The Power of the Media to Influence

The Power of the Media to Influence


I will be investigating how much the media influences its audience; whether it is negative or positive. In the current media landscape things like plastic surgery, gun and knife crime, drugs etc, has become the norm, making audiences more and more aware each day. Make-up is one issue of media influence on women. Commercials make the women “pretty” from make up, when really its all photo shopped. If an advert is persuasive then why wouldn’t people believe the lies they tell?
There are a lot of direct effects from watching a certain text, depending on culture, race, gender etc. Depending on the target audience this can create a moral panic. Audiences will always blame the media for certain outcomes in certain situations. Groups always need something to blame when things go wrong in society, and most of the time it will resort in blaming the media. The media create moral panics so society become scared, this causes the topic to be popular with that culture/society, which means the institutions, will become popular. That’s means popular = more money.

There are massive debates for and against media being an influence in today’s society. One argument for this would be that media influences younger generations into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. The Case of Jamie Bulger could be one example of society blaming media for influencing something. Jon Venebles and Robert Thompson were both killers of Jamie Bulger and “some details of the murder itself appeared to be similar to some violent depictions in the movie Childs Play III” . This was a great way for society to blame media instead of blaming themselves for what happened. The father who rented the movie for them was surely not to blame?
The argument against this would be that media was not to blame if the father had bought it for them in the first place. This could still be brought back the blaming the media as someone may be able to blame the institution in some way. This isn’t just to blame for crime either, society can blame the media for plastic surgery increase, gun and knife crime increases, make-up sales rocketing etc. but how do we know if media does really influence? Or is it all just in our heads?

The media in essences does influence us somehow as we use media in everyday life; in work, in school, at home etc. we can’t jus ignore it.
Little children are most affected in media influence as they are still learning all the time. In America a child died after being influenced by a cartoon called Naruto, after acting out a scene. “In 1956, researchers took to the laboratory to compare the behaviour of 24 children watching TV. Half watched a violent episode of the cartoon Woody Woodpecker, and the other 12 watched the non-violent cartoon The Little Red Hen. During play afterwards, the researchers observed that the children who watched the violent cartoon were much more likely to hit other children and break toys.”  This is perfect evidence that media influences at least a lot of its audiences, Obviously everyone is going to blame the cartoon for the effect it had, as there is nothing else to blame.
Also Plastic surgery is one main thing that is on the rise in today’s society, with adverts making so women skinny and beautiful, people may feel more insecure, in which they turn to plastic surgery for help. Nip/Tuck is a prime example for making plastic surgery look glamorized. With all the sex, money, drugs etc coming from making money and being beautiful then why wouldn’t people want the lifestyle?
Nip/Tuck always shows you the good things that come from being beautiful, but never show you the reality of it happening. Girls can be so easily persuading into thinking they can be beautiful with make-up and body modifications. In the theme tune it sings “make me beautiful” and “a perfect life", showing that if you have beauty then you must instantly be perfect, when this is certainly not the case. Plastic surgery is influencing a lot of young adults as the media mostly shows the positive outcome giving false pretentions to younger viewers. “We are all influenced to some extent by what we view, listen to, browse, play and read.”  This means that we as an audience react to certain situations in our own way, whether negative or positive.

Other may argue that media does not influence its audience, its mealy the audiences fault for what they have done. For example if a Mother was to buy their 13 year old son a video game rated 18, they would be the one to blame and not he audience as the restriction is there for a reason. Media is something we connect to in everyday life, one way or another; so blaming it would always is the easier option.
Institutions say that if parents where harder on their children nothing like this would happen. “Parents play a critical role in determining what does, or doesn’t influence their teens. The wise parent teaches his teen to be discerning about media choices” , if a child was brought up the right way they would be taught how and what to do in certain situations and know that some things are wrong and shouldn’t be influenced.
Ideologies and values play a big part into what we believe and what we don’t. Most people would say that everything we do is a reflex to something else, things like up-bringing/societies/beliefs etc can cause us to do it. Jon Venebles was accused of watching a film and reacting to it in a violent way, but may it have just been his upbringing and past memories that actually trigger of a certain emotion.

According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) credited with coining the term a moral panic occurs when “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.” A condition of a moral panic is the actual thing that scares people, so it could be plastic surgery or crime, instead of the actual person. Surgery is mostly to do with older generations, seeing as younger women are taking over the TV for make up commercials and lingerie. Women of an older generation may almost feel threatened by younger people and think plastic surgery is the only way to go. Older generations feel threatened and insecure about themselves. One good example for this would be Alesha Dixon taking over strictly come dancing from Arlene Phillips. This caused uproar in society as it was unacceptable just to replace someone because they aren’t as young and youthful. Now there are rumours that its getting reversed from Alesha Dixon to Liza Minnelli, because of audience complaints. Just because she’s younger and beautiful doesn’t make her right for the part. This creates a moral panic to the audience as women think they have to be young and perky just to be noticed.
Knife and gun crime have also become a moral panic in today’s society as audiences. In the news things like mugging and theft are not seen as much as knife and gun crime have risen. Theft and mugging have become the norm in a sense as we don’t acknowledge it enough. Knife/gun crime have become so popular that they have become a moral panic and also the group surrounding it have been too. The condition (gun and knife crime) has become so popular everyone thinks that when a person stereotyped with that condition, it’s instantly going to happen to them when it isn’t. Knife crimes by MediaboxOnline have described some of the reason why knife crime is on and increased and why we should be worried and how we should ignore it. Amienata Sillah says “is it because somebody is watching you? Or maybe a stranger walked through your ends?” This is one way in which moral panic was created. By these excuses this is why its becoming a moral panic. Everyone thinks that it may just happen to them.

“We are bombarded today with images of the ‘perfect’ women… One perfect women pretty much like the next; she is essentially not human, interchangeable and disposable.”  If we were all to be perfect women they we would all be the same, no one would be unique and pretty much die alone. The media today allow men to see women as object because of media and also by commercials by make-up. Women see themselves as having to be the ‘perfect’ women, if not then men will not fancy them and they won’t have a boyfriend. Wrong. In the dove avert a women is seen putting loads of make up on, making her hair perfect, and looking stunning. Yet for a beauty commercial that is not enough. Her eyes have to be bigger, her neck skinnier, and she has to be airbrushed. That’s not perfection its more like loosing the will to live.
Feminist see women as beautiful no matter how anyone else sees you, if God gave you that body, then why tamper with it?
“Many women appear to be encouraged to fear men and to circumscribe their public behaviour”  Women are meant to agree to the male behaviour as they are more dominant making men influence us, even in media. Women are brighter than men who means women are meant to not be influenced and not accept what is given to them. Men are meant to be dominant and over power the women, making women the influencer instead of being influenced.

Most groups are stereotyped from what they see on TV for example, Teenagers are stereotyped to be lazy, angry, temperamental etc. Media make a stereotype based on a few individuals in a certain group; this means all the people of that group/society/environment will be stereotyped. The media can influence in so many different ways in which we need to decide whether to believe or not. Do we really believe every black man is a robber and every white man is an alcoholic?
The media influence the audience in so many ways that just one glimpse of someone can tell us a book load of stereotypes, but is that necessarily our thinking or the media?
A News report in Canada a teenager explains “an important issue is how adults treat me just because I’m a teenager. Sure there are bad ones out there but I’m not one of them. It doesn’t just hurt but its disrespectful when security follows me around like I’m some kind of loser of criminal.” Just because they we are all stereotyped doesn’t mean we all have to agree with it.
“" We don’t need Afghan-style barques to disappear as women. We disappear in reverse—by revamping and revealing our bodies to meet externally imposed visions of female beauty.” This explains that women need to realise that beauty is only skin deep, just because you flaunt your body and your stick thin; people will like you. Girls of different ethnicities are given stereotypes just by the way they dress, making audience influence us. Girls will need to realise beauty is only skin deep.

People are to easily influenced by the media in negative and positive ways, we all need to realise that we all need to see the world for ourselves and not what they media gives us. I found out that most of the time media influences us in a bad way making us do thing we probably wouldn’t do, even if it has little effects.
Some things we can do to make it easy, is not listening and believe that everything the media gives us, we our humans and we have our own mind, just like the people behind the media do. Just because people behind the TV and radio have a higher status doesn’t mean we know best, we should think with our OWN self.
Television is one of the main influences as people can watch what’s happening instead of listening which means they can witness it before maybe copying.
For my linked production I will be making a mockumentary trailer about media influence and whether it is a negative or positive thing, with appearance and violence. I will be making the audience aware that media influence is a big thing and that people need to realise that we have our own minds, in a comedic style.


Bibliography


• Books:
• M G Durham - 2009 - THE LOLITA EFFECT - United Kingdom - Duckworth Overlook
• Dan Laughey - 2009 - Media Studies Theories and Approaches - United Kingdom - Kamera Books
• Chas Critcher - 2006 - Critical Readings: Moral Panics and the Media - United Kingdom - Open University Press
• Martin Barker and Julian Petley - 1997 - Ill Effects: The Media/Violence debate - United Kingdom - Roteledge.
• Media Studies: AS & A2 - 2008 - Pearson Longman
• Sense and Nonscence about crime, drugs and comunities: a policy guide
• When Children Kill Children - David A Green


• Websites
• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm
• http://www.troubledwith.com/ParentingTeens/MediaInfluence.cfm
• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/effects_media_violence.cfm
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