Social aspects of television
[1] Furthermore, when an event such as a fight or argument disrupts a personal relationship, watching a favorite TV show was able to create a cushion and prevent the individual from experiencing reduced self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy that can often accompany the perceived threat.
The article states that television can help young people discover where they fit into society, develop closer relationships with peers and family, and teach them to understand complex social aspects of communication.
[4] Dimitri Christakis cites studies in which those who watched Sesame Street and other educational programs as preschoolers had higher grades, were reading more books, placed more value on achievement and were more creative.
Complaints about the social influence of television have been heard from the U.S. justice system as investigators and prosecutors decry what they refer to as "the CSI syndrome".
Milton Shulman, writing about television in the 1960s, wrote that "TV cartoons showed cows without udders and not even a pause was pregnant," and noted that on-air vulgarity was highly frowned upon.
He asserted that, as a particularly "pervasive and ubiquitous" medium, television could create a comfortable familiarity with and acceptance of language and behavior once deemed socially unacceptable.
"[11] In 1989 and 1994, social psychologists Douglas T. Kenrick and Steven Neuberg with co-authors demonstrated experimentally that following exposure to photographs or stories about desirable potential mates, human subjects decrease their ratings of commitment to their current partners.
[12][13] Citing the Kenrick and Neuberg studies, in 1994, evolutionary biologist George C. Williams and psychiatrist Randolph M. Nesse observed that television (and other mass communications such as films) were arousing envy and causing lower feelings of commitment to spouses as a consequence of broadcasting the lives of most successful members of society (e.g. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous) and of the entertainment and advertising industry's hiring of physically attractive actors and actresses.
[14] Also citing the research by Kenrick and Neuberg and their co-authors, social psychologist David Buss has also argued that the evolutionary mismatch from constant exposure to images of physically attractive women in advertising and entertainment likely cause lower levels of commitment by men to spouses and partners.
[19][20] One theory says that when a person plays video games or watches TV, the basal ganglia portion of the brain becomes very active and dopamine is released.
However, other authors[33][34] note significant methodological problems with the literature and mismatch between increasing media violence and decreasing crime rates in the United States.
However, recent research (Schmidt et al., 2009) has indicated that, once other factors are controlled for, television viewing appears to have little to no impact on cognitive performance, contrary to previous thought.
[38] A study published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy concluded that parental television involvement was associated with greater body satisfaction among adolescent girls, less sexual experience amongst both male and female adolescents, and that parental television involvement may influence self-esteem and body image, in part by increasing parent-child closeness.
Considerable debate remains, however, whether the Cultivation Hypothesis is well supported by scientific literature, however, the effectiveness of television for propaganda (including commercial advertising) is unsurpassed.
"[48] Koppel also suggested that the decline in American journalism was made worse since the revocation of the FCC fairness doctrine provisions during the Reagan Administration, while in an interview with Reason, Larry King argued that the revocation of the Zapple doctrine's equal-time provisions in particular led to a decline in the public discourse and the quality of candidates running in U.S.
[50][51][52][53] Gallup polls in October 1960 showed Kennedy moving into a slight but consistent lead over Nixon after the candidates were in a statistical tie for most of August and September before the debates occurred.
[57] After the presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, INSEAD economics professor Maria Guadalupe and New York University (NYU) Steinhardt School educational theatre professor Joe Salvatore adapted excerpts of the debate transcripts into a one-act play titled Her Opponent that replicated the language, facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice, other body language, and nonverbal communication verbatim of Clinton and Trump during the debates by two fictional characters, but with the characters representing Clinton and Trump being gender-flipped.
[60][61] In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), philosopher David Hume observed that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
[70] Haidt argues that because of the difference in their life experience relevant to moral foundations, Baby boomers and Generation Jones may be more prone to what he calls "Manichean thinking,"[71] and along with Abrams and FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, Haidt argues that changes made by Newt Gingrich to the parliamentary procedure of the U.S. House of Representatives beginning in 1995 made the chamber more partisan.
Also, unlike the first half of the 20th century, protests of the 1960s civil rights movement (such as the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965) were televised, along with the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door by Alabama Governor George Wallace and the Report to the American People on Civil Rights by President Kennedy in 1963 (which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the long-term political realignment of the Southern United States as a whole to the Republican Party in turn), the police brutality and the urban race rioting during the latter half of the decade, the multi-decade surge in the U.S. homicide rate (that increased by a factor of 2.5 between 1957 and 1980), rates of rape, assault, robbery, theft, and other crime that began in the mid-1960s and did not return to comparable levels until the mid-to-late 1990s (after experiencing declining homicide rates during the Great Depression, World War II, and during the initial Cold War), and television was used increasingly used for negative campaigning and dog-whistle attack ads on wedge issues (such as the Daisy advertisement in 1964 and the Willie Horton advertisement in 1988).
In 1964 Betty Friedan claimed that "television has represented the American Woman as a "stupid, unattractive, insecure little household drudge who spends her martyred mindless, boring days dreaming of love—and plotting nasty revenge against her husband."
Through television, even the most homebound women can experience parts of our culture once considered primarily male, such as sports, war, business, medicine, law, and politics.
The inherent intimacy of television makes it one of the few public arenas in our society where men routinely wear makeup and are judged as much on their personal appearance and their "style" as on their "accomplishments."
[92] Proper interpretation and promotion of the increasing number of women working on and behind the scene of television projects are helping with the development of feminism, and now is the prime time to do so.
One of their most popular shows was where, "Their emancipated female characters are well-educated, work outside the home, control their own money, and have fewer children than rural women.
And the authors' composite autonomy index jumped substantially, by an amount equivalent to the attitude difference associated with 5.5 years of additional education.
Some communications researchers argue that television serves as a developmental tool that teaches viewers about members of the upper, middle, working, and lower-poor classes.
[95] A limited scope of findings of such studies demonstrate a shared public understanding about social class difference, which were learned through the dialogue and behavior of their favorite on-screen characters.
According to Justin Kidd television media perpetuates narrow stereotypes about social classes while also teaching viewers to see themselves as inferior and insufficient due to personal aspects such as "race or ethnicity, gender or gender identity, social class, disability or body type, sexuality, age, faith or lack thereof, nationality, values, education, or another other aspect of our identities.
[102] Yahoo!7 has already experienced significant early uptake of its Fango mobile app, which encourages social sharing and discussion of TV programs on Australian free-to-air networks.
