empathic concernAs shown in Table 5, ‘awareness of distribution and lending behaviour’ and awareness of ‘continuous reward’, ‘goodwill or love towards others (reason)’ and ‘reciprocity and compensation (reason)’ were significant for the group with high EC scores, while ‘awareness of small acts of kindness’ and awareness of ‘social norms or propriety (reason)’ had a negative influence on the group with low EC scores.

Personal distressTable 6 shows that the media variables of ‘reward’ and ‘continuous reward’ were significant for the group with low PD scores, while ‘reciprocity and compensation (reason)’ was significant for the group with high PD scores.

FantasyFor the group with high FS scores, recognition of ‘reward’ and ‘continuous reward’ had a significant effect on prosocial behaviour, as shown in Table 7.

DiscussionUsing a two-wave panel survey, this study investigated the influence of depictions of prosocial behaviour on television on the prosocial behaviour of elementary school students. The results as they relate to each of our hypotheses are discussed below. Hypothesis 1 posited that “the amount of television viewing is not related to prosocial behaviour, and recognition of viewing prosocial scenes promotes prosocial behaviour”. Excluding the weekend television viewing time for boys, the results show that television-viewing time and the number of depictions of prosocial behaviour recognised by respondents did not influence tendencies towards prosocial behaviour after the first year. Thus, hypothesis 1 was not supported. Hypothesis 2-1 posited that “viewing the depiction of rewards promotes prosocial behaviour, and viewing the depiction of punishment suppresses such behaviour”. The viewing of behaviour that was subsequently rewarded continuously was shown to increase the tendency towards prosocial behaviour one year later. No influence was revealed for depictions of punishment. Thus, hypothesis 2-1 was supported for depictions of continuous rewards.

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TABLE 4The influence of media variables for high and low groups on perspective taking (Empathy)


Media variable Low group High group

1. Television viewing

Television viewing .13 + .04

Average hours of viewing on weekdays .06 –.02

Average hours of viewing on weekends .13 + .01

2. Awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour

Amount of awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour (total) –.04 .04

Awareness of contribution and service behaviour .06 .04

Awareness of distribution and lending behaviour .08 .00

Awareness of aid in emergency situations –.02 .03

Awareness of aid necessary for assisting effort or labour –.06 .02

Awareness of assistance to lost children or people who lost something –.09 .04

Awareness of assistance to the socially weak –.04 .07

Awareness of small acts of kindness –.10 –.03

3. Actors

Bad person .03 –.03

Good person .06 –.06

Person you like .00 –.02

Person you dislike .09 .02

Child .04 .06

Adult .09 .03

Man .12 + .04

Woman .06 .07

4. Reward and punishment

Reward .13 * .02

Continuous Reward .13 + .14 *

Punishment .05 –.02

5. Reason for behaviour

Self-focus –.08 .04

Goodwill or love towards others –.00 .01

Reciprocity and compensation .14 * .16 *

Demand from others .01 .05

Social approval or conventions .02 .04

Empathy .02 –.03

Social norms or propriety –.08 .02

Other .01 .10 +

*p < .05 **p < .01Decision variable (proportion explained) R2 = .26–.37

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TABLE 5The influence of media variables for high and low groups on empathetic concern (Empathy)




Television viewing .07 .07


Average hours of viewing on weekends .14 + –.02




Awareness of distribution and lending behaviour –.02 .13 *

Awareness of aid in emergency situations –.04 .06

Awareness of aid necessary for assisting effort or labour –.02 –.01

Awareness of assistance to lost children or people who lost something –.08 .05


Awareness of small acts of kindness –.14 * .04

3. Actors

Bad person –.01 .01

Good person –.01 .03

Person you like –.05 .08


Child .05 .07

Adult .03 .09

Man .08 .08

Woman .01 .11 +


Reward .09 .11 +

Continuous reward .08 .19 **

Punishment .00 .03


Self-focus –.01 –.04

Goodwill or love towards others –.12 + .13 *

Reciprocity and compensation .09 .13 *

Demand from others –.00 .07

Social approval or conventions –.02 .05

Empathy –.06 .08

Social norms or propriety –.14 * .07

Other .09 –.04

*p < .05, **p < .01Decision variable (proportion explained) R2 = .26 – .42

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TABLE 6Influence of media variables for high and low groups on personal distress (Empathy)




Television viewing .12 + .06

Average hours of viewing on weekdays .04 .03

Average hours of viewing on weekends .07 .08


Amount of awareness of depictions of prosocial behaviour (total) .02 .03



Awareness of aid in emergency situations .06 –.05

Awareness of aid necessary for assisting effort or labour .00 –.01

Awareness of assistance to lost children or people who lost something .03 –.02

Awareness of assistance to the socially weak .03 .05

Awareness of small acts of kindness –.10 .00

3. Actors

Bad person .01 .02




Child .05 .06

Adult .10 + .03

Man .10 + .08

Woman .11 + .02


Reward .13 * .06

Continuous reward .13 * .12 +

Punishment –.06 .11 +


Self-focus –.09 .02


Reciprocity and compensation .05 .18 **

Demand from others –.03 .07

Social approval or conventions .01 .04

Empathy –.09 .06

Social norms or propriety –.03 .01

Other .01 .05

*p < .05, **p < .01Decision variable (proportion explained) R2 = .35–.45

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TABLE 7Influence of media variables on high and low groups for fantasy (Empathy)




Television viewing .00 .13 *


Average hours of viewing on weekends .11 .02





Awareness of aid in emergency situations –.01 –.01

Awareness of aid necessary for assisting effort or labour –.06 .04

Awareness of assistance to lost children or people who lost something –.02 –.04


Awareness of small acts of kindness –.11 –.03

3. Actors

Bad person .03 –.02




Child .08 .02

Adult .08 .04

Man .06 .11 +

Woman .06 .05


Reward .08 .12 *

Continuous reward .12 + .13 *

Punishment .08 –.04


Self-focus –.02 –.04


Reciprocity and compensation .12 + .11 +

Demand from others .03 .03

Social approval or conventions .05 –.00

Empathy .00 –.01

Social norms or propriety –.04 –.01

Other .11 + –.04

*p < .05, **p < .01Decision variable (proportion explained) R2 = .26–.47

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Hypothesis 2-2 posited that “viewing depictions of prosocial behaviour by positively portrayed or sympathetic characters promotes prosocial behaviour, and viewing depictions of prosocial behaviour by negatively portrayed or unsympathetic characters suppresses such behaviour”. For boys, viewing prosocial behaviour carried out by ‘adult’, ‘male’ or ‘female’ actors was shown to increase the tendency towards prosocial behaviour one year later, but otherwise, characteristics of the actors were shown to have negligible influence. Therefore, hypothesis 2-2 was not supported. Hypothesis 3 posited that “attending to depictions of prosocial behaviour based on reason-attribution through a secondary relationship with another person promotes prosocial behaviour”. Viewing of behaviour that was grounded in ‘reciprocity and compensation’ was shown to have a significant influence for both the whole group and for only the girls. Thus, hypothesis 3 was largely supported. The results show that ‘continuous rewards after behaviour’ and prosocial behaviour based on ‘reciprocity and compensation’ were influential contextual characteristics. These can be regarded as the types of contextual information that conform to the awareness structure of elementary school children at a low level of morality. It is possible that the influence of contextual factors varies according to the developmental characteristics of viewers. Hypothesis 4 posited that “when viewing prosocial scenes, prosocial behaviour will be more strongly promoted among people who have strong empathic concern (EC), perspective taking (PT), and fantasy (FS). However, when viewing prosocial scenes, prosocial behaviour will be suppressed among people whose personal distress (PD) is strong”. For the group with low PT, viewing ‘reward’ influenced prosocial behaviour, and for the group with high PT, noticing ‘continuous reward’ influenced prosocial behaviour. The viewing of behaviour based on ‘reciprocity and compensation’ influenced prosocial behaviour for both PT groups. For EC, the four factors with a positive influence all affected the high group, and the two factors with a negative influence both affected the low group. Children with high EC were shown to have prosocial behaviour strengthened by the viewing of behaviour based on ‘reciprocity and compensation’ and ‘goodwill or love for others’, by behaviour followed by ‘continuous rewards’ and by ‘awareness of distribution and lending behaviour’. For PD, viewing behaviour associated with ‘reward’ and ‘continuous reward’ positively influenced prosocial behaviour for the low group. For FS, the four factors exhibiting a positive influence all affected the high group. Thus, partially contradictory results were acquired for PT and PD but the hypothesis was supported overall. According to Hoffman (2000), from the middle years of elementary school, children experience not only egocentric pain, but also develop empathy oriented to others, similar to role-taking abilities. Hasegawa et al. (2009) showed that after the middle years of elementary

school, PD and PT become specialised. Thus, PD and PT transform during the later years of elementary school. It is possible that the somewhat inconsistent results in these two areas were due to this transformation. The influence of contextual factors was not necessarily due to high levels of viewing. For example, behaviours with ‘reward’ were noted more often than those with ‘continuous reward’ (Table 1). However, ‘continuous reward’ actually had a greater influence on prosocial behaviour. Thus, it seems that contextual factors do not always exert influence in proportion to the amount of viewing. Furthermore, the results suggest that contextual factors that increase prosociality may differ based on gender. It is possible that explicit information, such as the characteristics of actors and the rewards after behaviour, influences boys, but that intrinsic information necessary for explaining the reasons for behaviour influences girls.

SummaryFirst, an awareness of viewing many depictions of prosocial behaviour on television does not necessarily influence prosocial behaviour. Second, however, viewing depictions of ‘continuous reward’ after behaviour and perceiving ‘reciprocity and compensation’ as reasons for behaviour does influence prosocial behaviour one year on, with the influence of the former factor more striking among boys and the influence of the latter more striking among girls. Furthermore, viewing depictions of actions by ‘adult’, ‘male’ or ‘female’ characters influences prosocial behaviour one year on for boys. The influence of these contextual factors does not always coincide with the number of times that they are recognised during viewing, which suggests that viewing particular contexts is often not simply connected to the learning of prosocial behaviour. Third, the study suggests that the influence of the above-mentioned contextual factors on prosocial behaviour is mediated by the individual factor of empathy. In general, when empathy involving consideration of and compassion for others (EC) is high and feelings of pain and unpleasantness for others in pain (PD) are low, the tendency to imagine oneself in hypothetical situations and settings (FS) is higher, and the tendency towards prosocial behaviour one year later is greater. While PT and PD did not reveal consistent directions of influence, they could be considered to be connected to the development of empathy during the latter part of childhood. These findings suggest that learning prosociality is not promoted simply by the aware viewing of many depictions of prosocial behaviour scenes but that contextual factors also play a role and must therefore be considered. Furthermore, the question of whether the contextual information being viewed corresponds to the child’s level of development is also important. Such contextual information is not uniformly influential on viewers, but rather is mediated by individual difference factors such as empathy.

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theory” upside down in Asia: Advertising and Singapore’s cultural evolution. Asian Journal of Communication, 8(2), 148–166.

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Unpublished works Anwar, S. E. (1968). Modernization and youth. PhD dissertation.

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