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CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM:Catharsis Social learning Social cognitive theory

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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
VU
LESSON 15
CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM
In today's session we will see how the growing violence and the possible contribution of the television
became a concern for the American society. Several different perspectives are discussed, including:
Catharsis
Social learning
Social cognitive theory
First the background and focus on children and violence. Society changed from a primarily rural
agricultural society to a highly urban nation dependent on an industrially base economy. People had
regular incomes. They had more money to spend on the leisure. More consumer goods were competing
in the market place. More and more need to advertise
Women entered into work force. It became more and more acceptable for both parents working outside
home. The traditional community anchors ­church and school- began to lose their dominance in the
social development of their children
The teenagers brought sharp increase in delinquency and crime. In the 1960s political changes ­
President John F. Kennedy Dr. Martin Luther King assassinated. New unfamiliar music ­ rock music.
Sociologists discovered the existence of a `generation gap' between conservative, middle class parent
and their increasingly liberal, even radical children.
Media's role in all these change was hotly debated
Although social researchers and media practitioners typically argued from the limited effects
perspective, a new generation of critics charged that media were harming children and disrupting their
lives.
Particularly Television became the target of increasing criticism and the object of scientific inquiry,
especially where harmful effects were presumed. The debate rose between the ones who strongly
advocated the limited effects notions and those who were skeptical about their findings and accused
them of paid messengers of the media industries, where as the over zealots critics of the television were
accused of oversimplifying complex problems and ignoring alternative causes. The debate over media's
role in fomenting social instability and instigating violence reached a peak in late 1960s. The federal
government itself tried to locate new answers to this problem by establishing the Surgeon General's
Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and social behavior in 1969. The collection of scientists'
research concluded after two years and a million dollars of study.
It reported to a U.S. senate subcommittee:
"While the ... report is care fully phrased and qualified in language acceptable to social scientists , it is
clear to me that the causal relationship between televised violence and antisocial behavior is sufficient
to warrant appropriate and immediate remedial action. The data on social phenomena such as
television and violence and or aggressive behavior will never be clear enough for all social scientists to
agree on the formulation of a succinct statement of causality, But there comes a time when the data are
sufficient to justify action, that time has come.
President Johnson established a National Commission of the Cause and Prevention of Violence in 1968.
The Commission offered some serious criticisms of media and recommended a variety of changes in
both news reporting and entertainment content.
Commission's report in it preface stated that:
`if, as the media claim, no objective correlation exists between media portrayals of violence and violent
behavior-if, in other words, the one has no impact upon the other- then how can the media claim an
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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
VU
impact in product selection and consumption , as they obviously affect the viewers commercial attitudes
and behaviour? Can they do one and not the other?'
This did not stop the controversy. But ultimately the industry agreed to a self-imposed family viewing
hour in which violent content was ostensibly minimized.
Television Violence Theories
The most important outcome of the violence research was the gradual development of a set of middle-
range theories that summarized findings and offered increasingly useful insight into the media's role in
the lives of children. The accumulated research clearly demonstrated a correlation between viewing
violence and aggressive behavior- that is, heavy viewers behave more aggressively that light viewers...
Both experimental and longitudinal studies supported the hypothesis that viewing violence is causally
associated with aggression.
CATHARSIS - JUSTIFICATION OF MEDIA VIOLENCE
Catharsis ­ sometimes called sublimation- the idea that viewing violence is sufficient to purge or at least
satisfy a person's aggressive drive and, therefore, reduce the likelihood of aggressive behavior.
Catharsis suggested that television violence had social utility, providing young people with a harmless
outlet for their pent-up aggression and hostility. However critics called this a `phony argument'.
Common sense and your own media consumption offer some evidence of the weakness of the catharsis
hypothesis. When we watch families devouring chocolate cakes, does it purge you of your hunger
drive? If you walk out of a movie like Die Hard did you walk out of the theater a tranquil, placid
person? What scientist learnt that certain presentation so mediated violence and aggression can reduce
the likelihood of subsequent viewer aggression. But catharsis is not the reason.
Rather viewers LEARN THAT violence might not be appropriate in a given situation. Their aggressive
drive might not have been purged, but they might have simply learned that such treatment of another
human is inappropriate. Their inclination towards violence was inhibited by the information in the
media presentation. This leads us to the theory that is generally accepted as most useful in
understanding the influence of media violence on the individual ­ social cognitive theory.
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
Social learning ­ encompasses both imitation and identification to explain how people learn through
observation of other in their environments.
Imitation
IMITATION is the direct, mechanical reproduction of behavior. Supposing a viewer watches a violent
movie in which teenagers beat a policeman and the next day he does the same. This demonstrates
imitation. The problem for mass communication theorists, however, is that these obvious examples are
relatively rare. Moreover such gross examples support the argument t that negative effects occur only in
those `predisposed' to aggression.
Identification
Identification on the other hand is:
"A particular form of imitation in which copying a model, generalized beyond specific acts, springs
from wanting to be and trying to be like the model with respect to some broader quality."
Although there might be few who will imitate what they, there will be many who would like to be
identified with movies' characters. Imitation from media is clearly more dramatic and observable than is
identification. But identification with media models might be the more lasting and significant of the
media's effects.
Human learn from observation. The first serious look at learning through observation was offered by
psychologists Neal Miller and John Dollard in 1941. They argued that imitative learning occurred when
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Theories of Communication ­ MCM 511
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observers were motivated to learn, when the cues or elements of the behaviors to be learned were
present, when observers performed the given behaviors, and when observers were positively reinforced
for imitating those behaviors. In other words, people could imitate behavior that they saw; those
behaviors would be reinforced and therefore learned.
There have been questions however about how much and what kinds of behaviors people learn from the
media. So instead of presenting a means of understanding how people learn from models (including
media models) Miller and Dollard simply described an efficient form of traditional stimulus-response
learning.
They assumed that individuals behaved in certain ways and then shaped their behavior according to the
reinforcement they actually received.
Imitation simply made it easier for an individual to choose a behavior to choose a behavior to reinforce.
The actual reinforcement, they argued, ensured learning.
But this insistence on the operation of reinforcement limited their theory's application for understanding
how people learn from the mass media.
The theory's inability to account for people's apparent skill at learning new responses through
observation rather than actually receiving reinforcement limited its applicability to media impact.
Learning theory
SO traditional learning theory asserts that people learn new behavior when they are presented with
stimuli (something in their environment), make a response to those stimuli, and have those responses
reinforced either positively (rewarded) or negatively (punished) . In this way new behaviors are learned,
or added to people's behavioral repertoire- the individual's available behaviors in a given circumstance.
SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
Social theorists have advanced various theories about why people behave in the ways that they do.
Some say behavior is based upon a person's motivations. Other proposes that behavior is a response to
external stimuli and subsequent reinforcements.
Still others point out that people react differently in different situations, and these scholars feel that the
interaction between a person and situation produces a particular behaviour.
One theory in particular reappears time and again in media effects literature is SOCIAL COGNITIVE
THEROY.
According to Albert Bandura," social cognitive theory explains psychosocial functioning in terms of
triadic reciprocal causation , in this model of reciprocal determinism, behavior; cognitive, biological
and other personal factors; and environmental events all operate as interaction determinants that
influence each other bidirectionally.
This theory explains human thought and actions as a process of TRIDAIC RECIPROCAL
CAUSATION.
This means that THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR are determined by three different factors that interact
and influence each other with variable strength, at the same or at different times:
1. Behavior
2. Personal characteristics such a s cognitive and biological qualities (e.g. Iq, sex, or race)
3. Environmental factors or events
Baundra's social cognitive theory of mass communication the broader social learning theory serve as the
foundations for volumes of research in all areas of media effects study-
·  Effects of media violence
·  And sexually explicit material
·  Pro-social or positive media effects
·  Cultivation effects
·  Persuasion
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For the student of media effects, an understanding of Bandura's theory is therefore essential because the
serve as a common denominator among many other media effects theories and hypotheses.
Social cognitive theory emphasizes the importance of these uniquely human characteristics, known as
the
1. Symbolizing capacity
2. Self-regulatory capacity
3. Self-reflective capacity
4. Vicarious capacities (Bandura, 1994)
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Table of Contents:
  1. COMMUNICATION:Nature of communication, Transactional approach, Communication is symbolic:
  2. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (I):Positivistic Perspective, Critical Perspective
  3. THEORY, PARADIGM AND MODEL (II):Empirical problems, Conceptual problems
  4. FROM COMMUNICATION TO MASS COMMUNICATION MODELS:Channel
  5. NORMATIVE THEORIES:Authoritarian Theory, Libertarian Theory, Limitations
  6. HUTCHINS COMMISSION ON FREEDOM, CHICAGO SCHOOL & BASIC PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THEORY
  7. CIVIC JOURNALISM, DEVELOPMENT MEDIA THEORY & DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPANT THEORY
  8. LIMITATIONS OF THE PRESS THEORY:Concentration and monopoly, Commercialism
  9. MCQUAIL’S FOUR KINDS OF THEORIES:Social scientific theory, Critical theory
  10. PROPAGANDA THEORIES:Origin of Propaganda, Engineering of Consent, Behaviorism
  11. PARADIGM SHIFT & TWO STEP FLOW OF INFORMATION
  12. MIDDLE RANGE THEORIES:Background, Functional Analysis Approach, Elite Pluralism
  13. KLAPPER’S PHENOMENSITIC THEORY:Klapper’s Generalizations, Criticism
  14. DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THEORY:Innovators, Early adopters
  15. CHALLENGING THE DOMINANT PARADIGM:Catharsis Social learning Social cognitive theory
  16. SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEROY:Symbolizing Capacity, MODELLING
  17. MODELING FROM MASS MEDIA:Recent research, Summary, PRIMING EFFECTS
  18. PRIMING EFFECT:Conceptual Roots, Perceived meaning, Percieved justifiability
  19. CULTIVATION OF PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY:History
  20. SYSTEMS THEORIES OF COMMUNICATION PROCESSES:System
  21. EMERGENCE OF CRITICAL & CULTURAL THEORIES OF MASS COMMUNICATION
  22. REVISION:Positivistic perspective, Interpretive Perspective, Inductive approach
  23. CRITICAL THEORIES & ROLE OF MASS COMMUNICATION IN A SOCIETY -THE MEDIATION OF SOCIAL RELATIONS
  24. ROLE OF MASS MEDIA IN SOCIAL ORDER & MARXIST THEORY:Positive View
  25. KEY PRINCIPLES USED IN MARXISM:Materialism, Class Struggle, Superstructure
  26. CONSUMER SOCIETY:Role of mass media in alienation, Summary of Marxism
  27. COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE:Neo Marxism, Characteristics of Culture
  28. HEGEMONY:What exactly is the meaning of "hegemony"?
  29. CULTURE INDUSTRY:Gramscianism on Communications Matters
  30. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY I:Internationalization, Vertical Integration
  31. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY II:Diversification, Instrumental
  32. POLITICAL ECONOMIC THEORY III:Criticism, Power of Advertising
  33. AGENDA SETTING THEORY:A change in thinking, First empirical test
  34. FRAMING & SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Spiral of Silence, Assessing public opinion
  35. SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Fear of isolation, Assessing public opinion, Micro-level
  36. MARSHALL MCLUHAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE AND MASSAGE
  37. KNOWLEDGE GAP THEORY:Criticism on Marshal McLuhan
  38. MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY:Media System Dependency Theory
  39. USES AND GRATIFICATIONS THEORY:Methods
  40. RECEPTION THEORY
  41. FRAMING AND FRAME ANALYSIS:Information Processing Theory, Summing up
  42. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION I:Communication Science, Direct channels
  43. TRENDS IN MASS COMMUNICATION II:Communication Maxims, Emotions
  44. GLOBALIZATION AND MEDIA:Mediated Communication, Post Modernism
  45. REVISION:Microscopic Theories, Mediation of Social Relations