Priming in Media

The priming theory is supported by Albert Bandura's 1961 Bobo Doll experiment. Priming is the theory that media images motivate similar ideas in the brains of the audience. For example, when children watch one cartoon character act violently toward another cartoon character, that child is more likely to act violently toward another child. Or, when someone uses a baseball bat to kill someone and steal their car while playing the video game Grand Theft Auto, that person is more likely to attack someone with a baseball, steal a car, or both. Some believe that people, especially children, may store media images about how to react in certain circumstances with violent behavior, and then call on those images and recreate them in real-life situations.

Albert Bandura performed an experiment, commonly known as the Bobo Doll experiment, in 1961 to determine the effect of viewing violent behavior. Bandura showed some children a video of someone acting violently toward an inflatable doll. He then placed the children in a room with an inflatable doll, and observed the way the children treated the doll. Bandura also placed children that had not seen the video in a room with the inflatable doll and compared the way those children treated the doll with the way the children who saw the video treated the doll. Bandura found that the children exposed to the violent movie played much more aggressively and violently with the doll than those that did not see the movie. Also, he found that those exposed developed an attraction to guns and displayed hostile language toward the doll as well as physical abuse, while the control group did not.

The results of this experiment support the theory that media images create related thoughts and behavior in the audience. When violence is portrayed in the media, it causes and increase in violent thoughts and behaviors in the media. Now, while not supported by this experiment, it is reasonable to conclude that this effect is not limited to violence. Other thoughts and behaviors could theoretically be increased by related media images, such as kindness or promiscuity.

Framing in Media

The media practice of framing is perfectly demonstrated by the graphs of MSNBC's and FOX News' coverage of the 2008 presidential election. Framing is done to not only tell the audience about an issue, but to tell the audience how to think about that issue. It not only presents the facts, it also interprets them, leaving the audience with no role other than to sit back and enjoy the show. The practice of framing deals with which facts to include and what tone to set when reporting an story. News reporters will likely only include facts that will support the interpretation of the story that they are trying to instill in the audience. These graphs of MSNBC's and Fox News' coverage of the 2008 presidential election show how they framed their stories about presidential candidates by establishing a positive or negative tone. Over 70% of MSNBC's coverage of John McCain had a negative tone with only about 10% having a positive tone. Their coverage of Barack Obama, however, was only about 15% negative, with the rest of the coverage split between positive and neutral. Fox News, on the other hand, kept the tone of their coverage of these two candidates very similar. Both candidates were covered negatively about 40% of the time, with Obama receiving a little more positive coverage, which really surprises me. I definitely would have thought that FOX News would have covered the election in the same way as MSNBC, with the candidates switched. The graphs, however, show that MSNBC's coverage of the election was specifically framed toward supporting Obama, while Fox News' coverage does not seem like it was framed in support of either candidate.

The image of the graphs was found at http://www.verumserum.com/?p=16357

Why RTF 305?

I am in RTF 305 because it is a part of the FIG I signed up for, Reel America. I decided to join a FIG because I felt it would make it easier to make friends and study groups, and because it basically made my schedule for me, which means I had one less thing to worry about. I chose this FIG in particular, because it includes film and American studies classes, two things in which I am extremely interested. In this class, I hope to learn about the gowth, impact, and innovations of media as well as watch some excellent films.

Favorite Blog: http://www.upreacher.blogspot.com/