Media Effects

Jennings Bryant is Professor and holder of the Ronald R. Reagan endowed Chair of Broadcasting in the College of Communication at the University of Alabama. He is the founding co-editor of the Media Psychology journal, and serves on the editorial boards of 11 scholarly journals. His primary research interests are in entertainment theory, media effects, advanced communications technologies and systems, and media education.

Mary Beth Oliver is Professor and Co-Director of the Media Effects Research laboratory in the College of Communications at Penn State University. She specializes in media and psychology, with a focus on both the psychological effects of media and viewers' attraction to or enjoyment of media content. Her research includes studies pertaining to media violence, reality-based television programs, gender differences in enjoyment of media entertainment, viewers' responses to melodramas and sad films, and the effect of media portrayals of racial groups on viewers' racial attitudes.