Item Details

title

A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF MORAL VALUES, EMOTIONS AND THEIR LINKS IN WESTERN CHILDREN’S TV SHOWS

author

Wang, Wenyu

abstract

Given the role of prosocial media in childhood socialization, the present study employed the moral foundations theory (MFT) as a framework to examine moral messages with a focus on character’s emotions portrayed on Western children’s prosocial TV programs. As a pervasive theme in prosocial media, the study added inclusion/exclusion as a separate moral category. Overall, 141 moral domains were coded in 60 episodes in three popular preschool cartoons. The results showed the care/harm, fairness/reciprocity, and authority/respect foundations were dominant in preschool television programs. Moreover, positive emotions were portrayed more frequently than negative emotions. By examining the relationship between emotions and moral foundations, I found that anger was strongly associated with care/harm, fairness/reciprocity, authority/respect foundations. Love was strongly associated with the care/harm foundation. Fear and contentment were strongly related to the authority/respect foundation. Interestingly, the in-group/loyalty foundation and inclusion/exclusion were not associated with any discrete emotion. The findings have indicated that in Western prosocial media, links between moral domains and emotions were not exclusive, but emotional expressions still differed in reaction to different kinds of moral domains. The limitations and future research directions are discussed in the end.

subject

Children

Emotion

Morality

Preschool Children

Prosocial Media

contributor

Krcmar, Marina (committee chair)

Gill, Rebecca (committee member)

Dykhuis, Elise (committee member)

date

2022-01-15T09:35:29Z (accessioned)

2022-07-14T08:30:14Z (available)

2021 (issued)

degree

Communication (discipline)

embargo

2022-07-14 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/99381 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis