The Issue of Globalization and Its Potential Impact on the Media - Term Paper Example

Media Effects “…the entire study of mass communication is based on the premise that there are effects from the media, yet it seems to be the issue on which there is least certainty and least agreement’" (McQail 2005, p.456). Understandably, McQail’s statement is an fairly accurate depiction of the ambivalence that surrounds the field of communication study in as far as the topic of the impacts of various mass media on society are concerned. Even today, with over half a century of research on the subject, there is a lot of information available but hardly any indisputable evidence on which the various parties discoursing on the subject can agree. McQail is not alone in his presuppositions, in fact in the recent past; it has become a cliché more so among media professional and communication scholars to observe that irrespective of the extensive studies, the connection between media consumption and the subsequent behaviour are still far from established. Evidently, the public and scholarly audiences have been unusually patient with the researches given the fact that there are contradicting reports on the effect of media by numerous experts even though they address the same things (Gauntlett, 1998). However there will come a time when the society must take a step back and interrogate the academic quagmire that is embodied in the debate this begs the question on why it is so complicated for a consensus to be established for a topic that has been subjected to so much examination both from scholarly and formal points of view. There are two alternatives in this debate, either the effects have been so difficult to pin down because they do not actually exist or that those studying them have been going about it the wrong way. In this paper the second alternative will be examined with the intention of answering the question of why the study of media effects is so complicated. The answer is actually based on a negation of the question, media study is not actually complicated, and the approach with which it has been discoursed is the source of all the difficulty because it is fundamentally flawed. The media effects model when used to study the effect of media on violence and crime tends to look at the problem from the back as opposed form the front, in most cases researcher begin their work with a pre-set mind-set that violent media encourages violence for the viewers (Eveland 2003, p.399). When behaviourists and criminologist for example are trying to discern the connection between the media and violent crime, they tend to turn to the media to look for explanations about the criminal or devein behaviour. For example, when there is an increase in sexual activities among teenagers , drunk driving or other deviant behaviours it is common to here connections being traced back to the mass media, the sex and violence on TV and the internet among others (Bushman 2006, p.350). Blinded by this the researchers will tend to focus on how they imagine the violent crime on TV is being replicated on the streets and try to formulate solutions centred on the media rather than the children and social factors. To demonstrate this, one considers a study carried out through interviewing 78 violent teenage offenders and trying to trace back their violent tendencies to the media, this was compared against the 500 high school students with no criminal records (Hagell Haggel and Newburn 1994, p.20). In such as a scenario the convectional assumption would be that the 58 are victims of exposure to violence, however, the results of study were radically different. They tried to trace back the crime to the mass media by asking the offenders if they had to be a character in TV whom they would prefer to be, this question was intended to help them identify the “violent” characters they had model. However as it turned out, the young offenders not only watched less television, they had even less access to technology than the non-offenders in fact the non-offenders were proven to be more likely to identify with TV characters than the offenders. For this study, the media stage was proven to be the most inclusive; when the researchers addressed other issues such as social problems like poverty and housing problems they actually made much more headway as it was apparent that the delinquent children had been exposed to more social stress factors than their non-criminal counterparts. While not claiming that starting from the media front is erroneous, it is important that researchers understand that it should not be the sole approach since there are very many other contributing factors whose ignoring has contributed greatly to the ambiguity and confusion in the topic of media effect. Another instance in which the inadequacy of the media effect model is demonstrated involves the studies on children who are considered among the most venerable to media effect due to their venerability and impressionable nature. While this has often been proven through empirical psychological studies, it is worth noting that media studies on children tend to regard the child subject as non- adults with somewhat deficient thinking owing to their inability to match middle adult norms. Very few of these studies take to account the adult equivalent and in fact most studies are exclusively meant for children without adult parallels. The media approach which is reflected in the psychological studies on the media effect has been dominated over the years with researchers who have exposed a variety of ways in which the media is negatively affecting children. However this school of thought has assumed that children are passive appreciative viewers incapable of making critical judgment portraying them as puerile and transparent unlike adults who can presumably trick children into doing anything they want. However, research has shown that in some circumstances, children can be just as critical and cynical as adults and they can make critical and media literate content by themselves. Furthermore, the scope of media content has increased to astronomical levels given the advent f technological development more so the internet, globalization has also considerably extended the latitude of media. As a result carrying out and effective sociological study will involve taking to account a myriad of social cultural and political factors, for such as study to be carried out, the cost in regard to time and funding is often phenomenal and out for reach for most researchers. Therefore the comprehensive studies are heavily outnumbered by the many artificial ones, which are carried out in a laboratory or pseudo-natural environment. Instead of studying a fulltime TV diet as one would expect to experience if they studied families, the studies expose the audiences to selected clips and try to get a response from these and thus generate an assumption on the assumed effect of the particular content on the viewer. An example of this is the Banduras “bobo” doll where children are exposed to violent content then their reaction assessed based on the way they interact with the doll after they have watched someone assault it or violent content in a different setting (Kest 2005, p.50). The fact that such studies have been used as authentic evidence of the correlation between children and mass media is indicative of the confusion that plagues the effect approach of media theory (Heath and Kruttschnitt 1986, p.178) Interaction with media for most people takes place over long periods and during this time they are exposed to a multiplicity of content ranging from violent to non-violent. Therefore assuming to pass judgment about the effect of media from a few selected clips is unlikely to be an effective way of gauging the response of viewers over a significantly longer period of time. Finally for purposes of this paper, there is the issue of globalization and its potential impact on the media effect approach, different global cultures have been exposed to a variety of mass media content and the reactions have tended to be divergent and unpredictable. In addition the trends in terms of what are perceived and negative effects of the media at times are visible across different social setting where the in which the exposure to media content is not uniform. For example if the researcher sin the US concluded that sexual content on TV is having a negative effect teenagers (Hetsroni 2007, p.202), how can they explain the same trends in a different county where teens are not exposed to the same. At the end of the day, communication studies researches are faced with a great deal of information most of which they cannot make sense of and as result many of their conclusions are based on assumptions. It is evident based on the factors considered herein that the main reason why the study of media effect is so difficult is because the studies that have been carried out on the subject tend to start from the wrong side up and even when there is objectivity it is difficult to conduct conclusive studies since they are often construed by financial and logistic difficulties owing to the virtually inestimable scope of media influence. Ultimately the methodologies that are used to study the subject are in most cases flawed since they tend to ignore other factors that may cause the negative outcomes that often end up being ascribed to the media. References Bushman, B.J. & L, R.H. 2006, "Short-term and Long-term Effects of Violent Media on Aggression in Children and Adults",Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, vol. 160, no. 4, pp. 348-52. Eveland, W. P.,, 2003, "A "Mix of Attributes" Approach to the Study of Media Effects and New Communication Technologies", Journal of Communication, vol. 53, no. 3, pp. 395-410. Gauntlett, D. (1998) Ten Things wrong with the Media Effects model. Routlage London. Hagell, A and Newburn, T. 1994. “Persistent Young Offenders” Policy Studies Institute, NCJ 155147 Heath, L., Kruttschnitt, C. & Ward, D. 1986, "Television and Violent Criminal Behavior: Beyond the Bobo Doll", Violence and victims, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 177-90. Hetsroni, A. 2007, "Sexual Content on Mainstream TV Advertising: A Cross-cultural Comparison", Sex Roles, vol. 57, no. 3-4, pp. 201-210. Kest, R.T. 2005, "PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT", Futurics, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 50-66. McQail, D. 2005. McQails Mass communiation theory. London. Sage Publications Read More