#mediaeffects

Does Trump Coverage Matter?

Are you following national politics? Then I invite you to think about the news coverage of Donald Trump from 2 perspectives. First: think of your gut feelings. Second, think of the empirical evidence. Ready? Let’s begin. Trump receives a boatload of news coverage. And, amazingly enough, this is despite the fact that several reporters have promised to disengage from coverage of Trump. Yet,…

Media effects - see something you will imitate, how we are affected by what we consume

Moral Panics - something gets so much media exposure creates fear

Censorship

(When you see violence or sex think MEDIA EFFECTS, MORAL PANICS AND CENSORSHIP, we live in a media saturated world)

Springhall says fear of new technology because challenges existing norms

If new technology allows individual to have a lot of power like expose government then e.g. 10 downing street website

Jamie Bulgar case – why did they do this? Children play video games is an assumption = media effects – impossible to prove cause because so many other texts, media saturated world, result? Stricter age restrictions

‘The Interview’ – marketing can affect Sony hack, how media influences those who consume texts, if something is censored makes you want to watch it

Social learning theory *Bandura, bobo doll – viewers learn from media consumption

Gerbner disagrees – one could be desensitized to violence but still be appalled by it

Cultivation theory – the more time we spend watching TV the more we end up feeling like we live in an imaginary world and TV is the main source of storytelling e.g. texts cultivates…

Heavy viewers overexposed to more violence and affected by the Mean World Syndrome

The more time we spend watching TV the more likely to believe we live in a social reality

Overuse of TV is creating a homogenous and fearful audience

Anderson & Grill – games played link to aggressive behavior because they encourage aggressive behavior by rewarding players with rewards

Criticism:

Audiences are treated as passive whereas today we know that audiences are very active

Also the focus is not mainly on adults but venerable groups like adolescents

The jury it still out on who is culpable for Innocence of Muslims, the Anti-Islam film that has provoked havoc world over. Is it the Americans because an American produced it? Is it the Israelis because the American was actually an American-Israeli? Or is there no one to blame at all because free speech will be free speech will be free speech? Whatever answer the world converges to, there is no denying the escalating tension between Christianity and Islam, or Judaism and Islam, or Israel and Iran, or India and China, or the Thackerays and North Indians, or Kenyan Orma and Pokomo groups, or Afghanis and International Troops on their soil, or America and...a bunch of countries! Yes, multifarious wars are just waiting to catapult into calamitous effects for the globe, but it's not my task here to list those. I welcome Naill Ferguson, Thoman Freidman, Fareed Zakaria, both Sorkins or Diane Sawyer to elucidate further in a book. As a Hindu girl that grew up in India and goes to college in the US, I am here to talk about the harm inflicted by Religion on Religion and why it must be undone if Religion wants to maintain its sanity. 

Not so long ago, a half-Dutch-half-American friend asked me if I was religious. Her question seemed completely innocuous - "Girl, are you religious?" she inquired. But I couldn't shake off the feeling that there was a negative connotation hidden somewhere. In fact, whenever anyone speaks of religion these days, it seems to come with this negative-connotation baggage. You may think that religion is being condemned because of terrorism, violence, hatred and intolerance in the name of God, but I think there is something that is dismantling religion right from its core and therefore belittling it further. And that is, contemporary American pop-culture. 

As a tween in the mid-2000s in India I, naturally, consumed Terabytes upon Terabytes of American pop-culture. Then, the last two years I that I spent studying Media, Culture, and Communication in New York, concretized some of my media-induced perceptions, and dispelled some. In terms of Religion, they gave me a whole new visual! I mean, it's so hard to miss the examples because they are so ridiculously ubiquitous — in movies, TV shows, songs and, most importantly, everyday conversations. You've seen them! There's the all-White-all-Blond girl that wants her entire school to sign an abstinence pledge, or the religious fast-food chain owner that keeps his business shut on Sundays (oh, by the by, he also supports anti-Gay campaigns), or the politician that wants to run for President because God told her to do so, or the man that skipped Church on Sunday and then thought his house was going to be set on fire! All of these are things I have heard or watched on the screen in the recent past, and here's my two cents on the matter: 

In Hollywood's, and all its subsidiaries', attempt to look aloof and above-it-all, religion has been made into a total mockery. It has been attached to controversial ideologies and political campaigns, so you are coerced to choose an identity to go with your religion:

If you're religious and unmarried —you must be a virgin 

If you're religious and straight —you must hate gays

If you're religious with a daughter pregnant out of wedlock —you must stop her from abortion!

And God forbid, if you are a religious Muslim —you must be a... you know what! 

Saying that 'I am religious' has become like a declaration of fanaticism and instantly beckons images of chants and masochism. Everything about the word resonates with epithets of the extreme: immaculately pristine or infinitely conservative or irrationally hateful. No, moderates not allowed. And atheism, and all the coolness it holds, revels in the rising propagation of religion in this manner. I'm not against atheism or freedom of expression or satire or South Park, I am just disturbed by the social and cultural construction of Religion as a thing for the obsolete or the outcasts.

In my world, Religion is not a political statement. Religion is not a moral authority; it is a solace — a judgment-free zone. Where I grew up, Religion is about faith and humility. Humility - in accepting that there is a Being above us, named God. God is bigger than us all, and therefore, no matter how big or powerful we get, we are smaller than this God. And faith - in knowing that, even in our darkest, most desperate hour, God is watching us and will come to our rescue if we remain faithful. This is not blind optimism. Pragmatism agrees that you cannot continue to function sanely in two conditions: first, if you start believing that you are above all systems and beyond every being's reach in a reign of power, and second, if you lose even the last remaining sliver of the shred of hope in difficult times. Religion saves you from those two conditions. Therefore, Religion and Pragmatism are not mutually exclusive. And, more importantly, Religion and Madness are not necessarily attached at the hip. 

I don't know enough about Islam to judge whether representations of Muhammad are offensive. But I do know that contemporary representations of Religion are turning it into laughing stock. Anyone from the Culture Studies department will tell you that cultural construction is a slow and subtle process, and Media Effects are very real. There are many debates about the attack of one religion against another, and many defend themselves saying that they slammed all religions equally (Equal-Opporunity Offenders is the term, I believe). I hope to make the conversation about the sanctity of Religion in stead, irrespective of the type, and save religiousness from becoming a thing for the dull and the elderly.