On YouTube anti-smoking PSAs are widely viewed and uploaded; they also receive extensive commentary by viewers. This study examined whether such evaluative comments with or without uncivil expressions influence evaluations by subsequent viewers. Results showed PSAs with positive (i.e. anti-smoking) comments were perceived by smokers as more effective than PSAs with negative (pro smoking) comments. Smokers in the no comment condition gave the highest perceived effectiveness score to PSAs. Smokers’ readiness to quit smoking moderated the effect of comments on PSA evaluation. Smokers reading negative uncivil comments reported more negative attitude toward quitting and a lower level of perceived risk of smoking than those reading negative civil comments but positive civil and positive uncivil comments didn't elicit different responses.

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A central component of media literacy should be an understanding of the representational conventions through which the users of media create and share meanings. This paper analyzes the representational conventions of visual communications. It distinguishes between semantic and syntactic conventions and focuses on those characteristics that most sharply differentiate visual language from other modes of communication. It examines the impact of visual literacy on viewers' cognitive growth and on their development as informed consumers of visual media.

This is a theoretical examination of certain ways in which a child's development may be affected by parentchild interactions in which the content of television programming appears as an explicit referent, i.e., as the topic of a verbal exchange, as the premise for a game, and so forth. The discussion deals with four areas of development, viz.: (1) the child's interpretational skills with regard to the television medium; (2) the child's repertory of cognitive categories regarding the real world; (3) the child's behavioral repertory, including both verbal and nonverbal items; and (4) the child's social relation¬ships. The paper concludes with a discussion of certain methodological issues involved in the empirical examination of these matters.