Saturday, March 7, 2009
Food for Thought: The Media
Mass communication is generally defined as a form of communication through which institutional sources (ex. Govt body, media agencies) address large, diverse audiences whose members are physically separated from one another.
Let us consider some aspects of the media as food for thought. Out of the 4 main functions of the media, namely Surveillance, Correlation, Cultural Transmission and Entertainment, I believe that Surveillance and Entertainment tend to take precedence in the lives of the average person.
Provision of news is an example of the media function, Surveillance (the gathering and dissemination of information). I feel that it is a great fallacy on our part to accept media messages at face value and ignore the agenda setting functions of the media, ie. The media's ability to raise the importance of an issue in the public's mind, which may not even be true in reality.
Take the cartoon above as an example. There is the implication that previous news reports had portrayed violence breaking out in the Middle-East on a daily basis. How much of that is true and how much of that is a load of hogwash ? The viewer will never know since he/she/it is not experiencing the violence on-site (an unobtrusive issue) and as such, the media will have a great influence on the viewer's perspective of the Middle-East as a place awash with daily violence.
In this next cartoon, we can see that the media may not be as liberal as it is made out to be. The view of the media reflecting and reproducing only those ideas, meanings and values that uphold the interests of the power elite is known as Media Hegemony. If the guy being polled does not conform to any of the options given, do you think that his view will be reflected in the results pertaining to how liberal the media is? I think not. Being as powerless as he is (unless he turns out to be some super hero or politician in disguise), his thoughts are likely to be silenced if it turns out to be negative in nature, or is seen to oppose the status quo. Thus, the diversity of choices present here is merely an illusion, and it can be seen in reality as well, when diversity may be used to camouflage any one dominant ideology.
Look at the last cartoon above. Do you see the underlying concepts behind what is known as Cultivation Theory aka the theory that media messages do not influence audiences attitudes directly but instead cultivates it indirectly ? Although the theory is generally applied to the televised world, the psychology acting behind the printed media and televised world is approximately the same in this case, with both drawing upon the availability heuristic as one of the influencing factors.
Through mainstreaming, analogous to "Every time you open the paper, someone's stealing something", the media is able to create a synthetic reality which people eventually take up as the common view (cultivation). In this example, as they are constantly exposed to news of crime, they take up the view that "Crimes these days are attributed to the changes".
Furthermore, a resonance occurs when the audience's everyday experiences matches those they view on TV, or read about in the case of the cartoon above, reinforcing their possibly misguided viewpoints. In the situation present in the cartoon, there is a possibility that instances of crime in the past and present are identical, just that the media did not include such reports as frequently in the past compared to the present, resulting in the cultivation of unsubstantiated attitudes held by audiences.
Discussion
With the influence of the media in mind, where should we draw the line between implicitly believing what we hear, watch or read, and having to analyze everything from the media ? Surely it would be too tiresome to continuously ponder whether our personal views have been pre-determined or distorted by the media ?
5 comments:
True. Most people do not notice just how much certain information given out by the media is distorted. And the influence media holds on so many individuals is pretty scary, rather it reminds of me more of Propaganda. We see it in the Sunday newspaper too, under the comics section, the silly comments that some cartoons make about world situations, I rarely give a thought about if what I am reading is actually true. To answer the question about where should we draw a line to discerning the truth, maybe simply being more aware of the world? for example, actually watching the News, reading the Newspaper, informative magazines.. could in a sense help, and try not to be drawn in by everything you see and hear, rather take time to ponder about what could be the truth.
I admit that I take whatever the media says to be true because it is readily available and the media should know better than any of us what is going on in the world. Because if they do not report truthfully, the audiences will find out sooner of later from other media sources. But I feel that, we are required to think through before accepting whatever that is being thrown to us.
I think there isn't a choice of media for us in Singapore since its all controlled. So we usually go to the internet for alternative sources of news. Where should we draw the line? I believe that it takes a person of great maturity and general knowledge to really draw that line. A guy who doesn't follow to global issues like me wouldn't be able to draw that line. All i can do is to hope that at least, doesn't go overboard in masking the truth like the NTU case.
Yes it is tiring, but would u take the red or blue pill?
Like moonprincess, I am guilty of taking most of the information media feeds me at face value. There is simply too much information being thrown at us nowadays, it would be all but impossible to stop and discern every bit of information we come across.
Personally, I will only start analyzing information that interests me (probably affects me in one way or another), and my usual practice will be to go through different articles on the same subject. Sad to say, I am not able to pick up even the common fallacies unless I go through the information several times, consciously looking out for them.
There are instances when even official sources of information might be out to mislead the people.
A good example would be the reported heroics of Jessica Lynch, which Jessica Lynch herself fortunately confessed to be untrue.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/04/24
/tillman.hearing/index.html
Thus getting to the truth of the matter might even be harder than it seems.
@ym Personally I think that there is more to the NTU case than what is reported. It just seems to easy to dismiss it as a case of Computer game addiction.
I believe that one of the reasons we are so easily misled, is because we are unable to obtain higher-tier information. When we do research for example, we tend to be researching about things we do not really have any inkling about, and as a result it is hard to ascertain how reliable a source is. Time constrain is another factor for the lack of analysis.
Valerie> Yes, being well-read is one option. Everyone should aim towards this goal, though it would probably prove pretty challenging. Media influence is indeed powerful, and only through actively thinking about the things that you are exposed to will you be able to limit that influence.
moonprincess87> That's true. The media though, gets to decide what news to reveal and what to keep hidden. As a result, we may be given half the picture (that is true) but eventually come to the wrong conclusion due to the tendency towards closure based on whatever knowledge we possess.
YM> I'm interested to know more about the NTU incident. Like xx, I believe there's more than meets the eye. You can let me know on MSN =p
XX> Thanks for the heads up! I wasn't aware of that case, but now I am. Even official sources being wrong eh ? Looks like it's going to be tough sieving out facts from the lies.
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