Originally Published:20070701.
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Researchers estimate that between 1 of 5 and 1 of 11 young women today have an eating disorder (Hersh, 1991; Kilbourne, 1995). The American Psychiatric Association's Work Group on Eating Disorders (2000) estimated that between 0.5 to 3.7 percent of females will suffer from anorexia nervosa in their lifetime. Previous research has established a link between eating disorders and the media images of ultra thin models (Field et al. 1999; Stice & Shaw, 1994). Although media exposure may play a role in eating disorders, Brumberg (2000 p.28) argues that "The current cultural models fail to explain why so many individuals do not develop the disease even though they have been exposed to the same cultural environment." She has advanced a two phase model to explain the development of eating disorders: the recruitment phase and the fulfillment of psychological or biological needs. In the recruitment phase, Brumberg claims, a person begins to restrict her food intake due to social and cultural reasons, such as body aesthetics. In this phase, the mass media may play a significant role in shaping one's understanding of an aesthetically valued body. The second phase, Brumberg believes, occurs for a small percentage of individuals for whom the restriction of food fulfills a psychological or biological need. This process can be envisioned as a large funnel in which many individuals may be recruited at the top of the funnel but only a small number come out the bottom with an eating disorder.
In a free market economic system it would be impossible to eliminate ideological messages contained in media images that led to the recruitment phase of an eating disorder, such as images related to gender identity and body size. Thus, the research questions guiding this project are: how can we, as teachers, create critical awareness among our students as to the impact that media images have on young women? As educators, can we intervene in the "recruitment process" thus reducing unrealistic self-images? Can we alter the way a young woman appropriates mass media images to evaluate herself and others?
Previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of using media to enhance student learning on a variety of topics (see Baker-Sperry, Behringer, & Grauerholt 1999; Grauerholt & Covert 1997; King 2000; Konrad & Yoder, 2000; Paddock, Terranova, & Giles 2001; Shostrom, 1965; White & Lilly, 1989). However, this study is interested in a less commonly used approach in the social sciences, media literacy, in which educators utilize the media itself to teach about the media's impact on individuals and groups. Potter (2001) defines media literacy as "a perspective that we actively use when exposing ourselves to the media in order to interpret the meaning of messages we encounter " (p. 4). Sholle and Denski's (1995) critical approach argues that students must be taught to analyze the production and consumption of media products as ideological texts. Pedagogically, when teachers employ media literacy as a critical thinking process, students learn to examine the ideological context of the numerous media messages, and students discover how media messages may affect the behaviors, attitudes, and values of themselves and others.
While still uncommon in the college classroom, media literacy programs for elementary school children have developed around the United States. Media literacy assessment has been limited primarily to programs for children in primary grades or learning disabled children. Media literacy programs have been shown to increase children's critical understanding of advertising (Roberts, Gibson, Moser, & Goldberg 1980; Feshbach, Feshbach, & Cohen, 1982), enhance children's critical questioning of alcohol advertisements (Austin & Johnson, 1997), modify children's attitudes toward media violence (Gunter, 1994), increase a child's ability to deconstruct negative racial and ethnic stereotypes (Vargas & DePyssler 1998), and foster greater critical awareness of media messages among children (Dorr & Graves, 1980; Singer, Zucherman, & Singer 1980).
Since Kilbourne's pioneering video Killing Us Softly (1979) helped launch the academic use of videos to teach about gender representation in advertising, numerous researchers have examined the specific role media plays in shaping women's self image (e.g., Blair, 1994; Chapkis, 1986; Hess-Biber, 1998; Piper, 1994). Research on implementing and assessing a college level media literacy program especially designed to focus on gender images is in the preliminary stages of investigation. Irving and Berel's (2001) study of college age women compared media literacy programs to determine whether media literacy interventions could enhance students' critical understanding of media images and, thus, reduce women's negative body image. Irving and Berel found that media intervention resulted in increased skepticism about media images, reduced beliefs that models were realistic, and reduced the desirability to be as thin as a model.
Given the limited research on the impact of media literacy in the college classroom, this study contributes to an assessment of the effectiveness of media literacy by comparing two modalities of learning, watching a video versus reading a text. For this study, two specific measures of student learning were used: 1) students' retention of specific factual information and 2) affective changes in students' current body image and ideal body image.
Methods
Participants
Seventy-five female students, ages 1 8 -21, participated in the study. Students were recruited from the subject pool that includes upper and lower division courses; instructors offered extra credit for participation in an experiment among several other course relevant options for credit. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: video (N = 22), article (N = 19) or control (N=23). There were 4-8 participants in each session.
Procedure and Materials
Students in the experimental groups were randomly assigned to either watch the video Slim Hopes by Kilbourne (1995) (viewing time was 30 minutes) or read an article written by Kilbourne (1994) (on average students took 25 minutes to read). A control group was included to assess baseline knowledge of eating disorders. Subjects in the control condition were asked to solve a maze.
The article and video by Kilbourne were purposely selected because they contained the same thesis and several points of information were identical; we could not locate any other such parallel set of materials. The video includes scenes of Kilbourne at a lectern, a number of commercial advertisements to illustrate the ideas, and key points in Kilbourne's talk are shown in written form with her voice-over. The article presents similar information and has several of the same advertisements presented alongside the written text. Four objective, quantitative statements made in both the video and the article became the basis for the post-information questionnaire. Subjects were told that they would complete a question sheet after they had finished their assigned task. The questions given to all groups were identical since the factual information was the same in both text and video.
Immediately after the subjects had finished with their task of watching the video, reading the article, or solving the maze, they were asked to complete a two-page question sheet. The first page presented students with the body image scale from Fallón and Rozin ( 1985). The scale presents line drawings of a female figure that range from emancipated to obese, with a numerical range of O - 100 corresponding to the pictures. Students were asked to choose which body figure represented their current body image and which represented their ideal body image. The second page asked four factual, objective questions from the presentations; subjects in the control condition were asked to make their best guess. Table 1 illustrates the four objective questions and correct answers that were presented in both the video and the article.
The questions were scored as correct if the answer given fell within two percentage points of the correct numerical answer. This narrow range of correct answer scores insures that the students actually recalled the information and were not simply making a general guess.
Results
The first set of results focused on the retention of specific information. Table 2 shows that overall both the video group and the article group were more likely to correctly identify specific information on eating disorders when compared to the control group. The mean correct response for the video group was 40. 1 %, for the article group was 43.2%, and for the control group .01%. Thus, a significant difference exists in the retention of information for students who either watch video or read an article when compared to students not exposed to either the video or the article. However, there was no significant difference between the retention of information between the video group and the article group.
The second set of findings examined the differences between current body image and ideal body image for the video group, the article group, and the control group. Table 3 indicates that overall there was a difference of -17% between average current body image score (35) and average ideal body image score (29). Although the students in this experiment were, on average, on the lower end of the Fallón and Rozin (1985) scale in their current body image (the range was between 1 1 - 65 on the 100 point scale), they desired to be even thinner (the ideal body range was between 18-36 on the 100 point scale). Overall, 82.7% of the participants indicated that their ideal body weight is lower than their current body weight.
We found that the effect of group on body image was also significant. The video group had a significantly lower difference between average current body image and average ideal body image (-9%) when compared to both the article group (-28%) and the control group (-23%). The difference of the average current and ideal body images was not significant between the article and the control group. The average ideal body image score was not significantly different among the three groups (video 29, article 30, control 28). We noted that the average difference in scores occurred largely as a result of the difference in current body image averages; the video group had the smallest current body image average (32) and the article group had the largest average current body image score (41).
Discussion
For teachers who may be concerned that students will fail to retain information from less traditional methods of learning, such as videos, this study found no difference in retention of specific facts. When compared to control conditions, both texts and videos are equally useful pedagogical tools for the presentation of specific information, in this case about eating disorders.
While both the video and the article proved effective in the retention of information, an important implication of this study is that only the video resulted in an average current body image score that was more consistent with the ideal body image. A future study employing a pre-test might strengthen this conclusion; however, results here indicate that students in the video group were less likely to inflate their current body image than either the article or control group. Given that one goal of the educational process is to create deeper critical thinking among students, the videos appear to accomplish this by facilitating a healthy interpretation of one's current body.
Ultimately, one objective of media literacy might be for educators to use media literacy to facilitate a disruption in the recruitment phase of eating disorders and for students to critically assess the ideal body image that surrounds them in American culture. However, the findings here suggest that the ideal body image remained similar for all three groups. As noted, only the video affected a student's satisfaction with her current body image, but viewing the video did not change the student's ideal body image. A possible explanation is that current body image is a more fluid dimension of identity and is, thus, subject to change. Certainly over her lifetime, a student has already grappled with her changing body image, such as the on-set of puberty. Ideal body image, by comparison, is a relatively stable, idealized female form that has been socialized over the course of the student's life. Dislocating this hegemonic female body image with a single exposure to a critical analysis of media images is unlikely.
In conclusion, a curriculum incorporating media literacy in combination with traditional texts will enhance a student's retention of content information and, more importantly, impacts affective behavior. Compared with articles, viewing videos in the classroom has the potential to help women perceive their current bodies more positively. However, the ideal body image will likely remain unaltered unless extensive media literacy education occurs. In the media saturated environment in which our students live, media images shape the students' understanding of themselves and the world around them. Without a curriculum that provides a critical analysis of mass media images, students are left vulnerable to corporale messages that, in the pursuit of increasing profit by increasing sales, play upon personal insecurities about one's appearance. Although exposure to a critical deconstruction of images of thinness was limited in this study, the results suggest that even minimal exposure to a critical deconstruction of media images has an impact on a student's affective behavior, at least in the short-term. Further media literacy training will likely enhance the critical viewing skills of the students. Thus, whether media literacy becomes the thread running through a course or simply a one-day concept presented during a semester, a student will gain a deeper understanding of the effect of media images on her behavior.
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