This lesson we need to get a little deeper inside the ideas and start to consider some ideas about the impact of media products on audiences. we begin with a little theory and then progress to the Panorama clip below.
The first issue is to review what we understand [or at least what we have discussed in the previous lessons]:
- The issue of ‘dumbing down’ is an issue of saturation, not just the quality of the media we consume but the quantity and frequency of such consumption.
- Chips are not necessarily bad for us. But a constant diet of chips would be. We would put on weight, our body would lack all of the things it needs to function properly.[EG Morgan Spurlock : Supersize Me]
- It’s the same for a diet of X-Factor, the Sun, OK Magazine, TOWIE, Soaps
This leads us naturally [almost as if it was planned] to the very polarising concept of desensitisation - that our contact with media products [particularly those containing violence and sexualised images] if repeated with sufficient frequency saturates our very psyche and can lead to such matters at the very least not effecting us as much as they might once have done and, at the extreme, creating a more violent and hardened society.
We will have a look in the lesson at some facts [knowledge] about the current circulation of media products [in this case computer games]. This will give us some sense of the scope of media products reach into our culture.
We now need to have a look at the Panorama programme which recently explored the impact of gaming on its audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment