Studying The Media

"Crime through the imitation"- I looked into this quote from 'Studying the media' and the theorists behind it Peterson and Thurstone (1993)

Effects of the media as documented in the above book

• Short term behavioural effects such as when children imitate what they have seen


• Emotional effects such as being frightened, aroused or excited.


• Ideological effects, how representations of violence may effect ideas and attitudes- what is acceptable, who has a right to use violence to whom etc... These are long term effects and therefore cannot be assessed through research

I also looked into Albert Bandura and his bobo doll experiment. He stated that children are likely to copy adults and that crimes that they commit cannot really be their fault, but rather the media's because of the influence they have over the child initially. The picture above shows this.

Media Theory Lesson

Notes typed up from Friday 7th November lesson on media theory.

1. Hypodermic Syringe Theory
This injects ideas into the consumers mind hence the 'syringe' in the title. Audiences do not question these ideas and go along with these ideas willingly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodermic_needle_model gives more information on the influence it has in the world of media.

2. Step flow
Opinion leaders who influence what the public may believe on a certain issue.
Eg: Readers of the Daily Mirror may respect their viewpoint and therefore accept what they say. If the paper said children should be locked away for committing crime, the readers would agree with this.
http://www.cw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Mass%20Media/Two_Step_Flow_Theory-1.doc/ is an academic article giving a debate over whether opinion leaders should always force an opinion on an audience

3. Culmination (or Cultivation)
Years of watching violence in the media, desensities you to it.
http://1stslackerz.blogspot.com/2008/05/video-game-violence-and-real-world.html This blogspot is from a student who did a project on my topic a few years ago. She discusses in a detailed arguement, the pros and cons of desensitisation on children

4. Uses and Gratifications
This goes against the hypodermic syringe theory. It argues that audiences have different uses for the media- watching television, reading a newspaper and that we choose what we want to watch/ read.

5. Reception analysis
This theory concentrates on the audience as an independant body and how they influence or read the media (also known as decoding the media) - this can be determined by mood, upbringing, age, gender and even something as simple as what sort of a day you've had!

6. Reading a text/ watching television
Dominant- otherwise known as hegemonic
Negotiated-otherwise known as neutral
Oppositional- counter hegomonic

7. Representations
Societyand the individuals representation, the stereotype of people and places and how these have changed over time.

8. Good websites
Here are a few websites that have good information about media theory

• www.theory.org.uk- academic articles/journals about media and identity
• www.googlescholar.co.uk - academic essays and ideas/opinions

Carl's Blog

This is the link to Carl's blog so that I can access and share my opinions and findings with other students across my course.

Carl's Blog

Promotion of Child Crime?

Today I accessed www.youtube.com to try and find videos that would give me more information I found an ITN News Report which was shocking as it was about a website that advises children how to fight and commit crime.

The website in question is Little Hooliganz as seen above.

The press at the moment is trying to get the public behind them. The link below takes me to articles about the website and a forum where people can sign a petition for the website to be shut down.

http://www.littlehooliganz.co.uk/

Sally's Blog

This is the link to Sally's blog where I will be able to share my opinions and findings with other students that are doing the same macro subject as myself

Sally's Blog

Media Magazine Research

Today in order to make sure that I could find plenty of research I looked through the Media Magazine that my college has archived since September 2002. 

September 2003 Media Magazine

Article name: Why should we study digital games?

Writer: Andrew Burn, Diane Carr and Gareth Schott

Are games a 'good thing' or a 'bad influence'?

Quotes: 'They are also those that are concerned by the notion that games negatively affect their users. Games have been vilified in the popular press for their supposed violence. Much of the apparent evidence for the link is is founded on poorly conceived or simplistic research methods, generally combined with a very narrow understanding of what constitutes play, or a game, or violence. There is no compelling reason to single games out as having a greater 'influence' than television, for example. "

I also found a link to a forum website that lets children have a few- I also used the links down the right hand side, I found this by initially going to http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk

Macro topic- Initial ideas

I would like to research into how children who have committed a crime are influenced and perceived by the media. My initial ideas include:-

• Looking into different examples of child crime, popular news reports
• Researching to how the media can influence children to commit the crime in the first place (through the use of language)
• How children are perceived by the media and the law and how public opinion is similar or in contrast to this.

In order to find out more information on this topic area I would try and look into all the following areas:-

Primary Research

• Interview with a child who has committed a crime
• Adult or teenage convicts opinions on child crime and sentencing- (is the media protecting children or not?)
• Editor of a law magazines opinion
• Lecturer of law's opinion
• Questionnaires to members of focus group

Secondary Research

• News reports and articles
• Game company statements about how they do/ do not influence children]
• Websites that allow public to give an opinion
• Fictional books or magazines about child crime such as 'Border Crossing' by Pat Barker
• Legal information and how this is conveyed by the media in being right or wrong

Other Research

• Images of child crime and how this may affect others
• Statistics of how many boys or girls commit crime and how they adhere or subvert the media's expectations of gender
• A question of parenting and the issues brought up by the media on responsibility

My idea for a hypothesis is "I aim to investigate and prove that the media portray children in a negative way if they commit a crime."