Social media use can have major impacts on one's construction of identity, sexuality, and gender. However, some social media sites exhibit problematic and prejudiced themes through their photo and video posts. This paper examines two Instagram sites specifically targeting traditionally college-aged individuals. These sites have tens of thousands of followers, post frequently, and solely focus on highlighting the college experience. Through a textual analysis of these two sites, problematic themes emerged, including objectification of female college students, submissiveness of female college students, and emphasis on a young white college experience. These themes are detailed and explored, followed by a discussion on their potential impacts on broader societal structures and ideas for education on gendered prejudices in the media.

Abstract. Media violence is often accompanied by moral disengagement cues that allow viewers to minimize the moral concerns that violence in real life typically evokes. What happens, however, when preceding media activate viewers’ moral emotions? Can the affective states associated with elevation decrease subsequent enjoyment of media violence? The current study examined these questions with a one-factor, between-subjects experiment that tested how prior exposure to eudaimonic media affects viewers’ violence enjoyment and prosocial attitudes. Feelings of meaningful affect elicited by eudaimonic media decreased viewers’ enjoyment of violent media and increased prosocial attitudes. Evidence for a boomerang effect through mixed affect and transportation was also found. The implications of these findings for media violence interventions and theory on enjoyment are discussed.

No abstract