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Media Psychology

~ Informing, Educating and Influencing

Media Psychology

Monthly Archives: December 2012

Media Psychology Irony

28 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Effects, Psychology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Advertising, Cognitive, Desensitization, Ellul, Gaming, Propaganda, Video Game Violence

A late Christmas gift appeared at the house today which was wrapped in a bit of media psychology irony. Jacques Elull’s “Propaganda, The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” arrived in an Amazon wrapper emblazoned with a bold advertisement for the militeristic action video game “Call of Duty, Black Ops II.” Somehow the juxtiposition between “The Formation of Men’s Attitudes” and the media content in “Call of Duty” struck me in regard to the amount of militainment Americans consume on a regular basis these days, wether they choose to or not. It’s no wonder that at a cognitive level we are so “accepting” of so many of the activities we witness taking place in the world today. What’s a little desensitization matter in the long run (the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure)?

Amazon's wrapper for Call of Duty.

Amazon’s wrapper for Call of Duty.

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Anytime, Anywhere Access – Psychological Use of the Media

16 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Influence, Military Information Support Operations, MISO, Mobile Phones, Propaganda, Psychological Operations, Psychology, PSYOPs

Army Col. (ret) Lawrence Dietz, a former Psychological Operations officer (now called Military Information Support Operations, or MISO), recently observed that no matter where a military operation was taking place in the world, the military could leverage mobile phones to communicate directly to a host population, more so than any other communication medium.

“IO (Information Operations) tools are never fixed. One AO (Area of Operations) demands TV, while another can hardly read…//…Which brings me to the only constant, regardless of AO – the mobile phone. It appears that no matter where you go, whether urban or rural, developed or not, the cell phone is an important, if not the most import means of communication – the way people get or give information. To be effective the IO needs to know how to use mobile phones as a medium, but also how to deny individuals the use of their phones at certain times, or perhaps to alter the messages they receive” (Dietz, 2012).

ITU

There are almost six billion mobile cell phone subscriptions which is a global penetration of 87 percent (ITU, 2011). Srivastava notes that the rapid expansion of the internet was quickly overtaken by the development of mobile phones, both the analog varieties and Smartphones. In a three year period, twice as many people decided on cellular subscriptions instead of on home internet subscriptions (Srivastava, 2008). The majority of this growth can be attributed to personnel convenience. Six years ago there was more than one analog mobile phone for every three people on earth, while as of 2011 one third of the earth’s population was using the internet (Srivastava, 2008; ITU, 2011). Obviously the potential for using this medium to communicate messages to mass audiences for more than military applicatons is almost indescribable, if service providers cooperate.

References

Dietz, L. (2012, Dec 13). IO Refined in New Version of JP 3-13. Retrieved Dec 14, 2012, from PSYOP Regimental Blog: http://psyopregiment.blogspot.com/2012/12/io-refined-in-new-version-of-jp-3-13.html

ITU. (2011). ICT Facts and Figures. Retrieved Dec 8, 2012, from ITU: Commited to Connecting the World: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/facts/2011/material/ICTFactsFigures2011.pdf

Srivastava, L. (2008). The Mobile Makes Its Mark. In J. E. Katz, Mobile Communications Studies (pp. 15-27). Cambridge: MIT.

Related articles
  • Cell phone subscriptions to hit 5 billion globally (reviews.cnet.com)
  • Mobile phone subscriptions number six billion globally (misco.co.uk)

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Making the Case for War in the Media

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Effects, Media Literacy, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Agenda Setting, Associated Press, Cognitive, Greenwald, Influence, Iran, Journalism, McCombs, Mean World Sydrome, Media Effects, Media Literacy, Nuclear Weapons, Propaganda

Late last month the world, and Americans in particular, were subject to an ongoing propaganda campaign designed to further the cause for war against Iran using the media. On November 27th, Associated Press (AP) correspondent and bureau chief George Jahn authored AP: Diagram Suggests Iran Working on Nuclear Bomb which was published with an accompanying graphic “leaked by officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon. The officials provided the diagram only on condition that they and their country not be named” (Jahn, 2012).

AP exclusive

Examination of the graphic has shown that it can be found in common text books and on the internet, and further, that it’s flawed in its calculations (Greenwald, 2012). Greenwald interviews a number of different authorities on the topic who conclusively disprove the alleged authority of the graphic.
Therefore it appears as though the credibility of the reporter comes into question as well as “this isn’t the first time George Jahn has regurgitated dubious claims from diplomats critical of Iran. On September 11 of this year a nearly identical “exclusive” was published by AP…under Mr. Jahn’s byline, despite the fact that all the information contained within came from the November 2011 report, issued nearly a year prior. The article asserted that new ‘intelligence shows that Iran has advanced its work on calculating the destructive power of an atomic warhead through a series of computer models that it ran sometime within the past three years” (Business Insider, 2012).

Jahn could appear to be using his position as an AP bureau chief to facilitate the agenda of a foreign nation, a similar agenda that has led to great losses internationally over the past 10 years. A quick Google Scholar search using the terms “George+Jahn+Iran” show that Jahn has been key author on many AP Iranian related stories going at least 10 years back, most of them focused on the issue of nuclear weapons. In his position at AP he has the potential of placing influential news on the dining roomtable, on the television, on the radio, or on the World Wide Web for global consumption. As a result, he also has an obligation to check the facts provided for him by a third party. The AP was founded in 1846 as a non-profit cooperative to share news between media organizations. As of 2005 it provides material to more than 1,400 newspapers, and 5,001 television and radio broadcasters. It operates 243 news bureaus globally and serves at least 120 countries (Wikipedia, 2012; Associated Press, 2012). In an establishment such as this, an agenda can shape or reinforce opinions worldwide via a single impactful, credible story or through the continuous drip of subtle messaging, thus telling a population what to think about.

McCombs observed that much of what people know about the world comes from various media sources, which is reinforced in direct proportion to the amount of emphasis the media place on a topic (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Cognitively that means people are exposed to biased information designed to reinforce fear and shape attitudes. As discussed in the previous post, It’s a Mean World! Or is it?, the use of fear can easily manipulate and control a population, which makes them more susceptible to hard-line actions taken on their “behalf” (Associated Press, 2006; Associated Press, 2006; Heller, 2012). Jahn’s unquestioned facilitation of this agenda without checking his sources calls his credibility and professionalism as a journalist into question, regardless of how well established he may be. Indeed, it also reflects poorly on the AP as an organization that should be double and triple checking its facts before publishing them. Greenwald agrees that journalists have an obligation to protect their sources – to a point. That “anonymity ends when the ‘sources’ use them to disseminate falsehoods. Indeed, the obligation to protect these sources not only ends, but a different obligation arises: to tell the public who fed them the hoax” (Greenwald, 2012).

References

Associated Press. (2012). FAQs. Retrieved Dec 14, 2012, from Associated Press: http://www.ap.org/company/FAQs

Associated Press. (2006, Jan 3). George Gerbner, 86, Researcher Who Studied Violence on TV, Is Dead. Retrieved Dec 9, 2012, from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/obituaries/03gerbner.html?_r=1&

Associated Press. (2006, Jan 2). George Gerbner; Studied TV Culture. Retrieved Dec 9, 2012, from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010200577.html

Business Insider. (2012, Dec 4). Iran Disinfo Watch: The AP Gets Thrown Another Curveball. Retrieved Dec 8, 2012, from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-disinfo-watch-the-ap-gets-thrown-another-curveball-2012-12

Greenwald, G. (2012, Nov 29). AP’s dangerous Iran hoax demands an accounting and explanation. Retrieved Dec 8, 2012, from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/29/ap-iran-nuclear-program-graph-explanation

Heller, K. (2012, Dec 9). It’s a Mean World! Or Is It? Retrieved Dec 14, 2012, from Media Psychology – Informing, Educating and Influencing: https://mediapsychology101.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/its-a-mean-world-or-is-it/

Jahn, G. (2012, Nov 27). AP: Diagram suggests Iran working on nuclear bomb. Retrieved Dec 7, 2012, from CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57554866/ap-diagram-suggests-iran-working-on-nuclear-bomb/

McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The Agenda-setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly , 36 (2), 176–187.
Wikipedia. (2012, Dec 14). Associated Press. Retrieved Ded 14, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associated_Press#History

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It’s a Mean World! Or Is It?

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Effects, Media Literacy, Psychology

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Behavioralism, Cartoons, Cognitive, Cultivation Theory, Gerbner, Influence, Mean World Sydrome, Media Effects, Media Literacy

Anybody who has ever watched television or films knows that both mediums are replete with violent entertainment – from cartoons and children’s programs, to horror “porn” such as the Hostel film series that “grossed” $80 million, worldwide.  If one takes in enough of the stuff they may believe it is a mean world indeed.

George Gerbner (August 8, 1919 – December 24, 2005) was dean emeritus of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and a World War II veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency). He founded the Cultural Indicators Research Project in 1968 which tracks television content (especially that of a violent nature) and how that content affects viewers’ perceptions of the world. Its database has information on more than 3,000 television programs and 35,000 characters (Associated Press, 2006). By its estimates, American children witness more than 8,000 murders and 100,000 other violent acts on television by the time they leave elementary school (Stossel, 1997). This study led to Gerbner’s formation of cultivation theory which states “the more time people spend “living” in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality portrayed on television…//… effects occur only after long-term, cumulative exposure to television” (Cohen & Weimann, 2000). This cognitive bias is known as mean world syndrome and may be comprised of up to four different recurring attitudes to include the beliefs in:

  1. Increased chances of involvement with violence
  2. Fear of walking alone at night
  3. Perceived activity of police
  4. General mistrust of people (Miller, 2013; Griffin, 2011)

In the following six minute clip provided by the Media Education Foundation Gerbner discusses how this culture of violence has come about and how it translates easily in films and television programming around the world directly stereotyping minorities. Additionally he observes that violent film sequels typically double the level of violence when compared to their predecessors.


Further, Gerbner testified to a congressional subcommittee that “Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line measures. They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities. That is the deeper problem of violence-laden television” (Associated Press, 2006).

Interested in more proof? Scott Stossel of the The Atlantic Online had the following independent studies to offer which appear to backup Gerbner’s hypothesis:

  • A 1956 study compared the behavior of twelve four-year-olds who watched a Woody Woodpecker cartoon containing many violent episodes with that of twelve other four-year-olds who watched “The Little Red Hen,” a nonviolent cartoon. The Woody watchers were much more likely than the Hen watchers to hit other children, break toys, and be generally destructive during playtime.
  • In 1981, Brandon Centerwall, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, hypothesized that the sharp increase in the murder rate in North America beginning in 1955 was the product of television viewing. Television sets had been common household appliances for about eight years by that point — enough time, he theorized, to have inculcated violent tendencies in a generation of viewers. He tested his hypothesis by studying the effects of television in South Africa, where the Afrikaaner-dominated regime had banned it until 1975. He found that twelve years after television was introduced there, murder rates skyrocketed.
  • In 1960 Leonard Eron, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, studied third-graders in Columbia County in semi-rural New York. He observed that the more violent television these eight-year-olds watched at home, the more aggressive they were in school. Eron returned to Columbia County in 1971, when the children from his sample were nineteen. He found that the boys who had watched a lot of violent television when they were eight were more likely to get in trouble with the law when older. Eron returned to Columbia County a third time in 1982, when his subjects were thirty. He discovered that those who had watched the most television violence at age eight inflicted more violent punishments on their children, were convicted of more serious crimes, and were reported more aggressive by their spouses than those who had watched less violent television. In 1993, at a conference of the National Council for Families & Television, Eron estimated that 10 percent of the violence in the United States can be attributed to television.

References

Associated Press. (2006, Jan 3). George Gerbner, 86, Researcher Who Studied Violence on TV, Is Dead. Retrieved Dec 9, 2012, from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/obituaries/03gerbner.html?_r=1&

Associated Press. (2006, Jan 2). George Gerbner; Studied TV Culture. Retrieved Dec 9, 2012, from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010200577.html

Cohen, J., & Weimann, G. (2000). Cultivation Revisited: Some Genres Have Some Effects on Some Viewers. Communication Reports , 99-114.

Griffin, E. (2011). A First Look At Communication Theory. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Miller, J. (2013, July 18). Cultivation…Farming? or Media? Retrieved from Applied Social Psychology: http://www.personal.psu.edu/bfr3/blogs/asp/2013/07/cultivationfarming-or-media.html

Stossel, S. (1997, May). The Man Who Counts Killings. Retrieved Dec 9, 2012, from The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97may/gerbner.htm

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