Mass Media Influence on Perception of Drugs - Essay Example

Mass Media Influence on Perception of Drugs We often don’t even realize where we get some images of coolness we have in our minds, like why do we consider rock stars, whose lifestyle isn’t virtuous at all, as the cool ones? The point is that it is mass media that forms these conceptualizations of what can be considered as cool or not, helpful or harmful. We learn that drugs are helpful and consciousness expanding, and this point of view we’ve got from the mass media. First of all, it is important to analyze why mass media is so influential nowadays. Bunch of sociological researches discover the phenomena claiming which important role mass media plays in modern society impacting humans’ intellectual and psychological development. In the book “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the ideology of Advanced Industrial Society” Herbert Marcuse claims that in modern society people are determined by the information that comes from mass media and technologies (13). The information forms the concepts people keep in their minds to estimate things they meet in their lives. The point is that people almost become controlled by the images and concepts mass media thrust them. For example, concerning drugs, when we watch some advertisement on TV where we see that people who have used some medical drugs become healthy and happy, we undoubtedly believe that we will get the same effect if we start using the drugs as well. The main problem is that we certainly believe in what we see in mass media because media system taught us that the best way to get trustworthy information is looking for it in mass media sources. Why don’t we ask ourselves whether the conceptualizations we get from media are truthful or just the tools of manipulation on society? Within his social theory of communication famous German sociologist Niklas Luhmann argues that communication is the main basis that lies in fundamentals of society. As far as mass media is the main communicative tool of modern social system, it works throughout all the aspects of society (25). First of all, it forms public opinion, which evidently is one of the most powerful manipulative remedy against personality. It turns out that considering media products, for example, watching TV we unconsciously catch the main points of public opinion. In other words, we learn how we have to look like and who we have to be to become the persons accepted by our society. If watching TV we see that it is normally to use drugs to look cool and stylish, we start using drugs to become cool and stylish. Luhmann claims that the messages we receive from media can describe the current developmental level the society takes up (36). This means that if we can see the tendency of increase of drug messages in media it can cause some sort of moral degradation of society. In fact, if we take another point of view on mass media, we can conclude that it has not only penetrated into humans’ minds and formed the conceptualizations of drug usage, but also has become a drug itself. Media forms our life the way we can’t live without it. We trust the information we get from there and become “mediated” (Zengotita 5), which means we become the people totally consumed by media influence. Sociological researches often point out on the tendency of media addiction among modern people. Internet addiction is probably the most popular and obvious these days, and also Internet is the most manipulative modern media tool (Huang 346). So it becomes obvious that in modern world mass media forms our understanding of public opinion and what is acceptable or not in the society. Another problem is that people stopped discerning right messages they get from media information from the wrong ones, in our case from those that say that drug usage is something helpful, stylish, and harmless. As far as mass media is the main part of mass culture, it frequently sends quite dangerous messages into society. Like those that proclaim that drugs are helpful in different situations: you can escape from your problems using them, they will make you feel better and unselfconscious, they broaden the abilities of your mind etc. Several things can be meant by the word “drugs”: alcohol, medical drugs, and narcotics. In fact, all the things people can get addicted to are already dangerous. And mass media often shows us that the best solution for all our problems is to use some drugs. The most generalize thing we can notice in media is “before-after” scenes, in which initially frowning unhappy and hurting faces became smiling, relaxed and happy” (Barcus and Jankowski 90). It mostly concerns medical drugs advertisement on TV or printed press. The message we are supposed to receive is that the advertised drugs are reliable and helpful, and we usually have no doubts about their quality or even about whether we need them and whether they fit our needs at all. This is the biggest problem actually. In case with narcotics or alcohol we usually are warned about the consequences of their usage, they are not advertised that obviously, so it is up to us whether to take this responsibility of their effects on us and use them or not. Some researches show that in such cases when media promotes several things that may become dangerous (like medical drugs), people start using them more often because they begin worrying about their problems more, because ever since their problems are promoted they are publicized (Mutz 691). This means if nobody emphasized on humans’ problems and the fact that they need to be solved by drugs usage, there wouldn’t be such problem as drug abuse. The same situation happens with narcotics. If media didn’t point out on how helpful narcotics are and how extraordinary they can make people become, many people wouldn’t even know about their existence. What we can see in modern society is how popular drugs become in media, and that government’s mass media campaign on drugs isn’t really effective (Hansen 1054-1055). Moreover, people clearly know about the harmful effects drugs and alcohol can cause on human organism, but it probably turns out that stolen pleasures are sweetest. But even though the prohibition of such pleasures is legal, the message of allowance of them is much stronger and obvious than the actual federal law. It is hard to imagine a movie or TV series where there is no drug and alcohol usage. What a group of friends do when they want to have fun? They go drinking. Who are the coolest heroes in movies and TV series? –they are drug addicts or blackguards. One of the most famous and popular TV series “House, M.D.” describes a drug addict medical doctor who unravels mysteries of human body, diagnoses the most difficult diseases and is generally a genius. The slogan of the series is “Genius has side effects”, which in fact shows that even though the doctor is drug addict, he is a hero. But the question is why everything is positioned the way it becomes normal that a doctor can be drug addict? Why is House made so attractive and charismatic by the scriptwriters that his addiction and “side effects” are not disadvantageous, but even add some charm into his character? And despite sometimes House is being miserable and unhappy because of his addiction, he still doesn’t make right conclusions, in addition, his character starts losing attractiveness when he is drugless. The example evidently shows the real message of the series: drugs can make you extraordinary. Considering another example of media drug promoting it is hard not to notice the personalities of the very famous people. For example, rock stars or famous artists, actors, and other celebrities. Many of them died from drug overdose or are still drug addict. For example, such celebrities as Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jimmy Hendrix etc – the reasons of their death are concerned to their drug addiction. And still media keeps cultivating personalities who are drug addict and don’t even hide it. The consequences of it are quite obvious. Young people who are mostly liable to fanaticism look at their idols and start repeating their behavior. Moreover, they think that it is narcotics that make them cool. The problem of drug promotion in modern society is really serious. First of all, it is because of nonobviousness of those messages concerned drugs usage that we receive from media. It begins with media as a kind of object of addiction, and ends with the hidden messages of drugs (including the illegal ones) as something helpful and cool. Works Cited: Barcus, F. Earle, and Jankowski, Susan M. “Drugs and the Mass Media”. Annals of the American Academy of Social and Political Science. 417(1975): 86-100. Print. Hansen, Anders. “Will The Governments Mass Media Campaign On Drugs Work?”. British Medical Journal (Clinical Research Edition). 290 (1985): 1054-1055. House. Prod. David Shore. Fox. 2004-2012. Television. Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of the Mass Media. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Print. Huang, Chiungjung. “Internet addiction: stability and change”. European Journal of Psychology of Education. 25(2010): 345-361. Print. Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964. Print. Mutz, Diana C. “Contextualizing Personal Experience: The Role of Mass Media”. The Journal of Politics. 56 (1994): 689-714. Print. Zengotita, Thomas. Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. Print. Read More