This is the second part of your article for MedEdUK, which helps GCSE students to understand the key concepts of media theory.
This section of the website is entitled Understanding how media audiences respond to media products: Audience Theory the Key Concepts.
Apply Reception Theory to the documentary Bowling for Columbine (Moore:2002). Identify the director’s preferred reading (encoding), along with the possible audience responses (decoding) of dominant, negotiated, oppositional, and participatory. Give textual examples to support your findings.
Discuss how the Effects Debate (particularly Mean World Syndrome/Moral Panic) contributes to the Moore’s argument.
Does the media reflect the real world or intervene in shaping the way that we understand it?
Mean World Syndrome/Moral Panic
Mean world syndrome is a term coined by George Gerbner to describe a phenomenon whereby violence-related content of mass media makes viewers believe that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Mean world syndrome is one of the main conclusions of cultivation theory. Gerbner, a pioneer researcher on the effects of television on society, argued that people who watch television tended to think of the world as an intimidating and unforgiving place.
A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society.[1][2] A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media."[3]
The Violence In the Media Debate
“Violence is one of the most fun things to watch.”—Quentin Tarantino
“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.”—Roman Polanski
“How a society channels male aggression is one of the greatest questions as to whether that society will survive. That's why I am not against violence in the media, I am against the glorification of immoral violence.”— Dennis Prager
“A lot of people in the movie industry tend to run and hide from it like ostriches. Movie industry people are definitely in denial right now, but you do become desensitized to violence when you see it on the screen so often. Let's face it, violence exists for one reason in movies, and that's to get an effect, create an emotion, sell tickets.”—Madeleine Stowe
“You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.”—Roman Polanski
“How a society channels male aggression is one of the greatest questions as to whether that society will survive. That's why I am not against violence in the media, I am against the glorification of immoral violence.”— Dennis Prager
“A lot of people in the movie industry tend to run and hide from it like ostriches. Movie industry people are definitely in denial right now, but you do become desensitized to violence when you see it on the screen so often. Let's face it, violence exists for one reason in movies, and that's to get an effect, create an emotion, sell tickets.”—Madeleine Stowe
“Exposure to violent electronic media has a larger effect than all but one other well known threat to public health. The only effect slightly larger than the effect of media violence on aggression is that of cigarette smoking on lung cancer."”—L. Rowell Huessman
taken from http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/mediaviolence/violence.php
Moral Panic
Moral Panic
You need to
Discuss how the
Effects Debate (particularly Mean World Syndrome/Moral Panic) contributes to
the Moore’s argument.
In your words how
would you describe Mean World Syndrome/Moral Panic?
How would you
apply this to Moore’s argument in Bowling for Columbine?
Further viewing
http://videogames.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=001608
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