Crime against the body : an embodied cognition study of how platform affects responses to crime news
Abstract
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study aimed at exploring how geographical proximity of the news story (local or international news stories) and bodily proximity of the news platforms (reading news on a smartphone or desktop computer) affect people's cognitive and emotional processing of crime news. It adopted a 2 (close and distant geographical proximity) X 2(close and distant bodily proximity) X 3(stories) between-subject psychophysiological experiment. Heart rate, skin conductance, corrugator supercilli and self-report data of 54 female participants were collected to measure their psychological response to crime news. The result suggested smartphone, as a platform that offers users more interaction (touching and scrolling down the screens) and closer spaces, could be integrated into human's whole embodied cognitive system and influence how people engage in mediated content. In this experiment, participants are more engaged in reading international crime news on a smartphone than on a desktop computer. The research also confirms "Hardwired for News" theory in the way that higher threat proximity in news content elicits higher level of self-report arousal and absorption.
Degree
M.A.
Thesis Department
Rights
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