This article focuses on several concepts from mass communication theory and their application to sexuality in television programs. More specifically, the literature review will focus on the following research questions: (1) What is the nature of sexual content in television programs and how often is it included in television programs? (2) How does sexuality in television programs influence the sexual behavior of adolescents who watch the programs? (3) What sexual content does Gossip Girl, a popular teen television series, specifically depict? (4) How does the portrayal of adolescent sexual behavior in television programs such as Gossip Girl relate to mass communication concepts such as social cognitive (learning) theory, priming effects, superpeer theory, parasocial relationship and the identification of desires? This topic is important because mass communication theory can provide more insight into the concept of influence of sexual television content on adolescents. In this article I will analyze the mass communication theories mentioned above as reasons why there is a relationship between television content and viewer behavior, also applying the theories to themes and representations in Gossip Girl. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In 2006, it was reported by Nielsen Media Research (Peirce, 2011, p. 1-2). Young people of this age group find themselves "situated in a crucial phase" of the process of building personal identity. At the heart of this process is the development of a healthy, values-based understanding of their sexual behaviour, whereby media products such as television act as “virtual tools of many different possible identities”, providing a key source of information both on scripts and on social norms. for sexual, romantic, and gender-related behaviors (Van Damme, 2010, p. 80). According to media theorist David Buckingham (2003), the media (particularly television) “are integrated into the structure and routines of everyday life and provide many of the “symbolic resources” we use to conduct and interpret our relationships and to define our relationships. identity” (p. 5). According to recent systematic content analyses, television programming popular among adolescent audiences often features sexual content (Ortiz & Brooks, 2014, p. 41). For this article, Cope-Farrar and Kunkel's definition of sexual content, cited by Van Damme, will be used. They define it as including depictions of speech or behavior involving sexuality in any way, as well as sexual behavior, which must at least "involve potential or probable sexual intimacy between the participants" and, depending on the context, passionate kissing and physical flirting . are included (Van Damme, 2010, p. 80). Sexual content on television is becoming increasingly explicit. Adolescents, like the characters in Gossip Girl, are portrayed as engaging in sexual contact at an early age (Ortiz & Brooks, 2014, p. 41). Furthermore, at the same time, representations of risk and responsibility related to sex are extremely rare and, if they are mentioned at all, they are described as “transient and emotionally insignificant” (Ortiz & Brooks, 2014, p. 41). In a study of five popular teen television series in the United States (Glee, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill and 90210) conducted by Rebecca Ortiz and Mary Brooks, researchers found that the charactersadolescents are central to television shows expressed themselves sexually an average of ten times in the seven episodes of each program studied (Ortiz & Brooks, 2014, p. 49). In their study, an extremely notable finding was that one in eight programs broadcast in prime time (12%) depicted sexual relations between characters, a frequency that shows how difficult it would be to avoid watching these depictions regularly (p. 34). Again, not only is the content viewed frequently, but it is also exaggerated. A term used to describe sensationalized portrayals of sexuality in the media, “hypersexuality,” encompasses a range of extreme portrayals, covering everything from the way a character acts, dresses, or speaks, to the sexual act itself (Bindig, 2015 , p. 87). Clearly television is saturated with sexual content. It is particularly interesting to examine the effect that sexual content in television programming has on teenage viewers; according to Nielsen cited in Ortiz and Brooks (2014), in 2009, when Gossip Girl was in the midst of its run, television was the medium most interested in by teenagers (p. 42). According to Strasburger, Jordan, and Donnerstein (2010), shows directed at adolescents contain more sexual content than those directed at adults, however, once again, depictions of responsibility and the need for contraception are rare (p. 760). For example, in Ortiz and Brooks' (2014) study, none of the 35 episodes (26 hours of content) coded included any display or concern of sexually transmitted infections (p. 42). At the same time, a greater risk of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases accompanied a more rapid progression of sexual activity and “early coital behavior” among adolescent viewers in direct association with heavy exposure to sexual content in media. disseminated, particularly on television (Strasbourg, Jordan, & Donnerstein, 2010, p. In large part this is congruent with the fact that adolescents use television as a major source of sexual health information, with a substantial influence on their understanding of sexual relationships and the social “norms” surrounding sexuality (Ortiz & Brooks, 2014, p. 42), research verifies this influence. on young people's attitudes and beliefs about sexuality in one such study, teenagers who had just watched television programs filled with sexual content “rated descriptions of casual sexual encounters less negatively than teenagers who had not seen such. programs" (p. 8). It is not difficult to imagine that adolescents easily pick up scripts from television programs that ascertain the appropriate time to have sex with someone as well as the outcomes of sexual acts (p. 8-9). In the study by Farrar, Kunkel, Biely, Eyal, Fandrich, and Donnerstein, 797 half-hour programs were analyzed from 1997 to 2002. In the 2001-2002 sample (258 programs), sexual patience did not occur in any of the scenes . Only 2% of all shows studied in the research described both sexual precautions and negative risks/consequences, typically involving condom use (p. 26-27). Overall, only 9% of shows with sexual content in the 2001–2002 sample had at least one scene depicting sexual risk or responsibility at some point in their run (p. 29). Therefore, while adolescents easily learn sexual scripts through television programs, a large minority describe any type of responsibility or consequence, indicating a greatdeficit of positive sexual education for adolescents. One such program is full of sexual content and severely lacking in its portrayal of risks and consequences. consequences of sex is the CW's Gossip Girl. As Peirce (2011) cites Fitzgerald, in 2007 the television program had an average rating of 2.5 for adolescents aged 12 to 17, marking it as the highest-rated program for the age group (p. 2). The show's main characters include Blair Waldorf, Serena van der Woodsen, Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass, Dan Humphrey, and Jenny Humphrey, all New York teenagers who attend a private high school. Much of Gossip Girl's plot centers on the characters' sexual relationships with each other. In each episode there are elements of hypersexualization and frequent objectification of women. A notable occasion occurs in the seventh episode of the first season when Blair performs a striptease on stage at a burlesque club owned by Chuck. At one point, Blair takes off her headband and throws it at Chuck, “as if it were an invitation to the male gaze” (Bindig, 2015, p. 90). While this scene can initially be seen as empowering, when Blair takes the stage for herself, the objectification in the scene is evident. Once Blair throws him her headband and Chuck stands up to take a closer look at her, the camera zooms in on her body and focuses on certain body parts, meant to be from Chuck's point of view. Her "reward" for this objectification is sexual intimacy with Chuck, which occurs shortly thereafter in the back of a limousine; the direct connection that proves that sex is its own reward occurs when Chuck whispers “you were amazing up there” right before they start kissing (Bindig, 2015, p. 91). In the first episode of Gossip Girl, in fact, Blair is established as an object that a man can own, which is evident when Chuck tells Nate to "seal the deal with Blair because you have the right to touch that ass too" ( Ziegesar and Buckly, 2007). In addition to rampant objectification over the course of its six seasons, Gossip Girl is also hypersexualized in its reinforcement of "porn culture." Bindig (2015) discusses this, explaining how Gossip Girl regularly incorporates themes of pornography, depicting “strip clubs, prostitutes, threesomes, sexual fetishes, and sex parties” (p. 92). The characters on Gossip Girl constantly engage in these, which portrays pornographic culture as the norm for viewers. In season two, Nate continually sleeps with a married woman named Catherine over the summer, who is portrayed in a very hypersexualized manner. When their relationship is first introduced to viewers, they are shown engaging intimately before falling onto Catherine's bed. After having sexual intercourse, Catherine hears the sound of a car and it is revealed to viewers that her husband came home early, meaning Nate had to (dramatically) jump out the window to get away unnoticed. Their relationship eventually continues into the fall, and when Nate is in financial trouble, Catherine offers him money in exchange for continuing their relationship. Bindig cites the commodification of sex, as in Nate's case, and the eroticization of inequality, as issues inherent with pornography; the goal is not to demonize sexual expression (p. 92). Also noteworthy is that Nate's situation is rare, as it is the only major example of the commodification of sex where the woman pays the man. In every other episode of the many in which it is featured, men pay women. This happens in a fascinating way; women paid for sex typically belong to the classsuperior, a representation that “diminishes the real world class differential between financially unstable women forced to sell their bodies and financially secure men who can afford to pay for sex” (Bindig, 2015, p. 93). In Gossip Girl, large sex parties, or gentlemen's clubs, are held in decorated mansions with women employed to be sexually available to men. The women are shown wandering around serving them food or drinks while wearing elaborate and clearly expensive lingerie, which further glamorizes the sex work. Another example of the pornography of the culture in Gossip Girl is the threesomes that occur, all between one man and two women. One example happens between Dan, his girlfriend Olivia, and Olivia's roommate/Dan's best friend Vanessa in season three. As Bindig (2015) describes, the fact that this and all other references to threesomes occur between a man and two women exploits the situation to exploit female sexuality. Instead of two men focusing their sexual attention on women, which would significantly alter the roles, two women serve the man simultaneously, while he gets to use the male gaze for his “voyeuristic pleasure” (p. 94). Perhaps the most basic, yet most pervasive idea represented in the sexual content of Gossip Girl is the casual nature of almost every sexual depiction. Sexual activity with strangers, friends, or acquaintances is considered recreational and describes sex as “a fun, carefree activity of little consequence,” done without the involvement of feelings (Peirce, 2011, p. 3). Peirce (2011) also notes that plot summaries of past episodes that play before the start of a new episode include frequent scenes of sexual activity. These “hooks” are used to persuade viewers to continue watching, and in an effort to keep ratings high among teenage audiences, sexual content in popular shows like Gossip Girl will remain (p. 4-5). This gives teenage viewers of Gossip Girl the idea that it is normal and expected in society to be very sexually active at their age, especially due to the casual sex often depicted (Van Damme, 2010, p. 88). To further evaluate the effects of Gossip Girl on adolescents, several mass communication theories will be used as ways to connect the content to the audience. It has already been established that both the amount and nature of sexual content depicted in television programs influence the behavior of adolescent viewers, but an analysis of these communication theories will provide a better understanding of why the actual relationship exists between the content and the viewer and how it applies to Gossip Girl. Social cognitive theory is defined by Baran and Davis (2015) as a “theory of learning through interaction with the environment that involves the mutual causation of behavior, personal factors, and environmental events” (p. 166). Baran and Davis also explain that it developed from a psychological focus on the impact of mass media on people, or more specifically on children. Communication theorists then began to study the increase in real-world violence, which can be compared to the sexual behavior discussed in this article, and the possible influence of television on the increase, according to Baran and Davis (p. 166). When certain behaviors are depicted on television, social cognitive theory suggests that the behavior will then be followed by viewers, unless there are negative sanctions on the behavior depicted along with it. Contemporary social cognitive theory is now known as theoryof social learning, which explains that media characters are able to influence behavior “simply by being represented on screen. The audience member does not need to be reinforced or rewarded for displaying the modeled behavior” (Baran & Davis, 2015, p. 171). So, even without incentives to engage in the sexual behavior depicted on television, adolescents can still be influenced by it simply through constant exposure to it. Applying this theory to Gossip Girl, a teenage viewer is exposed to the characters engaging in ongoing casual sexual relationships with no consequences. Along with casual sex, objectification, hypersexuality and a pornographic view of sexuality will be considered a social norm for teenage viewers, influencing their future behavior. Social learning theory, as applied to sexuality on television, is supported by a study conducted by Collins, Elliott, Berry, Kanouse, Kunkel, Hunter, and Miu (2004) who found that substantial exposure to television sexual portrayals "was strongly related to the habits of adolescents". their initiation of intercourse or their progression to more advanced sexual activities (such as “making out” or oral sex) beyond intercourse in the following year,” and that adolescents exposed to the most sexual content were twice as likely to have sexual intercourse within a year of the study than those exposed to the minimum amount (p. 2). As can be inferred, constant exposure to sexual depictions in Gossip Girl can easily influence the sexual behavior of teenage viewers, a relationship that can be. viewed through social learning theory. Another communication theory that can be applied to the sexual content of Gossip Girl and its effect on adolescent viewers is the idea of ​​priming effects of priming are “the idea that presentations in media increase the likelihood that people will develop similar thoughts about those things in the real world” (p. 175). This notion is similar to that of social learning theory, however it takes into account of the influence of television content on viewers' perspectives on both their own sexuality and the sexuality of society at large. Perspectives, in turn, can influence behavior. In this line of thought, the notion of priming effects essentially provides further detail with respect to social learning behavior. Rather than simply theorizing that a high level of exposure will cause a behavior, connect the exposure with the idea of ​​developing similar thoughts about what is being represented in the real world, which has the ability to influence behavior. If a teenage viewer, for example, watches the previously mentioned episode of Gossip Girl in which Blair performs a striptease for Chuck, she might think that it is normal, expected, and encouraged in the real world to invite the male gaze in such an objectifying way, and then having to have sex. If a male teenage viewer were to watch this episode, he might think that it is normal, expected, and encouraged in the real world to use his male gaze in an objectifying way and then expect sex. Subsequently, both viewers may end up acting on these thoughts, and as found in the studies mentioned earlier, they typically do. According to Strasburger, Jordan, and Donnerstein (2010), “the media presents youth with common “scripts” about how to behave in unfamiliar situations such as romantic relationships” (p. 758). As explained earlier, adolescents find themselves in a identity construction phase of their life,.