It’s really intriguing to me to think about a statement that was mentioned today in class. Are the media’s focuses chosen by our society’s interests and cares, or are our society’s interests and cares chosen by the media and their choices on which stories to present? Why don’t we cover stories on devastating floods in Pakistan when we have streaming news coverage presenting up to date developments on a flood in Thailand? Why don’t we show the stories on the deadly earthquake in Chile when we provided the same coverage and active support in relief efforts of an earthquake recently in Haiti? My personal belief is that the media chooses our interests, but I think that the media’s choices come from already predetermined societal traits and biases.
Lilie Chouliaraki discussed the way in which symbolic power is influential in people’s reactions to media representations of world suffering. She argues that there are different types of media responses to tragic world events, and that these influence the connectedness viewers feel to that hardship as well as their active or nonactive responses to assist. She outlines that there are generally two opinions on whether or not people will reach beyond their Western world and media coverage. The optimistic viewpoint/response believes that viewing suffering will encourage sentiments of responsibility simply by viewing this footage. The skeptical viewpoint/ response believes that people turn to media simply for commercial and entertainment desires and that they will not feel any more connected and willing to help after viewing this footage. This does not provide a systematic evaluation, however. Chouliaraki argues that the type of footage needs to be looked at for its symbolic properties. There is footage that is ordinary that plays out as a simple news bulletin and does little to evoke connection and activism, extraordinary footage that plays out as rolling footage and engages people’s connectedness and breaks down global barriers which generally discourage people from helping out, and emergency news that is citizen generated and encourages sentiments of witness participation and connectedness as well.
This plays into my argument about media representation encouraging our beliefs in that this is a clear demonstration of the power the media holds over us. If the media shows an image that is a simple map or discusses an event briefly and moves on, (or doesn’t cover it at all), interests won’t be peaked. Connection will not be established, differences will be emphasized, and people will be unlikely to help in the disaster relief. If, however, there is rolling footage and people see individual cases of human suffering, there is a connection that they will come to feel. They will be much more likely to want to help, especially since they will not be thinking about their global distance and differences. The media plays a huge role not just politically and economically as we discussed previously in the course, but also, as we continue to examine, socially.
How does the media choose their stories and influence us? I think that a lot has to do with what stories already are commonplace in a society. I think that behind these stories are the world’s divisions. Thailand has many Western tourists, and Haiti is close to the United States. I think more importantly though that in both those instances there was extensive footage that was presented and captured society’s attention. There’s clearly a lot that is left to be explored in this topic, but there is no question that the media influences us in more ways than we note on the surface.
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