Scott Church Archives - BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications

Pop-Culture Power

admin — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 21:19:16 +0000

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Are Disney Princesses Harmful to Young Girls? New BYU Study Says No

McKell Park — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 22:50:52 +0000

Disney princesses excite and inspire young girls all over the world, captivating them with beauty, bravery and royal status. This princess frenzy — a hallmark of the childhood experience — also fuels passionate debates about the unrealistic expectations these characters set, especially concerning body image and romantic relationships. BYU communications professors Tom Robinson, Clark Callahan and Scott Church, along with graduate students Mckenzie Madsen and Lucia Pollock, recently published their research paper “Virtue, royalty, dreams and power: Exploring the appeal of Disney Princesses to preadolescent girls in the United States” which investigates the topic through the eyes of the girls themselves. “This study is unique because it’s talking about Disney princesses, but it’s not an adult talking about them,” Robinson said. “We’re showing what the young girls themselves think and discovered that they do not all think alike.” Read the full article at comms.byu.edu

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Why Do We Like ‘Stranger Things’ So Much? A BYU Professor Explains

admin — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 17:31:49 +0000

Scott Haden Church has a confession: At the start of the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” he rolled his eyes. The opening scene — a person running down a hallway of flickering lights, reaching an elevator and frantically pushing the buttons to escape a mysterious creature — wasn’t anything new. That the person ends up getting demolished by the creature anyway was even more predictable. Despite his initial hesitation, Church finished the first season of “Stranger Things” in three days. Aside from wondering what happened to Eleven and how being in the Upside Down would continue to affect Will, Church had another question on his mind: Why did he like the show so much? He wasn’t alone. In 2017, Netflix ratings confirmed that during the first three days season two of “Stranger Things” was made available on Netflix, 15.8 million people watched the first episode. As a whole the season averaged 8.8 million viewers per episode, and 361,000 people watched all nine episodes of the season within the first 24 hours of its release. Church soon after began his “Stranger Things” research — which he first presented last year at the Pop Culture Association in Indianapolis — by closely watching the show and picking apart the episodes to find how the Duffer brothers had remixed elements of ‘80s pop culture to create a new story. Read the full Deseret News article.

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Politicians and YouTube: Professor Scott Church Talks About How the Platform Still Pursues Entertainment, Even When it Gets Political

Mason Graham — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 18:36:12 +0000

Scott Church presented on media and politics to the National Communications Association. Since the beginning of the 2016 United States presidential campaign, many people have been examining how presidential candidates and, now the president himself, interact with social media. Twitter has been the focus of this conversation, but the candidates used other social media platforms in unique ways as well. BYU communications professor Scott Church realized that there was the potential for new, interesting research to be done on the candidates’ interactions with YouTube. He reached out to professors Pamela Brubaker and Jessica Zurcher and the faculty members researched and wrote a paper on the topic. “I wrote my master’s thesis on a similar topic about this ‘new invention,’ YouTube, back in 2007,” Church said. “I was looking at how presidential candidates presented themselves on the website for an audience. Back then, people thought of YouTube as being for the people, by the people, but you also have these presidential candidates hopping on board.” During the course of his past research, Church found that videos posted on candidates’ YouTube accounts generally fit into two camps: heroic narrative videos and attack videos. Building off past research, Church and his co-authors were able to recognize new trends and approaches politicians employ when using YouTube. Using these parameters, the professors built a coding sheet and began looking at the top four candidates in each party. Specifically, they watched the first three videos each candidate posted and the three most popular videos they posted. “The first three videos they post are crucial,” Church said. “That’s where they can say ‘Hey, everyone, this is the image I want to portray.’” After watching the videos and recording the data, the professors found that the most popular videos were attack videos. “Our big statistical find here was that videos with criticism of other candidates got more views than videos without criticism of other candidates,” Church said. “That’s supported by our statistical analysis. It was significant. For whatever reason, the ones that had more attacks attracted the most viewers.” These attacks varied in their approach and their attitude. Some videos featured aggressive diatribes targeting other candidates. Other videos channelled the comedic side of YouTube to attack their opponents. “Rubio uploaded a glorious rant in a presser that he did where he just attacked Trump ruthlessly,” Church said. “Cruz did a lot of parodies, like ‘It Feels Good to Be a Clinton,’ which is a parody of the movie Office Space. With satires, Kasich actually had one called ‘Make Tyranny Great Again.’ Those seem kind of unique to YouTube. Since they’re on YouTube, that seems to add a certain unique tone to the content.” The researchers found that the attack ads posted on the candidates’ official YouTube channels were generally aimed at candidates within the attackers’ party. “Almost nine out of ten attack statements came from Republicans, and half of those were just from Rubio to Trump,” Church said. Kasich also attacked Trump in a number of his official YouTube videos. In general, Church said the study found that, “YouTube seems to be biased towards entertainment. Even its official political messages tend to be highly entertaining and the ones that are considered the most entertaining are the ones where they criticize each other.” Studies like these show that as politicians and other important social and political influences continue to engage more with social media platforms, the communications field increases in social and professional value. “In the age of social media, communications is more important than ever before,” Church said. “In a world full of noise and messages everywhere, communications has become one of those scholarly areas that are the most important right now. Understanding communication is a good way to understand what everything means, not just how it’s happening.” Photo taken by Jonathan Hardy

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Comms professor to present on the art of memes for Beckham Lecture Series March 16

admin — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 19:33:54 +0000

The BYU School of Communications will host Scott Church, assistant professor in the School of Communications, in conjunction with the Raymond E. and Ida Lee Beckham Lecture in Communications Series March 16 at 11:00 a.m. in 321 of the Maeser building. Church will present his lecture, “The Art of Mass Communication: The Sublime, Ineffable, and Spiritual Elements of Memes.” Popular viral content, like memes, are taking over the Internet. The presentation will address how memes strategically use art, symbolism and spirituality to attract attention and to help the audience feel emotion. Church has taught courses in popular culture, business communication, public speaking, public discourse, music and media studies. His research primarily uses critical theory, aesthetics and media ecology as analytic lenses for social media and mediated popular texts. The lectures were established in 1995 in honor of Ray Beckham’s late wife, Ida Lee. Raymond E. Beckham was a leader in education at BYU for 42 years. He was the driving force behind the BYU Evening school program, the BYU Travel Studies program, Aspen Grove, and founded the New York Internship program for Communications majors. INFORMATION Dates: Thursday March 16 Times: 11:00 a.m. Location: 321 Karl G. Maeser Building Admission: Free, no registration required

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