Media Simply Reflects and Reinforces Existing Social Values

Media Simply Reflects and Reinforces Existing Social Values

There is a notion held by many people that the media has the power to

affect our beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviours either directly

or indirectly. Many sociologists believe that the media could be

extremely powerful and influential because of their technology,

economics, and because of the sheer scale of operations.

There has been a tremendous amount of research done into the possible

short and long term effects of the media on society but very little

has been proved either way. Early research often stressed the

construction of the audience and made assumptions about the impact on

the public. This includes the hypodermic effect theory, also known as

the behaviourist approach, which sees the mass media as not just an

influence on society but as being able to directly affect us with a

metaphorical, powerful syringe full of messages directly into the

mind. Based on the theory that behaviour is learnt through rewards and

punishment, the notion here is that the media could provide a model of

behaviour which could influence people by showing them that they could

get the same results as those portrayed in what they had

read/seen/heard. For instance if a child sees someone get hurt on

television and finds it exciting then they would want to replicate

this behaviour, to gain the reward of feeling the same emotion again.

In 1960 Albert Bandura undertook a research project based on these

ideas. He showed three groups of children a film which included scenes

of violence towards a doll, in the first film the person committing

the crime was punished, in the second the person was r...

... middle of paper ...

... into

account the audience effect model. Although this approach would seem a

common sense approach it is not very testable, however this theory

coupled with the audience effects model could go a long way to

explaining what the effects of the media are on society.

Despite all the research done on media effects there is very little

conclusive evidence to suggest that the media can change society. This

does not mean that it does not, just that it is very difficult to

prove or disprove because of the so many different variables that can

affect the research. Even though there is little conclusive evidence

common sense would suggest that if the mass media cannot change

society then it certainly would seem to influence it, if there were no

influence there then the billions spent on advertising would be a

waste of money.