Module 3 Readings

Yet again, I am very impressed by the articles and videos of this module. They give so much important insight into major issues that must be overcome and their connections to the media and society as a whole. While most all of them had to do mainly with poverty or violence, they all put forth different knowledge and perspectives to the table.

The reading by deMause and Rendall was focused on a study done by FAIR having to do with poverty and representation in media. It also included a large number of statistics and while that is typical for an academic study, it is a big contrast to some of the ideas in other articles. While statistics are not necessarily the best way to convey information, it worked acceptably in this sense and it is still extremely startling and disheartening when seeing how high the numbers truly are. According to a study by the University of Michigan, one third of U.S. residents will experience government-defined poverty in a 13 year period. This idea is just incomprehensible. How can we allow so much of the population to live struggling in poverty? Even worse is how can we be ignoring this problem? The article also mentions that the poverty line created by the government hasn’t been changed in nearly four decades aside from the increase to balance inflation. This means that there are even more people who are forced to live and struggle through such hardships while not even being at all acknowledged. It is such a sick irony that the U.S. is the richest country in the world and yet, it cannot even notice let alone support its people. The study that took place monitored 3 new stations and how many times they had a story about poverty within a 38 month period. Over the course of just over 3 whole years, only 58 stories about poverty were broadcasted and instead, “networks deemed the pop star’s legal problems twice as newsworthy as the economic plight of tens of millions of poor citizens” (deMause and Rendall 2). Something else that was pointed out which is extremely noteworthy is the fact that even when there are stories about poverty, it is extremely rare that the people living it were ever “allowed to describe for themselves the causes of and cures for poverty” (deMause and Rendall 6). Instead it is always “experts” who talked about it. One of the examples that showed how messed up these experts coming to talk about poverty could be was a woman labeled to be a “labor economist”. In reality, she was actually working for a corporation in order to downplay the problems during a recession. This shows how backwards and out of touch some people are. That corporations, greed, celebrities, and popular culture are more important than real, living people caught in the middle of a society that chooses to ignore them is inexcusable. A final point that demonstrated this was when a reporter asked John Edwards why he thought poverty was a “winning political issue”. He replied simply, “This is not a political strategy. It’s a huge moral issue facing America” (deMause and Rendall 9). Poverty is not something made up. It’s not something to be used to other people’s benefits. It is a problem that the media needs to show and that every person needs to be aware of.

The food diary was very stunning as well. Just from pictures and prices, you are given so much insight into the lives of these families and perhaps even the countries that they live in. It was absolutely astonishing at the differences between each picture. The difference in the types, amounts, and prices of the foods, the number of people in each family, and the housing that they live in was very eye opening. Many of the comments by other viewers were very thought provoking as well. I thought that it was very interesting that others shared their own stories and at all of the different places that they came from as well. Poverty is definitely not just an issue for the U.S. but something that the whole world must work to overcome as well.

The “Basic Facts about Low-Income Children” was exactly what it advertised. It gave astonishing facts and numbers about just how many children are living in poverty and low income homes. It divides it into regions, parent’s educational levels, and various other measures that connect to poverty as well as providing neat graphs for each. While it provides the numbers, it does not provide the personal touch that the next two articles make particularly clear.

The two articles by Kuper and by Ridgway were very powerful and were much more focused on taking action than on the numbers behind the crisis. They both talk about how the poor are ignored in the media. Kuper also mentions about poverty being global and that “2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day – are considered even more boring, due to the triple whammy of being non-white, non-Anglophone and poor” (Kuper 2). He thoughtfully notes that the only way for poor people to be noticed by the media is if there is major disorder. This says something about our society as well. The media believes that people will only watch things that are “interesting” and filled with “excitement” and that seeing ugly but real and important parts of the world will bring their station ratings down. That is not something that can be accepted though. Ridgway says this point extremely well:

We need to see this and hear about it, so that we can keep our humanity intact and maintain our ability to have empathy and compassion for others. When we make an entire community invisible in media, what we’re implying is that they don’t exist – not in any meaningful way (2).

So how is media supposed to show it so that people will pay attention? Once again, Kuper and Ridgway both address this problem. One thing to realize is that the media is always controlled by the “well-fed”. The media is controlled by and its world initially interpreted through the views of generally upper class people. So the problems and the views of people in other social groups are misrepresented and ignored. The other problem is when reporters use only facts and numbers to represent poverty. This is a problem because it has a dehumanizing effect. All people see are the numbers and not the faces and lives that they are made up of. People need to feel a connection to truly take notice. The media also needs to let the people actually talk for themselves about the problems and the factors that contributed to their situations. No matter how much people in power try to make others believe it, there is no way that poor people live the way they do because of their own choices. The American dream that anyone can make a good life for themselves through working hard is not a reality. When people are unable to get a job or have a living wage and when they are ignored and seen as being less than human, how can it be so easy to get out of that cycle? It’s nearly impossible. As Ridgway rightly state, “that’s what media literacy education is about. It’s about learning how to notice. It’s about being open and able enough to question what we see” (1).

The videos about children in poverty were also extremely strong and noteworthy. Hearing about each child’s own personal story was truly heartbreaking. As we have learned and seen for ourselves, people dealing with situations of poverty, let alone children, are rarely ever seen in media. So being able to hear a child’s voice and their perspectives on what is happening is of extreme value. The second video, while not quite so personal, made some very important points. The line that the speaker said that really caught my attention was: “Our greatest threat to national security does not come from an external enemy. It comes from the internal failure to build a strong citizenry” (Edelman). So often, people are worried about enemies from outside the country that they fail to notice the demons that are plaguing their own society. If things such as poverty and discrimination continue to hurt people without any aid or resolution, eventually society will snap from the pressures. If people will not look at societal problems through a moral basis of helping other human beings, then maybe seeing it as an issue of defense as well will turn some more heads.

The video by Barholow and the Sternheimer chapter went hand in hand very well about media and violence. Some of the studies and experiments discussed in the video were pretty interesting. You always hear headlines about violence and videogames, but I had never really heard about the ways in which that theory was supposedly tested. One thing that stood out to me was the speaker’s emphasis on the difference between violence and aggression. In some of his studies he found that yes, violent video games can increase aggression, but not for very long periods of time and it depends on the individual person. This is a very big difference than proving that playing video games can make people violent. The Sternheimer text also does a very prudent job in pointing out that all of these tests and studies cannot “prove” anything. Violent video games and other forms of media cannot be the single cause that makes people dangerous. The number of violent crimes has even largely decreased over the last two decades. Instead, there are a number of other variables that many people choose to ignore. This has to do once again with ignoring poverty and with the media’s obsession of extremes to get people’s attention. Unfortunately, for far too many children living in bad situations, violence can be a part of their everyday lives. The interviews of some children like that from the textbook were terribly eye opening. It is a whole different world that people living in comfort cannot even imagine. Yet, the media and others blame it on video games rather than the hardships that society continues to keep them in. Something else that I found interesting from the textbook was some of the reasons why children decide to watch or play violent and scary movies or games. The quote that illustrates this idea perfectly is that: “Viewing media violence is a way of dealing with the most frightening aspect of life in a safe setting, like riding a roller coaster while knowing that you will get off and walk away in a few minutes” (Sternheimer 125). While it cannot compare at all to what the children have to go through, the comparison to a roller coaster really helps to give somewhat of an idea to their feelings. It also shows a real maturating in the children. Facing their fears, especially when they are so real, must be a very hard thing to do.

The final reading about the attention economy was a much tougher read and certainly less emotional, but it gave a lot of insight and clarity about the topic of attention that we have been learning. One idea that I found interesting was when the author said:

Everyone who is seen on television models one common role, as do all teachers inschools, and that role is to be the object of a good deal of attention. Thus, without planning or intention, there has been a kind of cultural revolution, telling us that  getting attention is a fine thing (Lankshear and Knobel 3).

This was a way of thinking about attention that I had not noticed before. The example of teachers really hits home as well. Being the center of attention really has become of great importance in American culture. The media is able to use this knowledge and form tactics in order to grab people’s attentions. In order for us to truly understand the workings of media, it is therefore of great importance to understand this attention economy as well.