Media Do Not Have Us On String Hugh Mackay
Sun Herald
Sunday March 25, 2007
THE media are regularly attacked for their negative influence on society, especially for lowering the moral tone by being too permissive, increasing the level of violence in the community and, recently, for being part of the "dumbing down" of Australia. This is a big call: can we find the evidence to justify it?
Many of us persist in the naive belief that when we open a newspaper or turn on the TV, we are like blank slates on which the media - especially the advertisers - write their persuasive messages. Even if we believe we ourselves are immune to these insidious effects, we still like to claim that the media exert a powerful influence on everyone else."Advertising makes you buy things you don't want - well, not me, but lots of other gullible people." "The media tell people what to think." "I'm doing the right thing by my kids, but a lot of parents let their kids be far too influenced by what they see on television."It's tempting to characterise ourselves as media victims, and I hate to spoil the fun. But perhaps we are in danger of using this argument as a cop-out: what about our own part in shaping the society we live in (and who controls the off button, anyway)? In fact, the effects of the media are less frightening than we imagine.Let's start with the biggest bogey of all: subliminal advertising. This is the theory that advertisers are so smart, they've developed ways of influencing us without our even being aware of it. They flash messages on the screen so quickly, they lodge in our subconscious minds."Subliminal", of course, means "below the threshold of perception", so it's a big idea. But is it possible? The theory arose from an experiment that was supposed to have been conducted in the US in 1956. It was reported in a journal article that when subliminal ads for ice-cream were flashed onto the screen of a New Jersey cinema, this increased ice-cream sales at interval.It was such an intriguing idea many researchers repeated the experiment, but no one seemed able to reproduce those amazing results. Then, in 1972, what many researchers had long suspected was finally revealed to be true: the whole thing was a hoax. Subliminal advertising doesn't work.But there's a persistent belief that advertising has almost mystical powers, in spite of some strong evidence to the contrary. Before Germany was reunified, for instance, alcohol consumption was much heavier in East Germany, where there was no advertising, than in West Germany where alcohol was heavily advertised.Contrary to our beliefs about the effects of TV programs on the level of community violence, research has shown that when TV is introduced to a city the rate of violent crime goes down - partly because when people are at home watching TV, they're not outside bashing each other.(But that's a complicated issue and we'll return to it in a future column.)I'm no apologist for the media, but it saddens me to hear people - especially parents - talking as if the media have more effect on us than we have on each other. There's certainly no evidence for that.We choose what media to consume, and we take whatever we want out of those encounters. What we mostly want is something to distract, stimulate or tranquillise us, or to comfort us by reinforcing our prejudices or indulging our fantasies. Brainwashing? I don't think so.What do the media do to us? Wrong question. Try this one instead: what do we do with the media?Email your ethical dilemma to moralmaze@fairfax.com.au
© 2007 Sun Herald