Strings Behind The Curtain

Question of whether and how media influence self concept self identity and self evaluation as well as their impact on beliefs; attitude and behaviors underlines much research. Who is represented in media and how, groups and situation are portrayed and how they are excluded needs serious attention of the academic community who professes, preach and practice media in different capacities. Why one prefers to analyze the dynamics of mainstream media [electronics print] is because it influences the most of our lives yet we are rarely find time and space to express our attention in they way as it deserve the attention. We talk a lot about the quality of school, college, courses in order to provide the best education to our children by asking and diagnosing a lot, we send our wards to hospitals once we are sure of the quality and creditability of it, similarly we apply much of our time in selecting quality food products but at the same analytical and careful about the products and message media transmits to us which has far reaching consequences on our ways of thinking, decision-making in each and every aspect of our life. With their power to frame define and select aspect of the social world the mass media are a principal social and cultural institution.

The central position of media in everyday life ensures that symbols disseminated through the media became points of focus and interaction in the population. Interpretive approaches to media research focus on the premise that meaning is created in interaction with other.

Researcher’s talking these approaches imply that effect’s are contingent on the meaning is created and that these meaning are located not in media messages.

Qualitative researchers analyzing media processes have emphasized at least two issues. One is the notion that cultural meaning are not fixed in product’s but vary according to cultural, historical and social group context [Bloomer 1969]. Fish [1980] argues that reader’s crated meaning but do so the basis of interpretative community to which they belong. A second important issue in interpretive approaches to media focuses on the understanding that individual’s are not passive recipients of media. Years ago mill’s [1963] observed that people do not simply internalize dominant ideological messages but sometime resist them. He argued that people can resist by comparing alternative message in different media, comparing media message with their own life, or theirs message with the beliefs and behaviors of people in their social networks. Through this process people may denounce or rejects media message they contradicts their own experience. In the recent past one decade there has been phenomenal growth of media industry world over.

But does this growth have percolated to every section of society and do they have been portrayed that it can play the role of eye opener for all. Do they have been successful to do the justice to have-not’s of this country. Either it is the problem of rural India which constitutes nearly 70% of our population, children, uneducated youth, senior citizen, problems of the women and other disadvantaged groups. This symbolic annihilation of the disadvantaged groups have to struggle to project a publics self definition that is positive. [COLLINS-1991, ZOOMEN-1994].

A unique quality of media is their public’s pervasiveness and people’s knowledge that the images or ideas they see are also seen by many others, often millions of others. I addition individual’s believe that others are more strongly affected by media portrayals then they themselves are [Davison 1983, Perl off – 1993].

This believes reflects either a misperception of how other’s views are influenced by media or as Davison points out, perhaps an underestimation of the media influence on the self evidence for this belief – Known as the “third person – Effects” includes studies that people belief that other people’s children are affected by commercial more strongly than their own. How does belief that media images are powerful for other’s matter for individual? The third person effects suggests that effects of media in which content directly influences the self attitudes or behaviors may not be the only kind of influence. A complex indirect effect may also occur as people account for the effects of the pervasive imagery in media on other in their social network and are themselves influenced by perception of the way others see the media distorted world.

Media images play a big role in altering ideas of what is normative or ideal or what one thinks other believe is normative or ideal while offering additional pervasive standard of comparison that goes beyond local cultures.

Does the social responsibility of media as fourth pillar of democracy is being fulfilled? Does common man know that media is an industry run mostly by the capitalist where their sole motive is profit. The new capitalist class owns media to serve its business interest as it surround the power system more closely than any other institution. Propaganda agency manufactures consent and attitude of people at large to serve their business motive. They are in a better position to over power the thoughts of disadvantaged by alienating their voice from the mainstream media hence the already deprived is getting marginalized. They don’t care for you if you are obedient and subordinate and they care for the people who are trouble makers. They don’t care for people for people who are very poor who are potential care for people but silently and creative lead their lives. There are all sort of Craziness that sales high on the agenda of media pundits either it is power corridor, sex scandal, advertisement rich sports like tennis, cricket and sensationalism of all kinds. Expression of hate gets major attention than love, hostility [lingual, Ethnic] and aggressiveness gets more attention than the works of integration. Intimate relation gets less attention in comparison to deviant relation. Fundamentalists occupy the centre stage of media more than the spiritualists as the whole of network of terror market thrives its business prospects. Intolerance, Stress, Aversion is more suitable than calm, creative and unity. This sounds byte journalism has reached to a stage where even families of dead person of their loved ones are not left hounded. A remark by the father of a kidnapped boy that I am more traumatize by the question from media than to the sad limitation that one repeatedly teaches in media that if a man bites a dog only then it’s a news in media not the vice- versa. Selective omission and creating breaking news or unnecessarily dragging a marriage , love – affair too long and finally leading to very less curiosity to that news by the common- mass. If accountability of any institution can be analyzed why can’t be a serious effort be made to understand the stated and masked objective of the practicing media which affect us the most. How long we can continue with gospel truth media connotation if so many aberrations have percolated in this institution. Is not better to introspected from sociological, political, psychological, spiritual and media person perspective to achieve better in this Profession as what we are getting from it today. Is it not better to diagnose some of the pressing dilemma’s the media faces for the society at large rather than glorifying our dichotomies or anomies? Can there be a spiritual face of the media which express more in terms of unifying potential than the disintegrating. Can media reach to the last man in the society instead of celebrity – centric reporting. If one has to find solutions such queries there is an urgent need to come out with a holistic approach comprising intellectual’s from different stream put forward theirs views on an unified canvas so that our understanding of media can be richer than what it is now, of course this will be a tip of iceberg of this whole issue and a humble effort and further more such sincere attempts are needed to get a wider perspective of this whole issue. For this we need to conduct a seminar on this subject exchanging views from the cross-section of intellectuals.

Few question like,

1. Advertisement market share.

2. Growth of media as an industry.

3. The reach of media rural urban.

4. Issue in media capitalistics, social, moral, spiritual myth.

5. Research in media sector and other issue need a bit of highlight on your part.

Mass – Media and its Impact on Human Right of The Marginal – Senior Citizen’s, Children & The under privileged :-

The totalitarian regime established in the 1920’s and 1930’s grossly violated human rights in their own territories. The Second World War brought about massive abuse of human life and dignity and attempts to eliminate entire groups of people because of their race religion or nationality. Therefore international instruments were needed to codify and protect human rights, because respect for them was one of the essential conditions for world peace and prosperity. This conviction was reflected in and reinforce by the charter of United Nations signed on 26^th June 1945. the charter states the fundamental objective of the universal organization namely “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war and to reaffirm faith in fundamental Human Rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal right’s of men and women. Article of the charter state that one of the aims of United Nations is to achieve international co-operation in promoting and encouraging respect for fundamental freedoms for all without destination as to race, sex, language or religion thus enshrining the principal of non-discrimination. All United Nation member states must fulfill in good faith the obligation they have assumed under the charter of the United Nation, including the obligations to promote observance of human rights and to co-operate with the United Nation and other nation to attain this aim. A major step in drafting the International Bill of Human Right was realized on 10^th Dec 1948, when the general assembly adopted the Universal declaration of Human Right’s as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations. Govt. of India also enshrined in its constitution many articles that promotes equality before law: Social, Economic and ideological freedom to its citizen’s.

                                                  The preamble of our constitution which as amended in 1976 emphasizes to secure all its citizen’s Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in his concluding speech in the constitution Assembly: said “ Political democracy can’t last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognized liberty, equality and fraternity which are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one form the other is to detected the very purpose of democracy. Liberty can’t divorced from equality, equality can’t divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity.”

                                                       Guaranteeing of certain rights to each individual world is meaningless unless all inequality is removed from our social and cultural structure and each individual is assured of equality of status and opportunity for their best potential development.  Dr. Radha Krishnan once said “ Poor people who wonder about find no work, no wages and starve, whose lives are a continual round of sore affliction and pinching poverty, can not be proud of the constitution or its law.” Article 19(1) of our constitution provides all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression. But the impact of Mass – media in highlighting issues of various walks of our life is of immense importance. Despite of 60^th years of our Republic Day celebration inequalities have not been bridged instead it has increased in respect of our women talk the plight of the Aged, children and Dlits have not yet seen the light of the day. The majority member of such groups are still grouping in a dark era of malnutrition, mal- treatment discriminations of gender cast and community is still a real aspect of our social reality.

                                                 Question of why and how Mass –media influence the individual and its impact on society and policy needs a careful analysis of the subject. Mass – media is a powerful medium, and the symbols and messages it disseminates becomes point of focus and discussion among the population and policy makers. Media is not only a source of information dissemination but it is also a principal source of social and cultural transformation. The social change in a positive direction can take place it majority of its people ar5e satisfied involved, committed and identifies themselves with the nation building processes. Meaning is create4d in society with interaction and focal issue. People of disadvantaged groups do not have any major participation in mass – media message transmission hence they become passive recipient of media message. The vast majority of people constituting rural women folk, senior citizens and Dalits and the other disadvantaged groups have very less control over production of media message. In this age of globalization and capitalistic advancement majority of media houses are controlled by a selective  few capitalists all over the world and their master motive is to earn profit. Social emancipation can’t be achieved through selective representation of ideas and the people. The new capitalist class owns media to serve business interests as it surround the power system more closely than any other institutions. Fundamental Human Right of right speech and expression is catered through Mass – media agencies are in a better position to overpower the needs of disadvantaged group by voice  from becoming major points of discussion in the society. Media images play a big role in altering ideas of what is normative or ideal and disadvantaged group start to their real need. There is a convergence of fairly substantial evidence on causation of aggression among children by viewing violence.

                                              Symbolic interaction was one of the first social science theories to address questions of how we use culture to learn. This theory further describes that people give meaning to symbols and those meaning come to control those people. George Herbert Mead (1934) a university of Chicago philosopher and social activist argues that we use symbols to create our experience of consciousness (mind) our understanding of ourselves (self) and our knowledge of the lager social order (society). People’s interpretation and perception of the environment depends on communication Mass – media generated communication allows for the reduction of uncertainty without direct sensory experience. The media having a prime source of indirect experience and because of this reason have impact on construction of social reality. Different values that is more urban – elite capitalistic centric is presented as essential reality to the disadvantaged groups. The realities and need preferences are actually different for the disadvantaged groups but they have to become passive receivers of such messages further marginalized from the mainstream. Majority of disadvantaged group members are illiterate, unemployed and lacking basic amenities of life. They are caught in a dilemma of fulfilling technocratic needs of satisfying their basic needs of food, shelter and dignity. Useful social change is resisted by the elite media domination of capitalists, advertisers and political masters who cynically manipulate media content is their own interest.  

                                                     If you go to villages of India most of them are not connected to electricity but media reality projects on image that Indians have truly reached internet age. Our opinion leaders always try to project an image of India which is lopsided in reality. Our news papers and television channels devote significant energy and effort to highlight issues that concern the upper class and middle class over dramatized depiction not to the issue of serious social concern. Cast prejudice, gender discriminations, child labors bonded- labors, crime against rural women and other controversial issue that may demand corrective action on the part of government is selectively ignored by majority of our media. Does this explosion  of mobiles, E-mail, internet, electronic and print media enabling in terms of ability building measures in such disadvantaged groups.

                                           Our traditions are at a loss and effective interpersonal sharing for the elderly persons is being sacrificed in the name of style, fashion and other media created needs that have made their lives more miserable. The most important of the violence research offered increasingly useful insight into the Medias role in the studies carried out clearly demonstrate a correlation between viewing evidence  and aggressive behavior that is heavy viewers behave more aggressively than light viewers. Huston’s field experiments with preschool children and adolescents founds heightened aggression among viewers assigned to watch violent television or film under some conditions. Imitation is the direct mechanical reproduction of behavior.

                                         Identification on the other hand is “a particular form of imitation in which copying a model, generalized beyond specific acts, springs from wanting to be and trying to be like the model with respect to some broader quality (White 1572) the first serious look at leading through observation was offered by psychologist Neal Miller and Jhon Donal (1941). They described, people could imitate behaviors that they saw, and these behaviors would be reinforced and therefore learned.

                                           The social cognition through the use of media representations operates in one or all three ways (Bandura, 1994)

1)   Observational learning: -

                                   Consumers of representations can acquire news patterns of behavior by simply watching these representations.

2)   Inhibitory effects:-

                             Seening a model in a representation punished for exhibiting a certain behavior decreases the likelihood that the observers will make that response. It is as if viewers themselves are actually punished. Experimental studies using film and video of people being punished for various behaviors have shown that these representations can inhibit in observers such things as aggression exploratory behavior and antisocial interaction with peers.

3)   Disinhibitory Effect :-

                                          A media representation that depicts rewards for a threatening or prohibited behavior is often sufficient to increase the likelihood that the consumer of the representation will make that response.

            

Writing in 1994, Bandura summed the accumulated knowledge of social cognitive theory to conclude that television viewers “acquire lasting attitudes, emotional reactions and behavioral proclivities towards persons, places or things that have been associated with modeled emotional experiences.” (p. 75). What is it about specific presentations of media violence that encourage this acquisition through modeling? W. James Potter identified seven important contextual variables

Reward/ Punishment:- 

Rewards aggression is more frequently modeled. We know these to be disinhibitory and inhibitory effects respectively

Consequences:-

Mediated violence that is accompanied by portrayals of negative or harmful consequences produces less modeling.

Motive:-

Motivated media aggression produces greater levels of modeling and unjustified media violence results in less viewer aggression.

Realism:- 

Especially with boys, realistic media violence tends to produce more real world aggression.

Humor:-                  

Because it reduces the seriousness of the behavior humorously presented media violence leads to the greater probability that viewers will behave aggressively in real life.

Identification with Media Characters:-                                 

The more a viewer identifies with media characters the more likely it is that he or she will model the behaviors demonstrated by those characters.

Arsenal:-

Potter explained “ Emotional appeals can serve to increase the dramatic nature of the narrative and this can increase attentions positive dispositions towards the character using violence and higher level of arsenal.

It will not be appropriate to find the causal link of these children just to one source that is media rather other factors of parental behavior, their educational background and many other factors also play an impotent role. Value system, socio – cultural factors of discrimination and continued discrimination on nutritional and livelihood factors are also important contributors of negative behavior patterns among the children. The people of old age often called senior citizens are at a very difficulty juncture of their lives. Our social and traditional habits are decreasing with a rapid pace. Nuclear family system is on the verge of decay. Our respect for older people and the wisdom they hold have flatten prey to modern technological innovations of Mass – media. The informal social cultural time and interpersonal space has shrunk and its being replaced by easy entertainment and excitement presented by Mass – media. Mass – media are not an originator of the problems but they have certainly a big role to play preventing a problem being identified or being addressed in the public form. Social, political and economic elites maintain themselves in power through their control over media and cultural. It is often used to mislead the average and disadvantaged Common – Mass and encourage them to act against their own interests. The cultural and social interests of the under privileged in its true existence. One can always notice different and discriminating social realistic of the under privileged and the privileged or elites. The stories that dominate the prime time of our television networks or news papers headlines rarely provide space to these under or unprivileged citizen’s issue. Ritualistic tokenism is certainly followed in which some of the isolated issues concerning these groups are given same representation that their will being is also being taken care of properly.

                                               Social situations can create an awareness of problems that demand attention and such attention can be provided not by media alone but by the academia,  policy- makers and other powerful agent of our society. Real life opportunities to satisfy the needs of such disadvantaged groups must be given due importance if we want to achieve a goal of inclusive sustainable development. It is the duty of media to give more attention to vulnerable and marginal section of our society so that their concerns are handled in more effective ways. Better news coverage of conflict and problems of such marginal groups will be useful in reaching genuine solution to their problems. Difficulties encountered by such marginal groups need considerable highlight so that there Human Right are better protected. Lead stories have a greater agenda setting effect. Even people at large will become more sensitive and concerned about their plight.