Meritocracy in Media: The Influence of Representations of Meritocracy in Television and Gaming.

Research has shown that, globally, two thirds of all individuals hold meritocratic beliefs about the society in which they live (Mijs, 2019). Meritocratic beliefs can be defined as the conviction that society is structured fairly, with everyone having equal opportunities to become successful.  As such, success is considered a personal responsibility. A large body of literature is dedicated to understanding how meritocratic beliefs are formed. Key theories in this literature are System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) and Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1979) as they provide explanatory mechanisms to understand the dominance of meritocratic beliefs in the current society. One crucial socialization agent which is largely missing in this research area is (gaming) media. This lacuna has been criticized in one of the few studies of which the findings suggested that televised media played a role in sustaining meritocratic beliefs (Stavrositu, 2014).

The current project aims to address this lacuna and to rigorously analyze the role of televised and gaming media in generating and sustaining meritocratic beliefs. A first part of this project will document the prevalence of meritocratic imagery in popular television shows, movies and videogames. A second part of this study consists of a longitudinal and cross-cultural study in which attention is given to the mechanisms explaining the relationships between (gaming) media use and meritocratic beliefs. The study is organized among adolescents as the developmental period of adolescence is crucial in terms of the development of societal beliefs