This Powerpoint was presented in Fall 2016 to summarize results found during the implementation of a self-studied content analysis for my Theories of Mass Communication course.

1. ARE YOU MAD?: A CONTENT ANALYSIS
ON FAN REACTIONS TO THE CHANGE OF
AN ACTOR/ACTRESS IN A MAIN ROLE
Carlton K. Taylor, Jr.
COMM 4333
Georgia Southern University

2. WHAT AM I RESEARCHING AND WHY?
• I was binge watching The Fosters.
• The Fosters is a show on FreeForm, featuring a lesbian couple and their family
of biological, adopted, and fostered kids.
• In the middle of season 3, an “Aunt Viv” happened. I was upset.
• Noah Centineo replaced Jake T. Austin in the role of Jesus Adams-Foster.
• The “switch” happened after the character of Jesus returned back home from
camp.
• “Jesus! You’ve gotten taller.”
• I was curious to find out if others felt the way I did toward the “random”
actor change.

3. INTRODUCTION
• Individuals saturate themselves in the storyline of their favorite television
shows.
• The Transportation Theory
• This ability to “transport” yourself into a show’s narrative.
• It has become popular to interact with others on multiple media platforms,
the two most popular being Twitter and Facebook (Cameron & Geidner,
2014).
• When individuals die or a plot changes, fans respond – whether it be positive
or negative.
• In this study, I have investigated how an individual’s reaction to an
actor/actress change within a television series they regularly enjoy can
correlate to the way they have transported themselves in the story.

4. LITERATURE
• The Transportation Theory and Why My Topic is Important to Research
• “Transportation into a narrative world” is a state of immersion into a story (Green &
Brock, 2000).
• “Although transportation is a form of intense engagement, transportation refers to
immersion in the narrative world rather than drawing links between the narrative world
and the real world” (Green et. al., 2008).
• The media has a way of drawing us into their stories and we lose our personal perception
of reality.
• “Transported readers are completely focused on the story world; they may lose track of
time, fail to notice events going on around them, and experience vivid mental images
of settings and characters” (Green et al., 2008).
• This explains why viewer’s pick up on changes in shows.
• “Transportation entails imagery, emotional response, and attentional focus” (Green et al.,
2008).
• Research on virtual reality has focused on presence, or the experience of “being there”
in a virtual world (Biocca, 2000; Klimmt & Vorderer, 2003; Wirth et al., 2007).

5. LITERATURE (CONT.)
• Three components of transportation theory:
• Cognitive engagement
• Emotional engagement
• Mental imagery (Green & Brock, 2000)
• They all come together to create transportation effects.
• Some may even fall into a theory of identification.
• “Audience members often response to characters by understanding the narrative through the character’s
perspective” (Cohen, 2001).
• They develop a personal relationship with this character and not just the storyline, so when something
happens with that character, it’s just as huge.
• To tie it all back to Twitter, individuals use the media to gratify certain needs.
• “Individuals use the internet to pass time, for information seeking, for convenience and entertainment,
and for interpersonal utility” (Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000).
• Relates to why individuals result to Twitter to express their feelings about the actor switch. They may even
seek pleasure in receiving a certain number of “loves” and “retweets” off of others who share the same
opinions.

6. RESEARCH QUESTIONS & HYPOTHESES
• RQ1: Did the introduction of a new actor in the role of Jesus Adams-Foster
change viewers’ perspective of The Fosters?
• H1: When Jake T. Austin leaves the cast of The Fosters, viewers are going to become
upset and voice their questions and/concerns via Twitter.
• H2: With Jake T. Austin being a familiar face and his role, Jesus, being a prominent
character on the show, changing the actor in his role would not only be obvious, but
could temporarily or, more severely, permanently alter the viewer’s connection to
the show.
• RQ2: Do their reactions fall within the theories of transportation and uses of
gratifications?
• H1: The transportation theory is the idea that people transport themselves into their
media’s stories. The theory taps on the show’s influence on the viewer’s perception
of reality, which can be affected with the introduction of a new actor in a pre-
existing role. This is expressed through tone.
• H2: Uses and gratifications is the idea that individuals use the media to gratify
certain needs that they may or may not be conscious of. Viewers will use Twitter to
justify the way they feel about the actor switch whether it be good, bad, or neutral.

7. METHOD
• Unit of analysis
• Tweets
• Typed in keywords such as #TheFosters and Jesus. Selected for the tweets to be retrieved from
August 16, 2015 (the week of the first episode the replacement Jesus was featured in) to August 29,
2016 (the season 4 finale episode).
• Used random selection and analyzed every fifth tweet.
• Coded for:
• Date
• Jesus from The Fosters or Jesus Christ
• Transportation theory (tone of tweet)
• Punctuation – “???,” “!!!!,” “???!!!.” “…..”
• All caps
• Emoticons
• Profanity
• The presence of memes
• Accepting, negative, and indifferent tweets

8. RESULTS
Tone of Tweets
Accepting Negative Indifference
Yes 4% 85% 13%
No 96% 15% 87%
• There were more negative tweets (85%) than anything else.
• People were overwhelming confident in the way they felt about the actor switch and were not
satisfied at first.
• Those who were indifferent (13%) didn’t express concern or approval. They just went with the
flow of the show.

9. CONCLUSION
• For the most part, I found that all of my hypotheses (for the most part) were correct.
• RQ1 H1 & H2
• Most viewers reacted negatively to the character change. Most tweets were surface and
stated that they missed the real Jesus. Others were more deeply rooted and included
profanity or intended profanity, such as WTF or WTH. Viewers began to question the show
and were annoyed with the change.
• RQ2 H1 & H2
• Individuals were definitely transported into the storyline of The Fosters. Some were
transported to the point of identification with Jake T. Austin as Jesus. They didn’t want to
accept the change. Few didn’t mind the change because the storyline stayed the same.
Individuals did use Twitter to express whether or not the new actor satisfied their needs
from the show (mood management). There was a lot of commonality within the two
theories. There were times when different arguments utilized both theories – which was
interesting.

10. LIMITATIONS? WOULD I DO SOMETHING
DIFFERENT?
• Limitations
• The idea of conformity
• According to Song, Ma, Wi, and Li (2012), people tend to fall within the category of the majority. They
don’t want to seem different. They want people to love and retweet their tweets.
• Tweets may not be the best way to gather information.
• Next time..
• I would narrow down my topic. Make it simple.
• There is a lot I could cover with this. Narrowing down the information would make finalizing research
and articles much easier.
• Due to my topic, cross-blending of theories occurred.
• My time span wouldn’t be so large, because people ended up dealing with the change.