Module 3 Reflections
Module 3 was very interesting to me because I have never thought of attention as being a bad thing. Well, I soon found out that this aligns with Lankshear and Knobel’s (2010) belief that what is most desired, is most scarce (p. 4). Attention is scarce because the truth is, each of us have only so much to give. However, why is it that if we only have so much attention to give, why do we crave attention so much? The one thing I got wrong about this Module and attention was that I was only considering what was getting my attention or what catches my eye. It didn’t occur to me that one major aspect of attention is the idea that we, as consumers, desire attention. I realized this as soon as I watched the YouTube, Child Poverty-In Their Own Words. The children in this video are craving for attention, but not the attention that most of us crave every day. They just want to be noticed, heard, recognized, and ultimately taken care of.
The rich lifestyle catches our attention more than the poor, so we simply ignore them all together, as if it is easier to just fantasize about being rich than helping the poor survive. When the poor is brought up, it will get a little bit of press, then a new hot topic will come up and quickly take that attention. The sad truth is, people are more attracted to stuff they desire, and who truly desires to be poor? One of every seven people lives below the poverty line (Kuper, 2013). But yet, this is the least talked about social issue in the country? As a media literacy student I am trying to figure out, how such sad topic such as children living in poverty and starving on a daily basis can get less attention than food ads that we see watching the SuperBowl, which cost millions of dollars. I couldn’t agree more with Shannon Ridgway when she explains that the poor are seen as statistics; which could no be truer. I do not follow politics, but I have heard “______ million people are living in poverty” many times. However, this statistic is soon followed by the fight about tax-payers dollars and the poor are quickly over powered.
The textbook explains how media such as TV, video games, and movies have an active role in violence. The media can draw the right kind of attention to violence, but it can also draw the wrong. There has been an extensive amount of research done on violent video games and the affects it has on kids. However, what caught my eye the most was when Sternheimer explained that after doing her own research on the relationship between violence and video games, she realized her results were not as compelling as the media lead on. This relates to attention because once again the media is controlling what gets our attention. We will be more compelled by bad news than good. As I was reading the chapter I was thinking, what does video game violence have to do with all the articles I read about poverty? It made sense when Sternheimer explains that violence roots from low-income neighborhoods because of the gang-relative activities. However, these violent acts came from feelings of “fear, intimidation, despair and hopelessness”. She went to the places that had the highest crime-rate rather than going to college students and video games to find her data. Relating to Sternheimer’s ideas, the website Children’s Defense Fund (2015) explains, “When children experience strong, frequent, or prolonged adversity — such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic hunger and neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, or the accumulated burdens of family poverty — the stressful environment can become toxic” (p. 3. This toxic stress can cause major mental health problems in adulthood, including violence.
My overall question is, if so much violence takes place in low-income neighborhoods, the same ones that get the least attention, how can the media make a change to this with out drawing the wrong kind of attention?
