Television Viewing and Perceptions of the Olympic Athletes in the 1996 Olympic
Games
Television Viewing and Perceptions
of the 1996 Olympic Athletes:
A Cultivation Analysis
Xueyi Chen
Doctoral Student
Syracuse University
Newhouse School of Public Communications
110 Small Road, Apartment 8
Syracuse, N.Y. 13210
Tel: (315)-443-2370
Email: [log in to unmask]
Submitted to the 1997 Call for Papers
Leslie J. Moeller Competition of the International Communication Division
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Abstract
This study is aimed at examining the effects of exposure to television
coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games on the public perception of Olympic athletes
and their performance. A telephone survey of a random sample of 397 adult New
York residents from late September to early October of 1996 reveals that there
is no significant relationship between television exposure and the public
perception of Chinese athletes and their performance, but cultivation effect is
found in the public perception of American athletes and their performance.
INTRODUCTION
The Atlanta Olympic Games have been over for several months, while
controversies over what kind of communication behavior should be acceptable in
the context of the Olympic Games are still under way. Since the opening
ceremony of the Atlanta Olympic Games was held, Chinese students, scholars and
professionals currently in the United States have been protesting against some
NBC commentators who are assumed to have given irresponsible and unfair comments
on the Chinese athletes, especially Bob Costas. They even jointly published
paid ads in the Washington Post and the New York Times [1] and demanded a
public apology from NBC or Bob Costas.[2] The war between Chinese in the United
States and NBC is still going on.
This project is designed to examine the effects of exposure to television
coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games on the public perception of Chinese athletes
and their performance. It is aimed at exploring how Americans perceive Chinese
athletes and their performance during the Atlanta Olympic Games, whether
television exposure affects the public perception of Chinese athletes and their
performance, and if it does, how television exposure affects the public
perception of Chinese athletes and their performance.
Meanwhile, previous literature reveals that there exists disagreement in the
exploration of the roles of specific programs and genres on the social
conceptions in cultivation process. A study of the public perception of how
athletes performed in the recently concluded Olympic Games will contribute to
the elaboration of the genre-specific relationship.
THEORY
Cultivation Hypothesis
Cultivation hypothesis has been constantly used in the studies of
relationship between television exposure and social conceptions since the 1970s.
The central argument of the cultivation hypothesis is that television
contributes to viewers' conception of social reality. In its simple form, the
cultivation hypothesis argues that heavy television viewers are predicted to be
more likely than light television viewers to exhibit estimates, perceptions,
attitudes, feelings and values that reflect the television world message. More
sophisticated form of the cultivation hypothesis posits that because people
believe the world view that television reflect, and base their judgments of the
real world on it, television cultivates or creates a world view for viewers,
although possibly inaccurate. (Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner, 1994; Wright,
1959; McQuail, 1987; Baran & Davis, 1995).
Continuous efforts in this area have enriched and extended understanding of
television's contribution to conceptions of social reality. Cultivation has
come to be employed to describe television influence as a multidirectional,
dynamic, and gravitational process:
"...Cultivation is not conceived as a unidirectional process but
rather more like a gravitational process. The angle and direction of
the 'pull' depends on where groups or viewers and their styles of life
are with reference to the center of gravity, the 'main stream' of the
world of television. Each group may strain in a different direction,
but all groups are affected by the same central current. Cultivation
is thus part of a continual, dynamic, on-going process of interaction
among messages and contexts..." (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli,
1994, p.24)
Although the cultivation analysis has become more and more sophisticated
both conceptually and methodological, there are still many questions concerning
assumption, methodology, and definition open to discussion (Potter, 1994). For
example, given the many intervening and powerful social background factors,
cultivation hypothesis might not be able to convince us of the posited
relationships between symbolic structures and audience views and conceptions.
Even if in the United States, where the pervasiveness of television is
distinctive and unprecedented, the higher opportunity of exposing to TV can't
necessarily assure audience's intense attention to TV. In addition, TV programs
and demographic features, which are always taken into consideration as third
variables, can't give overall explanation of audience's interpretation of social
reality.
As far as methodology is concerned, Potter (1994) revisited a large body of
early literature, and found that the measurement on the exposure variable and
cultural indicators are still ambiguous. Evidence for cultivation is still not
strong enough to conclude that there does exist relationship between television
viewing and perceptions of social reality.
Although the assumptions, methodologies and definitions of the cultivation
analysis are still under heavy criticism, it does offer a theoretical framework
for the studies exploring the relationship and television viewing and social
perceptions.
Prior Research
Early empirical studies of the cultivation hypothesis focused on television's
portrayals of violence, crime, and the judicial system. For example, many
studies suggested that the more exposure people have to television, the more
likely they will overestimate the crime rate in real life; the more exposure
they have to television, the more likely they will overestimate the number of
people working in law enforcement, and their own chance of being victims,
(Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Gerbner, Gross, Eleey, Jackson-Beeck, Jeffries-Fox, &
Signorielli, 1977; Gerbner, Gross, Jackson-Beeck, Jeffries-Fox, & Signorielli,
1978; Gerbner, Gross, Signorielli, Morgan, & Jackson-Beeck, 1979; Elliott &
Slater, 1980.) Consequent cultivation research has been conducted in a wider
field, including sex roles, marital and family difficulties, physical
disability, health, attractiveness, age-role stereotypes, science, educational
achievement, politics, and religion, etc. dealing with the relationship between
television viewing and viewers' estimates, perceptions, attitudes, feelings and
values (for example, Morgan, 1986; Perse, 1986; Potter, 1990; Sparks & Ogles,
1990; Morgan & Shanahan, 1991).
Substantial cultivation studies have been conducted on the public
perceptions, and how people see the world. The foci of topics range from
perceptions about a mean world, doctors, traditional sex roles, sexism, American
stereotypes, to those about black groups, black self-esteem, black group
identification/mainstream, the black separatist perspective, etc. (Wober, 1978;
Volgy & Schwarz, 1980; Bryant, Carveth, & Brown, 1981; Tan, 1982; Rouner, 1984;
Morgan, 1986; Allen & Hatchett, 1986; Shrum, 1995). Those studies revealed the
correlation between television viewing and the public perception. For example,
by constructing a mean world index, Gerbner and his colleagues (1980) found that
heavy viewers were much more likely to perceive the world as a mean place than
light viewers, and the hypothesis was still supported when some social
background factors were controlled. Attempts to identify how television viewing
influences social perception are also made.
Noticing practical problems involving in the operationalization of the
concepts in cultivation analysis, Potter (1994) pointed out that the cultivation
effect should be assumed to be a complex non-linear relationship that is
influenced to differential degrees by different "third variables" at different
points in the curve. He also suggested that improvement could be made in
designing the measures and analyses once higher level of measurement, continuous
distributions in scaling, and more sophisticated statistical techniques be
employed.
Most cultivation studies consider audience as non-selective viewers, which
is not always the case in the real life. Individual's interpretation of social
reality is always a very subjective process, and personal experience,
judgment, temperament or feeling play an important role in many circumstance.
It still remains unanswered to a large extent whether TV exposure affects
personal perception of social reality, or perceived social reality from personal
experience or other sources induces audience to watch such programs, or TV
exposure and perceived social reality are interrelated and interacting on each
other.
Hypothesis
The Atlanta Olympic Games, held from mid-July to early August 1996, received
intensive media's attention as the previous Games did. During the 17 days of
the Olympic Games, mass media were flooded all kinds of information concerning
the proceedings of the Games. Among them, television, which televised various
sports live, played a significant role in presenting the Games to the public.
The public depended upon television as a main source of information, idea and
impression of the Games. Television was considered to be the source of the
most broadly shared images and messages of the Games.
The Olympic Games are more than international sports events. As Riggs,
Eastman, and Golobic (1993) pointed out, "twin images of internationalism and
national interests in conflict" have been embedded in the modern Olympic Games
ever since the 1936 Berlin Games (p. 254). The Olympic Games have been found
to be used as political forums, nationalist positioning arenas, tools of foreign
policy and symbols of cultural superiority (Riggs, Eastman, & Golobic, 1993).
The roles of mass media, especially television, in the formulation of
nationalistic images within the Olympic milieu have been identified as vehicles
for internationalism and nationalism. Through a textual analysis of CBS and TNT
coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics, Riggs, Eastman and Golobic argued (1993)
that no matter how the U.S. media claimed the 1992 Winter Olympic Games as
non-political, how they redefined the post-Cold-War Olympic/media milieu, they
still presented the international sports events in a political frame.
Among the televised coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games, some negative
comments were presented regarding Chinese athletes and athletes from some other
countries.[3] Given the lack of direct experience, the public might base their
judgment on the television coverage. In this project, it is hypothesized
that the more people were exposed to television coverage of the 1996 Olympic
Games, the less favorable their evaluation of Chinese athletes and their
performance is.
Method
A telephone survey was conducted in a city of New York, from late September to
early October of 1996, approximately two and a half months after the Atlanta
Olympic Games[4].
Residents were randomly selected from the area to take part in the study. All
telephone numbers within the local calling area of a university in this city
were initially selected from CD-ROM database. After eliminating all business
and duplicate telephone numbers, all the household numbers were randomly ordered
based on a computer generated list of random numbers and divided into fifty
telephone numbers to create twenty-six replicates of 50 numbers each for a total
of 1300 telephone numbers for the study. In addition, the Kish method was used
to randomly identify individual male and female members of the household to be
included in this research.
One week before the survey officially began, a pretest of the survey instrument
was conducted. Based on its results, survey instrument was modified and coding
scheme was set up. Coding scheme was further modified after the first 101
instruments were coded.
Interviewers were students in a local university. All went through not only a
training session before interviewing began, but also another follow-up training
session after they completed their first shifts. The process generated 397
completed interviews, and yielded a procedure response rate of 79%.
To gauge the public perception of Chinese athletes, respondents were read the
statement "Some Chinese athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games
were taking drugs", then they were asked whether they strongly agreed, agreed,
were neutral, disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement; they were
also asked how they thought the Chinese athletes performed in the Atlanta
Olympic Games, and whether they would say Chinese athletes performed in the 1996
Olympic Games very well, well, average, poorly, or very poorly.
Parallel questions concerning the public perception of U.S. athletes and
athletes from Eastern Bloc countries and their performance were also asked in
order to see how exposure to the television coverage of the Olympic Games
influenced the public perception.
To determine levels of exposure to the Olympic coverage, respondents were asked
whether they watched any of the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympic Games;
they were also asked for how many days they watched some of the televised
coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games of the 17 days of Olympic coverage on
television, and for how many days they read information concerning the Olympic
Games in newspapers of the 17 days of Olympic coverage in newspaper.
The hypothesis was tested in two ways. First, independent t-tests were used to
see whether viewing the Opening Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games affected
the public perception of Chinese athletes, U.S. athletes, athletes from the
Eastern Bloc countries and their performance. Second, pearson correlation
coefficients were computed to examine if exposure to the television coverage of
the 1996 Olympic Games was correlated to the evaluation of the Chinese athletes,
U.S. athletes, athletes from the Eastern Bloc countries and their performance.
RESULTS
This study attempted to test the relationship between exposure to TV coverage
of the 1996 Olympic Games and the public perception of Chinese athletes, and
their performance. The results failed to show that exposure to TV coverage of
the 1996 Olympic Games was statistically significant to the public perception of
Chinese athletes, and their performance. The extended cultivation hypothesis
was not supported.
According to Table 1, among 395 respondents, 52.9% watched, while 47.9%
didn't watch any of the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympic Games, where
some negative comments against Chinese athletes and athletes from other
countries were presented.
Table 1 about here
Table 2 shows that the average time respondents spent watching the Atlanta
Olympic Games amounted to 8 days; the public perception of Chinese athletes
differed from each other most (.90 or .88), while the public perception of
American athletes has reached more agreement (.56).
Table 2 about here
As Table 3 reveals, people's exposure to TV coverage of the Opening
Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympic Games (t-value of 3.68, p<.001) correlated
significantly only with the public perception of American athletes' performance.
People who watched the Opening Ceremonies of the 1996 Olympic Games are more
likely to hold a more favorable evaluation of the American athletes than those
who didn't . Although negative comments against athletes from different
countries were made at the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympic Games,
viewing the Opening Ceremonies or not didn't affect significantly the public
perception of either Chinese athletes or athletes from Eastern Bloc countries
and their performance.
Table 3 about here
According to Table 4, people's exposure to the televised coverage of the
Atlanta Olympic Games didn't correlate significantly with their perception of
Chinese athletes and their performance. The effect of exposure to the televised
coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games on the public perception was again found
significant only for the public perception of American athletes and their
performance, but the correlations, like most of the cultivation research, were
somewhat weak. The study shows that the more exposure people had to televised
coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games, the less likely they believe that
American athletes participating in the Atlanta Olympic Games were taking drugs
(r = -.12, p < .05); the more exposure people had to televised coverage of the
Atlanta Olympic Games, the more likely they think American athletes performed
well in the Atlanta Olympic Games (r = .25, p < .001). In addition, the public
perception of American athletes' performance in the 1996 Olympic Games was found
to be correlated with people's overall amount of TV viewing (r = .12, p < .05)
regardless of what programs people watch. A further analysis shows that the
public perception of American athletes is correlated with people's viewing of
live sports or sports news on TV (r = .112, p < .05). People's exposure to
newspaper coverage of the Olympic Games also affected significantly their
perception of American athletes and their performance in the same way (r = .11,
p < .05).
Table 4 about here
According to Table 4, factors which are correlated with the public perception
of Chinese athletes and their performance were the public perception of American
athletes and athletes from Eastern Bloc countries. The results demonstrated
that the more likely people believe that American athletes and athletes from
other countries who participating in the Olympic Games were taking drugs, the
more likely they believe that Chinese athletes were taking drugs (r = .45, p <
.001; r = .51, p < .001, respectively); the more favorable people's evaluation
of the performance of American athletes and athletes from other countries in
the Atlanta Olympic Games is , the more favorable their evaluation of Chinese
athletes' performance is (r = .20, p < .001; r = .26, p < .001, respectively).
In sum, this project fails to support the hypothesis that the more exposure
people had to the televised coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games, the less
favorable their evaluation of Chinese athletes and their performance. It
reveals that television exposure to the 1996 Olympic Games, live sports or
sports news on TV as well as TV exposure in general cultivated the public
perception of American athletes and their performance, but not that of Chinese
athletes and athletes from the Eastern Bloc Countries.
DISCUSSION
Many studies have been done to explore whether there is relationship
between TV exposure and the public conception of social reality; if a
relationship does exist, how does TV viewing affect it? What are the roles of
specific programs and genres in cultivation? How does the exposure to specific
programs affect social conception? This study is another attempt to test the
basic cultivation hypothesis. Based on the survey conducted from late September
to early October in a city of New York, results failed to show cultivation
effect in the public perception of Chinese athletes and their performance.
Exposure to television coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games was not found to be
correlated significantly with the public perception of Chinese athletes and
their performance. However, the results did indicate cultivation effect in the
public perception of American athletes and their performance. Television
exposure to the 1996 Olympic Games, live sports or sports news on TV as well as
television exposure in general cultivated the public perception of American
athletes and their performance, but not that of Chinese athletes and athletes
from the Eastern Bloc Countries.
The long-term nature of cultivation effect might serve as a possible
explanation. Television has been cultivating the public perception of American
athletes and their performance, and the television coverage of the 1996 Olympic
Games just reinforced the cultivated perception.
The reason why this study couldn't establish the relationship between
exposure to television coverage of the 1996 Olympic Games and the public
perception of Chinese athletes and their performance may lie in many confounding
factors. For example, compared with U.S. athletes, and athletes from some
Eastern Bloc countries, especially Russian athletes, Chinese athletes were not
of great interest to U.S. mass media. Meanwhile, Chinese athletes didn't
receive as much media salience as their counterparts from the United States and
the Eastern Bloc Countries did. In addition, the fact that American audience
might not pay intense attention to television coverage of Chinese athletes may
have interfered with the cultivation effects. Since athletes from the Eastern
Bloc countries, especially the former Soviet Union, and East Germany had been
perceived as major competitors of American team, they received not only a lot
of media attention but also audience attention. People obtained large amount
of information from television coverage, which might make them might project
their perception of American athletes and athletes from Eastern Bloc countries
on athletes from other countries, about whom they had less knowledge.
According to Table 4, we can see the correlations between the public
perception of American athletes and that of athletes from Eastern Bloc countries
are quite high ( r = .63, p < .001; r = .36, p < .001), when compared with
relationships between media exposure and public perception. People who believe
that some U.S. athletes who participated in the 1996 Olympic Games were taking
drugs are more likely to believe that some athletes from Eastern Bloc countries
were taking drugs. The projection of perception of U.S. athletes upon athletes
from other countries is also manifested in the survey results that baseball
teams were considered by most respondents as being the teams which were most
likely to get involved in drug-taking.
Some of the limitations of the study should be noted. First, the
self-reported media exposure was adopted. Inaccurate self-reports are potential
problems with all surveys and thus are unavoidable. In addition, the survey was
conducted approximately two months after the 1996 Olympic Games concluded, when
people's memory of the Olympic Games has faded, which might also increase the
risk of obtaining inaccurate data concerning media exposure. Meanwhile, the
protest advertisements of Chinese communities in the United States, which were
published in the Washington Post and the New York Times after the Olympic Games,
and news coverage of this event might have confounding influence on the public
perception.
The reliability of this study is also limited by the sample size. Although
the survey yielded 397 complete interviews, there existed a large number of
missing values for the public perception variables. Except the question
concerning American athletes' performance, valid answers to other perception
questions only accounted for less than three fourths.
As Pott (1994) pointed out, previous cultivation studies only showed that
TV exposure variables usually can only predict the variance in the cultivation
estimates, beliefs and perceptions to a very limited extent, with Pearson
correlation coefficients less than .30. Future research should explore better
measurement for cultivation indicators as well as media exposure.
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Table 1 Percentage for media use variable during the Opening Ceremonies of the
Atlanta Olympic Games
Variable
Percentage
Did you watch any of the Opening Ceremonies of the Atlanta Olympic Games?
Yes
52.9
No
47.1
100.00%
(N = 395)
Table 2 Means and standard deviations for media use, and perception variables
of athletes and their performance.
Variables
Mean
Standard Deviations
N
Of the 17 days of Olympic coverage on the television, how many days did you
watch some of the televised coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games?*
7.72
5.88
396
Of the 17 days of Olympic coverage in newspapers, how many days did you read
information concerning the Games in newspapers?*
6.02
6.69
395
Some Chinese athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games were taking
drugs.**
3.10
.90
300
Some U.S. athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games were taking
drugs.**
2.75
.84
301
Some athletes from Eastern European countries were taking drugs during the
Atlanta Olympic Games.**
2.90
.76
286
How do you think the Chinese athletes performed in the Atlanta Olympic Games?***
3.77
.88
314
How do you think the U.S. athletes performed in the Atlanta Olympic Games?***
4.61
.56
363
How do you think athletes from the Eastern Bloc countries performed in the
Atlanta Olympic Games?***
3.95
.829
323
* Responses were coded from 0 to 17 days.
** Responses were coded: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 =
disagree, 1 = strongly disagree.
*** Responses were coded: 5 = very well, 4 = well, 3 = average, 2 = poor, 1 =
very poorly. Table 3 Independent t-tests for public perception variables by
media use.
Did you watch any of the Opening Ceremonies of Atlanta Olympic Games?
Variables
Yes
Means
(&SD)
No
Means
(&SD)
t value
df
signifi-cance
Some Chinese athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games were taking
drugs.*
3.12
( .97)
3.10
( .79)
.19
294.99
ns
How do you think the Chinese athletes performed in the Atlanta Olympic Games?**
3.77
( .90)
3.77
( .86)
-.01
311
ns
Some U.S. athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games were taking
drugs.*
2.70
( .89)
2.81
( .77)
-.1.19
294.63
ns
How do you think the U.S. athletes performed in the Atlanta Olympic Games?**
4.71
( .52)
4.49
( .58)
3.68
323.28
p<.001
Some athletes from Eastern European countries were taking drugs during the
Atlanta Olympic Games.*
2.91
( .75)
2.89
( .77)
.32
281
ns
How do you think athletes from the Eastern Bloc countries performed in the
Atlanta Olympic Games?**
3.95
( .88)
3.96
( .76)
-.13
320
ns
* Responses were coded: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 =
disagree, 1 = strongly disagree.
** Responses were coded: 5 = very well, 4 = well, 3 = average, 2 = poor, 1 =
very poorly.
Table 4 Pearson correlation coefficients for media use, and public perception
variables of athletes and their performances
Variables
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1. Of the 17 days of Olympic coverage on the television, how many days did you
watch some of the televised coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Games?*
.31c_
(396)
.01
(298)
.02
(312)
-.12a
(299)
.25c
(361)
.02
(284)
.07
(321)
2. Of the 17days of Olympic coverage in newspapers, how many days did you read
information concerning the Games in newspapers?*
_
-.01
(298)
.05
(311)
-.06
(298)
.11a
(286)
-.03
(283)
.04
(320)
3. Some Chinese athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games were
taking drugs.**
_
-.12
(259)
.45c
(283)
-.12
(286)
.51c
(269)
-.05
(262)
4. How do you think the Chinese athletes performed in the Atlanta Olympic
Games?***
_
-.05
(260)
.20c
(313)
-.02
(248)
.26c
(297)
5. Some U.S. athletes who participated in the Atlanta Olympic Games were taking
drugs.**
_
-.08
(289)
.63c
(277)
-.12a
(269)
6. How do you think the U.S. athletes performed in the Atlanta Olympic Games?***
_
-.08
(274)
.36c
(322)
7. Some athletes from Eastern European countries were taking drugs during the
Atlanta Olympic Games.**
_
-.05
(256)
8. How do you think athletes from the Eastern Bloc countries performed in the
1996 Olympic Games?***
_
a p < .05,b p < .01,c p <.001
* Responses were coded from 0 to 17 days.
** Responses were coded: 5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neutral, 2 =
disagree, 1 = strongly disagree.
*** Responses were coded: 5 = very well, 4 = well, 3 = average, 2 = poor, 1 =
very poorly.
[1] The Washington Post of August 14, 1996 carried the first protest
advertisement against NBC. The New York Times of September 1, 1996 carried
another protest advertisement titled "Costas Poisoned Olympic Spirit, Public
Protests NBC".
[2] Bob Costas' comment on the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympic Games has
been under severe criticism. Bob Costas is assumed by the Chinese communities
in the United States to single out Chinese Olympians for criticism about
performance-enhancing drug use. ("...of course, there are problems with human
rights, copyright disputes, the threats posted to Taiwan. And within the
Olympics, while they have excelled, 4th in the medal standings in Barcelona,
with 54 medals, 16 of them gold. This after 30-year-absence, which ended in
1984, they've excelled athletically, they're building into a power, but amidst
suspicions, especially concerning their track athletes, and their female
swimmers possible using performance-enhancing drugs. No one caught in
Barcelona. But since those games of 1992, several have been caught.")
[3]
The New York Times, September 6, 1996, page B21, Cultural Views: Different
Outlooks.
[4] Questions used in this study were a part of a larger telephone survey.
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