Tag Archive for: instructor-none-2

When watching the video, What is Culture?, by Terry Dugan, he states that culture is something that is learned. I agree with his statement because everyone learns a different culture through their family, friends, school, work, etc.. Although, we all have various individual cultures, Dugan discusses the melting pot and the idea that we, as a society, are becoming a dominant culture. Further, he discussed the eight elements of communication. Personally, what I found to be interesting is that there is noise that can block a certain audience from receiving the message, this noise is something that is personal.

Then, when reading Chapter 6 of Connecting Social Problems and Popular Cultures, I learned that many believe media to be linked to sex. Specifically, many believe that media has increased sexual activity within adolescents. But, Sternheimer knocks down this idea by explaining that the rate of high school students participating in sexual intercourse has decreased by 7% since 1991, and the use of condoms has increased by 13%. From this, Sternheimer is able to clearly argue that media is not linked to an increase in sexual activity within adolescents. Due to the mere fact that we see sex within media today because sex sells, I believe that society assumes sexual activity has increased because it is advertised more often.

Furthering my reading to Chapter 8 of Connecting Social Problems and Popular Cultures, I learned about obesity, anorexia, bulimia, and health hazards. Such as many linked sexual activity within adolescents to the media, many also link obesity to the media as well. People believe that media is responsible for obesity, due to the amount of time people spend watching TV. Sternheimer also explains the link found between eating disorders and magazines. Although, I do believe the images of the models within magazines can have an effect on both men and women, I do not believe that media is the direct link to eating disorders.

In chapter 6 of Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture, Sternheimer discusses the controversial topic of pop culture’s promiscuity and the effects it has on today’s youth. She presents the argument that although sex may be more present than ever in popular culture, young people are not nearly as sexually active as many fear. The horror stories we see in the news regarding promiscuity often support the theory that kids these days have no morals as a result of the media. However, these stories ignore the vast majority of young people who are sexually responsible or do not participate in sexual activity at all. Sternheimer believes that social structure is to blame for “sexual revolution”, not popular culture. Sex is the media has always existed and always been controversial. In the early 20th century, politicians and activists demanded censorship, leading to the Hays Code. The Hays Code restricted any media content that was not considered to be “wholesome”. This was not just sexual content, but also content that showed interracial couples and questioned corporate America. I am currently in another summer school class that focuses on how the LGBT community is represented in film. I learned from this class that the Hays Code banned the entertainment industry from having any form or suggestion of homosexuality in films. While filmmakers were forced to comply with these ridiculous rules if they wanted their films to be seen, they still found ways to incorporate homosexuality into their storylines in sneaky ways until the Hays Code lost its power within the entertainment industry in the 1960’s. Similar to homosexuality, teen sex has and always will exist. Censoring the way natural human behaviors like these are represented in the media will not change the fact that they will always be present in our society, it only creates inaccurate and harmful stereotypes and assumptions. Sternheimer explains, “just as sexuality seems like a new invention for each generation of teens, the fear of teen sexuality is renewed in each adult generation” (2013, p. 148). Even though most members of the older generations do not discuss the sex lives they had when they were younger, most became sexually active at the same time kids today do. What has changed is the expectations of who teens are. Before industrialization, teens joined the work force, got married, and had kids at a much younger age than people in today’s world. Sexual behavior still began at the same time, it was just more likely that there would be a wedding before. Today, many expect those who are sexually mature to refrain from sexual activity before “socially defined adulthood.” These are unfair and unrealistic expectations to have. Sternheimer claims that the media has reflected the shifting attitudes that society has as time goes on. Instead of it being shameful, sex today is out in the open. Much of our research on teen sex continues to obsess over popular culture, ignoring the complicated influences of politics, race, and poverty. Similar to studies on violence and video games, researchers struggle to find negative connections between sexual behavior and the media. In fact, studies have shown a decline in teen sexual activity over the past decade. I would even argue that the media has made young people more knowledgeable about sex, something that many parents feel to uncomfortable to discuss with their kids. For example, the show Teen Mom made me realize how hard it would be to have a child at such a young age and inspired me to make the effort to get contraception. Overall, sexual behavior in teens has not changed much. What has changed is the way that we talk about it.

In chapter 8 of Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture, Sternheimer gives an opposing perspective on the idea that the media is to blame for health hazards such as obesity and eating disorders. She argues that the cause of obesity, (along with many other topics discussed in this book) is a much more complicated issue that can’t be scapegoated on popular culture. Blame is often put on the way unhealthy food product market to children and too much time spent in front of the television.  As a society, we should be looking at large scale structural patters to understand  how this epidemic has gotten so severe over the past few decades. Sternheimer beautifully explains that, “While turning off the TV seems like an easy solution, it fails to take into account the complex realities of today’s health care needs and economic realities of many families dependent on cheap, high fat food living in neighborhoods with few safe spaces for children to play” (2013, p. 303). While obsessing over TV being the source of obesity in America, we completely miss the big picture. Sternheimer also discusses how eating disorders relate to the media. Contrary to popular belief, she argues that only a very small minority of people with eating disorders develop them as a result of skinny models who appear in the media. Studies have shown that many women with eating disorders have used their disorders a coping mechanism to deal with abuse, poverty, racism, homophobia, and other stresses (Sternheimer, 2013, p. 209). Although the fashion industry and Hollywood are infamous for employing women with eating disorders, our obsession with skinny is nothing new. For hundreds of years women have been trying different things to make themselves meet the “skinny beauty standard”. It is important to question why extreme thinness became associated with beauty in the first place. Yes, we see skinny in the media all the time, but the idealization of skinny has existed for far longer than the present day media. In conclusion, Sternheimer explains that “while we are busy worrying about what’s advertised on television or how thin models and celebrities are, America’s health care system is in a state of emergency” (2013, p.211). The biggest threat to the youth of our nation is limited access to healthcare. While some still want to believe that we live in the best nation in the world, we are ranked 37th in the world for healthcare and it is only continuing to get worse. Instead of wasting time focusing on somewhat petty factors that carry little weight in the overall influence of our country’s health, we must focus on recognizing the realities so that real change can be implemented.

         Dugan believes that convergence is more of a threat to democracy than symbiosis in my opinion. I felt that the first video had plenty of benefits of media and symbiosis. While the second one might have confused me a bit because I felt it was a little harder to engage in. I thought Dugan had some great information to share, I just felt a little overwhelmed and at times easily lost in what he had to say. I also had trouble locating what his opinions were on democracy and its threats. I felt that there were more benefits than threats of the media in Dugan’s perspective. Did anyone notice any negative opinions or threats that stood out to them in these videos? The only threat that I could point out in my opinion would be the lack of information that media provides to society is hurting us. This is because people do not have all the information they need to make accurate decisions. The sources that they use are not as credible due to the lack of research.

      In chapter 6, Sternheimer proposes a great question, “ do representations of sexuality encourage teens to become sexually active?” (Tollefson, 2016, p. 139).This question is actually quite interesting to me because I did a research study based on this idea. I feel that the representation and images these young pop stars display, in fact, sexualizes their image. These stars are idols and have many teen fans and of course the trends that they set, many will follow. I think that the clothes they wear, such as the crop tops and tiny shorts, that we see becoming more popular in teen culture, definitely sends the wrong message. Any comments or thoughts on this question and how it can affect their health? Sternheimer also brings up a good point and comments “don’t let TV be your teenagers main source of sex education” (Tollefson, 2016, p. 140). Especially with shows that we see today that are very popular such as “Teen Mom” or “Sixteen and pregnant”, these shows are not an ideal representation, although they attempt to be. For me personally, growing up in a very cultural and strict home, sex was not a topic we ever discussed. Growing up, I didn’t find out about sex education from my parents nor did I ever want to ask. I think this is because my parents portrayed this topic as inappropriate and them being so uptight on the topic made it very uncomfortable for my sisters and I to want to ask them questions.

           I believe that this has a huge connection with health and media. If parents are not informing their children and providing them with the proper education it can be very harmful to their health. They might not take the proper steps to being safe or protected if they are sexually active, because they were not taught. Dugan touches on the idea that the media provides us a lack of information and I believe it is the same with parents. They are not having the sex talk with their kids and if they do, I would imagine the majority of households do not go into detail. Therefore, they too are providing their kids with an insufficient amount of proof and information, just as the media does with us.

        Chapter 8 focuses on the health issues that media has caused among many individuals, such as, eating disorders, beauty images, and obesity. Obesity was a factor that stood out the most to me. Obesity is a great example of media and health. It also connects with what we have been learning in this module, from the lack of information Dugan discusses, to Sternheinmer’s connection on how the media is harmful to our health. If Dugan were to comment on this I believe that he would mention that the media is at fault for some of these health issues because they do not provide or support information to these issues. The media is harmful to our health. If TV shows aired more educated based and informative programs then maybe people wouldn’t feel the need to binge watch so much. I think Sternheimer would agree with this idea because in Chapter 8 she links the issues of obesity to the amount of TV consumed by those individuals. All these issues tie into why media and health have a connection. Obesity has a connection to the media which affects your personal health. If people are spending too much time watching TV instead of exercising outdoors then this may become routine. Dr. Christina Pabers focuses on the body’s need to restore balance. While someone is sitting on the couch binge watching they may feel the need to take a short  walk to the kitchen to seek some comfort snacks. After a long day of work someone may find it more relaxing to come home and binge watch on their Netflix series. This might best pair well with a bowl of popcorn and in order to satisfy salty, it needs a sweet treat, so what better idea  then to grab a bowl of ice cream. Imagine that someone is so hooked on their show they may not want to go out so they will order pizza and need soda to wash it down. This idea of superficial balancing is your body’s way to balance itself with food according to Dr. Pabers. This vicious cycle is exactly what Sternehimer mentions that negatively affects health and the media that leads to obesity.

References

Dugan, T. (2010). Impact of Media on Culture: The New Media Landscape (Part 1) – Conglomerate vs. Partnership vs. Synergy. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch

Dugan, T. (2010). Impact of Media on Culture: The New Media Landscape (Part 2) – Convergence. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch

Sternheimer, K. (2013). Pop culture promiscuity: Sexualized images and reality. In Connecting social problems and popular culture: Why media is not the answer (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Sternheimer, K. (2013). Media health hazards? Beauty image, obesity and eating disorders. In Connecting social problems and popular culture: Why media is not the answer (2nd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

I cannot lie; the Dugan videos were pretty confusing. I watched Dugan’s series twice and could not wrap my mind around all of the technical jargon he laid out. Symbiosis? He said it was a science term, so immediately my mind just shut off. Science and I do not mix. I think I was most confused about how to really apply these technical terms that he presented to the two chapters that we had to read from Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture by Karen Sternheimer (Chapters 6 and 8).I think I was confused partly because the content in Sternheimer’s chapters have been discussed countless times.

In Chapter 6, Pop Culture and Promiscuity, Sternheimer tells the reader that we must not blame popular culture about the growing promiscuous ways. Instead we should look at the social structure of our society. (Sternheimer,  2013) Sterheimer admits that social structures have changed since media first became an influencing object, but she does not do a great job of explaining why our social structures have changed. Based on the content presented to us so far throughout the course, I highly doubt Sternheimer is an anthropologist and could easily explain the shifts in societal culture through the years. To blame social structure entirely on growing levels of sexual promiscuity seems rash in my opinion. How can media not influence sexual promiscuity? I am not blaming media entirely either, but I find it very hard to believe that media does not play a part. Sternheimer presented loads of statistics answering attempting to my question throughout this chapter, but the attempt was futile. The statistics were about young peoples and sexual activities, of course, but none explaining the diret effects of media. All of the content of media and sexual promiscuity seemed like assumptions to me.

In Chapter 8 of Sternheimer’s book tackled health and media. Once again, as stated in the first paragraph, the topic of health and beauty in the media has been tackled many times. Sternheimer tackled obesity, anorexia and bulimia. She did point out the small number of young women with anorexia and bulimia, Less than 5% of women will develop anorexia or bulimia based on the statistics tat Sternheimer presented, assuming I interpreted the statistics correctly. (Sternheimer, 2013) I could have interpreted those numbers incorrectly, numbers and I do not mix. The correlation of media and eating disorders seems simple, she states, but it is highly complex. Sternheimer lost me here. She did a decent job of presenting all of the factors that affect health in the media. I was happy she did not blame these issues entirely on the media, and acknowledged environmental and biological factors.

In the video series created by Terry Dugan, we learned that culture is a learned behavior comprising of our traditions, lifestyles, and shared experiences that contribute to the way we experience the world around us. I’m very interested in anthropology, so it was nice to see a somewhat outside approach to the idea of communication and culture. Cultural anthropologists call the learning we do from each other that helps us create our unique cultures, “storytelling.” I think this is such a great word to explain the largely ambiguous concept that is culture.

The media then, is a storyteller. Dugan explains that media rarely shows the consequences of bad actions, which I do and don’t agree with. Some interesting questions that came to my mind was the idea that teens are invincible. Now, this applies to the video series in addition to the required readings, but I’m curious about this idea of invincibility among teens (and therefore their more raccous behavior). Is this due to the media? Were teens like this before mass communication (newspaper, tv, radio, the internet, etc)?

Family values from the Cosby show etc., are being replaced by the Simpsons, and more risqué media. Isn’t that just because that’s what is popular? The change in culture happened before the shift in media (at least in my opinion.) As we grew older, we accept of reject the traditions we’ve learned, and create our own cultures (Dugar, 2010). Therefore, the media we see on TV was something that a culture somewhere accepted, brought to us, and we accepted as well (in the general sense).

It was interesting to hear Dugan talk about media’s role as the villain. I know that we covered this a little in previous modules but I think it’s always good to restate the concept that for many, media takes the role of a villain.

Attention (which we learned a little more about last module) according to Dugan, occurs when someone is displaying their culture in an inappropriate setting for that specific culture (Dugan, 2011). He gave the example of a woman in her underwear at a bus stop waiting for a bus, and the example of the Grand Theft Auto video game. I think that these examples really gave the quote “A culture of violence is OK, but a culture of sex isn’t,” that much more intensity.

Also in Dugan’s video lectures, he explains mass communication as involving 8 elements: A sender, a receiver, a process of encoding and decoding, a message, feedback, the change of noise, and a channel (Dugan, 2010).

He also explains that all culture is local, defined by language, religion, and village customs (Dugan, 2011). I think it’s interesting when connecting the ideas of how culture is learned, and then later in the second video he mentioned about how immigrants would go to the silent theaters because they wouldn’t speak English, and they learned how to be American that way. It just really brings me back to the question I asked earlier in connection to the chapter 6 and 8 readings, and the videos about the idea that teens think they’re invincible. Did the media teach them this? Or was this already in our culture and was bound to occur anyway even without the introduction of mass media?

Mass communication creates shared experiences. It helps us understand what’s going on around us, and I think this is an important thing to consider. The most interesting this from the first two videos was this idea of are we still learning from mass media. I personally would say yes. As children, we watch TV and then we try to imitate what we see on it. I don’t think it’s the only thing we learn from though, and I think that while it may be one of the first venues (especially for the past few generations) that we get our cultural values from because it’s just so pronounced. I don’t believe that we take it all at face value though. I still believe that media isn’t the only source of our cultural values, and in fact, I believe that it’s actually a very small portion if you are smart about things and educate your children. For example, I won’t deny that as a child my cartoons weren’t riddled with hidden innuendos and sometimes blatant references, but instead of shaming the child or the parents because they let them watch that TV show, it makes so much more sense to try and explain why that may be inappropriate. It’s interesting that in our textbook in chapter 6, Sternheimer cites a study done in 2012 that found that “38 percent of teens reported that their parents were the most influential when it came to making decisions about sex. Only 9 percent cited the media” (Sternheimer, 2013). More often than not, I’ve found that kids like to imitate language and words rather than actions, though, as kids turn into adults I believe that this flips as they experience more freedoms. Others may have had different experiences, and I’m not discounting anyone’s experiences, but I do have to agree with what Sternheimer says in chapter 6, since it’s so very close to my own experiences.

As explained earlier by Dugan, cultures are unique to each person, and even on a grand scale, for example we can take the dominant cultures from each country, they are all either slightly different, or very different in certain tolerances. I think that this is where the issues come in. Some people will have no problem with their children seeing a cartoon character smoke a cigarette, because they may smoke all the time at home; but if another set of more culturally conservative parents were observing what their kids were watching, they may be so offended by the act and would immediately blame the media. I think this Is a great representation of the idea that each person experiences media differently.

I think that for me, the biggest issue I see when media and the public clash, is the idea of the dominant culture silencing micro-cultures (AKA bounded cultures.) Last semester I took Intercultural Communication, and it’s very interesting to see concepts coming back from that class, and relating them to what this video series, and the topics in class in general have stated.

In finishing my reading of chapter 6 of our textbook, there was one thing on my mind If culture is learned, and all of our traditions (rules), and lifestyles are just the dominant culture trying to control the micro culture. In every generation there has always been some way of expressing a new found sexuality, and that’s just a side effect of more liberation, and more micro-cultures breaking to the surface and upsetting the dominant culture. I think this is a good thing, and should continue to happen, as I believe this is what makes our country continue to grow and become more accepting of micro-cultures or bound cultures.

In the intro to chapter 8, I immediately wanted to argue what an “expert” cited as the cause of obesity (Sternheimer, 2010). I do agree that overeating and inactivity and the cause of weight gain and obesity, but I don’t believe that TV is the cause of overeating and inactivity. Ads are lucrative, there is no doubt about it. We’ve learned all of the cunning ways that media can grab our attention, but it doesn’t make us act, not directly anyway. A child may see the ad on TV, but most of the time does not have the means to go out and purchase this food. I personally was very thing at a young age because my mother was very active, as was my father. Around the age of 6 or 7, my father became disabled, and thus we started to take numerous cross country trips to fill the vacancy that having no job left. For weeks on end, I would sit in the car, just looking out of my window. The scenery was beautiful, but the irresponsibility from my parents to allow the massive amounts of non-activity is disheartening. For years I struggled with my weight because of what I was fed (mainly fast food) and the lack of activity and socialization with other children. This is a very personal topic for me, because of my experiences with not only my weight, but my many, many eating habit changes. Sternheimer sums up my opinion on obesity very nicely with an explanation of: “obesity itself may be a causal factor for watching more television” (Sternheimer, 2010).

I think that media is much more apparent in the ideas of body image and eating disorders than it is on obesity. Unfortunately, as Sternheimer illustrates in this chapter, I’ve seen enough pro-ana (pro anorexia) images, blogs, and websites that display graphic images of severely underweight women with the intention of giving inspiration to those interested. Despite the numbers Sternheimer cited as 7 to 9 million Americans (Sternheimer, 2010), I think the number is much higher, and that this is definitely a problem that while I don’t think was created by media, was definitely exacerbated by it immensely. Even at one point in my life, I aspired to the beautifully thin celebrities before I found out that most ads are touched up in some way to create a false sense of beauty, and that really turned off the stars in my eyes as I realized what I aspired to was impossible. In that time, I had done many things that popular mediums presented as “What your favorite celeb does to keep thin,” and the like. These are often diets overseen by the guidance of doctors, strictly meant to help a celebrity prepare for a role (which in and of itself is absolutely crazy) but at the very least they have support to back them up if something goes wrong, and they lead a lot of young women into thinking that sticking to this kind of diet is the only way to stay thin and in likeness to a celebrity.