Ch. 8. Media Flashcards
Media Questions
MEDIA –The relationship between social problems and the media will help us to understand how some issues emerge as widely discussed social problems—and why others remain on the margins of public discussion, relegated to the category of personal trouble rather than social problems.
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Three distinct sets of questions about media and social problems.
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MEDIA CONTENT – the role of media in defining issues as social problems.
- How do news and entertainment media portray emerging and long-standing social problems?
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ROLE OF MEDIA as a cause of, or contributor to, social problems.
- Does exposure to violent media imagery produce violent behavior?
- Do media contribute to health problems such as obesity or anorexia?
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NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES.
- What are the consequences of the DIGITAL DIVIDEE – that is, persistent inequality in people’s access to the internet and knowledge about new digital media?
- How can we understand media-related social problems such as CYBERBULLYING and DISTRACTED DRIVING?
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MEDIA CONTENT – the role of media in defining issues as social problems.
Media: Construction of Social Problems
MEDIA CONSTRUCTION –The conditions that become social problems have both objective and subjective dimensions that interact.
- OBJECTIVE DIMENSION – includes evidence of the existence, of potentially troubling issues, such as illegal drug use, gun violence, or child abuse.
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SUBJECTIVE DIMENSION – includes collective interpretations of and public attitudes about these issues.
- Media become a place for interpreting the significance of statistics and incidents
- Media also serves as a place for discussion of the appropriate ways to respond, leading to additional reporting on things like the debate over gun violence.
- Thus media help define the context within which both public policy and public opinion develop
MORAL ENTREPRENEURS – are advocates of a position on an issue who organize in order to focus public attention on that specific issue.
- They do so through the process of
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CLAIMS-MAKING, whereby groups compete to have media and government acknowledge and respond to their claims about certain social issues.
- Claims making is central to the process that defines some social issues as social problems.
- Claims makers often use the news and online media for circulating their interpretations of social problems to policymakers and the public.
- Thus media attention is not distributed equally across issues, and it is NOT a simple reflection of the prevalence or severity of a given issue.
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CLAIMS-MAKING, whereby groups compete to have media and government acknowledge and respond to their claims about certain social issues.
Crime, Drugs, and Media Routines
CRIMES, DRUGS, and MEDIA ROUTINES –
PUBLICITY – sustained media attention—is a major factor in shaping what citizens and public officials recognize as social problems requiring policy responses.
- However, this increased attention does NOT usually follow the worsening of a troubling issue.
- Instead, the increased attention is driven by what society finds troubling AT THE TIME.
- Because an issue may have been just recently brought to the attention of society and claims makers in the recent past, increased attention can occur even when a social issue is stable or even improving.
- EX: Even as violent crime rates in the US trended lower, society perceived it as getting worse due to the increased media coverage at the time.
- Because an issue may have been just recently brought to the attention of society and claims makers in the recent past, increased attention can occur even when a social issue is stable or even improving.
- Instead, the increased attention is driven by what society finds troubling AT THE TIME.
NETWORK SOCIETY – media networks (Twitter, texting, e-mail) influence people around the world with instant communication.
JOURNALISTS’ PROFESSIONAL ROUTINES – Daily activities around which news reporters organize their work. Understanding journalistic routines give us insight into the way news media circulate themes.
- Sometimes news organizations are themselves the primary claims makers, and editors and reporters play a crucial role in constructing social problems.
- Often, what journalists tend to focus on is what people perceive as being important.
- EX: if they take a situation about road rage that resulted in a shooting, then the journalist has a choice to focus on the issue that road rage is a social issue, or that gun use is a social issue. Unfortunately, journalists often choose to highlight the topic that will generate the most ad revenues.
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CRIME COVERAGE – The volume of news coverage of crime is independent of the actual crime rate, causing people to believe that it is always worse than it actually is.
- The reason for such a focus on crime in news is due to Journalist Routines.
- Unfortunately, crime is a tried-and-true theme that draws the audiences that commercial and online news organizations need to earn advertising revenue.
- The reason for such a focus on crime in news is due to Journalist Routines.
MARK FISHMAN – a classic study, sociologists sought to understand the roots of crime news by examining “how and why news organizations construct crime waves.”. He noted three journalistic practices:
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First, in evaluating the newsworthiness of potential stories, journalists implicitly classify events by theme – “crimes against the elderly”
- Events are more likely to become news—and to be featured prominently—when they fit a continuing news theme.
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Second, most crime reporting relies overwhelmingly on information from authorities, especially local police.
- provides reporters with continuing examples of a currently popular theme as long as such stories exist.
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Third, news organizations track their competitors.
- The news media outlets in one city or region thus often end up reporting the same stories, reinforcing the significance of a specific theme—such as a crime wave—and further encouraging police sources to supply similar leads.
Media Frames and Sponsors
MEDIA FRAMES and SPONSORS – News media defines social problems using:
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MEDIA FRAMES – conventions of journalistic storytelling that situate a social problem within a broader context.
- HOW a story is presented to others greatly influences how the recipient of the story interprets the story.
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EX: If I tell a story about how a man was bitten by a snake, I might use the following FRAMES
- “A local businessman was bitten by a snake in his home before going to church.”
- “A local man was abusing his pet snake until it finally bit him.”
- Your interpretation of the situation here will be night and day depending on how the simple story of a man getting bitten by a snake is FRAMED.
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EX: If I tell a story about how a man was bitten by a snake, I might use the following FRAMES
- HOW a story is presented to others greatly influences how the recipient of the story interprets the story.
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SPONSOR ACTIVITIES – The work of promoting and publicizing specific media frames.
- Prominent media frames that define social issues frequently have sponsors interested in promoting their careers or a personal agenda.
- FRAMES are promoted in order to send a specific message and promote a particular interpretation of an incident or statistic. They WANT to influence the public’s assessment of the issue as a PROBLEM in the way that the SPONSOR desires.
News Coverage Builds on Culturally Resonant Themes
THREE THINGS SHAPE MEDIA REPORTING:
- Routine media practices
- Need for audiences that drive advertising revenue
- Public’s desire for dramatic and unusual stories
CULTURALLY RESONANT THEMES – the widely held beliefs, values, and preferences that resonate with a potential audience.
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EX: food-related social problems—overweight/obesity and anorexia/bulimia—are portrayals rooted in deep-seated assumptions about our bodies and our eating habits (culture).
- News coverage constructed obesity in ways that identified individuals as both the problem and the likely solution (rather than as a societal or structural problem).
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The decision to approach the problem of obesity as an “individual” problem rather than a “societal” problem was because the “individual” approach was the one that resonated with the media’s potential audience.
- This “individual” approach is a Structural Functionalist Approach that focuses on the individual taking responsibility for their lives.
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Structural Functionalist Approach – Media underplays the social, structural, and genetic roots of obesity. This individual-oriented approach to a social problem is consistent with cultural themes that value individual responsibility.
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EX: In the contemporary U.S. society, where thinness is highly prized, news articles are less likely to blame individuals for being (or trying to be) too thin than they are to blame them for being too fat.
- This suggests that cultural values shape how the news media assign blame and responsibility.
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EX: In the contemporary U.S. society, where thinness is highly prized, news articles are less likely to blame individuals for being (or trying to be) too thin than they are to blame them for being too fat.
Entertainment Media
ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA – Entertainment media play a significant role in publicizing social problems.
MORAL PANICS – public fear about particular social problems is disproportionate to the actual danger posed by those problems.
- Media play an active role in promoting moral panics – because “Fear Sells” – people seek news stories on the “fearful” issue, hoping to find out more (including possible solutions) in order to ease their fear.
MEDIA EXAGGERATIONS – strategies that dramatize and embellish social issues to attract an audience.
- EX: Think of a NY Post headline or linkbait online to get you to click through to some sensational story.
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Media Exaggerations take two primary forms:
- First, journalists pay inordinate attention to events that are uncommon or statistically unusual.
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Second, they overstate the extent or size of a social problem, using the exaggerated language of epidemic, crisis, or plague.
- This kind of reporting produces dramatic headlines and news stories that go viral, and it is one of the principal ways media contribute to a moral panic.
MEDIA ACTIVISM – activists work to drive a particular social issue through the media to get to the public. They intervene to try to highlight social problems in the news.
- Reporting of domestic violence is one example.
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EX: Rhode Island Coalition (2000) went on to produce a reporters’ handbook about domestic violence and the law, with recommendations from survivors, that was distributed throughout the state, and a training program for survivors and advocates about how reporters work so they could become more effective news sources.
- coverage has changed in ways that reflect the coalition’s emphasis on understanding domestic violence as a social problem, not just a private tragedy.
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EX: Rhode Island Coalition (2000) went on to produce a reporters’ handbook about domestic violence and the law, with recommendations from survivors, that was distributed throughout the state, and a training program for survivors and advocates about how reporters work so they could become more effective news sources.
Claims Making: New Media Environment
USER-GENERATED MEDIA CONTENT – Publicly shared media content produced by users (often amateurs) rather than media companies.
- Reaches only very small networks of friends and family of the generators, and many people remain spectators.
- Facebook and Twitter are becoming increasingly significant claims-making arenas.
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Digital media can democratize the process of social problem construction:
- Opening new communication channels
- Creating additional opportunities for information sharing
- Providing new infrastructure for public discussion.
- In this new media environment, claims-making is more accessible to a wider range of advocates, but it is also more diffuse, with many voices competing for public attention.
- EX: President Donald Trump has used Twitter – bypassing traditional news outlets to reach his more than 25 million followers – to advance often dubious claims about various social problems, including crime, voter fraud, and government surveillance.
Media Constructions of Obesity (US vs. France)
Media Constructions of Obesity (US vs. France)
- French news was far more likely to point to social structural causes of overweight/obesity.
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U.S News has an emphasis on individual blame.
- This difference reflects cultural differences – Europeans are more likely to frame social problems in structural terms.
Debating Media as a Cause of Social Problems
Debating Media as a Cause of Social Problems –
MEDIA PHOBIAS – broad public fears about the negative impact of media resulting from such things as sex and violence in movies, TV, and video games.
- Little evidence that media are the cause of real social problems stemming from these things.
- Public concern about media power has persisted since the early 20th century, and it often seems to intensify when new media technologies emerge.
- EX: The introduction of the telephone, for example, aroused fears that the new device would threaten privacy.
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PAYNE FUND STUDIES (1930s) – One of the earliest social science research efforts to study the relationship between media and social problems.
- Studied whether heavy movie attendance led children to engage in crime or other troublesome behavior.
- “RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP – movies do have an effect on children, but those children who are most attracted to the worst movies tend to be those with the most problems to begin with.”
- Payne Fund Studies generally affirmed public anxiety about the negative influence of movies on young people and helped pave the way for future research on media as a cause of social problems.
- “RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP – movies do have an effect on children, but those children who are most attracted to the worst movies tend to be those with the most problems to begin with.”
- Studied whether heavy movie attendance led children to engage in crime or other troublesome behavior.
COMIC BOOKS, too, became a focus of concern. In the 1940s and 1950s – attempting to determine if reading comic books is a cause of juvenile delinquency – Later research found little evidence to support that.
- Nonetheless, Comic Book companies decided to impose SELF-REGULATION – proposing to police itself in order to prevent government regulation
Media and Violence
MEDIA and VIOLENCE – Violence is a foundation of contemporary television, but does it CAUSE violence in the real world?
- In laboratory experiments, psychologists have found that exposure to violent television images produces a short-term increase in aggressive feelings and increases postviewing aggressive behavior.
- While many researchers accept that there is a relationship between violent television and aggression, the specific dynamics of that relationship remain contested.
- Evidence linking media violence to violent behavior is weak.
- Even if watching violent television does not cause violent crime, other potential links between televised violence and social problems merit attention.
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Television violence may also desensitize viewers to violence in the real world.
- Some studies have found that playing violent video games desensitizes players to real-world violence and can increase aggressive behavior.
- However, there is no simple consensus on the effects, and other researchers argue that concerns are overstated
- Some studies have found that playing violent video games desensitizes players to real-world violence and can increase aggressive behavior.
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Television violence may also enhance viewers’ fear of violence.
- television programs show crime and violence far more frequently than they occur in real life.
- While many researchers accept that there is a relationship between violent television and aggression, the specific dynamics of that relationship remain contested.
- “MEAN WORLD” SYNDROME – In creating entertaining and emotionally engaging stories, news outlets can promote fear and anxiety and contribute to the widespread expectation that we are all in danger.
Ads, Films, and Youth Smoking
Ads, Films, and Youth Smoking – Researchers show that tobacco ad campaigns work – influencing children to smoke.
- High levels of exposure to on-screen smoking are associated with more positive beliefs about tobacco and higher rates of smoking.
- But tobacco advertisements and a steady dose of smoking images in popular culture—including those resulting from PRODUCT PLACEMENT in which manufacturers pay for their products to be used or mentioned by film or television characters – definitely influence kids to smoke.
Media and Obesity
MEDIA AND OBESITY – We’ve seen that the definition of obesity as an “epidemic” in recent years highlights the role of media in constructing social problems (because the term “epidemic” promotes dramatic effect that FRAMES the issue as something dire and urgent)
- Children who spend more time with media are more likely to be overweight than children who don’t. But there is obviously a RECIPROCAL EFFECT where children who are heavy media users are simply less active in general (regardless of media use), and their lower levels of physical activity help cause weight gain.
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ADS TARGET CHILDREN – children drive many forms of family consumption, often pressuring parents until they relent or use their own allowances to purchase products.
- Research shows a link between food ads and obesity.
Media and Eating Disorders
MEDIA AND EATING DISORDERS:
- CUT OF THINNESS – which idealizes a decidedly slim body type unachievable for the vast majority of the population. This ideal presumably leads people to engage in extreme, unhealthy eating behavior in order to attain that ideal.
- While little evidence suggests that exposure to media causes eating disorders
- Media are among the central communicators of this cultural ideal
- Advertising is the most consistent promoter of the ideal of the thin body.
- Advertising encourages potential customers to be dissatisfied with their bodies as a way to build demand for new consumer products.
Distracted Driving, Cyberbullying, and Digital Divide
DISTRACTED DRIVING – Just as dangerous as drunk driving is distracted driving, operating a motor vehicle while engaged in other attention-requiring activities.
CYBERBULLYING – electronic forms of bullying
- Experienced by up to 25% of all students.
DIGITAL DIVIDE – The gap in access to online information and communication technologies between more advantaged and less advantaged groups, such as between the wealthy and poor regions of the world (the GLOBAL DIGITAL DIVIDE) and between social classes within a country.
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Size of the gap depends on educational attainment – In 2015, about 94% of U.S. households headed by a person with a college degree had high-speed Internet access at home (see Table 8.4).
- In contrast, a much smaller proportion, only 64%, of households headed by a person who had not completed high school had the same access.
GLOBAL DIGITAL DIVIDE – citizens of the developed world (81%) are twice as likely as people in the developing world (40%) to be online.
Functionalism and Media
FUNTIONALISM AND MEDIA – A functionalist approach suggests that media play the vital role of calling attention to pressing social problems, functioning as a kind of alarm system that can warn and inform the public about new and persistent social problems. With Regard to Media – media are a vital cultural resource, an arena for both official distributions of information about problems and public deliberation about potential solutions.
- The functionalist approach also sees the possible DYSFUNCTION that might occur if the media abuses its power, calling selective attention to social problems in a way that undermines a working public information system.
POLICY of Functionalism – Public policy should promote a media system that broadly distributes information and ideas about a wide range of social issues and promotes free expression and vigorous public debate.
- Public policy that protects press freedom and freedom of speech, including in digital media and often referencing the First Amendment, is consistent with this approach.
