Gerald Peterson wrote:
> I have used the "killing us softly" film...I am wondering if others have
>explored in class the empirical bases of the conclusions drawn from the
>films--regarding the relationship between media images and presentations
>and actual violence, sexual abuse, rape...
>
It is extremely difficult to verify experimentally the effects of sexist
advertising on our culture. We can identify plenty of examples of teens
copying what they have seen on MTV but this constitutes anectodal
evidence, good for illustrative examples but little else. Laboratory
experiments on television effects are generally limited to students and
only a few hours of stimulus exposure--hardly suitable for understanding
long-term exposure in a diverse population where the television is only
one of several concurrent stimuli during exposure. And laboratory
experimentation tells us little about pervasive effects of media
exposure upon contemporary culture. Rather, we get findings along the
lines of: women react negatively to nude female models in ads while men
react more positively. Or that sex in advertising captures our
attention but often detracts from memory of the ad content (product name
and relevant information).
What we need are large scale field experiments. These exist in the form
of marketing projects where several test cities receive exposure to test
ads while control cities do not. But rather than isolate psychological
variables for testing, intact ad/promotion packages are being assessed
and the dependent variables are generally limited to relevant sales data.
Perhaps the best that we can hope for are the correlational studies
regarding degree of media exposure, type of media exposure, and viewer
characteristics (e.g., violence-prone individuals watch more media
violence, and teen smoking increases following an increase in smoking in
teen-oriented films). But these studies leave open the question as to
whether the media leads or simply mirrors popular culture. It is truely
frustrating to attempt to pin down media effects with anything
approaching strong evidence.
--Dave
___________________________________________________________________
David E. Campbell, Ph.D. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Psychology Phone: 707-826-3721
Humboldt State University FAX: 707-826-4993
Arcata, CA 95521-8299 www.humboldt.edu/~campbell/psyc.htm
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