King Media: The Maker of the World - Essay Example

King Media: The Maker of the World We simultaneously watch television as we surf the Internet and read the evening paper. Advertising blaring from aradio or screaming from a billboard bombards us. From the time we wake up until we close our eyes at night, we are inundated with the media. It conveys information, educates, promotes products, and sells lifestyles. Everyone is influenced, to some degree, by the numerous games, videos, songs, magazines, and media outlets in daily life. From the moment we are born we are told what to buy, what to think, and pervasively told how we should perceive the massive amounts of information that we receive about the family, society, and the global community at large. Media influence begins at a very young age and advertisers are quick to utilise this factor. There is little doubt that when the local brewery advertises on Saturday afternoons that they are not just selling beer, they are grooming the next generation of customers. According to marketing researchers Maher, Hu, and Kolbe (2006), children as young as 6 years old are able to recall television advertisements with a 90% accuracy rate after seeing a commercial (p 31). At this tender and impressionable age, advertising can substantially influence a child's future willingness to drink or become engaged to a product's branding. Any producer that may have an agenda can just as easily sway them politically or socially. While some media outlets use sensationalism to attract attention and sway ideas, advertisers have been using sex to sell products for years. If the media did not have the power to sway opinions and preferences, the advertising business would not be the multi-billion pound business it is today. Getting to the consumer's feelings means portraying a relationship with their culture and becoming more acceptable. Getting to know the culture and what makes it react prompted one ad executive to remark, "Find out why people join cults and apply that knowledge to brands" (Goodman & Dretzin, 2004). Frank Luntz, political advertising specialist says there is nothing in his ads that is about political substance. He says, "Everything in here has a relationship to pop culture" (Goodman & Dretzin, 2004). The advertiser's vehicle to success is getting the culture to connect with the brand without knowing the product, and if it didn't work they would find another way to do it. Selling fashion and pop culture is driven by the media. People do not buy fashion; it is sold to them with hard sell tactics. The sexual norms that are linked to the fashion are also purveyed upon the unsuspecting public. While boys' magazines tend to focus on sports and male activities, girls' magazines portray "an ideology drawn heavily from their cosmetics and other fashion advertisers' agendas" (Brown, 2001, p.45). This puts popular magazines such as Seventeen in the position of informing girls on how to be attractive to boys and their articles are much more likely to have a sexual theme. Teenage girls become obsessed with trying to attain the perfect sexual body and image as dictated by advertisers. For teenage girls magazines may be one of the biggest influences on their fashion, culture, and sexuality. While critics denounce the damage that unrealistic body image portrayals convey on young women, these media sources also provide a positive service. In a sampling of 83 male and female participants from 4 major US cities, it was found that teenagers are reading more than just the racy stories. Participants reported seeing numerous articles in magazines dealing with reproductive health issues such as AIDS, HIV, condom use, birth control, and pregnancy (Brown, 2001, p.177). They cited the feeling of confidentiality they felt when consulting a magazine and considered it a credible source. As much as the media can push people to violate their own ethics, it can also promote an atmosphere of trust. While magazines have influenced sexuality, video games have influenced other aspects of social values. Their influence on children has been central in the debate on the effect they have on young minds. A recent study by Kansas State University indicates that they may have more effect than previously believed. According to John Murray, professor of developmental psychology, "Children react to video violence by activating areas of the brain involved in fear responses" (Video violence, 2006, p.13). These episodes have a lasting effect. Murray further explains that they affect a portion of the brain that stores traumatic events in long term memory such as the victims of post traumatic stress syndrome experience (Video violence, 2006, p.13). These children are left with a long-term mental illness that may take months or years to manifest. While video games are primarily a male domain, television violence has had an acute effect on young girls. In the 1960s studies indicated that females tended to block television violence. Experts believed at that time that they may be immune from it due to a lower level of aggression than males (Kirn, 2006, p.29). According to Dr. James Garbarino, things changed when the heroes got more violent and many of the heroes on television became female (Kirn, 2006, p.29). The admirable goal of equal rights and gender equality may be showing its dark side in regards to children. A recent study revealed that when playing a video game while remaining anonymous, girls tended to be more violent that boys (Kirn, 2006, p.29). The difference in the 1960s studies and recent results can only be attributed to the effect that the media has had on the violent tendencies of girls and women. The effect that media has on violent tendencies varies with the type of media involved. Zahl and Hawton (2004), reporting on self-inflicted violence and suicide, report that visual stories were more likely to provoke violence than the Internet or music (p.196). According to a Canadian study reported by Mishara (1997), many young school children said they first learned about suicide from the media (cited in Zahl & Hawton, 2006, p.190). Children who receive these messages from films or cartoons have a greater chance of acting them out at some future time. We expect young people to learn from books and violence in children's literature is not a new event. Children's stories have often been rife with images of cruelty and brutality that were intended to horrify and frighten. But in today's world of electronic publishing, easy distribution, and writers who are willing to ignore their intended audience, the material in books meant for children has become more offensive. When we see children's literature that refers to sex, such as Melvin Burgess's Doing It (2003), and it contains the line, "Fat girls are grateful for it... Fat girls will do anything", it will certainly influence a child's values (p.156). Yet, a leading book distributor has this on their recommended list for 14 year olds, and advertises it as "a funny and honest book" (Campbell, 2006). When these books are offered alongside books on history and social studies, the child will not have the capacity to know which to accept and which to reject. When they are presented with values, they will accept those that are being reinforced by other media outlets. To see the effect of the media on values, it's helpful to examine the issue of racism. Can the media lead the public into changing their views on racism Americans are typically swayed between their ideal liberalism and their conservative individualism. Kellstadt (2004) theorised that "when media coverage demonstrates the inconsistency between America's egalitarian beliefs and their treatment of blacks, it should pull the public toward more liberal views on race policy" (cited in Gross, 2004, p.597). The research that covered 50 years of media found that as more egalitarian viewpoints were presented in the media, the public responded with substantially more liberal views on race policy (Gross, 2004, p.598). The public's social and political viewpoints may well be dictated by the media that they read or watch. Political and social aberrations may be only the tip of the media iceberg. The content may be secondary to the mass availability. Putnam (1995) makes the case that television is largely responsible for the decline in socialisation in the United States (p.75). Television creates social disconnect, loss of civic involvement, community disengagement, disinterest in voluntary associations, and hence is responsible for the privatisation of modern life (Putnam, 1995, p.75). Research has shown that television tends to shield people, "to make them scared, alienated, isolated and disoriented" (Newton, 1999, p.579). The media is not only affecting politics and values; it is reshaping the nature of relationships in modern democracies. The influence of media on the family has been overwhelming. The public is presented with unrealistic images of what the family is supposed to look like. On the other hand, it separates the members to make the attainment of the image unlikely. As Livingstone (2002) says, "...as media spread throughout the day and the home, time at home today means time with media, and it is often a matter of choice rather than necessity whether this is spent also with other family members" (p.167). This affects the entire family from toddler to grandmother. In a 2005 interview, Juliet Schor argued that exposure to advertising was indoctrinating children into a consumer culture that ultimately leads to riskier behaviour, low self-esteem, and fewer social opportunities (Yohalem & Davis, 2005, p. 3). Media and entertainment that is aimed at different genders, ages, and taste further distances family members from one another. Clearly, more people are paying attention to the media and more people are being affected by it. Wars are being brought into the living room and the audience is getting larger. Popkin (2006) states that, "...more people than ever before are paying attention to a particular set of issues-small wars and foreign policy crises-which means that many people who were never engaged by news in the golden age are engaged now" (p.332). Yet, this mass inundation of news may be serving a counter productive purpose. People may be suffering from media overload. British evidence indicates that the massive media coverage of elections causes political exhaustion among the viewers as people begin to avoid news programmes, current affairs, and print media in the late stages of a political campaign (Newton, 1999, p.578-579). Newton (1999) also reports that, "In the United States experimental and survey research argues that television news tends to de-motivate and immobilise people politically and to make elected officials and public institutions less accountable to the public" (p.579). This failure of the public to hold officials responsible further confirms Putnam's theory that the media leads to isolation. The effect of the media may go well beyond simply changing the lives and fashion of individuals. The events at Tiananmen Square and the Berlin Wall became instant media sensations causing governments and academics to question to what degree did the press influence foreign policy. Robinson (1999) coined the phrase 'CNN Effect' to describe the real time communications and documented their ability to motivate and initiate responses from political leaders on a global scale (p.301). Likewise, governments have used the 'CNN Effect' to shape and distort news to fit their purposes by manufacturing consent and influencing news media to read global events with a special slant (Robinson, 1999, p.303). Whether one ascribes to the theory of the effect being used to influence policy, or to influence the public's opinion of their policy, it is being used to shape the way people view global events. The media may be a self-perpetuating phenomena. Phillips (2004) reports that "people read stories in a way which tends to confirm their own experience" (p. 442). This becomes visible when the issue concerns the treatment of minorities. When minority practices are reported negatively, it may serve as a "signal to those who engage in them (and their friends and family) that they are not alone" and form a self-justification for prejudice and bias (Phillips, 2004, p.442). Though the news story may not change the viewer's point of view, it may solidify and confirm it. In conclusion, no one is immune from media influence. However, it may come as a shock to learn how greatly directed the public has become. It is not a matter of the degree to which the media moulds our life. It is the direction that it drives it. Children, teenagers, adults, governments, and the global community are all under its spell. Even the act of tuning out the media due to overload is a sign of media influence. When the public comes to grips with the nature of mass communications, only then will it be able to do for society what advertisers have been doing for their shareholders for decades. References Brown, J. D. (Ed.). (2001). 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