Professional Documents
Culture Documents
STUDENT
BERNICE AGYEKWENA
MODERATOR
PROFESSOR JACOB SRAMPICKAL
ROME
JUNE 2005
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OF TAMALE, GHANA
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
for patiently guiding me to write this research. His suggestions influenced the
structure as well the contents of the study. I also wish to acknowledge that my
University.
Without a good social life, my stay in Rome would have been very
boring. Several people contributed to making life in Rome interesting for me
among whom are: Al Dogar, the good Samaritan , Philomena Dovi, Harriet
Nnamutebi, the symbol of humility and perseverance, Fr. Peter Lopez, and Fr.
Dominic Adeiza, for their sense of humor and ability to see the funny side of
life, and Chika Asogwa and Ikenna Ugwu for being such great friends.
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Table of contents
........................................................................................................................ 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................... 3
CHAPTER I .................................................................................................. 7
1.1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 7
1.1.1 Presenting the Problem.................................................................................. 7
1.1.2 Is the media then a foe or a friend? .............................................................. 11
1.1.3 The Family Today ....................................................................................... 15
1.1.4 Theories and Perspectives of the Family ...................................................... 17
1.5 SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN FAMILIES TODAY ........................ 26
1.5.1 Nuclear families dominate ................................................................................... 27
1.1.2 Kids world, with kids relating to other kids rather than parents .................... 27
1.1.3 Secularization.............................................................................................. 29
1.6 MEDIA AFFLUENCE ........................................................................................... 31
2.1.1 Stages of television use and ownership ............................................................. 41
2.1.2 Family communication patterns and television viewing .................................... 42
2.1.3 Television’s messages on sex ........................................................................... 46
2.1.4 How television undermines persistence ............................................................ 48
2.1.5 Television literacy and education ..................................................................... 51
2.1.6 Televised violence and advertisements ............................................................. 56
2.1.7 Racial and sexual stereotypes on television. ..................................................... 60
2.1.8 Television soap operas in family life ................................................................ 65
2.1.9 Television as a tool of imperialism ................................................................... 71
CHAPTER III ............................................................................................. 75
3.1 EXAMINATION OF CONTENTS OF TELEVISION IN RELATION TO THE
FAMILY ...................................................................................................................... 75
3.1.1 News and Sports for men ................................................................................. 75
3.1.2 Televised sports ............................................................................................... 80
3.1.3 Children’s experience with television ............................................................... 85
3.1.4 Impact of television on the reading skills of children ........................................ 90
3.1.5 Soap Operas for Women .................................................................................. 92
3.1.6 Music (MTV) for the Youth. .......................................................................... 101
3.2 HOW FAMILIES UTILIZE THE CONTENTS OF TELEVISION ....................... 111
3.3 IS VIEWING TELEVISION A PASSIVE ACTIVITY? ....................................... 113
3.3.1 Challenge: ...................................................................................................... 114
3.3.2 Concentration: ............................................................................................... 115
3.3.3 Activation: ..................................................................................................... 116
3.3.4 Affect: ........................................................................................................... 117
3.3.5 Relaxation: ..................................................................................................... 118
CHAPTER IV............................................................................................ 120
4.1 AN EXAMINATION OF MEDIA THEORIES IN RELATION TO THE FAMILY
................................................................................................................................... 120
4.1.1 The passive or linear theoretical models. ........................................................ 120
4.1.2 The magic bullet theory.................................................................................. 121
4.1.3 The hypodermic needle theory ....................................................................... 121
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4.1.4 Lazersfeld’s two step or multiple steps flow theory ........................................ 123
4.1.5 Festinger and the Consistency Theories .......................................................... 123
4.1.6 McCoombs and Shaw Agenda Setting Theory................................................ 124
4.1.7 Knowledge Gaps Theory................................................................................ 129
4.1.8 Stephenson’s Play Theory .............................................................................. 130
4.1.9 The Ritual Model of Communication ............................................................. 131
4.1.10 The Behavioral Theories .............................................................................. 133
4.1.11 The Social Learning Theory ......................................................................... 134
4.2 TELEVISION AND SOCIAL LEARNING .......................................................... 139
4.2.1 Interactions Between Televised Violence, the Family and Society ..................... 140
4.2.1.1 Pre-observation Reinforcement ................................................................... 141
4.2.1.2 Vicarious Reinforcement ............................................................................. 141
4.2.1.3 Post-observation Reinforcement .................................................................. 141
4.2.1.3 Self-generated Reinforcements .................................................................... 142
4.3 CRITICIMS OF SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY ................................................ 143
4.4 THE STALAGMITE THEORIES......................................................................... 145
4.4.1 Cultivation theory .......................................................................................... 145
4.5 CULTIVATION THEORY AND THE FAMILY ................................................. 149
4.6 THE USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY AND HOW IT RELATES TO THE
FAMILY .................................................................................................................... 150
4.6.1 Informational needs ....................................................................................... 151
4.6.2 Need for personal identity .............................................................................. 152
4.6.3 Need for social integration and interaction ..................................................... 152
4.6.4 Entertainment................................................................................................. 153
4.7 SOCIAL USES OF TELEVISION........................................................................ 154
4.7.1 Structural Uses ............................................................................................... 154
4.8 USES AND GRATIFICATIONS FROM SOAP OPERAS ................................... 156
4.8.1 Uses and Gratifications from Television Quiz Programs .................................... 157
4.8.2 Criticisms of Uses and Gratification Theory....................................................... 158
CHAPTER V ............................................................................................. 160
5.1 DRAWING CONCLUSIONS............................................................................... 160
5.1.1 How do Soap Operas Affect Women? ............................................................ 160
5.1.2 How do Media Models Impact on the Youth? ................................................ 166
5.1.3 Children and cartoons .................................................................................... 167
5.2 A LOOK AT GHANA IN RELATION TO TELEVISION. .................................. 169
5.2.2 Why Ghana Television was established .......................................................... 171
5.2.3 Programs on Ghana television ........................................................................ 171
5.3 HOW DOES TELEVISION VIEWING IMPACT ON GHANAIAN FAMILIES? 173
5.3.1 How Do Television Programs Impact on Ghanaians........................................... 174
5.3.1.1 Television Impact in Respect of Language .................................................. 175
5.3.1.2 Television Impact in Terms of Program Content ......................................... 176
5.4 HOW TELEVISION IN GHANA CAN BE IMPROVED ..................................... 179
5.5 WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO HELP THE GHANAIAN AUDIENCE TO
BENEFIT FROM TELEVISION? .............................................................................. 181
5.6 THE WAY FORWARD ....................................................................................... 182
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................ 184
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CHAPTER I
1.1 INTRODUCTION
1.1.1 Presenting the Problem
Most households today spend lots of money on burglar proof devices to
keep the home safe for the family, especially for their children, in order to
protect the family from danger. But does danger, threat to life and burglary,
come only in the form of the physical; through dangerous armed robbers and
gunmen. Is it not possible that a danger of a non-physical nature could seep
through the entire burglarproof devices, threatening the security of the home
and turning it into chaos?
The media today represents an unseen burglar, who is welcomed into
homes, especially via television and video and silently steals the most precious
of all human assets; values and virtues, and replaces them with media
produced counterfeits.
Available statistics indicate that, all over the world, over 3.5 billion
hours are spent daily by people watching television (Kubey, Csikszentmihalyi,
1990:1) which absorbs 40 per cent of all leisure time and is the most time
consuming home activity (Kubey, Csikszentmihalyi, 1990:71).
A report, dubbed the 1984 Nielsen Report, claims television is in use
for 7 hours a day in the typical American home where persons older than 2
years watch television for an average of 4 hours a day (Bryant, Zillmann,
1986:19).
In addition, 75 percent of America’s population relies on television for
the majority of its information while 40 percent of American homes do not
possess books of any kind (Costanzo, 1994:108).
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It has also been revealed that on the average, Britons spend 3 hours a
day watching television but only 17 minutes reading the newspapers and a
mere 11 minutes reading books. Britons also go on line for just 7 minutes on
the average a day (http://news.bbc.co.uk, 1, 2005).
In achieving this, this silent burglar stealthily presents media produced
representations of life as reality in a way that makes it impossible for the
untrained viewer and mind to read in between the lines and arrive at a true
judgment of what is being presented.
But how does the media and television especially, achieve this? This is
because television combines the visual and the aural, and the eye and the ear
are both active during television viewing (Downing, Mohammadi, Sreberny-
Mohammadi, 1995:35).
Further more “with its small screen, talking head format, and interior
settings, television combines the looming proximity of film with the
constraining space of the theatre” (Taylor, 1989:18).
Consequently, television lends itself to the intimacy of character and
relationship as well as the intimacy of domestic life (Taylor, 1989:19).
Of the three forms of persuasive proof identified by Aristotle, namely,
logos, ethos and pathos, televised material are normally richly endowed with
ethos and pathos.
According to Aristotle, logos, the use of evidence in rational argument,
ethos, the use of personal characteristics to claim credibility and authority and
pathos, the use of emotion such as hatred to move people, constitute the main
forms of persuasive language (Downing, Mohammadi, Sreberny-Mohammadi,
1995:27).
Television, as a form of secondary orality, brings back the power of
ethos that was lost by the printed word through the credibility and credentials
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In so far as people fail to understand the media and fail to read the
subtleness of its productions, the media can be a foe. One can fall victim to the
spread of the ideology of the dominant class through the media and become a
passive consumer of the products of a foreign culture rather than ones culture.
One can also develop feelings of inferiority or superiority based on
presentations that have racist, ethnic or religious undertones on television. An
example of this is the stereotyping of African Americans on radio, which
shares secondary orality with television, in the 1920’s and 1930’s that
portrayed African Americans as having no education and unintelligent. The
radio serials were meant to serve a number of purposes in that epoch during
which African Americans did not have the vote. Naturally, what White
Americans derived from this program was that African Americans were
uneducated and unintelligent and giving them the vote or decent jobs was an
injustice to democracy and White Americans (Downing, Mohammadi,
Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1995:355). This kind of message, of course, served
only to enforce the status quo at that time but in the light of today’s evidence,
it has been proved to be a fallacy. But how many White Americans knew it
was a fallacy at the time the program was being heard!
This debate as to whether television is beneficial to the family or not
seems to be a re-echo of the concerns expressed by the Greek and Roman
philosophers about the function of entertainment which still remains
unresolved after 2,300 years. Whilst Aristotle was of the view that drama
(which is analogous to films on television) had a cathartic function, Plato
condemned the theatre for arousing passion and undermining the state, much
the same way some condemn television today (Buckingham, 1996:95).
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Writing in the ‘Republic’, Plato said, “Then shall we simply allow our
children to listen to any story anyone happens to make up, and so receive into
their minds ideas often the very opposite of those we shall think they ought to
have when they are grown up?” (Kubey, Csikszentmihalyi, 1990:16).
In his criticism of the horror genre, which can be traced back to
representations of the underworld in the dramatic poetry of his age, Plato
admonished his people, saying, the “thrill of terror” induced by stories on
ghosts and corpses could lead to moral weakness (Buckingham, 1996:95).
Similarly, Cicero criticized the Roman theatres for their excesses,
much like how television is criticized for its excesses, saying, “If we are
forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this constant stream
of ghastly impression will deprive even the most delicate among us of all
respect for humanity” (Kubey, Csikszentmihalyi, 1990:16).
So, should television as an art form, be banned from the family, just as
the church abolished the Roman theatre as an art form in the fifth century
because it was so debased by commercial exploitation that it had lost its
relevance to the good of society? (ibid).
Already, some people think so. In Britain, some anti-TV campaigners
are advocating for this. One group, called “White Dot”, has been running a
“Turnoff TV Week” for eleven years during which time the group urges
Britons to turn off their sets for at least one week. During this year’s campaign
which begun on May 25, its spokesman, David Burke, said, “White Dot is
against TV at a fundamental level” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2005:1).
He said “the whole base model of TV depends on average viewing time
of three to four hours a day. That’s a huge commitment of time when you
consider we work eight hours, sleep eight hours; you give half of the rest of
your day to television” (ibid).
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Mr. Burke said apart from stealing precious time from viewers,
television also contributes to obesity and has been linked to attention deficit
disorder (http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2005:2).
Further more, after the National Institute of Mental Health in the United
States had reviewed over 2,500 studies on the impact of television on human
behavior, it came to the conclusion that television was a major socializing
agent on American children that had a non-trivial influence on how people
think and feel about the world around them (Swan, Meskill, DeMaio, 1998:1).
But television has also made some positive contributions to society by
demonstrating an exceptional ability to challenge parochialism and unfold the
interdependence of the world community for all to see.
Hence, notwithstanding some of the negative impacts outlined above,
television does have benefits, but the family can realize these benefits only if
it attains television literacy.
Once one has acquired the skills of understanding media productions
and what they stand for and has the ability to distinguish what is real from
what is unreal, then the media can be a friend.
In view of the fact that the strength of television rests on ‘ethos’ and
‘pathos’ but its weakness lies in logos, it follows that, any attempt to reap
desired benefits from television should be based on addressing its deficiency
in ‘logos’. This can be achieved by equipping television audiences with skills
that will enable them to interact actively with the contents of television rather
than passive viewing as was exemplified by the ‘couch potato’ who was
interviewed by a reporter.
Such skills, which range from understanding the symbolic codes of
television that constitute the technical aspects of its language (Greenfield,
1984:9) to knowing the ideologies, the cultural and political economy
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dictating its organization and control of contents will go a long way to make
audiences television literate.
For the benefits of television can only be realized by those who have
learnt to recognize its fallacies, to separate the ‘grains from the chaff’ and to
use the grains to feed and enrich their own lives.
This then is the purpose of this scientific study, which is aimed at a
critical examination of television in order to provide families with an antidote
against its defects so that they may use it for the benefit of all members of the
family.
Television today represents a wild fire that needs to be tamed. And as
the old adage goes, “fire is a good servant but a bad master”. Hence,
discovering the means of making television to serve the needs of the family
and society at large rather than allowing it to dominate is the scope of this
scientific dissertation.
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Since the family constitutes the subject matter under examination in its
relationship to television, there is the need for a critical examination of what is
meant by family, it’s historical, cultural, sociological, economic and political
evolution and the role that the media have played in defining its place and
evolution in society.
Simplistically, the family is regarded as the smallest and basic unit of
any society. It is both the foundation and the building blocks upon which and
with which society is built.
Basically, the family is the cradle for socialization where human beings
are nurtured and prepared for roles in society. It also aids the survival of
individuals by providing warmth and protection from the onslaughts of
society.
The family thus performs a duel role; it prepares an individual to live in
society and at the same time protects that individual from that same society.
In preparing an individual to live in society, the family equips him with
skills for surviving in the world. These skills are not only economic and
political, which are achieved through training and education but also socio-
psychological which is achieved mainly through parental nurturing that
satisfies the emotional and psychological needs of the individual. To achieve
this, the family serves as a point of relation where individuals learn how to
relate to members of the family, to love and be loved and subsequently import
these skills to relate to other individuals outside the family.
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It is thus the love that individuals acquire within the family that they
express in the outside world. Consequently, cold families produce cold
societies and warm families produce warm societies and communities. This is
because families, as the building blocks of society tend to lend their color and
characteristics to society. It is for this reason that the well being of the family
is very important since it is crucial to the formation of healthy societies. When
families cease to function well and fail in their socialization of children and
individuals and become ‘cancerous’, they produce ‘cancerous’ societies.
Over the years, sociologists have made several attempts to trace how
the family came to be in existence and what roles it plays in society. These
perspectives are used not only to describe and explain the functions of the
family but they also serve as a basis for a critical analysis of the family. These
include the Judeo-Christian view of the family, the functionalist view, the
African View, the Marxist view, Feminist view, views based on
Communication theory, the theory of Post-modernism and the
Capitalist/Historical view of the family.
commanded all his creatures to be fruitful and multiply. Hence, seen from a
Judeo-Christian perspective, the family was created out of the need for love,
warmth and companionship and also as a cradle for the regeneration of the
human race.
The family can also be regarded as a basic unit for instruction from this
perspective when one considers the book of Numbers in which God
commands the Jews to instruct their children, saying, ‘Teach them to your
children and keep on telling them when you are sitting at home, when you are
out and about, when you are lying down and when you are standing up. Write
them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates…” (Jerusalem Bible,
1990:174).
This view of the family from a spiritual perspective is further enhanced
by Biblical passages that compare the Church to a bride of Christ and the call
on men to love their wives as they would their own flesh (Jerusalem Bible,
1990:1401).
Whilst the Judeo-Christian view of the family perceives it as a divinely
ordained institution established by God to meet the emotional, psychological,
physical and spiritual needs of adults and children alike, other theories and
perspectives consider the family as a purely human institution.
During the African Synod, the family was given a prominent emphasis
judging its importance in African society. The Ecclesia in Africa points out
that, “The future of the world and of the Church passes through the family”.
Not only is the Christian family the first of the living ecclesial community, it
is also the fundamental cell of society. In Africa in particular, the family is the
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foundation on which the social edifice is built. This is why the Synod
considered the evangelization of the African family a major priority, with the
view of evangelization of the family through the family. The encyclical
enjoins, “the holy family is the prototype and example for all Christian
families and the model and spiritual source for every Christian family” (John
Paul II, 1995:81).
The human family is constituted of man, woman and children. In most
cultures in Africa, the family is not closed to the first generation but stretches
the ties of kinship to members of the extended family. In God’s plan, the
conjugal community is established upon the consent of the spouses. Marriage
and family are ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and
education of children. The man and woman united in marriage, together with
their children form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by
public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it. In creating man and
woman, God instituted the human family and endowed it with its fundamental
constitution. Its members are persons equal in dignity. (The Catechism of the
Catholic Church, 1994: 2201).
John Paul II speaking of the family as a communion of persons, points
out that in matrimony and in the family, a complex of interpersonal
relationships is set up within married life. These include fatherhood and
motherhood, filiation and fraternity, through which each human person is
introduced into the human family and into the family of God, which is the
Church.”(John Paul II, 1981:15).
The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in
which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of
life. Authority, stability and a life of relationships within the family constitute
the foundations of freedom, security and fraternity within society. The family
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is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin
to honour God and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into
life in society. (The Catechism of the Catholic Church :2207).
In the African context, the concept of the human family is loaded with
much greater meaning than just a man, wife and a child. Man is born into his
immediate family and to a larger family; the extended family and the society.
Under this theory, the family is seen as an institution that reinforces the
existing status quo in a given society (Lull, 1988:14). It does this by preparing
young people to partake in class- based work roles that serve the interest of
those in control of economic power. From this perspective, the family is seen
as a human system that undermines its own interest by unconsciously
reproducing the economic structures of domination in the society. This is
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The feminist theory sees the power relations between the male and
female sexes in the family as a factor that produces and sustains patriarchy in
societies where power and control are vested in the male members and
females are dominated (Lull, 1988:14). The gender differentiated roles
assigned to boys and girls within the family are designed to oppress women,
which is reproduced in the dominant ideology of the society. According to this
theory, efforts should be made to rescue women from a history of oppression
and discrimination perpetuated by the family through awareness and
consciousness raising.
The media forms the pivot of the post –modern view of the family,
which is seen as producing a chaotic informational environment that offers
broad based information without distinguishing between age, gender and
authority (Lull, 1988:15). The mass media, and especially television, makes
everyone privy to the same information, blurring the private communication
domains that once lent structure to society. It does not demarcate the world of
adults from the world of children, men from women, politicians from the
electorate. The muting of differences between the different ages, sexes and
social status has led to a harrowing social change. This blending of traditional
expectations with the impersonal media world produces a neurosis that is
characterized by confusion, and debilitation that is experienced at the familial
level.
through the media, mass education and professional experts who prescribe
rules for normal behavior and the needs of the family and society at large
(Luke, 1989:101). Individuals in society then attempt to counter code, subvert
or to re-function under these prescribed needs and behaviors. These prescribed
needs and behaviors is perhaps more evident in the area of fashion where
fashion experts, aided by television tell society what is fashionable at a
particular point in time. This results in individuals cladding themselves in
these prescribed ‘temporary uniforms’ until the fashion experts once again
prescribe the next one.
The firm and the state thrive on these needs that are extended to the
individual since they fuel economic growth and provide the economic force
that will guarantee the development of the state corporate system (ibid).
As the traditional nuclear family accepted the needs defined for it by the
corporate capitalist system, the organic need for air, drink, food, clothing,
shelter and affection which were the preserve of the family underwent
commercial redefinition as the commodified need for buying air conditioners,
coca-cola, wonder bread, coats, etcetera (Luke, 1989:107).
All individuals in the family, now as consumers, are transformed into
capital assets since their consummative mobilization boosts the productivity,
profitability and the power of corporate capital intensive industries which is
expressed as a rise in Gross national product (G.N.P.) (Luke1989: 108).
Hence, each individual family member becomes an integral part of the
means of production and the family unit is transformed into a service delivery
system of the modern corporate state.
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families
mass-produced messages which create, fit into, exploit, and sustain the needs,
values and ideologies of mass publics. These publics, in turn, acquire distinct
identities as publics partly through the ongoing flow of messages” (Bryant,
Zillmann, 1986:23).
Television is thus a home appliance that can be used to sell other
appliances. Through its episodic series, television manages to sell “an image
of desirable family life with consumption casually woven into the fabric of its
stories” (Taylor, 1989:20).
But who are the people behind the scenes of every television output,
who wield so much control over the lives of viewers? They are invisible
business moguls who derive both profit and influence from their ownership of
television channels.
“In television, genre is an explicit industrial category organized in the
service of efficiency and rationalization of a commercial product” (Taylor,
1989:19).
History has revealed that at each epoch in history, a selected group of
men and women dominate and control society. Human history has moved
from the era of the philosopher kings of Plato’s dreams through the traditional
religious and aristocratic authorities of oral culture to the intellectual and
political activists of print and halted at the electronic period, which is the
epoch of the Hollywood celebrity and entertainer and the televangelist.
1.1.2 Kids world, with kids relating to other kids rather than parents
The breakdown of the extended family system where baby sitter roles
were assigned to grandparents, cousins, aunties, uncles and other relatives has
resulted in increased emotional and physical pressure on parents to raise up
their children alone without the emotional and physical assistance normally
found in extended family systems. In some families, this baby sitter role that
used to be performed by members of the extended family has been shifted to
television.
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1.1.3 Secularization
This shift from religion to science has been given evidence by the
elimination of religion from the school syllabus of most countries. Apparently,
most governments and parents do not want their children to waste their time
on a religion that has failed to help them solve their problems in the past.
The result is that, the guidance and sense of belonging as well as the
psychological well being rooted in religion and the reverence for God that was
available to children and parents in the past to help them meet life’s
challenges is no longer available today.
Still absent is the lack of a system of values by which parents and
children can decide on what is of value and what must be discarded. In the
midst of this vacuum created by the absence of religion, the media becomes
the reference point for values, which people choose to assimilate.
The media, especially television easily takes over the role of religion in
this vacuum because “If one agrees that religion is a statement about life and
tackles the ultimate meaning of life, then television is religion. Television
seeks to define our world, to tell us how it works and what it really means”
(Soukup, 1996:138).
Like religion, the task of television is “to read the signs of the times”: it
mediates meaning and offers an alternative reading to life (Soukup, 1996:139).
Thus, rather than being a neutral communication medium, television is an
integrated symbolic world of myths that suggest a consistent value system.
Some of the myths and values central to television are: the fittest
survive; happiness consists of limitless material acquisition; property, wealth
and power are more important than people; everything can be purchased to
satisfy our narcissism and immediate gratifications and progress is an inherent
good (Fore, 1987:64-67).
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Table 1.1 Percentage of children with media in their home by gender, age and
social.grade.(Livingstone,2002:37).
From the above table, which is based on a week’s study between 8 a.m
and 10 p.m, 40.1 percent of time is spent at home whilst 42.3 percent is spent
at work. Television viewing accounts for 6.6 percent of primary activity,
which is not only the single most time consuming activity but also the
dominant leisure activity that consumes 40 percent of all leisure time.
Television also serves as an accompaniment and background to most
household activities today. Such activities range from talking, eating,
grooming, and childcare to even reading, which some people may claim to be
incompatible with viewing television. This underlines the structural uses of
television as propounded by the theory on the “Social Uses of Television”.
The following table illustrates this.
36
From the above table, 90.2 percent of respondents in the study watched
television because they wanted to which shows that people are highly
motivated to watch television. Also, the highest amount of respondents, 19.0,
said they watched television when they had nothing else to do, suggesting that,
television is the most preferred means for killing time out of the seven
activities studied.
The second role of the media is borne out of its function as a tool of
modern commerce. Herbert J. Altschull, a communication researcher, has
hinted that “It is in the distribution of goods –intellectual as well as material
goods- that the media’s position in the American system- as in all capitalist
systems is central” (Altschull 1984:123). Here, the media serves as an arm of
capitalism by fanning market forces that seek to promote consumerism. He
said “whereas from its earliest days the press had been a factor in the
38
economic well being of the United States, by the twentieth century, it had
become an ever more essential ingredient in the capitalist economy” (ibid).
Consequently, the media projects image packages that legitimize the
fragmentation of traditional family life. These fragmented bits of the nuclear
family then evolve into new family units thus multiplying their consummative
potential. Hence, broken households are the norm rather than the exception on
television and the single, the separated, the widowed and the divorced
(SSWD’s) are depicted as living in their own world of happiness, liberation
and professional achievement. Thus, the ideological apparatus promotes
norms, values and practices that do not help to forestall the internal collapse of
one unit of consumption; the nuclear family.
Besides, just as market forces determine our access to novels and films,
with those likely to make a profit being published or produced, access to
television programming is based on an economic exchange that is very subtle.
In return to being provided with television programs, viewers become
commodities that are sold to advertisers for money. Television thus transforms
viewers into units of economic exchange (Allen, 1985:45).
Les Brown, a veteran television journalist described this situation by
saying; “in day to day commerce, television is not so much interested in the
business of communications as in the business of delivering people to
advertisers. People are the merchandise not the shows. The shows are merely
the bait. The consumer, whom the custodians of the medium are pledged to
serve, is in fact served up” (ibid).
This view is supported by Ien Ang who claims that “the very corporate
foundation of commercial television rests on the idea of delivering audiences
to advertisers; that is, economically speaking, television programming is first
and foremost a vehicle to attract audiences for the real messages transmitted
39
by television: the advertising spots inserted within and between the programs”
(Silverstone, Hirsch, 1992:132).
In other words, television is more of a business delivery service, rather
than a box for providing entertainment and news as most viewers have come
to accept. The consumption of television products takes on a double meaning;
it not only delvers programs but cultivates consumers.
Hence, “the day to day practice of television consumption is
accompanied by the implicit and explicit promotion of ideal or proper forms
of consumer behavior, propelled by either ideological or economic motives
and instigated by the social institutions responsible for television production
and transmission” (Silverstone, Hirsch, 1992: 133).
Television, thus, serves as a national or international market place
where it assists in the distribution of both intellectual and material goods
though advertisements. Hence, families as audiences, are sold to advertisers
by television for profit.
40
CHAPTER II
Fears that television may be responsible not only for the alienation of
family members but also for significant changes in the traditional family set
up itself have been voiced by many writers. Writing in the book, “Behind and
in front of the screen, Television’s involvement with family life,” Barrie
Gunter and Michael Svennevig have expressed similar views. They said “It is
certainly true that there have been significant changes in the types of families
and household units over the last 25 years, but whether these can be
reasonably linked to the growth of television during that period is a highly
problematic assumption” (Gunter, Svennevig, 1987:2).
According to these two writers, television is linked to the family at two
levels; both in front off and behind the screen. The relationship that families
have with television in front of the screen is as a result of the domestication of
the medium, which has become a family member in most cases. It may disrupt
bonds between family members by curtailing conversation merely by its
presence. Behind the screen, families form an important part of the plots of
some programs whilst in others they may play peripheral role. However, most
portrayals of the family on television have been criticized as being inadequate
whilst giving the family a negative picture by not showing happy intact
families on the screens (Gunter, Svennevig, 1987:2, 5).
41
Another study conducted in Sweden showed that low concept and high
socio- orientation was linked with heavy television viewing by adolescents.
Another study conducted by Lull showed that concept –oriented family
members were more likely than socio-oriented family members to have
definite activities and attitudes pertaining to television use.
Gunter and Svennevig also noted that, the use of videocassette recorders
allowed most families to control their use of television by recoding programs
and watching them at their own convenience.
Writing in the book “Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic
Leisure”, David Morley, was of the view that television does stimulate
conversation in domestic and other settings. Quoting Simon Hoggart in “New
Society”, he wrote, “What television does furnish is a shared experience
which actually increases the amount of conversation. In factories and offices
across the land people earnestly debate what they saw on the screen last
night…Where once they might have discussed the sales manager’s love life,
the weather, or the shortcomings of the head of faculty” (Morley, 1986:20).
He said television, especially situation comedies, has contributed to the art
of conversation. This is because, far from supplanting family functions, the
medium is being adapted to the cultural, psychological and economic needs of
families. “Media and domestic communications exist in all manner of
symbiotic intertwinings” (Morley, 1986:21).
Apart from acting as a catalyst for conversations, Morley also regards
television as an antidote to family conflicts since in higher density families it
may act to reduce tension leading to conflict by creating personal space and
offering privacy to individuals in an overpopulated family environment.
Besides, television is utilized in a wide range of social activities such as
providing companionship, as a reward or punishment, as a battering agent, a
45
Truglio also noted that the vacuum created by the shallowness of parent
–child discussions on sex, which are infrequent and limited, give television an
edge. In a research on adolescents in 1992, most of them cited the mass media,
especially television, in addition to parents and peers as their primary sources
of information on sex. Other researches conducted by Louis Harris &
Associates, 1987 and E.J. Roberts et al, 1978, indicate that whilst parents may
like to be the primary sources of information on sex to their children, they
experience fierce competition from mass media’s sexual curriculum.
According to Truglio, “The problem of turning to television for sexual
information is that it is a constructed reality comprised of idealized and
distorted images of sexual behavior”.
She noted that on television, sex occurs more often between unmarried
than married couples, without consideration of safe sex practices and with low
portrayals of the consequences of sex.
What is more, young viewers are exposed to approximately 1,400
sexual acts per year, which occur within prime time designed for adult viewers
but nonetheless viewed by children. This was based on studies conducted by
A. C. Nielson and Greenberg et al. in 1993. It is no wonder then that in
American Society where over 98 percent of households own television which
is turned on for 7 hours a day, more than a million teenagers get pregnant
yearly, 85 percent of which are unintended, whilst over 3 million suffer
sexually transmitted diseases every year (Swan, Meskill, Demaio, 1998:9).
In the face of the Aids pandemic and rising teenage pregnancies,
television has come under pressure to portray the consequences of sex as well
as safe sex practices. The only achievement made in this area has been the
freedom to mention the ‘condom’ instead of referring to it as a ‘love glove’ or
‘thingamabob’. Messages on the consequences of sex such as Aids, and the
48
poor television programming but may have more to do with the television
viewing experience itself” (Swan, Meskill, DeMaio, 1998:45).
According to them, viewing television initiates a learning condition
under which the learner is passive, and his or her actions have no impact,
whatsoever, on the feedback or stimulation that he or she receives. This, they
claim, results in behavioral problems that they identified as ‘learned
helplessness’, as a result of the lack of contingency between the actions of the
viewer and the feedback from television.
The book said a study undertaken by Flanagan and Black in 1994 to
measure the relationship between television viewing and persistence in
children showed that when children begun a session with a passive activity
such as viewing video or listening to a story on mathematics, they were
significantly less persistent in solving difficult problems in mathematics later
on than if they begun their lessons with interactive activities. This finding
seems to correlate with that reported in the book ‘Television and the Quality
of Life: How Viewing Shapes Everyday Experience’, where the writers report
that, “Spending time with television might make concentration more difficult
afterward”, (Kubey, Csikszentmihalyi, 1990:123).
The writers claim a second study undertaken by Flanagan to determine
whether watching television for as little as 15 minutes could affect persistence
found out that students who were given a difficult tangram puzzle to solve
after a non-mediated session persisted longer with the puzzles than those who
attempted working out the puzzles after viewing a video clip. Hence, they
concluded, “the mere dissociation between the viewers’ actions and the
feedback received may be inducing a form of learned helplessness in the
viewer. Learned helplessness therefore begins as soon as the television set is
switched on (Swan, Meskill, DeMaio, 1998:54,55).
50
media can have on children are not intrinsic in the media but grow out of the
ways the media are used” (Greenfield, 1984:2).
She contended that, “television watching can become a passive,
deadening activity if adults do not guide their children’s viewing and teach
children to watch critically and to learn from what they watch” (ibid).
According to Greenfield, television can serve as a strong positive tool
for learning and development in children if it is used wisely since they provide
mental skills to children that are different from those developed by reading
and writing. Besides, television conveys certain kinds of information better
than the printed word, overcomes the barrier of illiteracy for adults and
children alike by providing them with information, which they cannot read for
themselves, and provides an alternative to children who do not perform well
under the traditional system of learning (ibid).
She said because television images are imbued with motion, they are
ideal in presenting information about dynamic processes, transformation and
spatial information and also suits the mental capabilities of the young child.
Elementary school children, for instance, remember actions from a narrated
television story better than if the same story were read to them from a picture
book because the actions involved are more explicit on television.
Greenfield recalled the example of how five and seven-year old
Swedish children who watched a film on the process of a tree growing from
seed to maturity learned more information than their counterparts who
watched a narrated version made up of still pictures. Evidently, it was the
movement inherent in the motion film that made the difference to the
children’s ability to grasp information.
53
the level of television literacy that students bring to it determines the value of
film as an instructional tool.
According to Greenfield, these experiments prove that, “television
literacy, developed partly through exposure to television and partly through
development, makes it possible to use television to transmit knowledge and
cognitive skills to the young child. The parallel to print is clear: the acquisition
of basic literacy skills makes it possible to use print to transmit information
and ideas. There is a difference, however: children must be taught to read, but
they learn television literacy on their own by simply watching television”
(Greenfield, 1984: 17).
She said contrary to popular opinion, watching television does present a
mental challenge, which unlike reading, can be acquired without special
tuition. However, the danger that the complex and varied symbolic codes of
television will be processed automatically, without effort, leading to passivity
on the part of the viewer cannot be ruled out.
Greenfield said whether a television program will be viewed actively or
passively depends on the attitudes of viewers towards television or the context
of social interaction in which television is viewed.
But still other writers strongly debunk the fact that television could
become a medium for instruction to children. Writing in the book, “Why
viewers watch”, Jib Fowles, claims, “The instructional aspect of television for
children, which are the focal point for much adult discussion, count for little
with young people. What television means to them is fantasy and more
fantasy” (Fowles, 1992:227).
He said when children are asked what gratifications they derive from
television, they normally point out the fantasy gratifications first which
outnumbers any other gratification. Besides, a research carried out by Wilbur
56
Schramm also showed that children most often select fantasy programs as
their list of favorite programs, which usually outnumber reality programs at a
ratio of twenty to one (ibid).
Further studies carried out by Schramm and his research team at
Stanford University showed that when learning does occur from television,
which is a very rare incidence, it is most often “casual and inadvertent on the
child’s part. The young person does not think of himself as a student when
viewing, and thus, that is not the mode of learning that goes on; what
commonly happens is that something of interest comes up in the course of a
show and the child will latch onto that one item” (Fowles, 1992: 222).
This indicates that whatever learning takes place from television is
incidental. Besides, other surveys carried out by Schramm showed that
children normally avoid didactic programs and thus virtually never watch
educational, public affairs and news programs, even when such programs have
been tailored to suit their needs (Fowles, 1992:223).
Consequently, for children, television is a means of entertainment, not
instruction. Hence, entertainment, rather than information, and fantasy, rather
than reality is what takes priority.
And as, George Heinemann, Vice president of one of America’s
television network put it, “We’re story tellers, not teachers, Leave the teaching
to the teachers in the classroom” (Fowles, 1992:227).
In the book “Children in the Cradle of Television” the writer hinted that
a central concern about the effects of television on children has being in the
area of violence, where questions as to whether children are modeling and
imitating the violence they see on television have been raised. “Does a child’s
viewing of television violence increase the likelihood of that child committing
subsequent aggressive acts?”, he asked (Palmer, 1987:71).
He said research by Psychologist, Albert Bandura in 1963, suggests that
children do imitate what they see on television. Other studies have found out
that, the more children viewed violence on television, the more they became
desensitized to violence in real life (Palmer, 1987: 71,72).
According to the author, “there was virtually no support for the early
suggestion that violence viewing functioned as emotional release (catharsis),
cleansing the viewer of aggressive tendencies. To the contrary, aggressive
tendencies were heightened by viewing” (Palmer, 1987:72).
He said other studies on the long-tern effects of television viewing
painted a still gloomy picture on the effects of violence. Research studies
carried out by Monroe Lefkowitz and his co-workers revealed that heavy
television viewing among eight –year old boys was exceedingly connected to
their likelihood of becoming juvenile delinquents in later years.
George Gerbner and his co-workers also discovered that heavy
television viewers also had a tendency to significantly overestimate
aggression-related dangers in their daily lives and developed expectations of
personalities who would be both perpetrators and victims of violence. This is
because; women the elderly and minority groups are normally always
portrayed as the victims of televised violence (ibid).
The book also identified advertisements as one area that had a profound
effect on young viewers. It said a number of professional groups have
58
expressed concern about the dental health risks inherent in the advertisement
of sugary food to children. Heavily sugared cereals remain the most advertised
food items on children’s programs, leading to the cultivation of unhealthy
eating habits in children and contributing to the incidence of obesity.
The success of these advertisements lies in the psychological appeals
they make to children, by identifying fun and acceptance with the use of
products. Meanwhile, they normally omit important information about the
product, such as, its ingredients, price, durability whilst subtly conveying
information on male and racial dominance and glorifying leisure (Palmer,
1987: 74).
In a bid to explain the social position occupied by television in the
household, the writer drew an analogy between television and a bottle
containing dangerous pills sitting on the bathroom. He said whilst adults are
aware that the pill is dangerous and know how to use it safely, children lack
both the awareness that the pill is dangerous and the knowledge on how to use
it safely. In order to protect children from the potential danger of the pill, three
choices are open; the manufacturer could label it with a “yuk face” to keep
children away, the company could be required to use a container lid that only
adults can open, or parents should be instructed to lock up all dangerous pills
in a cupboard.
The book said this analogy between television and a dangerous pill
bottle is simplistic in the sense that, while it is easy to identify the pill within
the bottle as dangerous, it is more difficult to identify the dangerous within
television (Palmer, 1987:71).
When it comes to child protection with regards to television as
illustrated by the pill bottle analogy, it is necessary to consider the
responsibilities of those who undertook the creation of the pill bottle and what
59
explained their feelings: they acted aggressively and altruistically less than
whites did” (Donagher, Poulos, Liebert, & Davidson, 1975).
But the power relationships that were once clear in early portrayals,
with subservient roles and negative characters being the preserve of blacks,
are now subtler. Black dominance occurs only in black series whilst in a
production involving whites they are less dominant. Besides, in the few
productions that blacks are allowed to dominate, they do so in collaboration
with white partners. Minority characters are portrayed as victims, rather than
killers and less likely to be authority figures or information sources in
educational shows (Berry, Mitchell Kernan, 1982: 25).
According to “Television and the Socialization of the Minority Child”,
“The personality characteristics given to minority characters and the situations
in which they are demonstrated are generally supportive of the current social
structure. So too are the majority of social roles minorities, as opposed to
whites, fill on television. Minorities normally fit our stereotypes of American
society by being poor (Fernandez-Collado et al., 1978, 1979) and confined to
their own ghetto. When minorities have more powerful roles, they are
generally those that support the current social order (Clark 1969). Blacks are
police officers and teachers. They maintain the current laws of the land and
educate our children into our system. There are only infrequent glimpses of
minorities who are middle or upper class, who live and work in a social order
that is more equitable for all, or who successfully challenge inequities” (ibid).
The writers claim that racial stereotypes on television have implications
for children who look up to television for role models. For minority children,
the choice of role models originating from the same ethnicity as themselves
are few and fall within a small variety of careers, personality characteristics
and social circumstances. The only choice of role models who are powerful
65
and successful then falls among white characters. The fact that minority
children are presented with two choices makes their social learning from
television unpredictable. If they choose to model themselves after minority
roles, they are more likely to cultivate a less knowledgeable, less assertive,
less wealthy, and less dominant attitude than their white counterparts and in
the process accept white versions of who they are. On the other hand, if they
choose they model themselves after white characters, they might imbibe
white, rather than minority values and imitate their behavior in relation to
family life, money, work, competition, aggression and co-operation (Berry,
Mitchell-Kernan, 1982: 27, 28).
Hence, inevitably, minority children may be forced to abandon
characteristic features of their own culture in order to model themselves after
white role models, or may have to rely heavily on their families and
communities for role models (ibid).
Further more, the long hours spent watching television may undermine
the development of other skills and interests. The development of any skill
requires investment of time, which is spent watching television. It may be
necessary to find out what both minority and white children lose by watching
television. For some children, the alternatives may be negative such as
involvement in fistfights, alcohol and drug use and crime. But for several
others, they might be giving up positive things such as the development of
athletic, intellectual, artistic, interpersonal and mechanical skills (ibid).
a text was carried out in Western Oregon in the United States by Seiter et al
(www.ber.ac.uk/media, 2004:5).
Most of the 64 people, who were interviewed in the study, including 15
men, claimed that viewing soap operas served as a source of catharsis and was
therapeutically beneficial.
Writing in the book “Soap Operas and Women’s Talk”, Brown stated
that women find pleasure in soap operas because they see other women
expressing their feelings and feel free to gossip about soap opera characters
because there is no repercussion for doing so (Brown, 1994:18).
In interviews conducted by Dorothy Hobson with women to investigate
why they find soap operas pleasurable, they said it was due to the
undemanding nature of the genre, its interesting story lines and the ability for
viewers to become emotionally involved (Seitel et al, 1991:157).
In her article “Why are Soap Operas so popular?” Helena Robson said
soap operas “appeal to the masses because it allows viewers to put their
knowledge of the world and knowledge of the conventions of television into
play. The close –up shots characteristically used in soaps enables viewers to
focus on the characters’ emotions and to understand most, if not all, of the
actions depicted…In this way, the characters are emotional representatives,
inviting the audience to partake in the arising issues and conflicts, in order that
they may seek temporary solutions to the problems they are experiencing in
real life” (www.aber.ac.uk/media, 2004:2).
However, other research studies have shown that women rarely watch
soap operas in an attempt to seek solutions for their problems but rather the
setting of soap operas as well as the time they are telecast makes women the
majority of viewers. A research undertaken by Modleski showed that soap
operas often reflect the role of women in the home and are mostly aired in the
67
day. This makes them an automatic choice for women working at home.
Because the genre is undemanding, with more emphasis on talk, rather than
action, women can go about their busy schedules at home whilst catching a
gist of soap opera conversation on television. Besides, soap operas emphasis
on family, public situations and the community instills a sense of belonging in
viewers and offers a surrogate family and social life for the lonely
(www.aber.ac.uk/media, 20042).
Just like Modleski, Kreizenberg, another researcher on soaps, claims
that soaps derive their strength from the family unit. He pointed out that most
often, soaps question family relations while including occasional dramatic
events such as a death or a wedding in their plots in addition to mundane
situations such as family feuds. By so doing, the genre successfully holds the
interest of viewers (Allen, 1992:130).
However, some writers do not view women’s fascination with soaps as
merely because it reflects the home but because most often it shows how male
dominance at home is challenged by women.
Writing in “Women and Soap Operas: A study of Prime –Time Soaps”,
Geraghty observed that “the pleasure for women viewers of patriarchal soaps
is the demonstration that male power, challenged on the one hand by moral
questioning and on the other by the women’s refusal to be controlled, can
never be fully unproblematically asserted” (Geraghty, 1991:74).
Thus, soaps serve as an outlet for feminine anger since they normally
strip the male head of the family of the stereotypical authoritative and
powerful image associated with action thrillers.
Consequently, some writers, such as Brown, view soaps as a source of
feminine strength because “they help women test the waters to see how far
they can go in challenging social norms” (Brown, 1994:12).
68
This view, is however, a far cry from the views held by some writers
who assert that women’s preoccupation with soap operas is symptomatic of
physical and psychic maladies whilst others see it as playing on the low
intelligence Quotient (I.Q) of women and a refuge for the lazy housewife.
According to the book, “Speaking of soap Operas”, “ Soap Operas serve
as a sort of re-medial ethics and civics lesson for the socially retarded” (Allen,
1985:26). The book quotes a Soap Opera writer as saying; “Women of the
daytime audiences are having physical and psychic problems that they
themselves cannot understand, that they cannot solve. Being physical, they
feel the thrust of these problems. Being poor, they cannot buy remedies in the
form of doctors, new clothes or deciduous coiffures; being unanalytical, they
cannot figure out what is really the matter with them; being inarticulate, they
cannot explain their problem even if they know what it is…Soap opera takes
them into their own problems or into problems worse than their own (which is
the same thing only better). Or it takes them away from their problems. It
gives listeners two constant and frequently simultaneous choices-participation
or escape. Both work.” (ibid).
The book also sees soap operas as functioning to restrict women’s role
in society to the domestic sphere. The author asserted that, a study carried out
on women by Warner and Henry showed that soaps operas work to strengthen
and stabilize the basic social structure of society, the family, by impressing on
the minds of women that the world outside is evil and unfulfilling and their
place is in the home. According to the book, these researchers summed up
their research saying; “…As females in our society they have learned by
rewards and punishment, from birth to sexual maturity, to conform to the rigid
conventions of our middle class culture. They have been trained by their
families to be wives and mothers and, unconsciously, to carry out and
69
maintain the roles, moral beliefs, and values of their social level. This they do
most effectively. We shall have occasion to say it later, but is well to say it
now, that should they fail in this behavior our society, as we know it, will not
continue” (Allen, 1985:28).
This view of soap operas as an instrument for maintaining the status
quo is also shared by Dolores Hayden in her book “Redesigning the American
Dream: The future of housing, work and family life”. She asserts that soap
operas were designed to fit into a domestic setup that will nurture “a
conservative point of view in the working man” (Hayden, 1984:33). They are
tied to the need to entice women away from the workplace, a place they
virtually invaded during world war one; and the call by unions for a ‘family
wage’ for men so that women and children will not need to work (ibid).
But the book, “Never ending stories, American Soap Operas and the
Cultural Production of Meaning” has a different viewpoint. According to the
book, “Not only women who work outside the home but also those who take
care of a household and children vehemently distance themselves from the
image of the (lazy) housewife associated with the prototypical soap opera
viewer” (Borchers, Kreutzner, Warth, 1994:197).
Citing some interviews that were conducted with women, the book said
some women had the opinion that viewing soap operas was illicit terrain
which had a stigma attached to it. It quoted one of the interviewees, identified
as Jane, as saying, “Only housewives that don’t have anything better to do
watch soap operas” (ibid).
According to the book, this interviewee relates the stigmatized and
culturally discriminated text of soap operas to the image of soap opera viewers
as bored housewives. Another interviewee, a mother of two and a part time
worker said, “For years, I will never watch a soap. To me, that was the worst
70
thing. Only housewives will sit around all day and watch soap operas. That is
the worst” (ibid).
Most writers also point out that the soap opera genre was born,
developed and maintained out of the need to reach women with
advertisements. “In the soap opera, advertisers have found the ideal vehicle
for the reinforcement of advertising impressions and the best means yet
devised for assuring regular viewing”, says the book, “Speaking of Soap
Operas”(Allen, 1985:47).
The writer goes on to say, “Viewed in this light, the soap opera text is
but a context for the messages of the corporations that ‘sponsor’ the soap
operas’ presentation. Obviously, however, it is that ‘context’ which attracts
the viewer and sustains his or her attention between commercials” (Allen,
1985:46).
Mary Ellen Brown, in her book, “Soap Opera and Women’s Talk”,
traces the history of the genre as arising initially by the need of manufacturing
companies to sell soap to housewives before being used by numerous others to
sell their products to women (Brown, 1994: 44).
Still other writers have tried to establish how soap opera characters
correspond to real life characters.
In the book, “Women and Soap Opera: A study of Prime –Time Soaps”,
Marion Jordan identified three types of women normally portrayed by Soap
Operas. They are the ‘married woman’, the ‘single woman’ and the
‘grandmother’ type. Meanwhile, Buckman recognizes social types such as the
‘good woman’, the ‘bitch’, the ‘villain’ and the ‘decent husband’ (Geraghty,
1991:132).
Various writers have also tried to expound the effects of television on
the cultural, socio economic and even religious lives of viewers. Such
71
their culture. The writer said in spite of the fact that many professional
journalists and professors in Nigeria were educated in Britain and the United
States, they were firmly behind their country’s official broadcasting policy of
preserving their traditional heritage, no matter how primitive it may appear in
modern eyes (Altschull, 1984:157).
Hence, “through out the 19 states of Nigeria, programs feature colorfully
costumed native singers and dancers chanting in local languages and dancing
to the beat of ceremonial drums” (Altschull, 1984:158).
Occasionally, Nigerian television may include foreign programs like
“Starsky and Hutch”. However, in comparison with capitalist countries and
Latin American countries, they telecast very few of the situation comedies and
dramas aired in the United States. While English is the official language of
Nigeria with news programs broadcast in English, local languages dominate
other programs, which center on local themes (ibid).
The writer said, nonetheless, some Nigerians are not content with the
ratio of local to foreign programs. Voicing the opinions of many at a meeting
of broadcasters, Olufolaji Ajibola Fadeyibi, a lecturer of the University of
Lagos, lamented that too many British and American programs were being
presented on Ibadan television. Summing up his speech, he said, “The
conclusion is obvious. There is no need for us to perpetuate a situation as well
as condemn it at the same time. If the western nations won’t talk about us,
play our music and enlighten their audiences about our culture, then we have
no business talking about them, playing their music and showing “kojak”. By
so doing, we will be putting an end to our cultural genocide and
communication neo-colonialism. To expect the western nations to facilitate
the bi-directional flow of information is to expect a river to flow backwards.
Surely, no flow is better than free flow” (ibid).
74
The writer noted that, even though Nigeria could well stand out as the
most capitalist country in Africa, it shares the contempt exhibited by several
Africa countries for the cultural penetration of the continent by the United
States, Britain and the rest of the capitalist world.
Generally, most writers on television tend to fall into two broad
categories: those who advocate media education as a solution or as a means of
mediating the negative influences of television and those who painstakingly
analyze the effects of television on people, whether negative or positive.
Among those writers who have proposed media education as an urgent
necessity in view of the pervasiveness of television are Bukingham in his
books “Watching media learning: Making sense of media education” and
“Children Talking Television: The making of Television Literacy” and
Bianculli in “Teleliteracy: Taking Television seriously”. Other authors are
Barry in “Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image and manipulation in Visual
Communication; Alvarado, Gutch and Wollen in “Learning the Media: An
introduction to media Education” and Alvarado and Boyd-Barret in Media
Education: An Introduction”.
The second category of authors who have chronicled television effects
include Rosengren in “Media Effects and Beyond: Culture, Socialization and
Lifestyles” and Jameison and Campbell in “The Interplay of Influence: News,
Advertising, Politics and the mass Media”.
75
CHAPTER III
3.1 EXAMINATION OF CONTENTS OF TELEVISION IN RELATION
TO THE FAMILY
Generally, research on the usage of television programs in families has
shown that men are identified with factual programs (news, sports, current
affairs and documentaries) whilst women exhibit a preference for fictional
programs (Lull, 1988:43). In fact sports viewers are twice as likely to be an
adult male instead of a woman or a child (Comstock, 1978:113). Children and
the youth may take an interest in several programs, but children normally
prefer cartoons whilst the youth tend to gravitate around musical programs.
fellow human beings, confirm what they already know, and in the process
reassures them.
The importance of news in maintaining psychological health should not
be underestimated; messages that reassure people that there is order in the
world are indispensable for people to plan their lives and initiate personal
goals, without which disorder may enter the human consciousness as a form of
disabling anxiety.
Television is well equipped to inform because of the richness of its
visual information that enable it to achieve realism and psychological
proximity.
The end result is that television news has demystified leaders by
reducing the awe that political leaders once enjoyed through ‘distant visibility’
by the excess familiarity given to them by repeated television coverage. This
familiarity brings politicians who were once held in awe to the scrutiny of
ordinary citizens where their human frailties such as stammering, sweating,
stumbling are on stage for every one to see (Downing, Mahammadi, Sreberny-
Mohammadi, 1995 :48, 49).
An example of how television can expose the emotions of leaders,
which in some cases may be detrimental, is the fall of United States President
Nixon. When the U.S public witnessed the gestures of President Nixon on
television during the ‘Watergate’ scandal, the general consensus was that he
behaved as if he had something to hide (Fowles, 1992:199).
Even though the investigations into President Nixon’s affairs was
initiated by two journalists whose reports appeared in one newspaper, the
effect was minimal until it was broadcast on television where it begun to draw
public opinion against the president. In 1973, television gave 37 days of live
coverage to the Watergate hearings, which stirred up the apprehensions of the
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American people. Viewing the hearings, and other televised events that
followed, Americans were unanimous that hey did not like what they were
hearing or seeing which finally led to the impeachment of President Nixon.
Television news played a major role in this decision by putting the president
and the people in touch through good pictures (ibid).
Another event in which television news played a central role was the
assassination of U.S President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It was through
television that news of the assassination traveled through a nation of 200
million with much rapidity and accuracy. The American families did not only
experience and share the same emotions by viewing television but were also
able to share in the grief of the wife and children of the president; with the son
copying a salute and the daughter following her mother to kiss the flag on her
mother’s coffin (Fowles, 1992:176).
But in spite of the important role that television news plays in
maintaining the psychological health of individuals, it does not enjoy such a
large audience as the entertainment programs, but rather has become the
preserve of the adult male.
In one survey conducted in the U.S., less than 10 percent of the sample
being studied said they watched television for news and information whilst in
another survey, news programs were at the bottom of the list of program
preferences on television whilst entertainment programs were at the top. One
third of regular viewers of news also said in a survey they would not miss the
news if it were taken off screen for several weeks (Fowles, 1992:180).
One reason is that after a hard days work, most people find the further
imposition of informational material unwelcome. Whilst Television stations in
America devote 15 percent of programs to news, the audience spend only 10
percent of their viewing time on the news (Fowles, 1992:185).
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Another research study established that only one third of the main
points of television news are understood by viewers, 40 percent of whom dine
whilst viewing television. Misinterpretation of news events is a common
phenomenon, as indicated by a study by the American Association of
Advertising Agencies in 1980. This phenomenon can be explained using
Gerhardt Wiebe’s (1970) scheme of directive, maintenance and restorative
usage of mass media content (Fowles, 1992:182). According to Wiebe, people
tend to convert directive messages, that is, news with new information content
that demand new responses, to maintenance messages. Maintenance messages
are a review, an embellishment or an elaboration of what people already
know. This conversion of messages from directive to maintenance occurs
when people feel threatened by new information that is likely to lead to an
imbalance, which the conversion helps them to avoid. Because most people
use television as a source of entertainment, there is also the danger of
converting directive information into restorative, escapist, messages. As
observed by Mark Robert Levy, “Many people also find that television news
entertains while it informs and reassures. Like situation comedies and
detective ‘shoot-’em –ups’, the newscast temporary releases some members of
the audience from the pressing cares of daily existence” (Fowles, 1992:183).
Hence, serious political news broadcasts may be taken as restorative
messages and entertainment by the audience, which will only undermine the
purposes for which the news has been telecast. When this conversion of
serious directive political messages into restorative messages occur, people are
likely to elect candidates who suit the fantasy needs of the public and possess
charismatic qualities, rather than what is required of them for good
governance (ibid).
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People watching television from the comfort of their living rooms are
more likely to have a clearer view of what happens during the game than some
less fortunate spectators whose positioning in the stadium may not give them
this advantage. This is because, television normally focuses on action around
the ball, cuts away views on team positioning and thus eliminates for the
viewer overall field strategy. Announcers provide cues for the viewer by
highlighting specific actions and players. Instant replays and slow motion
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techniques also detach specific parts of the game for deeper scrutiny. The
screen also provides information on the scores, time and performance details
(Real, 1996:57).
But perhaps, of even greater advantage is the fact that, televised sports
by reducing the potential number of people at a sporting event, also greatly
reduces sports related violence and offers some degree of protection to those
who participate in sporting events via the screen. The history of sports,
especially football, is replete with stories of violence: In Ghana, over a 100
people died in the Accra Sports Stadium in 2000 when the police tried to use
tear gas to control supporters of the Accra Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko,
two archrivals in Ghanaian football.
During the European Cup finals in 1985, 39 people were killed and 437
injured in confrontations between the two finalists, Liverpool and Juventus of
Italy. In 1989, 95 people died at the Heysel Stadium in Hillsborough, and
during the 1994 World Cup, Colombia player, 27-year-old Andres Escobar,
was assassinated by an angry fan because he let his country down (Real,
1996:52).
In addition to the above, others have identified the element of fantasy in
televised sports as the central issue bringing benefits to the adult male, much
like how some fictional genres provide fantasy for their audiences. According
to this school of thought, various forms of assaults are essential in any
sporting event. As television critic, Horace Newcomb put it “The idea of
conflict is central. Legitimate violence is present in varying degrees in athletic
contests” (Newcomb, 1974:192). Hence, in sports, balls and other surrogates
rather than people are hit (Fowles, 1992:148).
Televised sports also bears some structural parallels to fictionalized
genres in the sense that they are all governed by certain conventions, operate
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within strict time constraints and revolve around actions that should neither be
boring nor unbelievable at the same time. Besides sports contest also involve
good and bad guys all striving to win a trophy, and produces heroes for
viewers to identify with just like any other fantasy genre (Fowles, 1992:149).
Therefore sports also serve as an antithesis for a day of hard work, and a stress
reliever. This fact was testified by a report in Time magazine in 1978, which
said the number of violent assaults, more than doubled after the end of the
football season in the home of the ‘Super Bowl Champion Dallas Cowboys’
(Fowles, 1992:151).
Others have criticized televised sports for isolating viewers from the
scene of activity, saying, “this arms length involvement in sports eliminates
for spectators the benefits to physical health and reduces the benefits in
general to psychic, emotional and social ones” (Downing, Mohammadi,
Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1995:471).
According to the critics, televised sports encourage fans to dream
themselves into phony self-images of vigor, action and victory whilst leading
passive and unhealthy lifestyles. “Alas, the sports coach potato does exist”,
they claim (ibid).
Another criticism leveled against the televised sport fan is that he does
not experience the “environment of crowds, expressive behavior of cheering
and booing, physical movement to and at the game and other traditional
experiences of the classic sports spectator” (ibid).
Besides television has changed the very nature of sports and seems to
dictate the evolvement of sports to suit its needs, created and spiraled by an
intense commercialization due to advertisements which has brought sports
into the realm of the spectacular.
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Before the advent of television, American football had two teams with
15 members each, with four as reserve players. The spectators were local fans
and groups of friends, who identified with each other, the players and the
community or city in which the sporting teams were based (Baugh, CO2036:
2005).
Today, television has rendered sports fans impersonal whilst sporting
teams no longer consist of local fans but foreign players because sports has
been rendered spectacular by television and has become a highly
commercialized activity.
The sporting event used to be directly experienced and there was
dialogue between spectators and players and a shared feeling of belonging,
with the sport and the players being the most important thing. Television,
however, has abrogated all this. Instead, it creates a narrator, a kind of bridge
between the sporting events and the viewers who explains what is not
comprehensible to viewers as a result of the inability of television to show the
whole field at once (ibid).
Furthermore, television has turned sporting events that used to be
simple pastimes into something scientific whilst prying into the private lives
of well known sports men and women in its efforts to sensationalize sports;
statistics are given at the beginning and end of televised sports whilst
information is given on the sentimental life of players.
Besides, there is a drastic difference between viewing sports in reality
and viewing them on television. Television does not capture sports on a single
camera but sometimes uses as many as 30 cameras. This creates 30 points of
view. Camera angles change the point of view; zoom in, zoom out, fade out,
pan, cut, all these techniques create for the viewer something different from
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what actually takes place on the field. In this regard, it is the television stations
and their directors who determine what the viewer sees (ibid).
Apart from the fact that viewers do not determine what they want to
see, split screen techniques allow television stations to show viewers as much
as four different points of view at the same time coupled with instantaneous
repetitions of peak periods that do not only render sports spectacular but also
convert it into a dense “text”. Televised sports therefore remain a virtual
reality because nobody sees the events as they are represented on television
(ibid).
Further more, television has helped to create sports superstars which in
turn have turned the event into big business that bestows fame and power to
those who succeed in it and even accords them the role of experts in fields in
which they have very little or no knowledge such as politics and morality. But
alas, all is not rosy for even those who succeed in sports. Television fame is
highly precarious and sports men and women held in high esteem and
accorded the mythic role of demigods soon come tumbling down upon making
mistakes in their lives. What happened to O.J. Simpson and Michael Jordan
illustrate this.
mechanically shuttered slow and stop motion cameras and uniform graphic
fonts were first used at the Olympic and World Cup games before spreading to
other spheres of television. The first high definition television (HDTV) was
first provided on 200 public monitors in Tokyo during the 1988 Seoul
Olympic games. This was a follow up to NHK’s ability to compress two
instantaneous video pictures into one frame in Japan that was transmitted to
Los Angeles via satellite in 1984 (Real, 1996:57).
Consequently, the television fan can become deeply immersed in the
sporting event but at what cost?
Televised sports is replete with advertisements on cars, fast foods, beer,
all kinds of consumer goods and in the US appeals for military recruitment
(Real, 1996:58).
society to guide them as to how to judge and rate televised material and may
come to accept such programs as depicting the real adult world (Christenson
& Roberts, 1983:79).
However, whilst children may have access to programs with adult
content, the vehicle mostly used by television programmers to target children
is cartoons.
minds lack the skill to sort out relevant information from a scene and discard
what is irrelevant.
Cartoons allow producers to tune their products to the pre-logical
thinking of children since the drawings can be manipulated to do just that
whilst it will be impossible to achieve the same effect with real actors. With
cartoon characters, everything is possible from flying, ripping up mountains,
turning houses into automobiles, animals that have the power of speech and
motorcycles that are alive to shrinking buildings and all that cannot be
achieved with life and blood characters, real things and creatures.
By so doing, cartoons create a world of fantasy within which a
fantasizing child can enjoy with ease and without guilt.
Soap operas also manage to sell the products that engineered their
production as well as a national culture and an ideological system. Thus, even
though soap operas include a resistive discourse, the dominant discourse
always wins out.
Hence, soap operas may include issues such as rape or violence against
women, but instead of concluding that the problem is systematic which will
then constitute a threat to patriarchy or capitalism, it would rather be handled
as an individual problem requiring individual solutions to enable the dominant
discourse to win out.
Besides, as noted by John Fiske, the dominant discourse belittles
structural issues in society such as gender, class, race, age and other class
distinctions and places all responsibility on the individual for being or not
being successful. In so doing, social and structural compositions of society as
definers of meaning are overlooked.
The literary heritage of soap operas, which were first broadcast on radio
in the 1930’s, may have come from women magazines, newspapers or both.
Soap operas share some similarities with woman magazines, which contain
continuing serials, and features to which women can look up to for probable
situations and emotional dilemmas that they may encounter in life.
Magazines contain an ample supply of advertisements as well as
problem pages that offer advise to women which are akin to the provision of
advice on the early radio soap operas, an activity which still continues on
televised soap operas today. Past newspapers and magazines serialized
novels, including The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens in Britain, which
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The first soap opera was modeled after an Ivory campaign to sell soap
in 1923, which utilized a comic strip format depicting the ‘Jolly Family’,
whose life decisions and activities revolved around soap (Brown, 1994:44). A
research study conducted by Proctor & Gamble in the United Studies revealed
that a similar family narrative could be used to successfully conduct a
broadcast campaign. The services of Irna Philips, credited with being the
mother of the genre, was sought to write a serial that featured ‘The Suddses’
in ‘Painted Dreams’, which was run daily for 15 minutes in the 1930’s for a
short while. A second serial from the same author, entiltled, “Today’s
Children”, replaced it. These came to be known as selling dramas because the
soap pitch was written into them. Other soap operas; ‘The Romance of Helen
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Trent, Mary Noble, Backstage wife, and ‘Our Gal Sunday’ by Frank and Ann
Hummert focused on the feelings of women. Philips adopted this strategy in
her next serial drama, ‘The Guiding Light’ which saw the entrenchment of the
genre in the world of broadcast (Brown, 1994:45).
Consequently, soap operas were built into the needs of the capitalist
economy that necessitated that women stay at home to meet the emotional
needs of husband and children and concentrate on reviving the collective
energy of the male labor force to sustain capitalism. As a genre, it flowered on
radio in answer to the seclusion of women at home and the desire to cultivate
them as consumers of domestic products. Sixty –four soap operas, lasting 15
minutes, were broadcast on radio in 1940 in the United States each weekday.
These evolved into television productions in the 1950’s that were stretched to
a one-hour format by 1973 in a bid to reach the audience with advertisements
for longer periods of time (Brown, 1994:46). The audience for the genre grew
at an alarming rate, with over a 100 million people watching soap operas in
the United States alone in 1990.
One aspect of soap operas that make them endearing to a large number
of women is its adoption of a multiple plot system with a large number of
characters who mirror people from all walks of life. Most often, these
characters resolve their problems from a different point of view lending
credence to the idea among viewers that problems in life can be tackled from
different perspectives. This is a far cry from the formula of its literary
heritage, the magazine problem page, which used to provide only a single
hegemonic solution to problems of audiences.
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Soap operas also differ from Hollywood productions and other narrative
forms in the sense that, they do not provide one hero with whom the audience
can identify with. Identification with characters in narratives is normally
achieved by providing one or a few main characters from whose point of view
events in the story are understood and with whose feelings the audience
identifies with. Various camera shots collectively called ‘point of view shots’
are used to achieve this: the eye line match depicts the main character staring
off screen to be followed by a shot that brings to the viewer what the character
is looking at, the shot-counter shot technique depicts first one person, then a
second person talking or looking at one another (Brown, 1984:51).
Soap opera viewers are more likely to engage in an implication with
characters, rather than identification. With this kind of reading, the audience
may become involved with a character but retreats whenever events around
that character become unpleasant and bonds with another character with more
pleasant circumstances. With implication reading, there is no loyalty to any
character; it is a reading strategy under the control of the audience who
experiences active pleasure from it.
Another reading strategy associated with soap operas is the adoption
strategy, where the audience literary adopts its characters as a kind of family,
the bad as well as the good, and then relates to the soap together with its
characters along familial lines.
The profile of female characters normally changes over the years to
reflect the changing roles of women in society. Hence, as more women
entered the workforce, more women entered the workforce on stories depicted
by soap operas, which featured businesswomen, research scientist, surgeons
and psychiatrist among others. In a bid to attract younger viewers, some soap
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operas, such as general hospital, included younger characters and more daring
plots.
Soap operas are also sensitive to the sentiments of viewers and try to
mirror those sentiments in their productions. When 90 percent of the letters
received from the audience expressed disapproval at an interracial marriage on
‘Days of our Lives’ in the 1970’s, the relationship broke up. However, when
in 1988 an interracial relationship was featured on ‘General Hospital’, it
blossomed into marriage because only 65 percent of letters expressed
disapproval.
daughter after she acted a part in which she was involved in an obscene affair
with another character (Fowles, 1992:168).
Consequently, networks receive a flood of congratulatory messages
when a favorite actress gets married on soap opera and sympathy cards when a
character dies. Some viewers go even further by writing letters offering pieces
of advice to their heroines and praise for good action or behavior.
Mary Cassata, a researcher, explained this phenomenon to be due to the
intimate knowledge that the audience gain on characters because they have
access to their innermost thoughts and motivations, a privilege that is hardly
found in the closest of relationships (Cassata & Skill, 1983:31).
Hence women experience soap opera characters in a way that is not felt
to be outside reality and thus become attached to the character as if she existed
in real life. Renata Adler, a cinema critic, in spite of her sophistication and
knowledge in the field of cinema did fall prey to bonding to the fictional
characters on soap operas. Explaining her predicament, she said, “I saw the
characters in the soaps more often than my friends. It had a continuity stronger
than the news.” (Fowles, 1992:169).
A soap opera actress explaining why the viewers treat them as if they
were the actual characters they acted on television said “We are in their living
rooms five days a week, leading a continuous life, so we achieve a kind of
reality” (LaGuardia, 1974:126).
This explains one of the psychological functions of soap operas: they
extend the universe of women by peopling it, something that modern life with
its tendency for isolation and anonymity has failed to accomplish. Since
human beings are social in nature and have the ability to participate
emotionally and culturally in larger groups, their desire to widen their private
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world, especially if they are unemployed and also deprived of their families
during the day, is very great.
Consequently, soap operas expand the private world of viewers, and
give them something to think about with little emotional investment.
watching a live musical performance. This, then, is like going back to ancient
times, when music and artist were always presented together until modern
technology made it possible to record music and thus separate the work of the
artist from himself.
This is much like the difference between television and print. Just as the
discovery of writing made it possible to separate the speaker from his words,
the discovery of audio recording made it possible to separate the musician
from his songs, but television rich in ethos and pathos, reconnects the author
with his material, thus paving the way for secondary orality. Hence, with the
advent of music on television, it is not only the lyrics of a song that are
important but the images accompanying the music tell their own stories as
well.
In 1986, Brown et al. in a study of 12-15 year olds discovered that
above 80 percent of the group under study viewed music on television, whilst
another study by Christenson in 1992 showed that 75 percent of 9 to 12 year
olds also viewed music on television. Other studies indicate that between 35 to
40 percent of adolescents watch music on television daily (Christenson &
Roberts, 1998:39).
The reasons why the youth watch MTV is similar to the reasons why
people use the media in the first place. The gratifications and pleasure derived
from music either creates or contributes to the most intense peak periods of
life, whether they are moments of celebration and joy or moments of sadness
and loss. According to Lull, “music promotes experiences of the extreme for
its makers and listeners, turning the perilous emotional edges, vulnerabilities,
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Table 2.1 Early adolescents use of music and music videos (Christenson &
Roberts, 1998:40).
MUSIC VIDEOS
(%) (%)
Do you ever listen to music or watch music 98 75
videos?
How much do you like listening and watching? 97 60
Do you ever listen or watch in the afternoon? 84 62
How often do you listen and watch in the 72 62
afternoon?
Did you listen or watch last night? 62 15
Did you listen or watch today before school? 51 7
Ian Chambers and Lisa Lewis have attempted to explain how the
audience actively use music to suit their own needs. According to Ian
chambers, popular music is employed in the expression of individual
identities, symbolic resistance and leisure pursuits. He sited the examples of
how hippies used music at demonstrations, festivals, and various events in the
1960’s to achieve their own ambitions. The Nelson Mandela concert of 1988
is also another example of how popular music was employed in a political and
racial battle (Downing, Mohammadi, Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1995:386,
387,388).
Focusing on viewers of MTV and fans at musical concerts, Lewis
argues that fans participate in creating the meanings assigned to popular
music, which is polysemic and makes available many interpretations. The
interpretations that ultimately dominate are those produced by the audience
(ibid).
children, advertisers also appeal to their desire to be the most popular, the best
or the first by purchasing a particular product (Fowles, 1992:223). Because
children are the most vulnerable to advertising messages, even some
companies have tried to use children to influence adult decisions to buy a
certain kind of gas by giving out free toy fire trucks with each gas fill up.
Obviously, children will nudge their parents into those stations where they
will be given free toys (Fowles, 1992:224).
Television plays a part in socializing children as consumers through
advertisements as well as the nature of the medium itself. A research on
British children in the 1950’s where children only viewed the BBC, which
carried no advertisements, found out that children who viewed television had
more materialistic ambitions than those who did not (Greenfield, 1984:51).
Whilst adolescent boys who watched television focused more on what they
will have, those who did not focused more on what they will be doing.
Besides, a child’s materialistic outlook was found to be directly proportional
to his length of experience with television. Obviously, a child’s exposure to
the visual images of television instills in him an emphasis on visible and
tangible objects and thus consumption in defining his identity and lifestyle
(Greenfield, 1984:51). Marshall McLuhan is right, “the medium is the
message”!
Children also remember jingles, slogans and brand names from
advertisements, which influences their choice of products. Over the years,
pressure groups, especially in The United States have called for a law
insulating children against advertisements aimed at stimulating their
consumptive desires and turning them into lobbyist for the purchasing of
consumer goods by their families. But such efforts have so far proved in vain
since the annulment of advertisements for children will mean an end to the
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overtly and covertly. Apart from selling commercial products, televised music
also functions as a commercial for both music and artist. Music videos have
thus being credited with revamping the stagnant revenues of the recording
industry in the1980’s (Christenson, Robert, 1998:139).
Within the content of televised musical clips, fashion statements and
consumer goods such as nose rings and a million dollar yachts are portrayed
with the result that musical clips have come to be described as a ‘supermarket
of styles’. Thus, most MTV fans after electing to be a member of a musical
subculture, be it rap, funk, punk or heavy metal, depend on music videos to
learn the trade mark for that culture in terms of hairstyles, clothing, other
accessories and the general image of the subculture.
Furthermore, boutiques and clothing sections of many stores in the
United States play clips of MTV on several monitors depicting clothing and
accessories similar to what they are selling (Christenson, Roberts, 1998:140).
Thus, music videos covertly advertise the sales of certain consumer products!
This is because, product images and fantasies of wealth continue to be the
dominant ingredient of images leading to the glorification of luxury and
material wealth.
Another area where advertisements have exerted a strong influence is
the sports genre. When the winter Olympic Games were lengthened from 12
to 16 days to cover three weekends, an additional 43 million dollars was
realized by American National basketball Association through advertisements.
The American National Football League also included five more 30-second
commercials per game, two more teams to the playoffs and extended the week
by two weeks in order to increase television time and consequently boost
income from advertising (Real, 1996:59).
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and a whole lot of gadgets to help her cook without much effort and
expenditure of energy in the shortest time possible. In the absence of more
rewarding activities, most of this free time is spent watching television.
Because television offers one of the cheapest forms of entertainment,
people in low income groups who cannot afford to attend the theatre, go on
holiday tours, buy books and magazines, a VCR and video tapes or participate
in sporting events that require capital investments, come to rely heavily on
television for entertainment.
In addition, people with low education who cannot derive pleasure
from novels and plays or activities that require a bit of training also normally
use television as their source of entertainment. This is because; television
viewing does not require any training or education.
Furthermore, most people who have been through negative experiences
during the day tend to turn to television for distraction from their moods
whilst some youth and children through no fault of their own are sometimes
left with no other activity than television viewing.
3.3.1 Challenge:
From the above figure, it can be deduced that, from the three activities
being compared, television viewers experience very little challenge whilst
viewing a program as compared to sports and leisure. This means viewers are
less involved when they are viewing television than when they are engaged in
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sports and leisure. This may also mean they utilize very little mental and
physical energy.
3.3.2 Concentration:
From the above figure, television has the lowest level of concentration
during the viewing process as compared to sports and leisure, which have a
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higher level of concentration during the event. This indicates that television is
more passive as compared to sports and leisure.
3.3.3 Activation:
From the above figure, it can be seen that television has the lowest level of
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activation during viewing whilst sports has the highest. This means that
television viewers are more passive, drowsy, bored or week during the
viewing process than before and after viewing.
3.3.4 Affect:
Affects refers to the mood of people, and ranges from happy to sad,
cheerful to irritable, friendly to hostile, and sociable to lonely. The higher the
figure for the measurement of affect, the more positive it is. Hence, happy,
cheerful, friendly, and sociable moods correspond to higher numerical figures
whilst sadness, irritability hostility and loneliness are depicted by lower
numerical figures. The figure below shows the levels of affect for television
viewing, leisure and sports before, during and after the activity.
From the figure, it can be seen that both leisure and sports start with much
lower levels of affect but peak up during the activity and drop significantly
after, though not as low as that indicated for television viewing. The affect for
viewing television on the other hand, which is higher than for both sports and
leisure before the viewing experience, drops during the process of viewing and
drops even further after viewing.
3.3.5 Relaxation:
drugs have left the body so the effects of television wears off after the eyes
have been removed from the screen.
SYNTHESIS
This chapter has attempted to examine how television impacts on the family
by examining the various genres and the typical family members that respond
to these genres. It has also attempted to compare the benefits derived from
television vis –a-vis sports and leisure in order to examine its specific
emotional benefits.
Generally, whilst an examination of the various genres in relation to the
family seemed to point to several benefits, the examination of television
viewing in relation to other activities painted a rather gloomy picture. How
does one reconcile these divergent findings? Later chapters will address this.
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CHAPTER IV
4.1 AN EXAMINATION OF MEDIA THEORIES IN RELATION TO THE
FAMILY
A research of this nature that seeks to address the role of television in
families in relation to its benefits and disadvantages as well as how families
should respond to the contents of television in order not to be shattered by its
messages but to utilize them for their own requirements presupposes that the
audience under consideration is active.
Yet, some of the concerns people have expressed about the impact of
television on viewers, which were elaborated in the introduction to this
research, seem to suggest the audience might not be active gatekeepers to
themselves by sieving out information. So how does one examine and explain
the inner dynamics of television as well as its impact on people and how
people react to this impact? In which ways does television serve the needs of
society that has given it such a central position in the lives of many? Since
television viewing is considered as a passive activity by some and as an active
one by others, it may be necessary to examine the issue from both passive and
active theoretical models.
Variations of the linear model include ‘The Magic Bullet Theory’ and
the ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory” (http://www.central.edu/homepages,
2003:1).
power of the media whilst portraying the audience as a victim who neither
attempts to nor has the capacity to resist the power of the media.
This hypnotic power of the media was alluded to in the novel Don
Quixote before the onset of television or radio or the propounding of media
theories to guide the analysis of media impact. Miguel de Cervantes in
creating the character Don Quixote, a man whose views on life had been
distorted by the influence of the books (and thus media) he read satirized the
capacity of the media to brainwash its users (Real, 1989:20). Cervantes
describes the state of the character ‘Don Quixote’ as a result of his
undisciplined reading of books of romantic chivalry of the past century whose
works of exaggerated fantasy he believed wholeheartedly. The most
unfortunate aspect of this wholesale believing of the books he read was the
fact that they were set in a medieval context that no longer existed but which
Don Quixote had come to accept as reality. Thus, he completely lost his sense
of judgment because his consciousness was dominated by the fantasy of
enchantments, battles, wooing, tempests and other impossible follies.
Through the creation of the character Don Quixote, Cervantes
illustrated how consciousness can be distorted by undisciplined media
saturation in people just like what the hypodermic needle theory strives to
explain.
But then it is already happening! The conception that the average
European has of Africa is based on sensational news clips on isolated images
of war, famine and drought sieved out from the more complex reality of life in
Africa.
Given that television does not only mirror reality in the form of news;
which is most often sensationalized, and factual programs, but also provides a
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lot of fantasy in its fictional genres, one stands the danger of becoming a ‘Don
Quixote’ if one does not learn to view television critically.
and those to ignore, television decides the agenda. Furthermore, the airtime
given to each news report as well as its position in the news lineup determines
its importance for television and for its audience as well. Hence what is of
news value to the television reporter becomes of news value to the audience,
which is just like transporting the news agenda from the newsroom to the
social sphere or the audience. In the sphere of politics, the treatment given to
candidates by television sets the agenda of viable candidates and influences
their image, which has an effect on the way voters perceive the campaign, the
candidates and their choices.
Thus, “by focusing coverage on a few frontrunners to the sometimes
almost total exclusion of their rivals (in the United States), the news media
play a major, albeit implicit role in the selection of party nominees for national
office” (Bryant, Zillmann, 1986:10).
However, the level of agenda setting on issues by the press has been
found to depend on the kind of issue. Obtrusive issues; that is issues with
which the audience has personal contacts such as inflation, do not rise on the
agenda of the audience when they do so on the media because the media
serves as a secondary source of information on such matters. People
experience inflation personally in their daily lives. On the other hand,
unobtrusive issues on which the audience relies on television to be informed,
such as issues on foreign affairs, are greatly influenced by how they are
covered and used by television. Here, people have no personal experience
with the issue and are dependent on the media for information.
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There is no doubt that the agenda setting theory is relevant to the family
so far as television is concerned. A research in India showed that the arrival of
a television set in a farming community changed the “conversation of the boys
from farming culture to world views, political issues, films, girls and such”
(Lull, 1988:149).
Soap operas have been credited with replacing gossip by offering
women what to talk about. This means that soap operas set the agenda for
discussion for its audiences. The fact that soap operas have spawned several
magazines which have a market of 40 million in the United States alone testify
to this fact (Brown, 1994:47). These magazines, which include ‘Soap Opera
Digest’, ‘Soap Opera Update’ and ‘Daytime Confidential’, point to the agenda
setting powers of soap operas. ‘Soap Opera Highlights’ are also published in
about a 100 newspapers to give updates to audiences who might have missed
out on some shows. In addition, a fan club, dubbed ‘Soap Talk” has a
membership of 900 and was buzzed by almost 500 calls from fans within the
first week of its establishment (ibid).
As seen in chapter III, the agenda setting activity of soap operas are not
limited to the social level but have spilled over to the psychological level
where some psychologists have learnt to use soap operas to break into a
patient’s psyche to stimulate discussion on unpleasant experiences when there
is a stalemate in the process of therapy.
The youth culture fueled by music on MTV also sets the agenda for
discussion among the youth. They influence discussions on clothes, hairstyles,
dance steps and ultimately influence what the youth wear and appear like.
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Since some youth also claim to derive information from the lyrics, it follows
that this information will set the agenda for discussion.
Even children have not escaped this agenda setting function of
television. Cartoon characters not only provide topics for discussion amongst
children but have exerted a strong influence on the toy manufacturing industry
and now define the kinds of toys that are manufactured for children. Most
toys, especially the stuffed ones, are modeled after cartoon characters which
further goes to strengthen its agenda setting function because as children play
with their toys, they see in them their favorite cartoon characters and talk
about them.
But above all, one aspect of the agenda setting function of television,
which needs to be appreciated, is that different agenda are set for different
categories of people because people tend to respond to specific genres on
television.
Hence, there is a kind of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ going on in
contemporary society based on common interest and shared views in the
media. Children are linked together by their common interest in cartoons,
whilst excluding their older adolescent brothers or sisters who are also bound
with other adolescents by their common interest in music stars. Women are
linked together by their common interest in soaps whilst men find company in
each other due to their shared interests in sports and news.
Hence, one consequence of the agenda setting theory as far as the
family is concerned is that it might lead to a fragmentation of interests
amongst family members and if efforts are not made to discover television
programs that are of interest to all family members, they are likely to grow in
divergent ways as far as the television experience is concerned.
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Women cannot discuss soap operas with their husbands. They must rely
on other women or soap opera fan clubs for such discussions. The man seeks
the company of other men, usually in a bar, to discuss the latest sports game.
Children live in their own fantasy world created by cartoons, the characters of
which they can now play with, thanks to the toy manufacturing industry, while
the youth build a mythical world around pop stars and rock stars for
themselves. Hence, if television is to promote communication among family
members, they must strive to find a common agenda on television on which all
members of the family can talk about.
In this regard, the differences in knowledge that arise within the family
from viewing television are similar to the differences in agenda between
members of the family that come from television viewing.
It will be unrealistic to expect that children and adults in a family will
posses the same kind of knowledge. Such differences are the natural
consequences of the differences in age and maturity.
The differences that are important in terms of knowledge gaps are the
differences between people within the same age group, such as parents, or
amongst children within the same age group. As already explained in chapter
III, men tend to pay attention to factual information whilst women prefer
fiction, notably, soap operas. Consequently, there will be a gap in television-
based knowledge between husband and wife, and between sons and daughters
as a result of differences in their preferences for television.
the day and to play. Narration and play are therefore intimately bound together
and within every narration there is play (Martinez-De-Toda, 2000:57).
Today’s technology only superficially distinguishes mediated participation in
play from the rites of primitive man.
own world where they can share information and enjoy the
contents of media that they cherish. Examples of this are the
creation of youth cultures around rock stars, the creation of soap
opera fan clubs, or the men who gather together in a bar to
discuss the latest football game.
fantasies since his consciousness had been taken over entirely by the books he
read.
Behavioral theories are not confined to violent or criminal behavior but
to various aspects of life. Most often, behaviors that are modeled after a
television experience become habitual if found to be useful.
Behavioral Theory is valuable in understanding why the youth copy
artists, especially musicians that they see on television and even develop youth
cultures around them, as explained in chapter III. First of all, peer pressure
may force the youth to adopt a certain youth culture by imitating an artist’s
mode of dressing, hairstyle and general attitude towards life. If there are
rewards in adopting this youth culture in the sense that the youth feels
accepted by his peers, it reinforces this behavior.
Also, as explained in chapter I, the secularization of the world which
has left most families, and for that matter, the youth with no reference points
for values makes the media more potent as a market place where values are
searched for and assimilated. The youth are more vulnerable in this direction
because they are at point in their lives where they seek to form their identities
and create a niche for themselves in society. One important behavioral theory
that has attempted to explain how television influences behavior is the Social
Learning Theory.
Rather, they are learned from observing other people in the environment,
people who are encountered in one’s personal life and from the media
(Bandura, 1976:204). These learned aggressive behavior are reinforced if they
reduce tension, build up one’s self-esteem, gain praise, or financial rewards
(Siegel, 1992:171).
Using a Bobo doll experiment, Bandura was able to demonstrate how
children imitated aggression in adults for a rewarded gain. In this experiment,
children were exposed to a video clip in which a model repeatedly hit and
pummeled the head of a Bobo doll with a mallet. The model hurled down the
doll, sat on it punched the nose again and again, flung and kicked it across the
room and bombarded it with balls (Bandura, 1973:72). When the children
were placed in a room with attractive dolls after the video clip, they were cold
and hostile and refused to touch them because a process of retention had
occurred. However, when they were shown to another room containing
identical Bobo dolls, the motivation phase occurred which resulted in 88
percent of the children imitating the aggressive acts they had observed on the
video clip. Eight months after the experiment, 40 percent of the children still
repeated the aggressive acts on the video clip.
Bandura identified four main processes that are triggered off by
exposure to violent or aggressive acts that foster imitation or modeling of such
behavior. These include; attention, retention, motor reproduction, and
motivation.
4.1.11.1 Attention
behavior achieve this (Allen & Santrock, 1993:139) In the Bobo doll
experiment, the children were keen witnesses to the assaults carried out on the
Bobo doll which enabled them to reproduce what they observed. In addition,
televised violence attracts attention because it is simple, distinctive, prevalent,
useful and depicted positively (http://www.afirstlook.com/archive, 2004:3).
Simple: A quick punch to the face is simpler and easier to accomplish
than drawn out negotiations and efforts at reconciliation in a conflict
situation. Aggressive acts drives home the message that one is angry
more quickly than words.
Distinctive: Violent acts on television are characteristic in the sense
that they do not fit into the everyday life of viewers. Pro-social behavior
such as delayed gratification, control of anger, sympathy, and sharing
appear mundane in contrast to violent sequences, which are exciting.
Prevalent: The prevalence of violence on television makes it
impossible for one to miss them. More than 80 percent of prime-time
programs and 90 percent of weekend cartoon programs in the United
States contain violent acts.
Useful: Television programs normally present violence as a preferred
choice in solving problems and a handy strategy for life. On the
average, half of the major characters experience 5 to 6 acts of overt
physical violence within an hour. These violent acts are rarely followed
by pain, medical help and suffering which makes them symbolic.
“Symbolic violence demonstrates power, not therapy; it shows who can
get away with what against whom. The dominant white men in the
prime of life are more likely to be victimizers rather than victims.
Conversely, old, young and minority women, and young boys are more
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4.1.11.2 Retention
increases the possibility of the child memorizing the aggressive act (Bryant,
Zillmann, 1986:48).
Besides, studies to determine whether children understand the meaning
of televised aggression in the context of the narrative in which it occurs have
revealed that viewers aged 8 years and below are not able to “infer
implications and linkages between scenes in television programs”(Bryant,
Zillmann, 1986:49). Therefore, most youngsters do not understand the reasons
and outcomes of aggressive acts within the narrative structure in which they
occur which increases their chances of modeling after such acts.
Televised violence also promotes symbolic modeling, where viewers
make a generalization of one violent behavior to similar behaviors and
circumstances. An aggressive act used by a character on television to resolve
interpersonal problems is seen symbolically as the most effective and
preferred way of resolving general problems. Studies of televised aggression
indicate symbolic modeling to be the most common outcome of viewing
violence on television (ibid)
begin to talk and several years before they begin to read! Television thus, can
become for most children, their major source of cultural participation.
When viewing molds and encourages their continued attention, the
messages are likely to reiterate, confirm, nourish and thus cultivate their
values and perspectives in life (Bryant, Zillmann, 1986:24). Hence, television,
independently can contribute to the generation and maintenance of certain
outlooks or beliefs as a result of cumulative exposure in heavy viewers. A
research study on adolescents by several research scientists showed that their
attitudes were influenced independently by television over time whilst
subsequent viewing was influenced by their belief structure (ibid).
An important consequence of cultivation is that, because the perception
of the audience on reality is based on what is screened on television, these
perceptions normally have no bearing on real life situations.
For example, on a week’s program of prime time episodes, viewers are
exposed to the apparently realistic but normally phony representation of 30
police officers, 7 lawyers, 3 judges, a single engineer or scientist and a few
blue-collar workers. These episodes are normally dominated by threats and a
crime wave 10 times as widespread as what pertains to real life (ibid).
Hence, when heavy viewers and light viewers of television are asked
identical questions, heavy viewers normally provide answers that reflect the
world of television; heavy viewers will put the chances of being involved in
some kind of violence in a week at 10 percent, whereas the real life answer is
1-percent.
Consequently, due to their misconception of reality as a result of the
brainwashing they have received from television, heavy viewers sometimes
become paranoid, and develop a mean/scary world syndrome as a result of the
violence they see on television. They come to believe that people cannot be
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trusted and that most people are just looking out for themselves (Bryant,
Zillmann, 1986:28)
The violence saturated world of television, which presents differential
ratios of symbolic victimization of women and minorities results in a
corresponding cultivation of different levels of insecurity in them. This
hierarchy of fears produced in women and minorities through televised
violence confirms and perpetuates their dependent status (ibid).
Another misconception of reality occurs when heavy viewers transform
message system data from television into general hypotheses about issues.
Television facts are made the basis of a wider worldview thus turning
television into an authoritative source of values, ideologies, perspective,
beliefs and images (ibid).
Heavy viewers also tend to score high on sexism than light viewers
because heavy viewers make extrapolated assumptions based on how women
are represented on television. They absorb the implicit messages that women
possess more limited capabilities and interest than men.
4.4.1.3 Mainstreaming
Research also established that children who are more integrated into
cohesive peer groups were more resistant to cultivation than their counterparts
who were not.
Therefore, cultivation in individuals is the outcome of how mediated
imagery monopolizes the viewer’s source of information. More sources of
information prevent dependency on television and undermines cultivation.
Consequently, affiliation on the part of the viewer, personal interaction and
intervention by parents all reduce cultivation (ibid).
order to shake off his boredom whilst a person who is stressed will prefer a
program that will help him to relax. (McQuail, 1987: 236).
People may also derive different gratifications from the same television
program. Most often, the needs of viewers are determined by their personality
makeup, stages of maturation, their political, economic, religious and social
background and their roles in society. The developmental stage of children
may make television the preferred medium because children can watch
television at any stage of their development but need to acquire the ability to
read in order to read newspapers. Thus, children are more susceptible to the
influence of television.
The needs of the audience that push them to watch television can be
grouped into informational needs, the need for identity, the need for social
integration and interaction, and entertainment (McQuail, 1987:73).
bright and sunny. It may determine whether one will invest in the stock market
or not based on news on the stock market.
Television may be the only window through which many old and sick
people, isolated from the rest of the world and denied active participation in
society by old age and ill health, may see what is going on in the world and
even in the towns and countries that they live.
As a result, they experience a feeling of participation that creates an
atmosphere of being in touch with the rest of the world, which makes them to
feel they are not alone, and hence makes their loneliness more tolerable.
4.6.4 Entertainment
Television offers diversion from the daily battles of life for its audience.
It helps them to relax and to escape momentarily from the cares of the world.
The audience also derives intrinsic cultural and aesthetic enjoyment from
television, which they use to fill up time. Entertainments such as football
matches, Olympics, are expensive. People save money from cost of air tickets,
time to drive or take a bus as well as transportation costs when they watch
entertainment on television. These are the inconveniences of entertainment
that television allows viewers to overcome by bringing entertainment into
their homes.
In addition, television allows people to watch entertainment that can
have potentially violent consequences such as football and boxing in the
comfort and security of their homes. Thus they are protected from the violence
that normally characterizes some entertainment activities. Viewing television
can also become a source of emotional release and sexual arousal.
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4.7.1.1 Environmental
4.7.1.2 Regulative
4.7.1.3 Relational
can also bury herself in her soap operas and refrain from any meaningful
conversation with her husband.
particular programs. They point out that whilst the audience may exhibit some
degree of selectivity, television use is most often habitual, ritualistic and
unselective. Viewing television may be an aesthetic experience fueled by
intrinsic motivation.
Some critics also claim the functionalist stance of the “Uses and
Gratification theory” is politically conservative. They assert that, the
assumption that people do derive some gratifications from any kind of media
may lead to a complacent and uncritical attitude towards current media
contents. This position also exaggerates the openness of interpretation of
television texts and creates the impression that the audience can derive
gratification from any program irrespective of its content or preferred reading.
Others find the theory to be individualistic and psychological since it
does not take into account the socio-cultural context of viewers. It tends to
foreground individual psychological and personality factors and backgrounds
sociological factors. But as Research Scientist, David Morley pointed out,
even though individual differences in media interpretation do exist, sub-
cultural and socio-economic differences do play a role in shaping how people
interpret the contents of television.
Besides, the theory exaggerates active and conscious choice without
taking into consideration that some programs may be forced on some people.
An example is a woman who is forced to watch a sports program along with
her husband even though she would have preferred watching a soap opera.
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CHAPTER V
5.1 DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
Based on what has been presented in the preceding chapters of this
research, it is essential to draw inferences on the interactions between
television and the family. Most of what has been presented point to the fact
that viewing television does have an impact on family members. In trying to
relate television viewing and effects on the family, it may be necessary to do a
specific analysis based on what programs each family member is drawn to.
The fact that men and women are drawn to different genres, whilst the
youth and children are attracted to other genres points to an underlying uses
and gratifications approach inherent in the use of mass media. These need not
be determined by only the felt needs of the individual, based on which he
selects a particular genre but may arise from certain inherent factors around
which the media user has no control or knowledge of.
Women have no control over their genetic composition and socio-
economic factors that draw them to seek out soap operas as a means of
extending their social environment, creating a pseudo-social climate and using
them as topics for conversation. After all, the female species has been
classified as being more emotional than the male species. It is therefore logical
that if the female finds herself in an emotionally sterile environment where she
has little opportunity to express her emotions, whether hostile or non hostile,
she will welcome any avenue that will pave the way for her to express these
emotions. Being locked in the house with, perhaps only furniture for company,
soap operas provide what exactly meets the emotional needs of women. But
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women’s preference for soap operas should not only be viewed from the social
point of view but also from their biological make up. Being more emotional
means they have a tendency to cry more, shout more and scream more.
Besides, women are credited with talking more than their male counterparts.
Soap operas, therefore, give them the opportunity to talk and cry, especially
when a favorite character has died thus providing some emotional release.
Hence, the observation that soap operas have replaced neighbors as
topics for gossip rings true. But herein lays the danger of soap operas. Gossip
about neighbors is gossip about reality and whether the outcome is positive or
negative, what matters is that one is dealing with concrete issues that concern
living beings. The problem with replacing gossip with soap operas is that
women have moved from reality into fictional constructions by the media,
much like the case of “Alice in Wonderland” who moved from the world of
reality into a fictional world. Whereas a little indulgence in the world of soap
operas may offer healthy distraction and prove to be relaxing, overindulgence
in the fictional world would have dire consequences not only for women but
also for society at large.
This is because, talking that is based on reality serves as a bridge for
people to connect to each other: wives to husbands and vice versa, children to
parents and amongst themselves, and families to their neighbors. It is through
talking that people make themselves known to each other, make their
problems known and in turn find solutions and sympathy. Now, if what
women talk about are only about soap opera characters, this displaces the
conversation on concrete issues that would have helped them to learn more
about each others personalities, the problems their children are going through
and what is going on in the neighborhood. Closeness amongst neighbors and
friends that is based on discussions on soap operas gives them a false feeling
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of closeness and knowing each other when in actual fact such knowledge is
based on fiction rather than reality.
This then gives rise to pseudo-relationships based on soap opera
characters. The relationships that exist amongst soap opera fans in fan clubs is
nothing short of pseudo-relationships since these women do not have an in-
depth knowledge or true relationship to each other but only that which is
based on their common interest in soap opera characters, who in turn are
nothing but fictional constructs of the media. This also serves another
gratification of women since it enables them to hide who they are and to
indulge in relationships with other women without the risk of exposing
themselves to criticism, ridicule or harm.
Soap opera fan clubs therefore spear women to waste valuable time and
resources on issues that are unproductive and short of providing entertainment
and diversion do not contribute to their personal, social, academic or
economic development. Soap operas have thus become a drug for women
much like alcohol, which they use as an escape from reality but which do not
provide permanent solutions to their problems.
For one to get an insight into the economic cost of viewing soap operas,
one should consider the case of soap opera magazines and columns in
newspapers. The columns in newspapers could heave been used to provide
valuable information on real issues that affect people who have been ignored
because they fall into an economic category that cannot be packaged and sold
to advertisers. Soap opera magazines could cover real social problems
afflicting people in the world rather than concentrating on analyzing the
activities of fictional characters.
Besides, there is more joy to be derived from being involved in the lives
of real people, than getting caught up in the lives of fictional characters.
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This is not to say that television models should be a “no go” area for the
youth. Some television stars can be a big source of inspiration for the youth,
especially if such stars worked hard to overcome unfavorable conditions to
accomplish what they have achieved.
What is important is a sense of balance, which can be achieved under
parental guidance so that the youth learn to discover their own strengths and
weaknesses. When they have a clear sense of what they are capable of
achieving and what may be out of their reach, they can then work hard on their
abilities and use them to their maximum potential instead of chasing after
empty dreams.
punished. Such moral lessons when imbibed by children remain with them for
the rest of their lives.
Cartoons on the other hand, go on and on with one violent act after the
other, and most often, with no distinguishable story line. A cartoon series such
as “Tom and Jerry” whilst depicting beautiful episodes, appropriately spiced
with violence on how a mouse always outwits a cat do not teach any virtues
such as honesty, truthfulness, and longsuffering among the whole list of
virtues that are normally addressed by fairy tales and folk stories.
Hence, the kind of socialization accomplished in children by traditional
folk tales is not the same as that accomplished by cartoons. Further more,
cartoons come laced with advertisement that begin their work of instilling
consumerism in the young child, something that was unknown when
traditional tales were the dominant means of socializing the young child.
Besides, traditional folk tales normally center on human characters with
problems, trials, ambitions, and frailties that children can identify with. Since
cartoon characters consist of caricatures, which children know do not exist,
they may fail to identify with the characters and learn any moral lesson in
cartoons even if the story were to be woven around a plot that aims at
imparting virtues.
Furthermore, cartoons have been designed mainly to entertain, to
provide pleasure and excitement. By not showing the consequences of
violence and by using caricatures that children know do not exist anyway,
cartoons convert violence into something that children can experience as
pleasurable. But we live in a world of cause and effect, of pain and pleasure,
where both evil and good produce results. Thus, cartons prevent children from
relating cause to effect.
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Another point worth noting is the fact that as children gradually give up
books in return for television as a main source of entertainment, they may
miss out on valuable lessons about life that they can learn from novels as they
grow into their teenage years and into adulthood.
One important area is the socializing role provided by romantic novels
for orientating the youth for love and marriage. Most often, romantic novels
with a plot woven around love and marriage normally depict a young person’s
search for love amidst challenges until he or she finds the woman and man of
his or her heart’s desire with whom he or she pledges to live with forever. Sex
is always portrayed within a context of love and relationship. These little steps
that lead to love and romance are normally absent from televised material,
which normally depict sex as occurring between people with no strong
commitment or the intention of an enduring relationship.
Nonetheless, cartoons, and other genres in the era of television have
come to stay. What then remains is for parents to select a wise blend of
cartoons and other television programs for children whilst ensuring that they
do not displace the much needed exposure to books and other forms of
recreation. This situation brings to the mind of the writer the old nursery song
that runs this way; “make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver but the
other gold”. Folk stories, fairy tales and novels remain our old friends while
cartoons are our new friends. Cartoons are silver but folk stories, fairy tales
and novels are gold by comparison.
Adult education programs are carried out in the six local languages
mentioned above. Talk shows are carried out in two main languages, English
and Akan, which is the most widely spoken local language.
Entertainment programs consist of local dramas in the six local
languages that are used for broadcasting. Local untrained actors and actresses
who rely on their ingenuity and the knowledge of their culture to act their
plays normally perform these. Trained local actors and actresses, notably those
from the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) and the School of
Performing Arts at the University of Ghana also stage dramas that are telecast
on television. But these local productions are normally few and foreign films
and soap operas rather dominate.
The soap operas that have been telecast in the past include “Days of our
lives”, “Neighbours”, “The bold and the beautiful”, “Dynasty”, “Izaura”,
“Soul food”, “Savage heart”, “Oshien”, “Igola”, and “Journey to the west”
among several others. Those currently running on the screen include
“Tentacles”, “The woman of my life”, “My three sisters”, “Home sweet
home” and “Kejetia”.
In addition, several situation comedies have been screened on Ghana
Television including “Different Strokes”, “Cosby Show”, “227” and
“Moesha”.
Hollywood films are normally telecast as late night movies and Sunday
family movies, which are interspersed by a few Nigerian and Ghanaian films.
Foreign cartoons dominate programs for children on Ghana Television.
Cartoons are telecast every day from between 3p.m to 5p.m when children are
expected to have closed from school and on Saturday mornings. Unlike what
pertains in western countries, cartoons in Ghana carry very few
advertisements since Ghana does not have the economic base that sustains
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or Pioneer stage. In some cases, the only television set in the village may be
one donated by a politician to the village chief to buy votes from the
community. Apart from the fact that most rural people cannot afford to buy a
television set, they may lack electricity or be situated at a place where
reception of television signals is very poor.
For the few families that have access to television, it becomes a symbol
of social status. That family will be the proud receiver of several visitors who
flood the house to view television. Television viewing thus becomes a group,
or even community activity rather than a family activity. Whilst television at
this stage can provide entertainment, information and relaxation, other effects
such as providing companionship or stimulating conversation are very
minimal since the cohesiveness of community life experienced in rural areas
makes these needs unnecessary. In fact television viewing at this stage is not a
need, like what pertains in western countries or even in urban Ghana where
life is more westernized but an addition to the social life of the people.
Television does not take over their shared social activities because the nature
of rural life makes this impossible.
Thus, in Ghana, two patterns of television viewing exist side by side.
Cartoons
5.3.1.3 News
The problem with locally produced Ghanaian dramas is that the plots
are too simple. These dramas which are performed in both English and local
languages attract a wide audience, especially women. But their simple nature
makes viewing them a passive activity since most of the audience can readily
predict the outcome of successive scenes.
In addition, most films that are made are amateurish and unrealistic
because film directors neglect certain important parts of the plots. An example
is a film in which the plot revolved around a young woman purported to be the
only daughter of a wealthy man. However, in the film, this so-called rich girl
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wore only one dress throughout the production. How does this correspond
with her status as an heiress? Similarly, in another film, the plot revolved
around a man who went oversees for five years. Before he left, his only sister
saw him off at the airport. When he returned after five years, this same only
sister went again to meet him at the airport. What rendered the film unrealistic
was the fact that she was still wearing the same hairstyle she wore five years
before to see her brother off at the airport. These are but just two of some of
the numerous blunders that make locally produced Ghanaian films
substandard and uninteresting to the educated elite.
Soap Operas and situation comedies also command a big audience, with
the dominant audience being women. Over 90 percent of Soap Operas that are
screened on Ghanaian television screens are from the United States and
Western Europe, with a few from Asia, Latin America and South Africa. In
spite of the fact that these have a wide audience, the possibility that viewers
do not read and understand the texts from the producer’s point of view is high.
Apart from existing cultural differences between the cultures from which such
programs are produced and Ghanaian culture, the use of slang and English
words that have local connotations may not be understood in the Ghanaian
context and viewers may carry away a different meaning of the message.
Foreign films remain the preserve of the educated elite, both men and
women, who normally find local productions unchallenging and amateurish
and hence prefer foreign films.
team playing if the match or tournament is taking place in their own locality.
They rely on television to view events that are out of their reach, such as
sports programs in other towns or cities and international games taking place
in other countries. Apart from big games such as the Olympic Games, the
World Cup, the African Cup, amongst others, which attract a wide audience,
other games such as Football made in Germany and British soccer attract a
loyal audience.
on local productions from those communities, which they can simply film and
screen.
By doing this, they will be breaking the myth of ethnic dominance in
Ghanaian society and pave the way for a more unified Ghana. Such a bold
step would also help cultivate the spirit of belonging and patriotism in all
Ghanaians by proving to them that they matter to society.
It will also be a mighty step towards the fight against cultural
imperialism since all Ghanaians will be exposed to their rich cultural diversity
and heritage which when blended carefully would stimulate their interest in
local productions and curb their over reliance on foreign programs which
undermine their cultural values and replaces them with ‘Hollywood produced’
values.
Secondly, by developing and increasing the output of trained Ghanaian
actors, Ghana Television can rely less on foreign films, situation comedies and
soap operas and screen more local productions. Such a step will provide more
job opportunities for actors and actresses and earn revenue for the country if
the films are good enough to be exported.
In the development of these films, care should be taken not to produce
gender and ethnic stereotypes since in the long run these do not augur well for
development.
It will also be necessary to produce local films with more complex plots
since one of the reasons why most Ghanaians prefer watching western films is
because they find the plots of local films too simplistic which makes them
boring. There is therefore the need for local films to be approached with more
professionalism to make them more realistic.
181
During the gathering of materials, one issue that stood out starkly was the
lack of ethnographic research material on how television impacts on African
countries.
Hence, it may necessary to carry out an ethnographic research in African
countries in this regard. Such a research should not be limited to just viewers
but should also try to identify the power brokers who control the media in
African countries, determine whose interest is served by the media and the
role of advertisements on media content.
It is hoped that an ethnographic research on television’s impact on
families will be carried out on Ghana in the near future to fill up the existing
gap.
184
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Web Sites
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Course Lectures
Baugh, Lloyd P. (SJ). CP2036: Il Linguaggio, l’esperienza e i genre della
televisione, June 2005.
Savarimuthu, Augustine. CP2032: Storia Sociale della Communicazione, June
2004.
Savarimuthu, Augustine. CO2A87: Introduzione alla Pre-produzione del
Video, February 2004.
Srampickal, Jacob. CS2062: Educazione ai Media, June, 2004.