Effects Of The Media: Studies & Findings

 
   According to Campbell, media effects research is the method by which researchers understand, explain and predict the effects of mass media on individuals and society. The main objective of such research is to uncover whether there is a relationship between aggressive behavior and violence in the media. Meanwhile, cultural studies focus on how people make meaning, understand reality, and form values through their use of cultural symbols.

    These studies result in several different conclusions on how people come to adopt certain behavioral patterns based on what they see in the media. The two that stood out the most to me are: the cultivation effect and the social learning theory. The former is the belief that people who watch a lot of TV (hereby decreasing their interactions with the outside world) come to interpret the world around them through the rules that they find in the television medium; these people often feel detached and become out of touch with reality. The latter theory believes that children pick up aggressive behavior from violent programs. Hence, a child who is exposed to a lot of violent scenes will soon grow to match those behaviors to his own. It is a learned behavior.

   Another way by which the masses could be controlled was through propaganda, especially during war times. One notable example is German director Leni Riefenstahl who during WWII directed several movies (most famous, or rather infamous, of which is Triumph Of The Will) for Adolf Hitler. Those movies hailed the Nazi party and rallied more people to Hitler's cause. Riefenstahl was arrested after the war, but released without charges. Though her film career was effectively over as a result of her association with Nazi Germany, the damage done by her films was already complete.

   From 1929 to 1932, the Payne Fund Studies were conducted on children and teenagers to deduce how the new world of cinema would be able to lend them into juvenile delinquency, promiscuity, and other antisocial behavior. The test subjects' skins were wired with electrodes that monitored any heightened responses in accordance to what the subjects were watching. The kids responded more to violent and tragic scenes, while teenagers responded more to romantic or sexual scenes. The results of these studies brought about the Hays Code, which from the early 1930s to the early 60s dictated what could and could not be shown onscreen. A few of the things that the Hays Code disallowed onscreen were: toilets flushing; a man and a woman sharing the same bed; a bad guy getting away with the crime; women could not show their navels onscreen.

Say No To Navel

Janet Leigh that hussy

    By the end of the 50s, the Hays code began to lose its power due to film pioneers such as Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock broke several Hollywoodian tropes in his film Psycho such as showing a woman undressing, and a scene where the toilet is flushed.



Before that, in his movie Notorious, he filmed a scene where actors Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman kept breaking their kiss every three seconds (a rule set by the Hays Code that stated that no onscreen kiss could last more than three seconds). Hitchcock's kissing scene ended up lasting two and a half minutes. In 1959, Billy Wilder shot Some Like It Hot, where two men dress in drag and join an all-girls band to escape the mafia.

The perfect kind of gal

  After the end of the Hays Code, the media began to take large liberties with what they showed onscreen. Even to this day, movies such as A Clockwork Orange (filmed as far back 1971) or Natural Born Killers cause much controversy due to the violence depicted onscreen.

    Other examples of events that affected the masses at large include Orson Welles' notable War Of The Worlds broadcast. All in all, those events serve as a means by which researchers study the effects of the media on the public. Despite rating systems having replaced the Hays Code, people still clamor that the media still manages to find a way to impressionable children, especially now in the age of easy Internet access. That studies are still being conducted on the matter speaks volumes about how major of an issue the effects of media truly is. Yet, I can't help but think that by now these studies are rather pointless. They have been ongoing for near a century now and the results speak for themselves. Yes, the media does affect those of an impressionable mind! Instead, we as a society should be looking for a way to fix that problem. I think the blame lies mostly on who allows these children, with their undeveloped and impressionable minds, access to such media. There is no way we should ever return to the days of the Hays Code with its limitations and suppression of creative freedom. The ratings system is in effect for a reason. Let's now veer our eyes to those who watch over these kids or what other factors may be influencing them.

The siren luring you to your doom