The Circle of Academic Blog Life

So I'm waiting for a student to show for a meeting and I'm skimming the new issue of the Journal of Media and Religion. There's an article about religious responses to The Big Bang Theory, so I start reading the first graph and this appears in the third sentence:

Based on statistical analysis, Hollander (2013) suggests a more moderate perspective. He indicates that many people with differing perspectives about belief in the Bible still watch the highly popular television show, now in its eight season on the CBS network. He compares perspectives about this show with those who claim religious affinity and those who do not see religion as important. Biblical literalists, in Hollander's study, report that 28% of them watch the show; for those who see religion (and the Bible) as unimportant, the percentage of viewership was 31%. There is a slight difference in this report, but it is not significantly definitive (Hollander, 2013).

"Whoa," I think. "Another Hollander? Because I've never done research specifically about the TV show. Then I check out the references:

Hollander, B. (2013, October). What people know: B ig Bang Theory. Retrieved from http://whatpeopleknow.blogspot.com/2013/10/big-bang-theory.html.

In other words, they cite my blog. This very blog. Cool. And a first. Here's the link to that post and here's a related post even more to point, if you've nothing better to do. What it boils down to is I have tons of data and came across some questions that ask how often respondents watch various television programs. I saw Big Bang and then quickly analyzed it in terms of other questions available in the data. I even mulled over a bigger piece, but got busy elsewhere.

And thus we have the circle of life, the circle of academic/blogging life. I blogged about it, my blog post gets cited, and thus I must blog about the citation.

Oh, an abstract of the Media and Religion article is here, but I can neither point to nor see myself online the full article -- and I'm on the journal's friggin editorial board.

Big Bang Theory and Conservative Christians

Sheldon: You know, in difficult times like this, I often turn to a force stronger than myself.
Amy: Religion?
Sheldon: Star Trek.

Maybe you heard the news this week. Sheldon Cooper – yet again – did not win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Cooper is, of course, fictional. But if you turn on a TV you’ll see him a lot more often than those two European guys who won.

It’s tough to avoid The Big Bang Theory. 

The program centers around two California roommates, both physics professors, as well as two equally geeky friends and a neighbor, Penny who, as Wikipedia puts it, “is contrasted for comic effect” from the nerdy guys thanks to “social skills and common sense.”  Several other semi-regulars come and go (the mothers are my favorite).

The show, like NCIS, is almost impossible to avoid thanks to syndication.
Science and nerdom lie at the heart of the program. The writers go out of their way to not only get the science right, but to make it funny. The best known character, Cooper, lacks any social skills and was raised in a religiously conservative Texas family. As such, the humor often pokes fun at religion. As in:

(Talking about about his religiously conservative mother's upcoming Christian cruise)
Sheldon: Frankly, Mom, I'm encouraged to see how advanced your group has become -- willing to sail into the ocean without fear of falling off the edge.

Given the very title of the program identifies a scientific theory many conservative Christians find unnerving, not unlike evolution or, say, electricity, you’d expect the program to be unpopular with them. Look hard enough online and you’ll find plenty of religious-based criticism, but when it comes to watching, conservative Christians are certainly less likely to do so than others.

And yet they don’t shun it entirely.

Take, for example, people who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That’s as conservative and fundamentalist as it gets and among these folks, according to my analysis of recent survey data, 18 percent say they watch. That’s nearly 1-in-5 from the word-of-God set.  As you’d expect, among those who say the Bible is from God but not to be understood literally the viewership is even higher (28 percent). Among the godless heathens who think the Bible is merely a book, it’s 32 percent.
How’s this for a promo – 1-in-3 of the everlasting damned watch our TV show! You should too!

For you stats nerds out there, the relationship is statistically significant at X2 = 77.0, p<.001. Don’t worry if you don’t follow the statistical mumbo-jumbo, Sheldon Cooper would, though he’d sneer at the social science.

The Big Bang Theory appeals not just to science geeks. We know this because (1) it is very popular and (2) this is America, and just look at our lousy test scores.

You’d hope some of the program’s love of science would rub off on its audience. For example, in the same data there’s a question asking people whether the U.S. government (you know, that shutdown thing) should rely on scientific methods in crafting policy. Most reasonable people who are not named U.S. Rep. Paul Broun would say yes, of course it should. Still, 4 percent of all people say “never” (I’d love to meet those folks) and another 34 percent say only “some of the time.” If The Big Bang Theory is so popular and the power of TV so pervasive, shouldn’t watching it nudge people toward the evils of science?

Turns out, not so much.

My cranking of the data found no real difference in people who watch it and people who don’t, at least when it comes to supporting a scientific approach to policy. Plus, among our friends who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, watching the show makes no difference in their beliefs about science and policy.

You can take that last finding as good news or bad news. It’s bad in that you’d hope anything might help them see the role science plays in government policy, but it’s good in that people believe what they choose to believe and a single entertaining TV program isn’t going to really change their minds.

So whatever your beliefs just sit back, watch it, and laugh. It’s okay. And maybe next year, Cooper will win that Nobel.

Big Bang Theory

You can hardly turn on the TV and not find The Big Bang Theory playing somewhere. It's quite popular. And as everyone knows, the program often pokes fun at religion and so I've always wondered, what do religious people think of the show?

Yes, I have data for that. (I have data for everything)

I may write a longer piece, either academic or for real people, but lemme share a couple of quick hits when it comes to who watches the program.

Let's go with a favorite, people's belief in the Bible:

• Among those who believe the Bible is the actual, literal word of God, only 19 percent report watching the show.

• Among those who believe the Bible is the word of God but not to be taken literally, 28 percent say they watch the program.

• Among those who believe the Bible is a book written by men and not the word of God, 31 percent say they watch the program.

The results above are fairly obvious. Literalists/fundamentalists are, not surprisingly, less likely to watch the program. Still, nearly 1-in-5 do watch it, and that's very interesting. Then again, it's a damn funny show. Oh, and for the statistically minded of you out there, the relationship above is X2 = 62.1, df=2, p<.001. In simple terms, the relationships are statistically significant.

Okay, one more. How important is religion in your daily life? This is a yes-no question and as you'd expect, those who see religion as important were somewhat less likely to watch the program, but not by a lot. Yes, it's statistically significant (X2 = 31.9, p<.001) but not strongly so. Among those who see religion as important, 23 percent watch the program. Among those who do not see religion as important, 31 percent watch it. So the difference, while statistically significant, isn't all that big.

I've got other data and maybe when I finish on some other projects I'll crank out a good pop culture academic piece or perhaps a data-based essay.