Two chapters I co-authored were published in a book this week. The first one (Vergeer, Coenders  & Scheepers, 2009) focuses on explaining the time people spend on watching TV. The interesting point about this study that explanations are not only sought at the individual level (especially in terms of alternative ways to spend time) but also at the level of the television system (i.e. tv program diversity, number of commercial and PSB channels, the budget). The study uses multi level analysis to test the hypotheses. Here is the abstract:

This study aims to explain the variation in time spent on watching television in 15 European Union countries, using determinants defined at the individual level, and characteristics defined at the national level, such as the number of channels and nature of the television supply. The results of the multi-level analysis show that the number of channels in countries has no effect on time spent on television. Yet, the more diverse the program supply on public broadcasting channels in different countries, the less time people spend on watching television. However, this relation decreases when more commercial channels are available to watch. This suggests that EU citizens, having commercial channels as alternatives, avoid a diverse program supply in favor of commercial program supply.

The second chapter Westerik, Hollander, Verschuren & Vergeer, 2009) in the same volume, deals with community involvement and media use.

Full references:

Last Tuesday (September 25th) I left for South Korea for my first four month stretch working at the YeungNam University. So, first a lot of time spending at airports and in airplanes. Ever wondered why there are so little clocks at airports? Most likely there is some psychology at play here. Without clocks people probably go to the gate sooner than later. When they do know what the time is, they most likely tend to linger at an additional shop to by things, in the process delaying the flight.

From Dusseldorf to Paris to Inchun Airport (Seoul)  and subsequently to Daegu (also spelled as Taegu). In the Korean Airlines plane I had my first taste of Korean food (Bibimbap) and it was good.

At Daegu International Airport I was welcomed by representatives of YeungNam University . A short taxi drive immediately showed a major difference as compared to the Netherlands. Traffic safety is in the Netherlands highly valued. And therefore recently it was proposed to not only forbid talking on the mobile phone while driving a car, but also operating other equipment such as navigation software, radio, or a DVD player. Anyhow, getting into the taxi in South Korea, you guessed right, two TV’s: a smaller on the center console of the driver and a large one attached to the roof for the back seat passengers. From what I understand a soap opera was on. Of course one might argue, so what, you don’t need to watch a soap attentively to follow the story. True and the taxi driver drove fine. Maybe it’s more intended to keep passengers docile. This reminds me of a professor in Nijmegen. He complained that students were loud during classes. So he showed a soap episode in class while teaching the course: students were quit as never before.

Although Amsterdam has a problem with aggressive taxi drivers, I don’t think it’d be a solution to let them have TV in their car. Imagine what would happen if a customer would interrupt them viewing the latest episode of the Bold and the Beautiful…

Later in the week I discovered that not only taxi drivers have TV in their vehicle, but also scooter drivers, some even two: square boxes covering the small TVs to keep the sunlight away. Photographic evidence will hopefully appear soon on this blog.