ArticleThe Journal of communication2024
The effect of animated Sci-Fi characters' racial presentation on narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention among children.
Article in The Journal of communication, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of narratives and active video games among black and hispanic children with overweight and obesity: a randomized controlled trial.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2025Trial
- Decoding the perceived value of Wushu short videos and its influencing factors: an interpretable machine learning analysis based on TikTok videos.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- Community-Based Participatory Obesity Prevention Interventions in Rural Communities: A Scoping Review.Nutrients · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Characters play an integral role in animated narratives, but their visual racial presentation has received limited attention. A diverse group of U.S. children watched a 15-min physical activity-promoting animated Sci-Fi narrative. They were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, which varied the lead characters' racial presentation: realistic racially unambiguous (Original: White children, Black mother), realistic racially ambiguous (Ambiguous: All with brown skin without specified race/ethnicity), and fantastical racially ambiguous (Fantastical: All with brown skin with fantastical hair-and-eye color schemes). We assessed narrative engagement, wishful identification, and physical activity intention. Controlling for social desirability and multigroup ethnic identity, children who watched Fantastical characters showed significantly higher narrative engagement than those who watched Original characters, but they did not statistically differ from those who watched Ambiguous characters. Structural equation modeling indicated that narrative engagement and wishful identification fully mediated the racial representation effect (Fantastical vs. Original) on physical activity intention.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.