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"I bid you welcome" to The Media Zone.
I'll be writing about how the mass media psychologically insinuate themselves into our daily lives, for good or ill -- in terms of what we watch, what we think, what charms us, alarms us, informs us and misleads us, how we are entertained and what sense and nonsense we believe about the world. I'll draw on research from a variety of disciplines and I'll be giving impressions and personal opinions about what I see around me in this mediated environment we have come to take so very much for granted.
I will cover how the media, especially the mass media (radio, television, magazines, films, even horror films!) shape, color and give texture and tone to our lives - what's called "media effects," e. g., Do horror films truly traumatize us? as some psychologists declare (psst! What's your favorite movie monster?)
I will shamelessly rant a bit on how gaining access to media products such as Sirius radio subscriptions or grafting our bodies to our PDAs keeps us in touch with everything, all the time but may make us just a little more 21st century neurotic.
But let's be fair here. Although electronically tethered (psychologically speaking), the public doesn't simply sit back, sponge-like, absorbing the media mindlessly. It doesn't passively suck in the milk of media where, when, and how it is given. Technology permitting, the public often rebels, shoves back and tries to customize this mother's milk for its own taste and its own convenience and cost. Maybe it embraces the Internet mantra "music wants to be free," or at least cost no more than a buck; or maybe it tries to skip ads by using TiVo, Wall Street's lingering nightmare.
But here's the dance: Media producers and advertisers shove back. They sue internet music pirates or they use a 1950s strategy and sponsor whole shows thereby "branding a show." Sometimes they simply ratchet up product placement budgets. Placing a product into the storyline or visual canvas of a show is a creative strategy known to bypass our advertising radar and let the "ads" seep into our preconscious. GM did it when they footed the bill for Oprah Winfrey "generously" giving members of her audience Pontiac G6s. The hit TV show Survivor waltzed with Procter and Gamble when it gave challenge winners in Survivor China "Ultra Strong" Charmin bathroom tissue.
Producers try other psychological elixirs, other gambits to blow out our defenses. But at least Big Brother media is not in our face, our senses, our thoughts, 24/7. Not yet. You've got consumer bills of rights. You've got the power. You're not media pawns.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe it's too late. Maybe you had the power but now you're in so deep the power has you. Communications scholar Neil Postman, in his ground-breaking, classic work, Amusing Ourselves to Death, deftly noted that while George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) predicted that we'd be enslaved by forces we hate and fear, Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Doors of Perception) said we'd be enslaved by forces we love. Hmmm... Well, we do love our media, don't we? Maybe we're already the media's love slaves.
Consider: TV is still the big Kahuna, even with all competing media, portable, personal, and otherwise. Age demographics aside, TV eats up 30-40 hrs a week for some of us. If you add in watching videos, the viewing numbers rocket higher. If you add in hours on the net, listening to radios and portable music devices, using media is the largest consumer of time in our lives, larger than work, school, and sleep (unless you're fighting a war somewhere.)
Fact is, we are awash in media. We can't do without media. And the media producers can't do without us. That's why they try so hard to get our attention -- and our money. Being a media entity like Clear Channel, the largest radio conglomerate in America and having the FCC on your speed dialer doesn't hurt either.
The media today, however, is no benign force just offering entertainment to get our money. Collectively, media may now be the most powerful economic, political, cultural force on the planet, and I'm not just talking about Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp. It's getting more power by the day, more power in fewer and fewer hands, it should be noticed. The gang of media moguls bestriding culture like colossi is shrinking, consolidating and entrenching. Remember actor Ned Beatty as the near-mythic media mogul, Arthur Jensen, in the movie Network? He's the one who delivered the magnificent, testicle-shrinking rant at fellow ranter, Howard Beale, about messing with primal media forces? If you don't know it or don't remember it, rent it and watch, listen, and learn.
Beyond power of media moguls there's the advertising-created insecurity button: the power of allure, of "feel good," the desperate status of cutting edge. The media, its programs and its products, clearly seduce and affect us in ways we understand and in ways we don't.
We're a species of habit, prone to overdoing whatever it is we like doing. In academia one common anxiety about media effects is that many of us are actually addicted to our multi-purpose cell phones and iPods -- we just think we're making personal entertainment choices! Ridiculous, right? But think about it. Really, why would anyone "need" to download 1,000 songs on their iPod? Something way, way beyond "need" is going on there, don't you think?
"But what's the big deal?" you mutter, "Are there real dangers in swimming in the warm, embracing media pool?" Maybe. Maybe not.
Tune in next time and we'll discuss it. I'd like that. We might even discuss Grand Theft Auto, a video game where you can shoot cops and do much, much more. Is this a great country, or what!
