Human behavior is very interesting to me. It is something that I think about quite a lot. So, I found the video “The Human Behavior Experiment” very intriguing. This video showed many instances in which people demonstrate how outside forces can affect their actions. 

We are easily influenced by many things, but especially the media. Due to our near constant consumption of it. There is so much information being thrown at us that seems legitimate. It is hard to be skeptical and critical of everything we see. So, as a result, the media definitely affects the way we think. 

One way that the media affects the way we think is the pure amount of media available to us at any one time. The news is full of bad things happening every day. Now, this includes bad things all over hte world. Very little things go unknown. So, with the large amount of bad news we consume, we often think the world is a lot worse than it actually is. We even fear the world a bit. 

Now, of course, when it comes to the bigger things or things we personally care about, most people know now that media is not always correct. You must be skeptical and critical of the information you trust. It takes time and multiple sources to really learn anything through mass media, in order to make sure you are getting the truth. But this can not be done with everything, and often, people don’t care enough to fact check anything. Which is okay, but then that can lead to trusting the wrong people, and being just like someone in one of these videos: trusting a man who is telling you to harm another person.

So my question is: how are you going to ensure htat you avoid any of these situations?

Violence on the screen is nothing new. It produces that shock factor in all kinds of major media outlets; television shows, movies, cartoons.. but does this all come at a cost?

The documentary ‘The Human Behavior Experiments’ explores how people can become swayed in decision making when presented with a strong figure of authority or difficult group dynamic. This film includes clips from the experiments done with Dr. Milgram who had participants conduct a series of electric-shock experiments on a controlled group of people to see how far they would follow his instruction. Milgram says that he conducted such an experiment to gain a better understanding of the Holocaust. In the film, 60% of the participants continued to administer electric shocks to the point of hearing what was perceived as a middle-age man on the other end of the wall screaming out in pain. This reminded me of watching ‘The Stanford Experiment’ where a group individuals was randomly selected to be prisoners and the prison guards and power was quickly abused. This feeds into the controversy today of people in positions of power take advantage of their status and use it to feed their own agenda. Most commonly, people believe that this occurs in law enforcement and government.

The other viewing for this week ‘The Mean World Syndrome’ delves deeply into how violence in the media impacts on the viewer. It was honestly difficult for me to watch some of the violent acts in this film because you almost feel a de-sensitization to these horrid acts of harm and murder by watching them being done over and over again. Scholar, George Gerbner explores specific links between violent acts in the media and how they shape our society’s culture. Topics presented in reality-T.V., movies and even local news outlets are often times presented in a way that make us feel insecure, threatened and question the safety of our environment. It was interesting watching this film as of recently with the election coming to a close and having lived through the coronavirus lockdown. The coronavirus pandemic has targeted fear and instability in so many people and some could say that it’s constant news coverage has caused people more stress that helped people in times of crisis. Even without hearing about complications people face, hospital-horror stories from healthy people who have faced complications from the virus and how we’re expected to utilize new tools in this ‘new normal’, people feel pushed from their pre-existing safe reality. Turning on the news only to see how the job market is crashing and graphics of how poorly the U.S. economy is doing in comparison to being the worst since the Great Depression is unsettling to most.

It’s this brutal honesty that we look for but also want to shy away from. Personally, I’ve never associated the general news as something happy or something to watch to make me feel better. I did however, think it was really interesting to see how watching something so religiously could have an impact on a person’s current reality. I feel like this form of entertainment could almost be worse to people’s psyche’s than watching violent television or movies as we have more control as the viewer in deciding how gory or violent what we watch is.

There have been scientific links between people who view violence and commit it personally. This is because watching it almost normalizes it in their mind and gives them the idea that committing such acts is normal like they saw in the video game they were playing or horror movie they were watching. It’s scary to see how children nowadays spend so much time in-front of a screen playing with a video game device (especially if the games in which they are playing are violent) because they probably have difficulty bouncing back into reality from spending so much time in an alternate one. This is even worse if the video game incorporates using guns and weapons and involves acts of destruction.

My questions for the class are: Do you believe that there should stricter regulations in what we generally put on television?

Do you believe that slander and sensationalism has gotten the best of the modern media?

Living in 2020 means that most people are being exposed to more info in 1 week than people 50 years ago would be in their entire life. Technology has made us lazy yet smarter as we can look up any question you have in a little box in your pocket. We are in an age where we are oversaturated with content, which is causing anxiety and depression to grow among the younger generation 

We as humans crave attention and social media is a place where people of different walks of life can connect and talk to each other on sites like Twitter, so when you add the 2 they mix just as well as oil and water. Social media trolls have taken over all major social media sites and have caused a stir or controversy under almost every comment section. This has caused arguments and has been quite annoying lately as we are going through one of the most polarizing elections in recent history and everyone is on edge due to COVID-19. Trolls as of recent have been more aggressive and in high volumes because of this and even just saying “TRUMP 2020” will incite arguments and give the troll “clout” (a term used when someone on the internet gains attention and followers). With all of this, you can see why this is extremely frustrating for kids growing up in this day and age with social media right at their fingertips. 

Another factor in this is a fake news in which there has been an abundance of in 2020. I did gloss over this topic in one of my blogs a couple of weeks back but this topic has been the circle of debate for all of 2020 and the topic has affected all our lives in every way possible since news about specifical coronavirus and the elections have been different in almost every single news channel or page. Fake news has caused the American people to doubt what’s real and has made a strong division between Democrats and Republicans as they both pitting themselves in what seems to be a social media civil war as they coming for each other throats on which information is correct and incorrect. This has confused the youth on who they should believe and adds an unbelievable amount of stress to what they already have on their plates. According to NPR “The National Survey on Drug Use and Health, a government survey that tracks mental health and substance use in individuals age 12 and over in the U.S. They looked at survey responses from more than 200,000 adolescents ages 12 to 17 and almost 400,000 young adults ages 18 and over between 2005 and 2017. They found the rate of individuals reporting symptoms consistent with major depression over the past year increased 52 percent in teens and 63 percent in young adults over a decade. Girls were more vulnerable than boys. By 2017 one out of every five teenage girls had experienced major depression in the last year.” This stat is extremely concerning and has most likely increased in 2020 due to the hectic year we have had. 

One question I would like to pass off to the reader is that have you experienced an increase in anxiety or depression since Corona has started and how has the recent news cycle affected your day to day life?

One of my favorite things that is very pervasive in our country is the media’s use of the many different theories that we reviewed over the past week. We have seen first hand the effects of constantly watching the news during the pandemic and the fear it instilled in our family and friends. Without downplaying the effects of the virus, it’s obvious that the media’s constant fear mongering was just heightening our fear in general. This theory can also be seen in many other different aspects of life whether intentional or not. Everyone should normally think for themselves but when the same idea is being displayed over and over it generally makes you think the worst. Coming off of this theory we had the Agenda setting theory which in my opinion is HUGE. No matter your political beliefs it’s obvious that each side has their own agenda and their own checklist of things to say so that people will hop on board and support them. For a lot of people these things are subjective and rely on their emotions to influence their decisions for them. Without going any further into it it’s just very important to just stay objective throughout life.

I personally really enjoyed the two viewings we had this week “The Human Behavior Experiments” and “The Mean World Syndrome“.

The psychology behind what makes people act indecisively and inhumanely in various situations was very interesting. It was crazy to me watching some of these situations and just trying to understand what was going through these people’s minds as they obeyed these insane instructions. Moreover I just recently watched The Stanford Experiment, which was touched on in this video, and it escalated scarily quick.

Touching on what was mentioned above, The Mean World Syndrome goes into depth about how the media makes us believe the world is much more dangerous than it actually is. I’ve been pretty aware of all of this going on for the past 3-4 years as I became interested in politics. I generally do not make an opinion without having enough facts to convince myself it is true or it is worth supporting etc. So having the media use these techniques on me has been pretty useless as I just do my own research and make my own conclusions (which may ultimately agree with the message). It’s just tough to see how negatively powerful the media is when it could be one of the greatest tools created if we used it right.

Media plays a huge role in our society and it is a strong source of influence. There are hardly any limits on media there’s always anyway to access thing and this highly affects people of all ages especially the youth. Media is something in this generation we cannot run from. Media is something like a brainwashing device, it literally steals attention from everyone. For kids it’s the gaming, for teenagers it’s the social media, and for adults it’s the news.

It’s easy for the youth to get distracted or thrown off by media. Children rather be engaged with the fun, violent, games or television rather than school work or learning. Due to these games having most of their interest and attention it is no doubt that it is affecting them. There have been studies that shows the correlation between violent tv shows and video games with children aggression and aggressive behavior.

Over the years technology has become the greater factor when it comes to everything. There is very few things that are unaffected by the new and powerful technology that has come about. Most of the news that we hear today comes from social media or a media source that has not been around that long. With technology being such a huge influence on how we get our news, it is very hard to determine if the news we are receiving is real news or fake news. This has been problems in the past but when we had very little technology. This happened when we still reading newspapers. As technology has evolved how do we know the news that is being spread is true? There is limitations and laws in place to try and protect the people and limit what the social media outlets can say and law put in place to assure what they are saying is true. Now does this always work? Of course not. There is a lot of rules in this world and a lot of them get broken everyday. This is one of them for sure. Being that technology is so huge now a days, when one report gets word that is somewhat crazy to one person they spread it to the next person and then it starts a chain. With all this false information that gets spread so easily how do we tell what is real and what is fake? It takes someone to question the statements being made and look for themselves to try and find the right information. Now how often does this happen? How often do people now a-day look for information for themselves? All of this depends on the people around you and the experiences you’ve had with people in my opinion.

With all of the power that media has in today’s society most would think they would try and promote good things in today society and try to help the public. They do this as well. Social media and just media in general has been very good for our society. The ease of being able to find out about important news that is happening in our country is just unbelievable. An example is the constant information on the current election. If it were not for social media or television we would be in the dark for a majority of the current election. Now there has been problems with social media and spreading rumors of illegal ballot information and that has spread. Weather this information is false or true I have no idea. The point is the ease of information to get spread and the very few limitations on what can be said and the accuracy of this information.

My question for the readers is, Is media becoming to much of an influence on the public opinion or is it on the public to know what is true and false?

Media is in our lives and is here to stay, everyday we check our phones go on social media for multiple hours, many times a day. We are glued to our phones, television and laptops we never stop and put them down. With all the social media apps it is hard to get away from media. Social media is getting bigger and more useful for everyone of all ages. In today’s society there are opportunities that arise everyday just from social media. We can get all of our news straight from our phone. Some of the news online is questionable and must be more looked into to believe it. Anyone can post anything which means people who lie have a voice as well.There are many rude and negative things that can be sent to you on social media. But because of this there are plenty of mean people in the world and being online allows them to say and post anything they want without consequences most of the time. We can block these accounts but they can just make new accounts and post the same thing. The world can be a very hateful place, especially with social media being so close to us. If we don’t fire back with more hate then that’s the best thing we can do for social media.

In May of 1962 a human experiment was conducted using the shock method. The subjects were unaware of what he was really studying. The experiment used teachers and students and led them to believe that the students would learn better when they are shocked, however, it tested how far the professors would turn the voltage. Some teachers were questioned and stopped while other, went to the highest voltage. They did that because it was they were told to do, it didn’t matter if it was ethical. The effects of media on society theories sound quite outlandish and hard to believe. The Human Behavior Experiments shine a different light on the matter. Many humans some more than others, are very susceptible to change in behavior given a strenuous situation. We also learned Agenda-setting describes the way that media attempts to influence viewers. News broadcasts use this theory to “help” viewers decide what is the most important issues in the world at that moment.

  In the documentary, The Mean World Syndrome, The man who studied at the University of Pennsylvania was George Gerbner he spent his life learning how the violence on television affects us. He found that over time, the exposure to media violence had more complicating effects. George Gerbner has said that violence has become more and more shown on television. Now a days violence has become so normalized when viewing anything on screen. This has created people to become scared and have more anger. Often there are scenes of torture or murder that has been shown in recent media. I think that sometimes we don’t need that much violence as there is.

One of the theories in which are believed to have effects on humans from forms of media is the Gerbner Theory. What I took from the Gerbner Theory is it examines long-term effects from television. the main point of the theory is that people start to have a sense of living in the fictional world of television, and begin to align their real life with it. For example, a regular everyday human that watches a significant amount of violent TV will be scared of going out into the everyday world, as if the acts they are seeing will potentially happen to them.

Question to the class: Do you believe everything you see on social media?

Our media today is saturated with tons and tons of violence ranging from action movies and games, to horrific acts and gore in the horror genre and alike. It is with no surprise that many are worried about the effects violence can have on the young population, especially children. While studies have shown that violence in TV shows and movies and video games have a correlation to aggressive behavior, many have refuted this by saying that there are not enough studies and that this is more complicated then simple correlation.

Many have attributed to violent media influencing very young people into committing more aggressive acts, decreased empathy, and decreased reactions to violent acts either in media or in real life. They always conclude that content matters most importantly. However, there have not been many empirical studies, as this is a recent phenomenon. Many have refuted this statement using this fact and a few others.

Many have criticized these studies for being too simplistic and bias.

Firstly, some have criticized these studies for not controlling other variables such as mental health, home life, general stress, etc. if they cannot determine these variables, then attributing these childrens violence tendencies to violent media is plain wrong, and the results are not conclusive.

Secondly, there have not been many studies that have tested this thoroughly, and even less so that have had a good amount of subjects to study.

And lastly, considering the state of media right now, its hard to determine if some studies are completely biased or not. With news sites promoting their own agendas and spinning stories, studies are mostly funded by these sites to promote a certain outlook instead of finding actual credible results.

We are experiencing a very precious and aggravating time in human history where people seem to be in a more anxious mood than we have seen in a long time. It could be that politics is playing a large part in our lives and that nervousness that we have experienced is becoming a subliminal part of our lives. It can also be the technology that we have developed to be a part of our everyday lives.

We have developed films and TV shows that can make it very convincing that these things are real. The things we are presented on shows give us false narratives on how we as humans are allowed to act and how things are in the actual world. Media has made it hard to distinct which of our memories are from the media or our own. This has effected the way we raise our kids now, we still don’t know how this will effect them in the future. We as a society expect everything to be fast this includes media, although this can be helpful the fastest truth is not always the right truth.

We can see that the media has been corrupted by bias with the very places we get our media from. This extends to the major networks to the major social media platforms. All these platforms can encourage their own views on subjects that allow the truth to be extended or plain wrong.

How do we fix our own paranoias in this era?

How do we fix the major networks from showing bias news?

  Since the beginning of the media, parents have worried about the amount of violence present on television. Worried if their younger children are becoming brainwashed, George Gerbner, in his research, analyzes how watching violence can desensitize us to everyday violence. This desensitization from reality makes younger children unaware of the emotional fear and mental, sensory others experience when in violent situations. In this week’s screening, “Mean World Syndrome,” George Gerbner took three groups of television watchers ranging by the amount of time spent watching. Categorizing them into three groups from A two hours and less, B two to four hours, and C fours and more; he found that people who were heavily consumed by television lose sight of reality. Group C notes their perception of mass media influences their views on society and enforces their violent thought. Nonetheless, these heavy watchers are affected in the long run as this television watcher culture can be manipulated and capitalized for the worst.

       Throughout Gerbner’s research, I wondered how available Gerbner’s analysis is and how substantial television stations may take advantage of this culture. As we see today, media coverage runs a fine line of “fake or biased” news. For a long time in African American history, we have seen how movies, televisions shows, play, and songs have painted this group in a terrible light. Enforcing a narrative that Black males steal, are thugs, have drugs, or gang-affiliated. These narratives are distasteful as they create pre-notion and false judgment on a group other may have no real understanding about. Thus this group has been criminalized, underrepresented, and even worst, killed. Media has forced other judges to approved society’s hateful action, in turn, implementing Gerbner’s research that media can consume your perception.

While violence is a primary concern many parents have with media consumption, many other psychological ensure that shows have mass media effects on the mind. For instance, it is a sort of gratification present when a majority of people share the same ideas as one may. Psychologically a person may protect their ideology by not engaging with others who may oppose these views.

Proretaining to today’s culture shock of covid-19, political, racial, and social climate media has been a crucial factor influencing many of our human behavior. News stations such as CNN, NBC, FOX, PBS, and the local station has been many of our connection to the outside world while we are stuck inside. While these stations may state their credit, these stations remain opinion-driven and can give the view an abstract message. Their perspective on specific topics leaves viewers feeling one way or another, thus dividing our nation and creating tension between these two opposite groups. As we remain indoors for the rest of our days, I can only worry about how much influence media outlets have on our minds. We are now puppets on what we have seen, so who knows how long society can last with misinformation.

A question to the reader: How has misinformation shape your view on society?