From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: blame it on the media! (was Re: First Post!)
Date: 22 Jan 93 18:32:54
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
	<1jft51$pj1@agate.berkeley.edu> <1993Jan19.153016.3294@dsg.cs.tcd.ie>
	<1993Jan19.190543.29858@ctp.com> <1993Jan20.122343.25579@dsg.cs.tcd.ie>
	<1993Jan20.135839.18944@infodev.cam.ac.uk>
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In-reply-to: gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk's message of Wed, 20 Jan 1993 13:58:39 GMT

In article <1993Jan20.135839.18944@infodev.cam.ac.uk> gdb15@grebe.cl.cam.ac.uk (Guy Barry) writes:
>By the way, I think it's a little unfair to blame the media for the
>models of society we grow up with.  When all's said and done, the
>media are only reflecting the perceptions of the general populace.

In a way, this is true, but *which* "general populace" are they
reflecting the opinions of?  Certainly not me and my friends...*grin*.
I think that the models presented by the media are on the conservative
side of the "averge" point of view.  They are also fairly consistant,
with just a few blips here and there, which get noticed for being "new
and adventurous" or whatever.  If you made a survey, for example, of
prime-time TV shows, I doubt that you would find anywhere near the full
range of viewpoints and perceptions that people in our society have.
So, *some* views are *not* being represented, and are therefore much
less accessible to people than the views which *are* presented.  This,
then, makes it harder for people to obtain or even simply understand
those viewpoints.

>My
>models of sexuality were (I believe) influenced far more by the
>perceptions and behaviours of my contemporaries at school than by
>anything I saw on television or read in the papers.

Perhaps so, but where did your contemporaries get their views?  Views
don't just spring into being for each new generation.  They're getting
their views from their parents, who got them from their parents, etc.
All of these people are also influenced by the people around them and
what *they* see in the media.  So, while the media may not *cause* all
these views, it does have a large hand in *reinforcing* them.

Some elaboration:

Reinforcement: if you constantly see your views presented as the way
other people think/act, you will feel that they must therefore be
"right."  This is related to another phenomenon I've noticed, where many 
people feel threatened when they are confronted by a lifestyle or
viewpoint that is different from theirs.  Some people take this as a
disparagement of and attack on their choices, since if the other person
chose differently, they must think that their choices are "better."
These people fail to recognize that the choice is only "better" for the 
person who chose it.

Presentation of a range of views: Some people have very little contact
with people in other societies and cultures, people with different
viewpoints, or people with different lifestyles.  The various media are
one way of putting these people in contact with those other people, or
at least images of them.  For example, imagine a person who doesn't know
any homosexual people.  They have to get their image of homosexual
people from other people and the media.  However, if they really don't
know any, it is fairly likely that the people they know don't know many,
either.  So, the media are the main source of their images.

Presentation of a wide variety of choices would be desirable, in my
opinion.  A lot of people simply don't know that they *have* that many
choices.  If the media were to present more, they would be more aware of
them.  Certainly, they could acheive the same results by travelling
extensively, meeting lots of people and talking to them, etc., but few
people actually do that.  Even for people who are not trying to choose a
viewpoint or lifestyle, it would be good for them to have a clearer
understanding of the choices of others.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy                      |~Never had a lot of faith in human beings/
muffy@mica.berkeley.edu            | but sometimes we manage to shine/like a
"amorous inclinations"? Aha! I'm   | light on a hill beaming out to space/from
not "not straight," I'm *inclined*.| somewhere hard to find~ - Bruce Cockburn