During this week's readings, I noticed that there were some rather chaotic answers that were presented by a the large number of theories that were used to explain in what ways media impacts people's lives. There were theories in the reading to explain just about everything, from seeing both Catharsis theory (Theory that viewing violence actually reduces violent behavior) and the theory of violent stimulation (Theory that viewing violence increases aggressive tendencies), I noticed that for every theory presented there were one or more theories that would be in conflict with it. These theories were in conflict on just about every level from how information is actually passed on (flow theory) to theories about the motivations that are behind the use of mass media. All these different theories leave me wondering whether or not there really is a single explanation for our consumption of mass media in its wide variety of forms. The best guess from where I'm sitting appears to be that all these theories are true, but apply differently to different people depending on our experience.
Catharsis theory may be accurately applied to a person that can watch a violent and gory movie and feel like they've experienced it, but if a person doesn't feel like they've experienced it through some kind of osmosis (I'm not sure how else to put it), they'll be more likely to be stimulated into violent behavior. The different flow theories may apply better in different settings, but there probably isn't a single way that information flow from the media to the masses. Some of the theories suggest that the person who watches the media is the end, that once the information reaches them, that's it, a person has absorbed it and we can move on. But the two-step theory suggests that people continue to spread that information in a...pre-chewed format to others that may not have been exposed to a particular news story or seen a movie.
These conflicting theories always give me a sense that we have no idea what is actually going on, we just see a piece of the puzzle and assume that the study is over. Every piece is flawed until we put them together into some messy and chaotic picture.
Pregnancy in the media
17 years ago
