Example research essay topic: Extremely Important Mass Media - 1,227 words

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The following was written, 20 April 2005. In 21 st century American society, there seems to be a growing infatuation with technology and mass media in the midst of natural disaster and terrorist attacks. Specifically, Americans seem to be inundated by so much television that they no longer have the capacity to think outside the box, and would rather be immersed in the idiot box than in a good book or a news paper. Mr. Murray, Washington bureau chief for CNBC and the Wall Street Journal columnist (Hess 275), remarked on his frustration with television and its effect on the public during a heated debate among several of todays experts, in the book The Media and the War on Terrorism. I am constantly amazed at how little depth you can achieve even with a full hour of television to play with every night and with a pretty sophisticated and intelligent audience relative to the average TV audience.

I am amazed and frustrated and shocked at how much more I can do with an 835 -word column. (Hess 289) Is it the medium of television which lacks the capacity to transmit knowledge, or is it the viewers inability to constructively comprehend what is being interjected into their intellect? In his article, To Analyze a Video Text, Robert Scholes invites and challenges his readers to critically analyze video text and to look beyond the pleasure and surrender created by these cultural narratives. Scholes warns that it is very hard to resist the pleasure of this text, and we cannot accept the pleasure without, for the bewildering minute at least, also accepting the ideology that is so richly and closely entangled the story that we construct from the video (622). The ideology presented in television is entrenched by the cultural values of American society (Scholes 620). These video texts confirm viewers in their ideological positions and reassure them as to their membership in a collective cultural body.

This function, which operates in the ethical-political realm, is an extremely important element of video textualist and, indeed, an extremely important dimension of all the mass media (Scholes 620). He further explains that we are dealing with and archetypal narrative that has been adjusted for maximum effect within a particular political and social context (Scholes 622) and that by getting the story, we prove our competence and demonstrate our membership in a cultural community (Scholes 621). All the meaning that viewers are able to construct from the video text highly depends on cultural framework (Scholes 620) in which the perceiver is engrossed. Not by analyzing one twenty-eight second video advertisement, but by determining the effects television has on American society, it can be concluded that the cultural context television is depicting is very unhealthy. It has been published that 56 % of Americans who are heavily in debt also watch too much tv (Schor 45). In her article, Whats Wrong With Consumer Society?

Schor analyzes such trends. One research paper that she sites claims that television shows are a really great idea source for [finding things] to get or buy (Schor 44). This concept is further reinforced when she brings up her prior research, which revealed that one hour of television watched per week, on average, contributes to a $ 208 per week spending increase (Schor 45). It can be sent that exposure to television really exacerbates this cultures preoccupation with consumption. Richard Harwood, Pollster, explains in the PBS documentary, Affluenza, that 60 % of all Americans say that our children are not just materialistic, but very materialistic from advertising (Affluenza).

This is no accident, this is just what corporations are paying their advertising executives for. Also featured on Affluenza is a spokes person for the Kid Power Conference at Disney World, he explains In boys advertising it is an aggressive play pattern anti-social behavior in pursuit of a product is a good thing. He even goes on, to objectify children further, by encouraging eager note taking conference goers to participate in the process of branding children and owning them in that way (Affluenza). The portmanteau word, affluenza, as sited by De Graff in wikipedia, is defined as a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more (Affluenza). The epicenter of this cultural disease lies within the idolization of consumption. The effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumptions (Consumerism), no doubt eventually leads to the measurement of economic productivity and growth [as] the purpose of human organization and perhaps the purpose of life itself (Productivity).

With such a productivistic mentality, one believes all growth is good and starts to champion profit above all else. As far as television goes, among the most profitable genre of programming is children oriented, especially when it comes to the international market. Therefore, American television is focused on disseminating its ideological values through society by effecting the most impressionable and vulnerable people, the children. Children, who are especially susceptible to surrendering to the pleasure of the video text, are taught to be selfish and materialistic and to embrace all the affluenza ideology, as represented through the ideals portrayed on television.

If Americans have an understanding that television corrupts their youth, then what about people of other cultures who are far separated from the cultural contexts of which television is so dependent? Foreigners, with traditional values, who analytically criticize western video text feel that the high degree of cultural export through the business and popular culture[among other mass media, television] threatens their unique ways of life or moral values where such cultural exports are popular (Cultural Imperialism). The modern use of television in Egypt is quite rampant. In the villages of Upper Egypt, where the anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod conducted a study in the mid- 1990 s, she found most households had a television set (Thomas). Like most media conglomerates, Egypt's state run television facilities are the center of audiovisual production in its geo linguistic region (Thomas). In fact, this was the first Arab country to launch an international broadcasting service for the Arab world (Thomas).

Since its inception, television has played an important role in modern Egyptian society. The person who brought television to Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, also founded and served as leader of the Free Officers Movement[, which] was the real force behind the coup (Gamal Abdel Nasser") known as the 1952 Revolution, in which the British-backed monarch was overthrown. Nasser gained power in the following years as the second President of Egypt, (Gamal Abdel Nasser") and soon signed a major contract between United Arab Republic (Egypt) and Radio Corporation of America (Boyd 33). RCA installed a complete system and granted the Egyptian Government ability to create its own programming (Boyd 34). Although the United Arab Republic did not participate in the first stage of globalization [which others] tend to experience [as] a wave of western programming (Thomas), television service was a definite sign of American influence. Nasser was unique among Middle East leaders, because of his commitment of financial resources to television (Boyd 33).

He fully employed this medium as a social-political tool as his government had full control over the programming and often gave broadcast priority to his own public addresses (Boyd 36). A political group at the time, The Muslim Brotherhood, was opposed to western influence (Muslim Brotherhood), and cons...

Research essay sample on Extremely Important Mass Media