Tag: Media Studies

The Anti-heroine: An Emergent Television Character Trope 

Presenter(s): Meg Rodgers − Media Studies

Faculty Mentor(s): Erin Hanna

Panel Session 1SW

Research Area: Media Studies & Television Studies

Funding: UROP Mini-grant, Humanities Undergraduate Research Fellowship

Television’s anti-heroes have long raked in high ratings and delivered audiences with devilishly corrupt but ultimately sympathetic viewpoints. Recent exemplars such as Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Dexter Morgan are rarely ethical and far from heroic, which has led to a wide breadth of scholarship about male characters who skirt the boundaries between regular life and outlaw culture. For example, Brett Martin’s Difficult Men and Amanda Lotz’ Cable Guys explore masculinity on television that is predicated on breaking societal norms. What the existing scholarship fails to fully address—and where my research project intervenes—is a thorough analysis of the anti-heroine, a television genre that has grown rapidly in recent years. My research launches from Kathleen Karlyn’s The Unruly Woman, an early examination of women in film and television who use humor to undermine patriarchal authority. Margaret Tally’s The Rise of the Anti-Heroine in TV’s Third Golden Age is the first text to explore the emergence of the anti-heroine. My project extends past Tally’s work to look specifically at how anti-heroines have become a dominate feature of quality television. Quality television is a category that loosely refers to series with narrative complexity, high production values, and characters with psychological depth. My three case studies, Sex and the City, Veep, and Girls, are Home Box Office (HBO) productions. I focus on HBO productions because the single network allows me to draw on consistent industry information, viewership demographics, and critical accolades. The anti-heroines from my case studies might be difficult or even unlikeable—but they do address and challenge traditional femininity (whereas anti-heroes reinforce hegemonic masculinity). Do anti-heroines have more agency over their personal and professional lives than other leading ladies? What underlies America’s fixation with immoral women? These are just a couple of the questions guiding my preliminary research.

The Power of America’s Most Watched Show: How Entertainment Television Can Change Social Behaviors

Presenter(s): Kyle Heiner − Journalism: Advertising

Faculty Mentor(s): Kim Sheehan, Erin Hanna

Oral Session 2C

Research Area: Media Studies and Advertising

This thesis examines the effects entertainment television can have on audiences beyond simply making them laugh, scream, or cry. In an era where the public has become increasingly untrustworthy of traditional broadcast news and advertising, I argue that ideas that prompt social change can be communicated through entertainment television, specifically, America’s most watched shows. In this thesis, I focus on how America’s current highest rated show, The Big Bang Theory, a scientifically- accurate sitcom centered around a group of young male scientists and their new blonde neighbor, can incorporate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into its storyline to promote their message to a majority of Americans. Using theories such as Uses and Gratifications, Parasocial Interaction, and Agenda Setting, as well as analyzing case studies about product placement, public service announcements, and media partnerships, the study suggests that integration with television storylines can increase knowledge and spur action among audiences. Importantly, I argue that episodes that contain a message central to the storyline, ease seamlessly into the narrative, and are open with their external partnership, are the most successful in getting their message across. A ‘spec’ script, which is a speculative screenplay for a series written by someone outside of the production, that illustrates these techniques is provided.

College Students and Online Streaming Services: Piracy and Suggestions for the Future of Content Distribution

Presenter(s): Mai Amalie Bak − Journalism

Faculty Mentor(s): Heather Shoenberger

Oral Session 2C

Research Area: Media Studies

This study aims to understand how American undergraduate university students make decisions about the entertainment media they stream, including the motivations in choosing a particular streaming service and their attitudes and actual engagement with piracy. In recent years, the entertainment media industry has been evolving more quickly than ever before, and a significant factor in this change is the ever-accelerating transition to online streaming services. These services, including Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify, offer films, television shows and music which can be streamed and downloaded through the Internet on most digital devices. Increasing methods of piracy and peer to peer password sharing has made it more difficult to regulate how entertainment media is distributed, and determine whether consumers use legal methods to obtain the media they consume. This project will use semi-structured individual interviews of 30 undergraduates at the University of Oregon with the goal to be to illuminate their understanding of/participation in piracy, and media streaming motivations and habits. The results of this study seek to offer empirical evidence of college student awareness of piracy policies, use of online streaming and offer suggestions for content providers looking to avoid piracy in the changing entertainment media landscape.