Petro, G. D. (2016). The Impact of Television Programmes on Teenage Career Aspirations: The ‘MasterChef Effect’. IZA DP, (9804), 1-27.

From Digital Culture & Society

Jump to: navigation, search

Megan Johnson

Petro, G. D. (2016). The Impact of Television Programmes on Teenage Career Aspirations: The ‘MasterChef Effect’. IZA DP, (9804), 1-27.

This article garners into a deeper discussion and thought process on why adolescents choose the career path that they do. Heavy television consumption may have a large impact on why they are choosing to take a certain career path, one that they may have not even considered before. This poses an issue into a larger social perspective as most careers are portrayed as substantially more excitement filled and glamorous than they actually are. This may then lead these individuals to be unhappy and/or unsatisfied with their choice of career path. A larger issue that may be present in this is that if they are in a field such as the article looks into – food, they may become uncaring at work, and violate a certain health code, resulting in someone becoming ill. In other words, going into a profession simply because of how it is portrayed on a television program, may come with serious implications.

What this article sets out to do, is to find out whether or not students are choosing to attend hospitality and catering schools based on heavy consumption of foodnetwork television programs, specifically, MasterChef. Results from this study conclude that the majority of this specific school’s final year and lower secondary students have either watched this program, or are currently watching it. It also finds that popular television programs such as this one may play an important role in the choosing of a career path in young adolescents. Two major theories are examined while conducting this study, Cultivation Theory and Wishful Identification. As “Young viewers may identify with television characters whom they perceive to be attractive, successful, and admired by others. They may vicariously participate in the characters’ experiences during a programme” (Cohen, 2001). Extremely well known hard-core chef Gordon Ramsey has been apart of this program for quite some time. Young individuals entering this profession may be under the impression that they will be as success and looked up to as this this Chef. They may also mirror his actions when entering this field, which could cause an issue within their schooling/workplace as his lines are extremely fabricated and dramatized for the television programs he appears on.

This article has more strengths than it does weaknesses. Using the two theories that they used, I believe was a fabulous approach. Cultivation theory is an extremely well known and used theory when it comes to studying the effects of television. This gives the article a sense of credibility. The article gives many different examples from other university students in different fields, such as forensic sciences, which their enrollment has sky rocketed since CSI has aired, a university in the UK titling this the ‘CSI effect’. With many other examples, including the legal field & medical profession mentioned, this article’s literature review was extremely well done and gave readers a great insight to this growing phenomenon. Another aspect that I believe was extremely well done in this article was their methodology. The authors completed a longitudinal study, something that I found to be quite rare when studying the effects of television consumption and choosing a profession. Over the span of 5 years, Italian students were shown 4 seasons of MasterChef. After viewing this program over the span of these 4 seasons, students were asked what post-secondary institution they were interested in attending. The article does reference their small sample size as one of their limitations. A larger sample size definitely would have been beneficial to their study, although they claim that their study was the first systematic quantitative evidence to fill the gap on television exposure and the effects it carries onto teenage career aspirations. Another aspect that I believe can be seen as more of a strength than a weakness is the plethora amount of evidence it brings in regarding this phenomenon. Though some examples are quite outdated – dating back to the 1950s, they still bring depth to the authors’ argument. All in all, I believe this article did an extremely well done job on trying to decipher if consumption of a certain television program has an impact on their career choice. The innovative longitudinal approach that was taken to conduct this research made articulating this article very enjoyable. I believe that this specific research is worth noting in this popular study.

Personal tools
Bookmark and Share