1) Surveillance - No, not snooping, but the news and information role of the media
2) Interpretation
3) Linkage
4) Establishing Values
5) Entertainment
3) Linkage
The media can join together culturally different elements of society in a common goal or similar interest. Recently, linkage has been a response to cope with tragedy.
"As their campus churned with chaos, many Virginia Tech students, grief-stricken and bewildered, turned to the Internet to share
information and stories, ask questions and comfort each other.
On Facebook.com, a members-only social Web site popular among college students, dozens of groups were created, starting moments
after the shootings. Students updated information within existing groups, and created additional groups long into the night, and into
Tuesday."
The media can join together geographically separate groups.
The media can reinforce positive or negative values in society through wide exposure and constant repetition.
Positive Effects of Linkage
1) Enhances socialization (learning about others)
2) Enhances solidarity (strength in numbers)
3) Reinforces positive values
Remember this post 9/11 campaign, designed to create solidarity?
To be successful, the advertiser has to make a broad spectrum of teens want to buy the product. Gap is a mass market retailer not a "niche" retailer. As a result, it links together many different teens in this commercial.
In a free society, people can form groups for good or bad. In the past, the influence of a specific group was limited by the group's lack of access to mass media. As I mentioned in an earlier presentation, the Internet provides unlimited opportunities to influence mass audiences for minimum expense.
The poster on the right, from the late 1930's Germany, reads "The Jew: The inciter of war, the prolonger of war." Its purpose was to create Aryan solidarity and link the Jews to German problems.
The organization below tracks web sites devoted to "hate".
Our own beliefs are validated if others believe the same thing.
"Anyway, what's wrong with a little honesty, even when conveyed with brass knuckles? There's nothing wrong with a
wakeup call -- however unlikely its recipients will heed it.
The wrong part, if any, is this: putting it on TV. Putting it on TV can be cruel. Which makes "American Idol" a pretty cruel
show. If it weren't, the most appalling contestants would be weeded out beforehand, safely out of view -- not hand-picked
to face the judges' on-camera scorn."
"I think reality TV may be symptomatic of a broader trend toward cultural nastiness that crept up on us with the advent of Jerry, Maury, Ricki, Montel and the other professional talkers who specialize in bleeping and screaming,
as "guests" are subjected to verbal assaults from former spouses or secret gay admirers. (In the notorious Jenny Jones case, an actual off-camera murder ensued.) The tears and curses and venomous exchanges make any outlandish soap opera plot pale by comparison.
But the question remains: what makes Americans watch? Is it a kind of bizarre revival of slapstick, a banana-peel joke raised to a surreal pitch? Is it an offshoot of the politics of accusation, exposé, sleaze and attack ads that dominated the Clinton years? Is Monica Lewinsky the mother of Fox? Is this what TV is all about for today's undergraduates?"
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