ADOLESCENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL CONFLICTS IN TELEVISION NEWS AND SOCIAL REALITY

AKIBA A. COHEN*, HANNAA DONI, GIDEON DRORI

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

This study examined Israeli adolescents' differential perception of social conflicts in society and of their presentation by TV news, given the assumption that TV presents a distorted picture of real social conflicts along three dimensions: complexity, intensity, and solvability. It was hypothesized that age and degree of remoteness of social conflicts from one's life experiences will account for the main differences in an adolescent's differential perception of social conflicts. The sample consisted of 492 9th‐grade and 425 12lh‐grade Israeli adolescents. The data indicate that the older adolescents typically differentiate between the two realms of reality to a greater degree than do the younger adolescents. This is the case for three conflicts (school integration, labor disputes, and political terrorism) across the three dimensions. Moreover, the highest degree of differentiation between the two realms of reality was found for both age groups in the school integration conflict, with which the respondents were presumed to be most familiar, and the least differentiation for the conflict concerning political terrorism, with which they were presumed to have had the least experience.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)203-225
Number of pages23
JournalHuman Communication Research
Volume10
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 1983
Externally publishedYes

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