Deviance and the Media Flashcards
What is media?
Vehicles used to transmit information in acts of communication/flow of information, what is included in the media depends upon media ownership
- Past and present
- Individual audiences and mass audiences
Use of media over time has changed significantly, in both:
Amount and medium
- Rapid development and changes in a very short period of time
- Impacts the message and how it is received
Why media matters
- Defines a social problem
- Shapes public debates
- Defines boundaries between groups
Does media violence increase aggression in the real world?
- Correlational studies
- Experimental studies
- Desensitization
Correlational studies
Small-to-moderate (statistically significant) relationship
Experimental studies
- Less empathy, more acceptance of aggression to resolve problems, aggressive behaviour
- Individual variations (e.g pre-existing aggression, exposure to real-life violence)
Desensitization
More exposure to violence (in media and real-life) makes people more tolerant of violence
- Emotional: lower levels of anxiety when watching a violent film
- Physiological: lower heart rates and blood pressure when watching a violent film
How we socially construct deviance, specifically how the media constructs issues/events/deviance, constructs
people’s identities
Critical Approaches
- Intertwined with structures of power in society
- Similar to more subjectivist deviance scholars
- Interpretive and critical theories
Framing
News and images are linked together to create certain audience perceptions and give specific impressions to the audience
- Affects what we notice about reality
- Similar to the way selfies include only certain portions of reality
Associative priming
Viewers pass the material presented via media through their already existing thoughts and stereotypes in order to interpret and understand the material
Framing racialized groups as:
- Invisible
- Stereotypes
- Social problems
- Adornments
- Whitewashed
Trends in media ownership:
- Convergence: individual companies own multiple forms of media
- Conglomeration: companies merge or buy out others, creating larger companies
- Concentration: a small number of companies control most media products
Media as a Cause of Deviance
As seen in administrative approaches to media studies
- e.g advertising -> tobacco use, underage drinking
- e.g media violence -> violence, crime
Media Constructs Deviance and Normality
Critical approaches to media studies E.G: - Framing of racialized groups - Sexuality in mainstream media - Media portrayals of youth crime - Construction of body ideals - Stigmatization of mental illness - Stigmatization of groups
Media as a Tool for Deviance
Cyber deviance: deviant acts that are committed using computer technology
- Digital piracy
- Cybercrime -> hacking, identity theft, credit card fraud
- Cyberterrorism or cyberespionage -> malicious hacking to attack businesses or societal infrastructure
Media as a Site of the Deviance Dance
- Varied points of view and debates within media
- Online support communities for stigmatized groups
- As a tool for exerting social control measures over deviant acts
- As a tool for resistance
Deviance Dance: The Dark Net
- The deepest, hidden layers of the Internet
- Tool for committing acts of deviance or resistance
- As a hidden technology, it is a form of resistance in itself
Deviantizing the Media
- Parental restrictions on children’s media use
- Government censorship of media
- Efforts of moral entrepreneurs -> especially regarding youth media (concerns about effects of media on youth behaviours, deviantization of media associated with “troublesome” groups of youth)
A social problem is a condition that involves
harm to one or more individuals and/or one or more social entities
The concept of harm is:
an insufficient definition for a social problem, as many harmful conditions are not recognized as social problems (i.e smoking in the past)
Synchronization
The discrepancy between harmful conditions and the incongruent methods through which members of a society collectively recognize some harmful conditions as socially problematic
Latent social problems
Potentially harmful conditions that persist before being recognized and framed as social problems
Popular hazard
Harmful activities that people knowingly participate in each day (drinking alcohol, unsafe sex)
- Common and legal, but can cause immediate harm
Non-existing conditions that are widely recognized as a social problem
i.e Halloween sadism
Claims-Making Activities
Verbal and non-verbal ways that people define social issues and conditions as social problems
Social problems are characterized by claims makers who try to convince various audiences about a real or perceived harm to humans, animals, and/or the environment
Constructionist Perspective of Social Problems
- Supportive of the claims-making perspective
- Maintains that we can never understand the harm posed by various social conditions apart from cultural, social, political, and linguistic influences
- Interested in the consequences of problem-framing (actual effects that social problems have on real peoples’ lives)
What are the implications of saying that deviance is purely socially constructed?
The veiled pretense of neutrality
Realist Perspective of Social Problems
- Reject the idea that social problems are no more than a set of claims
- The objectively measurable harms to humans, animals, and environmental well-being are what make social problems socially problematic
- Our interpretations of reality do not change the fact that a reality independent of perception can be investigated
