The Evolution of Media Influence in Brazil: A Longitudinal and Multi-Sited Study of Electronic and Digital Media

田纳西中部州立大学的Richard B.Pace博士和密歇根大学的Conrad P.Kottak博士将研究与电子和数字媒体(电视、广播、电影、CD/DVD、互联网、手机和数字录像机)的引入和传播相关的社会和文化变化。这项研究将在巴西进行，科塔克研究员在20世纪80年代进行了一项研究，研究了新引入的电视对文化和地理上截然不同的社区的不同影响。这一新项目将返回这些社区以及另一个社区，以评估随后的变化，包括最初进行研究时没有出现的新媒体的影响。要研究的五个社区从一个媒体曝光率很低的亚马逊土著社区到一个相对富裕、可以接触到所有当代媒体的城镇。Kottak以前的研究以及20世纪其他人类学家的研究提供的基线将使跨文化的、纵向的和比较的实证研究成为可能。除了佩斯和科塔克之外，研究团队还包括四名研究生、一名数据分析师和巴西贝伦埃米利奥·盖尔迪博物馆人类学系的小格伦·H·谢泼德博士。研究重点有三个方面：媒体生产；观众参与；观众接受信息。关于巴西媒体的生产有丰富的现存文献，该项目将综合这些文献，但不会复制它们。相反，研究的重点将放在(1)媒体是如何“消费”的(什么是可用的，技术，背景，受众目标，谁参与，它是如何被利用的)；以及(2)观众如何解读媒体并受到媒体的影响(注意，缺失，忽视，抵制)。他们还将对电视节目进行内容分析。这项研究的结果将为不同背景下与媒体使用和影响相关的社会文化、经济和政治变化提供重要和独特的数据。该项目还支持国际合作和研究生培训。它得到了美国国家科学基金会文化人类学项目、国际科学与工程办公室和激发竞争性研究实验项目(EPSCoR)的联合支持。

Dr. Richard B. Pace (Middle Tennessee State University) and Dr. Conrad P. Kottak (University of Michigan) will undertake research on social and cultural changes associated with the introduction and spread of electronic and digital media (television, radio, cinema, CD/DVD, the Internet, cell phone, and digital recorders). The research will be conducted in Brazil where researcher Kottak conducted a study in the 1980s on the differential effects of newly-introduced television on culturally and geographically distinct communities. This new project will return to those communities as well as one other to assess subsequent changes, including the influence of new media not present when the original study was undertaken. The five communites to be studied range from an indigenous Amazonian community with very little media exposure to a relatively wealthy town with access to all contemporary media. The baseline provided by Kottak's previous research as well as the 20th century research of other anthropologists will make possible a cross-cultural, longitudinal, and comparative empirical investigation. In addition to Pace and Kottak, the research team includes four graduate students, a data analyst, and Dr. Glenn H. Shepard, Jr., of the Department of Anthropology at the Museu Paraense Emí lio Geldi, Belém, Pará, Brazil.The research focus is three-fold: media production; audience engagement; and message reception by the audience. There is a rich extant literature on production of media in Brazil that this project will synthesize but not replicate. Instead the research focus will be on (1) how media are "consumed" (what is available, technology, setting, audience goals, who participates, how it is taken up); and (2) how viewers interpret and are influenced by media (heeding, missing, ignoring, resisting). They will also do content analysis of television programming. Findings from this research will provide important and unique data on sociocultural, economic, and political changes associated with media use and influence in different contexts. The project also supports international collaboration and graduate student training. It is being jointly supported by the NSF Cultural Anthropology Program, the Office of International Science and Engineering, and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).