Media Treatment of the Death of MJ

I think its quite useful to see how the media have treated the death of Michael Jackson. Will we have a realistic appraisal of his life? A deification similar to the treatment of Princess Di? Will they turn on him like a pack of hounds after all the slur and gossip? I think we know the answer already - but it will be interesting to see how it develops over time. Perhaps this is all a little unfeeling? But I don't think so. Jackson played the media game as well as anybody.

First up are the BBC. A typically unambiguous report.

The Mirror has a tabloid slant - Wham bam thank you mam!

Sky News have a range of reports but dwell on the technology.

My favourite is the Morning Star where you wont find anything. Hurrah!

Even IMDB get in on the act.

Those antipodeans at the Sydney Morning Herald concentrate on the his wealth or lack of it.

Meanwhile at CNN they are 'up-to-date' and are already talking about the autopsy.

Take a look through all of these reports and more and see what you think.

Video Game Addiction

Addiction Behavior: What causes "internet gaming addiction"?

How To Beat Your Children At Computer Games

How To Beat Your Children At Computer Games (Technology & Cars: Video Game Culture)

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BTEC Media Handbook

Please download the handbook to find out about the Level 3 Media Production course

Btec Media Handbook

View more PDF documents from heathparkmedia.

Digital Britain Report

Rather essential reading for any media and film students is the just published Digital Britain report. This sets out the Government vision for communication issues. Areas covered include:

• PSB
• Super-fast Broadband
• Media Literacy
• Piracy

Read the report to widen your knowledge of these areas.

Media Debates Exam Questions - Censorship

June 2008

How well does the current system of film classification and censorship serve the British public?

"Our violent, sex-obsessed society is a direct result of the violent and sex-obsessed films that we have allowed to dominate our cinemas and televisions." Discuss this view.

June 2007

Discuss the arguments for and against stricter censorship of film.

Consider the reasons why the criteria for film classification might change over time.

June 2006

"Censorship of film is to be avoided at all costs." Discuss this view.

Effects Models

Key Theory 1: The hypodermic syringe

There have been a number of theories over the years about how exactly the media work on the mass audience. Perhaps the most simple to understand is the hypodermic syringe. This has been very popular down the years with many people who fear the effects of the media.

According to the theory the media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who as a powerless mass have little choice but to be influenced- in other words, you watch something violent, you may go and do something violent, you see a woman washing up on T.V. and you will want to do the same yourself if you are a woman and if you are a man you will expect women to do the washing up for you.

This theory has been particularly popular when people have been considering violence in films. There have been films such as Straw Dogsand The Evil Dead which have been banned partly because of a belief that they might encourage people to copy the crimes within them but on the other hand no-one has ever really claimed that every-one will be affected by these texts in the same way. Many people have therefore seen the theory as simplistic because it doesn't take any account of people's individuality and yet it is still very popular in society particularly for politicians looking for reasons why society has become more violent which can't be blamed on them. A good example of this is Dumblane- there has never been a real suggestion that Thomas Hamilton watched a lot of violent films but a kind of woolly thinking has allowed newspapers and MPs to link his dreadful crime to video violence.

Another interesting example of the theory in action is the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Before every one of his murders, he watched a clip from his favourite film in order to get himself excited. This is the kind of fact that might seem toi prove the hypodermic syringe theory but the film was Star Wars and no-one has ever suggested that that should be banned- clearly the film meant very different things to him to what it means for us.

Key Theory 2: The Culmination Theory

Because of the difficulty of proving the effects of individual media texts on their audience a more refined version of the theory has been created called the culmination mode. According to this, while any one media text does not have too much effect, years and years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence, years and years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make you less bothered about it in real life.

One difficulty with both of these ways of looking at the media is that they are very difficult to prove either way. Many people have a general sense that the media do affect our behaviour and advertisers certainly justify their fees by working on this assumption, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to actually prove how much effect if any a text might have on an audience. In fact researchers have spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to prove the validity of the culmination theory with no success- this of course does not mean that there is no truth in it as an idea.

Key Theory 3: The two step flow

A theory that springs from this idea is called the two step flow. The idea of this is that whatever our experience of the media we will be likely to discuss it with others and if we respect their opinion, the chances are that we will be more likely to be affected by it. (The theory calls these people opinion leaders.)

Key Theory 4: Uses and Gratifications

This is probably the most important theory for you to know. According to uses and gratification theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. In other words, when we encounter a media text, it is not just some kind of mindless entertainment- we are expecting to get something from it: some kind of gratification.

But what does this actually mean? What kinds of gratification can we be getting? Researchers have found quite a few, but there are four main ones:

1. Information- we want to find out about society and the world- we want to satisfy our curiosity. This would fit the news and documentaries which both give us a sense that we are learning about the world.
2. Personal Identity- we may watch the television in order to look for models for our behaviour. So, for example, we may identify with characters that we see in a soap. The characters help us to decide what feel about ourselves and if we agree with their actions and they succeed we feel better about ourselves- think of the warm feeling you get when you favourite character triumphs at the end of a programme.
3. Integration and Social Interaction- we use the media in order to find out more about the circumstances of other people. Watching a show helps us to empathise and sympathise with the lives of others so that we may even end up thinking of the characters in programme as friends even though we might feel a bit sad admitting it! At the same time television may help us to get on with our real friends as we are able to talk about the media with them.
4. Entertainment- sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.
   

You can probably recognise yourself in some of these descriptions and not surprisingly uses and gratification theory has become quite popular amongst media critics. It is important to remember with this theory that it is likely that with any media text you enjoy, you will be getting a number of Gratifications from it and not just one

However, despite this popularity amongst critics, there have also been criticisms made of some features of the theory. First of all, it ignores the fact that we do not always have complete choice as to what we receive from the media. Think, for example, about your family who may end up having to listen to the same music as you sometimes. Similarly, you don't have that much choice about the posters that you see on your way to college however objectionable you may find some of them.

A second problem relates to this last example. The poster that you see on a billboard, may be extremely sexist. However, you clearly cannot choose a different poster that you want to see that you might find more pleasant. If you think about it, this problem also affects us in our other encounters with the media- we are generally having to choose the media that we consume from what is available. This undermines the idea of uses and gratifications- we may not all have the same potential to use and enjoy the media products that we want. in society there are in fact plenty of minorities who feel that the media does not provide for them the texts that they want to use.

One of the difficulties of assessing uses and gratifications like this is that people won't often be aware of the real uses of a text in their lives- how many people would admit for example that they watched a certain program because they were lonely even if that were the truth.

Arguments against Film Censorship

There is a difference between an argument that disagrees with all of the three statements above (i.e. a view that suggests films are not influential) and an argument that asserts that films can influence, but that citizens should not be all treated as though they cannot interpret filmic images safely.

What is really at stake is the assumed link between viewing and behaviour. This is referred to as the 'media effects debate'.

THE EFFECTS DEBATE

This debate rests on whether or not people agree with the 'effects model'. This way of understanding the relationship between film and viewer is grounded in BEHAVIOURIST Psychology which examines taught behaviour and 'stimulus-response'. In this framework, viewers of violent images take part in various tests. These determine the extent that people's likelihood to respond to certain situations violently is increased, as a result of exposure to violent images.

However, this approach has been refuted by those who think that this way of examining media violence is 'topsy-turvy'. That is, looking first at film violence and then at the social problem of violence as an effect is less useful than to look at the social problem first and research violent behaviour and the experiences and psychological profiles of violent people.

David Gauntlett, a much publicised critic of the effects model suggested that this approach is like implying that the solution to the number of road traffic accidents in Britain would be to lock away one famously bad driver from Cornwall! In other words, the effects model tries to approach things the wrong way.

Read Gauntlett's 'Ten Things Wrong with the Media Effects Model'
(A bit long but well worth the effort)

The many academics who have opposed the effects model have all argued against its central thesis - that we receive media messages passively, that violent films have a causal effect in the same way that cigarettes harm the lungs. While effects experiments and hypotheses have offered 'spins' on this notion, they have all tended to assume this passivity.

Another outspoken critic of the effects model and the justification for censorship that it offers, is Mark Kermode. It is useful to look at two arguments he has put forward against censoring films. Kermode argues that, to the true horror fan, the pleasure of the genre lies in the ironic, excessive send-up nature of 'graphic' scenes.

Hence, the horror fan is a sophisticated 'reader' of film references. Horror can offer a post-modern approach to film (where horror films all relate to each other in what is essentially an intertextual game). This means that nobody is more aware that horror films are not real than the viewers who the censors are trying to 'protect'. To take this argument to its logical conclusion (and it is up to you to decide whether you agree), the only people truly qualified to judge how harmful a horror film might be, are people who have seen other horror films and have viewed than with the sophisticated engagement that only a fan is capable of.

Kermode claims that the reason for the difference of opinion between censors and genre fans is not because horror fans have become hardened or insensitive to violence through years of exposure to sadistic material. Rather, the experienced horror fan understands the material through knowledge of a history of genre texts and this actually makes any sense or arousal, sadistic or otherwise, unlikely.

Have a look at the Kermode Uncut section at the Channel 4 website.

Arguments for Film Censorship

Although the central debate is about the rights and wrongs of censorship the vast majority believe that there is a 'minimum standard' that supports censorship in any event. This minimum standard supports censorship where the offending film:

1. Involves non-consensual sex and/or sexual violence

2. Involves the ill-treatment of animals and/or child actors

Beyond these two points we have to consider a debate that revolves around censorship and its impact on responsible adults. Those who believe in some form of film censorship hold the view that censorship protects the moral values that are prevalent in society, thus it reflects our values.

The counter-argument is that censorship imposes the values of certain people, who do not necessarily respect the rest of us, and it assumes that we are not capable of mature, safe responses to 'immoral' material.

Most people's views on censorship depend on the context. There is a kind of continuum - at one end there is the view that media, including cinema, influence people and teach behaviour, like the hypodermic needle injecting 'effects' into passive viewers. At the other end, there is the anti-censorship view, which feels that we are able to understand texts as works of fiction or art; if an individual commits an act of violence in response to a media experience, then the psychological condition of the perpetrator is the problem, not the film. In between are those of us who think that classification and information is needed and those who believe that some kinds of films might be 'harmful', but that others are not.

One famous advocate of censorship was the late Mary Whitehouse. For many years she lobbied for the banning of films and TV programmes, on the grounds that media images of sex and violence are in part responsible for the decline of moral standards in society.

Whitehouse claimed that it is indisputable that young people are vulnerable to harmful screen images. She used accounts from psychologists and researchers to apparently prove the link between violent acts and exposure to violent images. In particular, Whitehouse decried films where violence is depicted without moral context, or where violence is not punished. In this sense, those concerned about the effects of film images differentiate between the contexts for such images (i.e. the rationale for, or the justification for the violence).

Whitehouse believed that the burning issue is one of protection, arguing that it is a matter of getting filmmakers to accept a sense of their own responsibility for the health and welfare of the whole of society, especially for the welfare of children. She may be a rather extreme example of the pro-censorship lobby (and here we have dealt only with violence, remember there are at least six other criteria which have been used to scrutinise film content), but her views do resonate, in part at least, with those who believe that:

• Films are potentially influential
• Viewers of films receive messages, which, in some cases, they need to be protected from
• There are certain people who are capable of judging what others should be able to see

Key Areas of Film Censorship

Censorship has tended to operate around the following key kinds of examples:

SEXUAL CONTENT: Cinema has always had a problem with this area. Damaged Goods (1919) was not given a certificate because of its frank discussion of venereal disease. Likewise, more recent (ish) films like Emanuelle (1974), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Ai No Corrida (1976) have also caused controversy.

VIOLENCE.  Reservoir Dogs (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994) both fell foul of the censor at video release stage. Entertainment Weekly even rated Natural Born Killers as the 8th most controversial film ever. Some films like A Clockwork Orange (1973) were removed from distribution at the behest of the director - in this case Stanley Kubrick - when he was concerned over copy-cat acts of violence and threats to his family.

HORROR. Horror in itself isn't so much the controversial area as the subject matter portrayed. Sometimes horror can involve violence or blasphemy or poor taste and this is the controversial part. Sometimes films like The Exorcist (1973) can involve all of them as well as having a child actor in a key role to add weight to the concerns.

DRUGS. The portrayal of drug taking in film has often led to accusations that this will incite young and vulnerable people to experiment with hard drugs. Films like Pulp Fiction (1994)and Trainspotting (1996)are often cited as examples.

TASTE. A hard category to define. Many films have been cut for this reason e.g. Night and Fog (1959), contained unacceptable documentary footage of corpses in Nazi concentration camps.

POLITICS. A controversial area. Films were refused certification on fears that political content could lead to public unrest. Fear of revolution led to banning of Battleship Potemkin (1926) because of its pro-communist slant. More recently films like JFK (1991) caused controversy when some people said the film was implying a truth that wasn't there. The film was not cut in any way however.

BLASPHEMY. Local councils used powers to ban Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)because of its comical treatment of the story of Jesus. Again the more recent Passion of the Christ (2004) was denounced in many quarters rather than being cut.

MORAL PANIC. This term describes the hysterical reaction that mainstream society sometimes has to groups of people who challenge conventions and behave in ways that threaten the status quo. Films that offer an insight into such subcultures are often banned or edited lest they serve to encourage people to participate. Example The Wild One (1954) starring Marlon Brando as a Hell’s Angel. It was banned as a bad example to the young.

The examiner suggests you look for three examples of every type, including current examples where you can.

Key Issues in Censorship

The key themes to revise for this topic area are:

1. History of film censorship 

2. Different motives for censorship 

3. Arguments for and against censorship 

4. Debates containing effects theories

You will need to relate these to contemporary examples.

The main areas of debate surround issues like:

What is censorship and why does it happen?

What are the different kinds of self-censorship or what different kinds of material get censored?

Is censorship necessary; are there some kinds of material that need to be censored more than others?

Which kinds of material should be censored to certain groups of people and which banned altogether?

Questions Questions

Scheduling and Production

Ensure you have a knowledge of the producer broadcasters and publisher broadcasters and the types of programming they offer. Examples of programmes, target audiences, successes.

Look at the schedule time-slots on the handout. What is said about each of the slots? What kind of programming is shown in each one? Be aware of the terminology such as prime-time, lifestyle, niche audiences etc

Regulation

Look at the Ofcom website.

What are the legal duties of Ofcom?

How are they funded?

What is their role in television broadcast licensing?

What is the broadcasting code?