When Political Narratives Entertain: The Effects of Political Entertainment on the Attitudes of Young Viewers Toward Female Lead Characters

• Other Authors: Rasul, Azmat (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Mass media
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-9433

Political narratives have entertained human beings since times immemorial. The political narratives in the form of drama, novel, ballads, and contemporary televisual and filmic stories revolved around various characters that served as role models. Citizens tended to identify with good, morally ambiguous, and sometimes bad characters depending on the context and a host of personal motives, which subsequently determined the enjoyment of the entertainment narratives and absorption into the storyline. Storylines and characters in political entertainment has also been a great source of enjoyable entertainment for the audience. However, female lead characters in political roles were marginalized and frequently represented in conventional roles that were uninspiring and cultivated negative sentiments about females in various leadership roles. In the past few decades, the representation of female lead characters has considerably changed due to the entry of several notable female politicians in the corridors of power across the globe. Since females are visible in different leadership roles, they are attracting attention of the news and entertainment media and their increased visibility is positively influencing attitudes of female and male citizens toward feminine role models. This dissertation focused on the portrayal of female politicians in semifictional and fictional political narratives and explored if enjoyment, character identification, and narrative transportation influenced the attitudes of the audiences toward female protagonists in political entertainment. As political entertainment became a dominant pattern to involve uninterested voters in democratic processes, entertainment psychology research paid attention to the dual process model of entertainment, and several scholars investigated the "serious" nature of enjoyment experience associated with the consumption of political narratives. Several other studies reported that audiences identified with positive political role models featured as the protagonists in "meaningful" semifictional or fictional narratives. Audience were likely to enjoy such narratives by transporting them into the storyline that reduced critical evaluation of the narratives and subsequently influenced their attitudes and beliefs. By designing and conducting two studies to explore the serious nature of political entertainment, this dissertation empirically tested the relationship between exposure to semifictional and fictional narrative and audiences' attitudes toward female protagonists playing the role of a politician, which was not adequately addressed in extant research. Study one served as a pilot study that tested the causal associations between exposure to semifictional biographical political movies and attitude of the audiences toward female politicians, followed by an exploration of the mediating role of a few variables such as enjoyment and narrative transportation. Study two, on the other hand, scrutinized similar relationships between exposure to fictional political drama and viewers' attitude toward female role models featured as political protagonists in the drama narratives. Both studies found significantly insightful results and paved the way for future inquiry into the effects of fictional entertainment, as was advocated by Holbert (2005) in his "typology for the study of entertainment television and politics". Exposure motives with meaningful intentions proved to be a significant exogenous variable due to their potential to elicit cognitive and elaborative processing of the entertainment narratives. This dissertation addressed significant questions surrounding political communication and entertainment psychology research. The studies conducted for this research offered plausible results and paved the way for continued research on fictional political entertainment and its effects on attitudes. Various conceptual models were examined (using SEM) to understand the effects of political entertainment and consistent with the previous research, this dissertation developed a plausible and replicable model that reasonably established causal links between different constructs frequently tested in entertainment psychology research. This research followed and confirmed the results of a relatively new approach based on the dual process model of entertainment experience. In agreement with current research in this area, studies in the dissertation found that biographical political movies and primetime drama engendered meaningful entertainment experience that subsequently paved the way for a story-consistent attitudinal change. This line of research also supported the use of entertainment to involve citizens in political processes, not approved by a stream of research arguing that entertainment weakened democratic ethos. Contrariwise, studies in this dissertation confirmed that entertainment was not a negative emotion, and in a postmodern world, entertainment should be effectively used for political well-being and ensuring the existence of a healthy public sphere. === A Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Spring Semester, 2015. === March 30, 2015. === Attitudes, Enjoyment, Entertainment, Female politicians, Narrative transporation, Political self-efficacy === Includes bibliographical references. === Arthur A. Raney, Professor Directing Dissertation; Betsy J. Becker, University Representative; Laura Arpan, Committee Member; Jennifer M. Proffitt, Committee Member.