Effects & Television

Television is often critcised for having a bad effect on viewers. There are those who see watching television as an entirely passive activity, requiring no interaction or thought processes on the part of the viewer. They believe that viewers may be manipulated by the messages they receive from television into chagning their spending habits, their behaviour and even their beliefs. These critics are using the hypodermic needle theory to interpret the relationship between television and its audience.

The Hypodermic Needle Model of media consumption

Fears about the power of propaganda, as spread by the mass media (at the time, of newspapers, magazines, radio & cinema) surfaced as long ago as the First World War, when governments strove to communicate with their citizens through advertising campaigns.

Many of the World War One posters were jingoistic, xenophobic, and contained representations of the enemy which were horrifically fantastical: German soldiers bayoneting babies, for instance. However, they demonstrated the power of the media to influence popular thinking, and the hypodermic needle effects model was born.

This basically suggests that the media can inject ideas directly into the minds of an audience.

The audience is totally passive, and does not process or engage with the information that they are receiving in any way. They believe what they hear/see/read and will change their behaviour accordingly.

This understanding of the relationship between text and audience continued into the 1950s. It undercuts much of the propaganda used in World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War, and is also used to explain why Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of The War Of The Worlds caused such genuine and widespread panic.

As television infiltrated millions of homes, there were many fears expressed about the potential power of this new and powerful medium to manipulate thinking. Advertisers certainly believed in television's capacity to change consumer habits, and in the US alone, were soon spending over a billion dollars per year advertising in this way.

However, as the twentieth century continued, both audiences' relationships with media texts and theorists' understanding of those relationships became more sophisticated. Studies were carried out to try and discover exactly how audiences responded to texts, and how much media texts could really change people's thinking.

Active Audiences

As we move into the 21st century, it is generally believed that audiences are much more active in their interpretation of texts. They will think about the messages relayed by a particular medium, and will decode the message in an individual way. Different members of an audience will read a media text differently, depending on their background, experience, other media texts they have encountered, age, mood and all the other factors which make us individuals rather than part of a homogenous mass.

Some theorists suggest that audiences choose to consume media texts for the following main reasons:

This is known as the uses and gratifications theory and informs much of modern media thinking.

TV Addiction

Nonetheless, out of all the different media, television is seen as the most powerful way of communicating to the most passive audience. TV audiences are time and time again described as 'couch potatoes', 'tv junkies'. We "stare mindlessly" at the "goggle box" and parents are constantly warned to limit their children's exposure to this medium.

Is television addicitive? Is it really bad for you? You will note from your reading that television is meant to have a particularly harmful effect on children. Read the following articles and begin to make up your own mind.

 

Further Reading

For a summary of Media Effects see p 42 of your textbook.

Television is seen as 'the enemy' by a wide range of people and organisations. But you have to make up your own mind.