Media influence
Encyclopedia
Media influence or media effects are used in media studies
, psychology
, communication theory
and sociology
to refer to the theories about the ways in which mass media
affect how their audience
s think and behave.
Connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society, critiques in the early-to-mid 20th century suggested that media weaken or delimit the individual's capacity to act autonomously — sometimes being ascribed an influence reminiscent of the telescreen
s of the dystopian novel 1984. "Mid 20th-century empirical
studies, however, Current theories cultural and personal beliefs, as per the propaganda model
. Mass media
content created for newsworthy events and those stories that are not told all have Television broadcasting has a large amount of control over the content society watches and the times in which it is viewed. This is a distinguishing feature of traditional media which New media
have challenged by altering the participation habits of the public. The internet creates a space for more diverse political opinions, social and cultural viewpoints and a heightened level of consumer participation. There have been suggestions that allowing consumers to produce information through the internet will lead to an overload of information.
Media influenced violence =
Many studies illustrate that consuming mass media does lead to violence. However, this is a contentious issue.
Gauntlet goes on to criticize studies that focus on children by stating that they do not utilize adults as a control group, and that the studies are conducted primarily to further a "barely-concealed conservative ideology." He counters the premise of these studies with the concept that not all depictions of violence are even bad to witness. USC
Professor Henry Jenkins
, for instance, suggested in his speech to congress that The Basketball Diaries
utilizes violence in a form of social commentary that provides clear social benefit.
Gauntlet explains further that objects defined as "violent" or "anti-social" may not be judged as such in the minds of the viewer and tend to be viewed in artificial circumstances. These objects are furthermore based on previous studies with flawed methodology, and are not grounded in theory. Additionally, he claims that the effects model attempts to understand the meanings of media.
Supporters of effects theory contend that commercials, advertising
and voter campaigns prove that media influence behavior. In the 20th century, aggressive media attention and negative coverage of trials involving celebrities like Roscoe Fatty Ar buckle or Michael Jackson
have influenced the general public's opinion, before the trials effectively started.
However, these critics do point out that while the media could have an effect on people's behavior this isn't necessarily always the case.
Critics of the media effects theory point out that many copycat
murders, suicides and other violent acts nearly always happen in abnormal upbringings. Violent, emotionally neglectful or aggressive environments influence behavior more than watching certain programs, films or listening to certain music. Most people who carry out these acts are also mentally unstable to begin with.
Also there are other thinkers who criticize effects based research, such as Terry Flew and Sal Humphrey, Barker and Freedman.,,
-Martin Barker (2001) criticised Elizabeth Newson who alleged link between media violence and real life violence in her report in 1994, Brooke (2003–07),for example talks about this in details. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/591456/index.html, and the report gained media attention when it claimed the horror film Child's Play 3 had influenced two 10-year-old boys' behavior and led to the Murder of James Bulger
in Feb. 1993. After examining and assessing Newson’s report, it was apparent that there was no clear link between the film and the crime. Critics pointed out that Newson's case studies were reliant on press accounts and opinions rather than independent research. However, Newson's report was influential, and has led to more censorship of videos and more concern from the British Board of Film classification on the psychological effects of media violence. The attention and question become whether they were watching violent media.
But Barker (2001) doesn’t agree with Elizabeth Newson. He reject her claim about the connection between media violence and real life violence, in his argument he justifies his position, he indicates that there was not a scrap of evidence that the boys had seen the movie and Child's Play 3 is a moral film. He also criticized anti media campaigns and described them as ignorant and disguised political campaigns. He states that these claims are represented by media and most of people have no chance to check the credibility of them, he also points out that these films including Child's Play 3 are often attacked because they deal with political issues. Moreover, he lists real cases, for example “a man takes a gun and shoots his entire family after watching the news, arrested and tried, he explains his actions on the basis that the world news was so bad there seemed no point in anyone going on living”. Barker suggests that this case for example is no different that other putative cases of media a causing violence, Barker said that we should not always blindly blame the media because people are not copycats, instead we should be aware of someone's mental state and take other factors into account before making such claims. For example, in his case he states that the man's reaction was abnormal. Therefore, his behavior could not be explained by suggesting “the effects of the news”. There are other social and cultural factors in criminal acts in which the media are not the basic influence. Barker also suggests 'that we must look beyond a specific film to think about the specific context in which it has been consumed, and the wider social background of the people'.,according to Barker there is no such thing called violence in the media that either could or could not cause violence, we should rather pay attention to how social factors and background make some people consume media in specific way., for instance, even the news also show lots of violence, so people should rather pay attention to how social factors and background make some people consume media in particular way. In addition Barker (2001) proposes further research, he suggests that the theory of media violence connection must be tested because identification with particular element in a film is not something can be seen. He also noted problem with campaigners treating delinquents as normal people who become influenced by the media. Therefore, he suggests further research on how these people understand and consume media.
-Critics of effects research see no connection between exposure to media violence and real life violence, because humans are not copycats and can realize what is wrong and what is right. Although some research claims that heavy exposure to media violence can lead to more aggressive behavior, it has been suggested that exposure alone does not cause a child to commit crimes.
-Flew and Humphreys (2005) said that the assumptions of effects researchers are frequently flawed. According to Flew and Humphreys, Freedman (2001) and Goldstein (2001) the number of studies on games and violence is small and the research suffers from flawed methodologies which do very little to prove a direct link.
Terry Flew and Sal Humphreys also state ‘that differing context of consumption will always mean we need to take account of the particularities of players and how and why they play, effects researches often give insufficient account to the relevance of cultural contexts and the way in which media are actually implicated in the circulation of meanings in our cultures'.
-Freedman (2007) is another thinker who rejects this idea, in reference to the FCC ‘the Federal Communications Commission in US’ report that suggests link between media violence and real life violence, Freedman indicates the lack of discussion and states that the FCC does not make a sufficient distinction between people’s opinions, intuitions and musings on the one hand, and the hard scientific data on the other, and he indicates the lack of discussion of one of the strongest arguments against the idea that media violence causes aggression. According to Freedman the rate of violent crime in the United states increased sharply from 1965 to 1980 and some people blamed that increase on media. The rate of violent crime leveled off until about 1992, since that time, television continued to have violent programs, there was also more scenes and media showing more violence, if exposure to violent media cause real violence one would surely expect the rate of violent crime to have increased sharply, yet, since 1992 there has been a dramatic drop in violent crime, it seems clear that media violence did not cause the earlier increase. Therefore, it is widely accepted that there is no convincing evidence that prove that media violence cause violent crime or any type of real life violence. For example a recent long-term outcome study of youth found no long-term relationship between watching violent television and youth violence or bullying
, the wife of Al Gore
, was the founder of the Parents Music Resource Center
, and was the main figure in pushing for warning labels on music although she does not fit into the conservative demographic. They argued that such material had simple and identifiable effects on children, and thus should be banned/labelled.
Political factions use the media to influence possible members into joining their groups.
process is an almost unavoidable part of news gathering by the large organizations which make up much of the mass media. (Just four main news agencies — AP
, UPI
, Reuters
and Agence-France-Presse — claim together to provide 90% of the total news output of the world’s press, radio and television.)
Stuart Hall points out that because some of the media produce material which often is good, impartial and serious, they are accorded a high degree of respect and authority. However, in practice the ethics of the press and television are closely related to that of the hegemonic establishment, providing vital support to the existing order. Independence (e.g. of the BBC
) is not “a mere cover, it is central to the way power and ideology are mediated in societies like ours.”
The public is bribed with good radio, television and newspapers into an acceptance of the biased, the misleading, and the status quo. The media are not, according to this approach, crude agents of propaganda. They organize public understanding. However, the overall interpretations they provide in the long run are those most preferred by, and least challenging to, those with economic power. Greg Philo demonstrates this in his 1991 article, “Seeing is Believing”, in which he showed that recollections of the 1984 UK miners’ strike were strongly correlated with the media presentation of the event, including the perception of the picketing as largely violent when violence was rare, and the use by the public of phrases which had appeared originally in the media.
McCombs and Shaw (1972) demonstrate the agenda-setting effect at work in a study conducted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
, USA during the 1968 presidential elections. A representative sample of un-decided voters was asked to outline the key issues of the election as it perceived them. Concurrently, the mass media serving these subjects were collected and their content was analyzed. The results showed a definite correlation between the two accounts of predominant issues. "The evidence in this study that voters tend to share the media's composite definition of what is important strongly suggests an agenda-setting function of the mass media." (McCombs and Shaw),.
. In the 21st century, with the rise of the internet
, the two-way relationship between mass media and public opinion is beginning to change, with the advent of new technologies such as blogging.
Mander’s theory is related to Jean Baudrillard
’s concept of ‘hyperreality
’. We can take the 1994 O.J. Simpson trial as an example, where the reality reported on was merely the catalyst for the simulacra (images) created, which defined the trial as a global event and made the trial more than it was. Essentially, hyperreality is the concept that the media are not merely a window on to the world (as if a visiting alien were watching television), but are part of the reality they describe. Hence (although additionally there is the question of navel-gazing) the media’s obsession with media-created events.
It is this which led Marshall McLuhan
in the 1960s to say that "the medium is the message", and to suggest that mass media are increasingly creating a "global village". For example, there is evidence that Western media influence in Asia
is the driving force behind rapid social change: “it is as if the 1960s and the 1990s were compressed together.” A notable example is the recent introduction of television to Bhutan
, resulting in rapid Westernization
. This raises questions of ‘cultural imperialism
’ (Schiller) — the de facto imposition, through economic and political power and through the media, of Western (and in particular US) culture.
(1) Media:Media included all kinds of media namely; newspapers, TV, Radio, Internet, Books etc.
(2) Education: It included all kinds of School, College and Universities students and also teachers.
(3) Judicial: It included all the person related with judiciary namely; Judges, Lawyers etc.
(4) Medical: It included all kinds of doctors Government or private.
(5) Defence: It included all kinds of members appointed for the protection of a country internally or externally namely; Police, Army, Navy, Air etc.
Jerry Mander
’s work has highlighted this particular outlook. According to him, the atomized individuals of mass society lose their souls to the phantom delights of the film
, the soap opera
, and the variety show
. They fall into a stupor, or apathetic hypnosis, that Lazarsfeld called the ‘narcotizing dysfunction’ of exposure to mass media.
Individuals become ‘irrational victims of false wants’ - the wants which corporations have thrust upon them, and continue to thrust upon them, through both the advertising in the media (with its continual exhortation to consume) and through the individualist consumption culture it promulgates. Thus, according to the Frankfurt School, leisure
has been industrialized. The production of culture had become standardized and dominated by the profit motive as in other industries. In a mass society leisure is constantly used to induce the appropriate values and motives in the public. The modern media train the young for consumption. ‘Leisure had ceased to be the opposite of work, and had become a preparation for it.’
and Rupert Murdoch
.
For example, the UK
Observer (March 1, 1998) reported the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins
' refusal to publish Chris Patten
's East and West, because of the former Hong Kong
Governor's description of the Chinese leadership
as "faceless Stalinists" possibly being damaging to Murdoch's Chinese broadcasting interests. In this case, the author was able to have the book accepted by another publisher, but this type of censorship
may point the way to the future. A related, but more insidious, form is that of self-censorship by members of the media in the interests of the owner, in the interests of their careers.
Media studies
Media studies is an academic discipline and field of study that deals with the content, history and effects of various media; in particular, the 'mass media'. Media studies may draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, but mostly from its core disciplines of mass...
, psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, communication theory
Communication theory
Communication theory is a field of information and mathematics that studies the technical process of information and the human process of human communication.- History :- Origins :...
and sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
to refer to the theories about the ways in which mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
affect how their audience
Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
s think and behave.
Connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society, critiques in the early-to-mid 20th century suggested that media weaken or delimit the individual's capacity to act autonomously — sometimes being ascribed an influence reminiscent of the telescreen
Telescreen
Telescreens are most prominently featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, although notably they have an earlier appearance in the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times...
s of the dystopian novel 1984. "Mid 20th-century empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
studies, however, Current theories cultural and personal beliefs, as per the propaganda model
Propaganda model
The propaganda model is a conceptual model in political economy advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that states how propaganda, including systemic biases, function in mass media...
. Mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
content created for newsworthy events and those stories that are not told all have Television broadcasting has a large amount of control over the content society watches and the times in which it is viewed. This is a distinguishing feature of traditional media which New media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
have challenged by altering the participation habits of the public. The internet creates a space for more diverse political opinions, social and cultural viewpoints and a heightened level of consumer participation. There have been suggestions that allowing consumers to produce information through the internet will lead to an overload of information.
Media influenced violence =
Many studies illustrate that consuming mass media does lead to violence. However, this is a contentious issue.
Gauntlet goes on to criticize studies that focus on children by stating that they do not utilize adults as a control group, and that the studies are conducted primarily to further a "barely-concealed conservative ideology." He counters the premise of these studies with the concept that not all depictions of violence are even bad to witness. USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
Professor Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins
Henry Jenkins III is an American media scholar and currently a Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts, a joint professorship at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and the USC School of Cinematic Arts...
, for instance, suggested in his speech to congress that The Basketball Diaries
The Basketball Diaries
The Basketball Diaries is a 1978 memoir written by author and musician Jim Carroll. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen...
utilizes violence in a form of social commentary that provides clear social benefit.
Gauntlet explains further that objects defined as "violent" or "anti-social" may not be judged as such in the minds of the viewer and tend to be viewed in artificial circumstances. These objects are furthermore based on previous studies with flawed methodology, and are not grounded in theory. Additionally, he claims that the effects model attempts to understand the meanings of media.
- Historical criticisms situate the 'meta-narrative' of effects theory within a long history of distrust of new forms of mediaMass mediaMass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
, dating as far back as SocratesSocratesSocrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
's objections to the deleterious effects due to the written alphabetAlphabetAn alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
. - Political criticisms pose an alternative conception of humans as rational, critical subjects who are alert to genre norms and adept at interpreting and critiquing media representations, instead of passively absorbing them.
Supporters of effects theory contend that commercials, advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and voter campaigns prove that media influence behavior. In the 20th century, aggressive media attention and negative coverage of trials involving celebrities like Roscoe Fatty Ar buckle or Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
have influenced the general public's opinion, before the trials effectively started.
However, these critics do point out that while the media could have an effect on people's behavior this isn't necessarily always the case.
Critics of the media effects theory point out that many copycat
Copycat effect
Copycat effect may refer to:*Copycat crimes - crimes inspired by or replicating another crime*Copycat suicide - suicide inspired by or replicating another's suicide...
murders, suicides and other violent acts nearly always happen in abnormal upbringings. Violent, emotionally neglectful or aggressive environments influence behavior more than watching certain programs, films or listening to certain music. Most people who carry out these acts are also mentally unstable to begin with.
Also there are other thinkers who criticize effects based research, such as Terry Flew and Sal Humphrey, Barker and Freedman.,,
-Martin Barker (2001) criticised Elizabeth Newson who alleged link between media violence and real life violence in her report in 1994, Brooke (2003–07),for example talks about this in details. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/591456/index.html, and the report gained media attention when it claimed the horror film Child's Play 3 had influenced two 10-year-old boys' behavior and led to the Murder of James Bulger
Murder of James Bulger
James Patrick Bulger was a boy from Kirkby, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, when aged two. He was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables .Bulger disappeared from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle, near Liverpool, while...
in Feb. 1993. After examining and assessing Newson’s report, it was apparent that there was no clear link between the film and the crime. Critics pointed out that Newson's case studies were reliant on press accounts and opinions rather than independent research. However, Newson's report was influential, and has led to more censorship of videos and more concern from the British Board of Film classification on the psychological effects of media violence. The attention and question become whether they were watching violent media.
But Barker (2001) doesn’t agree with Elizabeth Newson. He reject her claim about the connection between media violence and real life violence, in his argument he justifies his position, he indicates that there was not a scrap of evidence that the boys had seen the movie and Child's Play 3 is a moral film. He also criticized anti media campaigns and described them as ignorant and disguised political campaigns. He states that these claims are represented by media and most of people have no chance to check the credibility of them, he also points out that these films including Child's Play 3 are often attacked because they deal with political issues. Moreover, he lists real cases, for example “a man takes a gun and shoots his entire family after watching the news, arrested and tried, he explains his actions on the basis that the world news was so bad there seemed no point in anyone going on living”. Barker suggests that this case for example is no different that other putative cases of media a causing violence, Barker said that we should not always blindly blame the media because people are not copycats, instead we should be aware of someone's mental state and take other factors into account before making such claims. For example, in his case he states that the man's reaction was abnormal. Therefore, his behavior could not be explained by suggesting “the effects of the news”. There are other social and cultural factors in criminal acts in which the media are not the basic influence. Barker also suggests 'that we must look beyond a specific film to think about the specific context in which it has been consumed, and the wider social background of the people'.,according to Barker there is no such thing called violence in the media that either could or could not cause violence, we should rather pay attention to how social factors and background make some people consume media in specific way., for instance, even the news also show lots of violence, so people should rather pay attention to how social factors and background make some people consume media in particular way. In addition Barker (2001) proposes further research, he suggests that the theory of media violence connection must be tested because identification with particular element in a film is not something can be seen. He also noted problem with campaigners treating delinquents as normal people who become influenced by the media. Therefore, he suggests further research on how these people understand and consume media.
-Critics of effects research see no connection between exposure to media violence and real life violence, because humans are not copycats and can realize what is wrong and what is right. Although some research claims that heavy exposure to media violence can lead to more aggressive behavior, it has been suggested that exposure alone does not cause a child to commit crimes.
-Flew and Humphreys (2005) said that the assumptions of effects researchers are frequently flawed. According to Flew and Humphreys, Freedman (2001) and Goldstein (2001) the number of studies on games and violence is small and the research suffers from flawed methodologies which do very little to prove a direct link.
Terry Flew and Sal Humphreys also state ‘that differing context of consumption will always mean we need to take account of the particularities of players and how and why they play, effects researches often give insufficient account to the relevance of cultural contexts and the way in which media are actually implicated in the circulation of meanings in our cultures'.
-Freedman (2007) is another thinker who rejects this idea, in reference to the FCC ‘the Federal Communications Commission in US’ report that suggests link between media violence and real life violence, Freedman indicates the lack of discussion and states that the FCC does not make a sufficient distinction between people’s opinions, intuitions and musings on the one hand, and the hard scientific data on the other, and he indicates the lack of discussion of one of the strongest arguments against the idea that media violence causes aggression. According to Freedman the rate of violent crime in the United states increased sharply from 1965 to 1980 and some people blamed that increase on media. The rate of violent crime leveled off until about 1992, since that time, television continued to have violent programs, there was also more scenes and media showing more violence, if exposure to violent media cause real violence one would surely expect the rate of violent crime to have increased sharply, yet, since 1992 there has been a dramatic drop in violent crime, it seems clear that media violence did not cause the earlier increase. Therefore, it is widely accepted that there is no convincing evidence that prove that media violence cause violent crime or any type of real life violence. For example a recent long-term outcome study of youth found no long-term relationship between watching violent television and youth violence or bullying
Political
Certain groups tend to argue for media effects in an effort to promote a political cause. Demands for the banning of certain songs or the labeling of obscene albums came specifically from conservative political groups in the United States. However, Tipper GoreTipper Gore
Mary Elizabeth "Tipper" Gore , née Aitcheson, is an author, photographer, former second lady of the United States, and the estranged wife of Al Gore...
, the wife of Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
, was the founder of the Parents Music Resource Center
Parents Music Resource Center
The Parents Music Resource Center was an American committee formed in 1985 with the goal of increasing parental control over the access of children to music deemed to be violent, have drug use or be sexual.The committee was founded by four women: Tipper Gore, wife of Senator and later Vice...
, and was the main figure in pushing for warning labels on music although she does not fit into the conservative demographic. They argued that such material had simple and identifiable effects on children, and thus should be banned/labelled.
Political factions use the media to influence possible members into joining their groups.
Framing
The agenda-settingAgenda-setting theory
Agenda-Setting Theory states that the news media have a large influence on audiences, in terms of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them. Agenda-setting theory’s main postulate is salience transfer. Salience transfer is the ability of the news media to...
process is an almost unavoidable part of news gathering by the large organizations which make up much of the mass media. (Just four main news agencies — AP
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, UPI
United Press International
United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...
, Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
and Agence-France-Presse — claim together to provide 90% of the total news output of the world’s press, radio and television.)
Stuart Hall points out that because some of the media produce material which often is good, impartial and serious, they are accorded a high degree of respect and authority. However, in practice the ethics of the press and television are closely related to that of the hegemonic establishment, providing vital support to the existing order. Independence (e.g. of the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
) is not “a mere cover, it is central to the way power and ideology are mediated in societies like ours.”
The public is bribed with good radio, television and newspapers into an acceptance of the biased, the misleading, and the status quo. The media are not, according to this approach, crude agents of propaganda. They organize public understanding. However, the overall interpretations they provide in the long run are those most preferred by, and least challenging to, those with economic power. Greg Philo demonstrates this in his 1991 article, “Seeing is Believing”, in which he showed that recollections of the 1984 UK miners’ strike were strongly correlated with the media presentation of the event, including the perception of the picketing as largely violent when violence was rare, and the use by the public of phrases which had appeared originally in the media.
McCombs and Shaw (1972) demonstrate the agenda-setting effect at work in a study conducted in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Chapel Hill is a town in Orange County, North Carolina, United States and the home of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Health Care...
, USA during the 1968 presidential elections. A representative sample of un-decided voters was asked to outline the key issues of the election as it perceived them. Concurrently, the mass media serving these subjects were collected and their content was analyzed. The results showed a definite correlation between the two accounts of predominant issues. "The evidence in this study that voters tend to share the media's composite definition of what is important strongly suggests an agenda-setting function of the mass media." (McCombs and Shaw),.
New media
Theorists such as Louis Wirth and Talcott Parsons have emphasized the importance of mass media as instruments of social controlSocial control
Social control refers generally to societal and political mechanisms or processes that regulate individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group. Many mechanisms of social control are cross-cultural, if only in the control...
. In the 21st century, with the rise of the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, the two-way relationship between mass media and public opinion is beginning to change, with the advent of new technologies such as blogging.
Mander’s theory is related to Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...
’s concept of ‘hyperreality
Hyperreality
Hyperreality is used in semiotics and postmodern philosophy to describe a hypothetical inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies...
’. We can take the 1994 O.J. Simpson trial as an example, where the reality reported on was merely the catalyst for the simulacra (images) created, which defined the trial as a global event and made the trial more than it was. Essentially, hyperreality is the concept that the media are not merely a window on to the world (as if a visiting alien were watching television), but are part of the reality they describe. Hence (although additionally there is the question of navel-gazing) the media’s obsession with media-created events.
It is this which led Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
in the 1960s to say that "the medium is the message", and to suggest that mass media are increasingly creating a "global village". For example, there is evidence that Western media influence in Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
is the driving force behind rapid social change: “it is as if the 1960s and the 1990s were compressed together.” A notable example is the recent introduction of television to Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...
, resulting in rapid Westernization
Westernization
Westernization or Westernisation , also occidentalization or occidentalisation , is a process whereby societies come under or adopt Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet, language, alphabet,...
. This raises questions of ‘cultural imperialism
Cultural imperialism
Cultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another. Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including military action. Economic or technological factors may also play a role...
’ (Schiller) — the de facto imposition, through economic and political power and through the media, of Western (and in particular US) culture.
An instrument for social control
Social scientists have made efforts to integrate the study of the mass media as an instrument of control into the study of political and economic developments in the Afro-Asian countries. David Lerner (1958) has emphasized the general pattern of increase in standard of living, urbanization, literacy and exposure to mass media during the transition from traditional to modern society. According to Lerner, while there is a heavy emphasis on the expansion of mass media in developing societies, the penetration of a central authority into the daily consciousness of the mass has to overcome profound resistance.Government and Mass Media
They include licensing in advance; censorship of offending material before publication; seizure of offending material; injunctions against publication of a newspaper or book or of specified content; requirement of surety bonds against libel or other offense; compulsory disclosure of ownership and authority; post publication criminal penalties for objectionable matter; post publication collection of damages in a civil action; post publication correction of libel and other misstatements; discrimination in granting access to news source and facilities; discrimination and denial in the use of communications facilities for distribution; taxes; discriminatory subsidies; and interference with buying, reading and listening.The public sphere
It is an objectionable matter that the Government always tries to harass the Printers, Editors as well as making many media laws, but sometimes it is needed. Now a question might arise, when?..... Nowadays, most of the Journalist are involved with politics and there report also made under there politic related. It is not finished every kinds of newspapers and others media is running under a political control. So where there is a political control there must be some of false and fabricated news will be publish. For a developing country there are five sectors must be neat and clean means they must work not for the politics but for the peoples of the country, which are;Mass Media in a free enterprise society
Although a sizable portion of mass media offerings - particularly news, commentaries, documentaries, and other informational programmes - deal with highly controversial subjects, the major portion of mass media offerings are designed to serve an entertainment function. These programmes tend to avoid controversial issues and reflect beliefs and values sanctified by mass audience. This course is followed by Television networks, whose investment and production costs are high.Jerry Mander
Jerry Mander
Jerold Irwin "Jerry" Mander is an American activist and author, best known for his 1977 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television...
’s work has highlighted this particular outlook. According to him, the atomized individuals of mass society lose their souls to the phantom delights of the film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, the soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
, and the variety show
Variety show
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...
. They fall into a stupor, or apathetic hypnosis, that Lazarsfeld called the ‘narcotizing dysfunction’ of exposure to mass media.
Individuals become ‘irrational victims of false wants’ - the wants which corporations have thrust upon them, and continue to thrust upon them, through both the advertising in the media (with its continual exhortation to consume) and through the individualist consumption culture it promulgates. Thus, according to the Frankfurt School, leisure
Leisure
Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....
has been industrialized. The production of culture had become standardized and dominated by the profit motive as in other industries. In a mass society leisure is constantly used to induce the appropriate values and motives in the public. The modern media train the young for consumption. ‘Leisure had ceased to be the opposite of work, and had become a preparation for it.’
Mass media, mass culture and elite
The relation of the mass media to contemporary popular culture is commonly conceived in terms of dissemination from the elite to the mass. The long-term consequences of this are significant in conjunction with the continuing concentration of ownership and control of the media, leading to accusations of a 'media elite' having a form of 'cultural dictatorship'. Thus the continuing debate about the influence of 'media barons' such as Conrad BlackConrad Black
Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, OC, KCSG, PC is a Canadian-born member of the British House of Lords, and a historian, columnist and publisher, who was for a time the third largest newspaper magnate in the world. Lord Black controlled Hollinger International, Inc...
and Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
.
For example, the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
Observer (March 1, 1998) reported the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
' refusal to publish Chris Patten
Chris Patten
Christopher Francis Patten, Baron Patten of Barnes, CH, PC , is the last Governor of British Hong Kong, a former British Conservative politician, and the current chairman of the BBC Trust....
's East and West, because of the former Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
Governor's description of the Chinese leadership
Government of the People's Republic of China
All power within the government of the People's Republic of China is divided among three bodies: the People's Republic of China, State Council, and the People's Liberation Army . This article is concerned with the formal structure of the state, its departments and their responsibilities...
as "faceless Stalinists" possibly being damaging to Murdoch's Chinese broadcasting interests. In this case, the author was able to have the book accepted by another publisher, but this type of censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
may point the way to the future. A related, but more insidious, form is that of self-censorship by members of the media in the interests of the owner, in the interests of their careers.
See also
While Media Influence Theories are often used to demonstrate the negative effects of the media on society, it is also of note that media can influence in a good way. The following are of note:* Strategic mediaStrategic media
Strategic media runs opposed to tactical media in the sense that it is power coming from a "higher" entity to control those with less power. It is essentially the material that larger media companies screen to the masses...
- Tactical mediaTactical mediaTactical media is a term coined in 1997, to de note a form of media activism that privileges temporary, hit-and-run interventions in the media sphere over the creation of permanent and alternative media outlets. Tactical media describes interventionist media art practices that engage and critique...
- CensorshipCensorshipthumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
- Communication theoryCommunication theoryCommunication theory is a field of information and mathematics that studies the technical process of information and the human process of human communication.- History :- Origins :...
- ControversyControversyControversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of opinion. The word was coined from the Latin controversia, as a composite of controversus – "turned in an opposite direction," from contra – "against" – and vertere – to turn, or versus , hence, "to turn...
- Cultivation theoryCultivation theoryCultivation theory is a social theory which examined the long-term effects of television on American audiences of all ages.Developed by George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of Pennsylvania, cultivation theory derived from several large-scale research projects as part of an overall...
- Orwell Rolls in His GraveOrwell Rolls in His GraveOrwell Rolls in His Grave is a 2003 documentary film written and directed by Robert Kane Pappas. Covered topics include the Telecommunications Act of 1996, concentration of media ownership, political corruption, Federal Communications Commission , the controversy over the US presidential election...
- Sonia LivingstoneSonia LivingstoneSonia Livingstone is a professor of Social Psychology and head of the Department of Media and Communications at London School of Economics, and Political Science and has dedicated much of her research to children and Internet use. She has written or edited eleven books and 100+ academic articles...
Further reading, etc.
- Adorno, Theodor (1973), The Jargon of Authenticity
- Allan, Stuart (2004), News Culture
- Chomsky, Noam & Herman, Edward (1988, 2002). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon
- Curran, J. & Seaton, J. (1988), Power without Responsibility
- Curran, J. & Gurevitch, M. (eds) (1991), Mass Media and Society
- Durham, M. & Kellner, D. (2001), Media and Cultural Studies. UK: Blackwell Publishing
- Grossberg, L., et al. (1998). Mediamaking: Mass media in a popular culture. CA: Sage Publications
- Habermas, J. (1962), The Structural Transformation of the Public SphereThe Structural Transformation of the Public SphereThe Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society , by Jürgen Habermas, was published in 1962 and translated into English in 1989 by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence...
- Horkheimer (1947), The Eclipse of Reason, Oxford University Press
- Lang K & Lang G.E. (1966), The Mass Media and Voting
- Lazarsfeld, BerelsonBernard BerelsonBernard Reuben Berelson was an American behavioral scientist, known for work on communication and mass media.He was a leading proponent of the broad idea of the "behavioral sciences", a field he saw as including areas such as public opinion...
and Gaudet (1944), The People’s Choice - Mander, Jerry, “The Tyranny of Television”, in Resurgence No. 165
- McCombs, M & Shaw, D.L. (1972), 'The Agenda-setting Function of the Mass Media', Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, pp176–187
- David Riesman (1950), The Lonely Crowd
- Thompson, J. (1995), The Media and Modernity
- Trenaman J., and McQuail, D.Denis McQuailDenis McQuail is one of the most influential scholars in the field of mass communication studies.. He has published extensively in the field of political communication and communication theory. Best known is his contribution to the education of the public, concerning communication theory. His work...
(1961), Television and the Political ImageMethuen - Barker, Martin, & Petley, Julian, eds (2001), Ill Effects: The media/violence debate - Second edition, London: Routledge
- Carter, Cynthia, and Weaver, C. Kay, eds (2003), Violence and the Media, Maidenhead: Open University Press
- Fowles, Jib (1999), The Case for Television Violence, Thousand Oaks: Sage
- Gauntlett, David (2005), Moving Experiences - Second Edition: Media Effects and Beyond, London: John Libbey
- Potter, W. James (1999), On Media Violence, Thousand Oaks: Sage