Gerbner, G. and Gross, L. (1976)
“Living with Television: The Violence Profile”. Journal of Communication
26(2): 172-199.
The
environment that sustains the most distinctive aspects of human existence is
the environment of symbols. We learn, share, and act upon meanings, derived
from that environment. TV is most likely
to remain the chief source of repetitive and ritualized symbol systems, which
will lead to a common consciousness and heterogeneous mass publics in history.
TV
was found to have established order and serves primarily to extend and maintain
rather to alter, threaten, or weaken conventional conceptions, beliefs, and behaviors.
TV is a medium of socialization of most people into standardized roles and behaviors.
The
social, political, and economic, integration of modern industrial society has
created a system in which few communities can maintain an independent
integrity. TV is the common ground among different groups that make up a large
national community. No national achievement, celebration, or mourning seems
real until it is confirmed and shared on television.
Never
before have so many classes and groups shared so much of the same culture and
the same perspective while having little to do with their creation. Representation in the world of television
gives and an idea, a cause, a group it’s self of public identity, importance,
and relevance.
Television,
the flagship of industrial mass culture, now rivals ancient religions as a
purveyor of organic patterns of symbols- news and other entertainment – that
animate national and even global communities sense of reality and value.
The
authors do not believe that TV violence is to be found in the stimulation of
occasional individual aggression. The consequences of living in a symbolic
world ruled largely by violence might be much more far reaching.
TV
violence is a dramatic demonstration of power, which communicates much about
social norms and relationships, about goals and means, winners and losers and
about the risks of life and the price for transgressions of society’s
values.
There
may be a connection because the expectation of violence or passivity in the
face of injustice may be consequences of even greater concern.
Real
life is hidden from our eyes, motives are obscure, outcomes ambiguous,
personalities complex, people unpredictable. The truth is never pure and
simple. On TV this is different it offers us clarity, and resolution.
TV
provides the broadest common back ground of assumptions not only about what
things are but also how they work, should work and why?
We
assume that TV’s standardizing and legitimizing influence comes from its
ability to stream line, amplify, ritualize, and spread into isolated or
protected subcultures of the mass produced information and entertainment.
All
the media research that has been done on the correlation between TV and
Violence has missed the point because they look at a particular program or isolated scenes and cases. What
they missed is that TV drama consists of a complex and integrated system of
characters, events, actions, and relationships who affects cannot be measured
with regard to any single element to program seen in isolation.
Their
analysis looks at the contribution of TV drama to the viewer conceptions in
conjunction with such other sources of knowledge as education and news. And how
these sources of facts, images, beliefs, and values play into assumptions of
reality.
Representation
in the fictional world signifies social significance, absence means symbolic
annihilation.
TV
can present promises of the way that society, people and issues can be. Which puts the symbolic world in a place
where it has meaning of it own.
Violence
plays a key role in the world of Television because it is the simplest and
cheapest way to show the rules of the game of power. In the symbolic world,
physical motion makes dramatically visible that which in the real world is
usually hidden.
Violence
on TV does not stem from close personal relationships like it does in the real
world.
The
structural characteristics of television drama are not easily controlled. The
reflect basic cultural assumptions that make a show entertaining by fitting
into dominate notions about social relations and thus demonstrating
conventional notions of morality and power.
Result:
a heightened sense of risk and insecurity, is more likely to increase
dependence on a established authority, and to legitimize it use of force, than
it is to threaten the social order.
Television
maybe does not cultivate fear and aggression but it does cultivate a sense of
mistrust and danger. Violence on TV appears to cultivate assumptions that fit
into socially functional myths.
Does TV incite or
pacify? The environment that sustains the most distinctive aspects of human
existence is the environment of symbols. We share, learn and act upon meanings
from that environment. TV is and will remain the biggest source of symbols and
symbolic systems that makes up common consciousness of mass publics.
The reach, scope,
ritualization, organic connectedness, and non selective use of mainstream TV
makes it different from other media of mass communications.
Gerber + gross
- does TV incite or pacify?
- Tv as main source of ritualized and repetition of symbol system
cultivating common consensus most heterogeneous society in history
→ investigation of violence in network TV drama, 60s + 70s
Assumption → tv as central cultural aim of American society
→ agency of established order – maintain
rather than alter
→ spread and stabilize social structure
→ medium of most people socialization
into standardised roles (?)
- ‘living’ in the world of tv cultivates conception of its own conventionalized reality.
- time of program more important than individual tastes
- “system” of message
- Fear as historical instrument of social control
- Expectation of violence and passivity in face of injustice (diff
than enforcement of social norms)
- Reality looks of tv hides its selective nature –trojan horse of
facts of life
- tv vs reality
- tv answer vs real
Violence - 6/10 characters involved in violence!
- social reality cultivated morein heavy viewers
- especially in areas of little personal expirience
→→ heightened sense of risk and insecurity → leads to
dependence upon established authority and legitimizes its use of force.
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