Book Description
A disturbed student shoots up his classroom -- and suddenly a wave of mass murder is sweeping through our nation's schools. A young child is taken from her home -- and for months afterward child abductions are frantically reported on an almost daily basis. A surfer is attacked by a shark -- and the public spends an entire summer fearing an onslaught of the deadly underwater predators. Why do the terrible events we see in the media always seem to lead to more of the same? Noted author and cultural behaviorist Loren Coleman explores how the media's over-saturated coverage of murders, suicides, and deadly tragedies makes an impact on our society. This is The Copycat Effect -- the phenomenon through which violent events spawn violence of the same type. From recognizing the emerging patterns of the Copycat Effect, to how we can deal with and counteract its consequences as individuals and as a culture, Loren Coleman has uncovered a tragic flaw of the information age -- a flaw which must be corrected before the next ripples of violence spread.
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"VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE... A disturbed student shoots up his classroom -- and suddenly a wave of mass murder is sweeping through our nation's schools. A young child is taken from her home -- and for months afterward child abductions are frantically reported on an almost daily basis. A surfer is attacked by a shark -- and the public spends an entire summer fearing an onslaught of the deadly underwater predators. Why do the terrible events we see in the media always seem to lead to more of the same? Noted author and cultural behaviorist Loren Coleman explores how the media's over-saturated coverage of murders, suicides, and deadly tragedies makes an impact on our society. This is The Copycat Effect -- the phenomenon through which violent events spawn violence of the same type. From recognizing the emerging patterns of the Copycat Effect, to how we can deal with and counteract its consequences as individuals and as a culture, Loren Coleman has uncovered a tragic flaw of the information age -- a flaw which must be corrected before the next ripples of violence spread. "
Customer Reviews:
Tries to convince through sheer repetition and not solid arguments.......2007-05-21
I was expecting more from this title, especially considering the good reviews it got here, but frankly it seems to fail both on the level of entertaining reading and as an academic essay. Within the first couple of chapters it's already obvious that he's just listing deaths and assorted facts one after another in a really repetitious way. Over and over I wished I could just tell the guy, "We get it, yeah, this person killed himself like the last 50 people killed themselves, now get on with it." But the primary problem with the book is that it links media reports of suicides and killings to other suicides and killings without adequately considering that mentally unbalanced people are just as likely to take drastic and mentally unstable actions even without these news stories -- just at some other time and some other way. If it's not some movie or media report it's from reading Shakespeare or the Bible. Nuts do crazy things, and they're going to pick whatever captures their attention. You can't ban everything. A long list of deaths doesn't prove the argument the author is trying to make, but it appears he hopes that people will be so affected by the long line of tragedies recounted here that they'll rush to pin the blame on the nearest target offered to them to try to solve the problem. Somewhere in here there are reasonable arguments ready to be made and potential ways to get help for people at risk. Instead the author just points the finger at the popular media with only a token concession that this book itself (as well as his other books -- I mean, if anyone should be conscious of the potential for mentally unstable people to do horrible things by no fault of anyone else it would be someone who writes about topics well known for attracting kooks) would then logically also be part of the problem if he was being fair in his moral outrage. But no, the problem is everyone else, even if it isn't. It's just a knee jerk reaction to a very complicated problem with no easy answers.
Coleman does it again.......2006-12-13
The Copycat Effect explores how highly publicized murders and suicides often inspire imitation in certain individuals due to a media that thrives on and profits from lurid and sensationalistic reporting.
Veteran author Loren Coleman presents a meticulously researched expose on the causes of such things as suicide clusters, rage murders involving workplace and school shootings and the books and movies that have inspired such violent acts in others. (The chapter on teen suicide is particularly sad, but compelling reading).
Coleman's data has even allowed him to make accurate predictions about where and when other copycat suicides and murders will occur.
As with all books written by Loren Coleman, this one is highly recommended.
Author uses sensitive language.......2004-11-27
The reviewer E. Sena, who writes "I strongly disagree with associating Suicide Victims with being Cowards," is correct. But E. Sena does not appear to be talking about The Copycat Effect, but their own personal feelings. The Copycat Effect talks of "vulnerable" people, yes, but never, not once, labels anyone a "coward."
Just a clarification, as the book concerns itself with the triggering effect of contagion via the media, and only senstively discusses all people, whether the suicide victims, the shooters, the people left behind, or any others of those who are killed or survive.
Loren Coleman sets up a provocative world view.......2004-11-24
The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines, is an incredible read. I agree with Coleman that the world's always had its problems, it's just far more glamorous now when death is the main topic. However, on another note...not to start something, but I strongly disagree with associating Suicide Victims with being Cowards. I think a lot of people need to realize that those too sensitive to live in this world are not the problem, it's the mean, evil conspirators of the world who have nothing better to do than to make someone's life a living hell, who are to blame. It's the troublemakers who are the cowards. As a Catholic, suicide is percieved as a sin in my household, but everyday there are people taking drugs to cope with the nasties of the world. Everyday. Is it their fault they are born into homes of violence, are targeted in school as freaks, and grow up to become insecure, insular adults? I am speaking from experience. Being bullied by the world at large can crush a person who was never brought up with the right tools to cope. And there are many people like that. Instead of calling them cowards, people should realize that rather than caring about themselves, they should learn to reach out and care for others so that those lost people have someone to go to in a world when more and more everyday, noone wants to listen to another's problems. Granted there are the damaged individuals who'll jump off a roof if you say their shoes are ugly. But mostly, the victims are like you and me, but mostly alone, lonely and forgotten. I have known people like that, passing through the world unnoticed. I don't blame them. I blame the blind world at large that refused to see them.
Suicide is a huge problem, and dismissing it as something weak, cowards do is not alleviating the problem. It's just making it an even easier alternative to living in a world full of demons.
brilliant and crystal clear.......2004-09-18
The role and function of our modern day mass media have often been discussed, but never before have the effects on our society, the way we behave and react, been explained in such crystal clear fashion. While the book gives irrefutable evidence that the darker side of our society is intertwined with the way we describe it in our media, it also helps to come to terms with this mechanism. Clearly, understanding is the first step on the road to betterment, and as such this book is highly recommended.
Book Description
Media Effects and Society provides an in-depth look at media effects and offers a theoretical foundation for understanding mass media's impact on individuals and society. Working from the assumption that media effects are common and are underestimated, author Elizabeth M. Perse identifies dominant areas of media effects and provides a synthesis of those areas of research. She focuses on the theoretical explanations for media effects, offering explanations of how media effects occur so readers can understand how to mitigate harmful effects and enhance positive ones.
This text provides comprehensive coverage of the range of media effects, including news diffusion, learning from the mass media, socialization of children and adolescents, influences on public opinion and voting, and violent and sexually explicit media content. It also presents a variety of theoretical approaches to understanding media effects, including psychological and content-based theories. In addition, it demonstrates how theories can guide future research into the effects of newer mass communication technologies.
Written for those who study and conduct research in media effects, Media Effects and Society presents a thorough and accessible discussion of media effects theory. As such, it is appropriate for advanced courses on media effects, media theory, and media and society.
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- Scrutinizing the science
- Time for someone to talk sense in the face of hysteria
- An Aggressive Attack on Research and Scholarship
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Media Violence and its Effect on Aggression: Assessing the Scientific Evidence
Jonathan L. Freedman
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ASIN: 0802035531 |
Book Description
The scientific evidence does not support the notion that TV and film violence cause aggression in children or in anyone else. So argues Jonathan Freedman, based on his findings that far fewer than half of the scientific studies have found a causal connection between exposure to media violence and aggression or crime. In fact, Freedman believes that, taken to a more controversial extreme, the research could be interpreted as showing that there is no causal effect of media violence at all.
Media Violence and its Effect on Aggression offers a provocative challenge to the accepted norms in media studies and psychology. Freedman begins with a comprehensive review of all the research on the effect of violent movies and television on aggression and crime. Having shown the lack of scientific support for the prevailing belief that media violence is connected to violent behaviour, he then explains why something that seems so intuitive and even obvious might be incorrect and goes on to provide plausible reasons why media violence might not have bad effects on children. He contrasts the supposed effects of TV violence on crime with the known effects of poverty and other social factors, and discusses the difference between television advertising, which, he argues, does have an effect, and violent programs, which do not.
Freedman concludes by noting that in recent years television and films have been as violent as ever and violent video games have become more and more popular, yet during this period there has been a dramatic decrease in violent crime. He argues that this makes it highly implausible that media violence causes aggression or crime.
Customer Reviews:
Scrutinizing the science.......2005-05-14
With the mixed messages parents are getting on the issue of media violence and aggression, this book serves as an educative tool. We are usually treated to misleading sound-bites and talking points regarding the "scientific studies" the author evaluates. Like all science, these studies are not safe from scrutiny. There have been many poorly designed studies in this area and the author calls attention to them. I am dumbfounded by previous reviewers attempt to accuse this psychologist as someone trying to undermine psychology. For scientists: questioning one and anothers' research methods is part of the profession. This is how knowledge advances. The only insults to common sense I see are the studies that attempt to define aggressive behavior as popping a balloon, or thinking about violence after seeing violent movies.
Good science can and should stand up to scrutiny. The fact is, psychology has been guilty of some bad science.
Time for someone to talk sense in the face of hysteria.......2003-07-05
Media violence research is badly flawed in many respects. First, every scientist and social scientist who I've ever heard of who studies media violence is opposed to it, so the whole research agenda is biased from square one. Find me a scientist or social scientist who studies it because he/she is indifferent about it or likes media violence. Second, there is a logic problem: I, like everyone else I know, have seen thousands of murders in movies and on television, and yet I have never seriously contemplated murdering anyone. Among those people who have considered it, even only a fraction of them actually commit murder. So the role of mass media in murder, for example, must be extremely small to non-existent. Theories that suggest that we might or will do what we see in the media, such as cultivation theory, agenda-setting theory, social learning theory, socialization theory, etc., utterly fail to explain why so few of us are murderers; such research must admit that mass media play an extremely small to non-existent role in real-world violence. Third, even if media violence is partially responsible for some people being violent occasionally, this flimsy connection is not enough under the First Amendment, or based on common sense, to regulate or ban media violence. If the public wants to save lives, it could do so much more quickly and effectively by banning tobacco, alcohol, automobiles, guns, fast food and junk food. In other words, media violence would be way down the list of items or activities in American life that cause widespread harm and even death. Fourth, all of this research on media violence, even if it proves something, won't make any tangible difference. As a federal appeals court judge showed in an important law review article a few years ago, it's much easier under the First Amendment to regulate media sex in the United States than media violence. The V-chip may be mandatory in TV sets, but most of the other ratings systems and labeling for TV, movies, CDs, etc., have been voluntary by the media industry and could be upheld in court only with the claim (often made, rarely supported) that they protect children. We're not willing under the law to regulate almost anything that adults might see or hear (and I'm not suggesting that we should), as if magically at 18 Americans aren't effected by anything in the media anymore. Moreover, the FCC has been in a deregulatory mood for 20 years regarding TV, then cable, and now the Internet. The FCC has no authority over newspapers, magazines, books, movie theatres or movie rentals. Media and entertainment companies can be held liable for the actions of customers in only very rare cases (such as when a company puts out a book on how to be a hit man, and then someone follows the advice.) In short, regulating or banning movie or TV violence is not going to increase, probably will decrease further, and will become tougher to justify under the First Amendment in any case. Fifth, this leaves those who oppose media violence with two options: appealing to media companies to stop making violent content (and why would they do that, since their job is to make money for stockholders?), or not buy violent media content and try to persuade others not to do the same. Some social scientists may be deluded into thinking that that's what they're already doing: producing research that is negative about media violence and will convince average Americans not to consume media violence anymore. The only problem with this is that the average American doesn't read scholarly journals that publish articles on media violence, and isn't likely to--mostly because average Americans don't read scholarly journals at all, and partially because Americans are anti-intellectual: most of them wouldn't read a well-written scholarly journal article if it fell in their lap. Bottom line: with more than 3,000 studies in the last 50 years on media violence, this whole research stream has gone nowhere fast, and the last thing we need is another study on it. But certain scientists and social scientists have their own agenda, not the least of which is that research on media violence has turned into something of a cottage industry through federal grant money.
An Aggressive Attack on Research and Scholarship.......2003-04-03
Media Violence and Its Effect on Aggression is a very peculiar book. It is written in the style of H.L. Mencken--but without the scholarship and care. The book is a biased attack on the science of psychology, the profession of communications, and the common sense of any educated reader.
Book Description
Was the 2000 presidential campaign merely a contest between Pinocchio and Dumbo? And did Dumbo miraculously turn into Abraham Lincoln after the events of September 11? In fact, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman argue in The Press Effect, these stereotypes, while containing some elements of the truth, represent the failure of the press and the citizenry to engage the most important part of our political process in a critical fashion. Jamieson and Waldman analyze both press coverage and public opinion, using the Annenberg 2000 survey, which interviewed more than 100,000 people, to examine one of the most interesting periods of modern presidential history, from the summer of 2000 through the aftermath of September 11th. How does the press fail us during presidential elections? Jamieson and Waldman show that when political campaigns side-step or refuse to engage the facts of the opposing side, the press often fails to step into the void with the information citizens require to make sense of the political give-and-take. They look at the stories through which we understand political events--examining a number of fabrications that deceived the public about consequential governmental activities--and explore the ways in which political leaders and reporters select the language through which we talk and think about politics, and the relationship between the rhetoric of campaigns and the reality of governance. They explore the role of the campaigns and the press in casting the 2000 general election as a contest between Pinocchio and Dumbo, and ask whether in 2000 the press applied the same standards of truth-telling to both Bush and Gore. The unprecedented events of election night and the thirty-six days that followed revealed the role that preconceptions play in press interpretation and the importance of press frames in determining the tone of political coverage as well as the impact of network overconfidence in polls. The Press Effect is, ultimately, a wide-ranging critique of the press's role in mediating between politicians and the citizens they are supposed to serve.
Customer Reviews:
Consider some of these ideas.......2003-11-03
The Press Effect suggests the media frames issues and candidates in a way that their future stories on the subjects will tend to fit neatly inside the pre-conceived box. Since the media is a follow-the-leader game, once a frame takes hold it doesn't let go very easily. Jamieson and Waldman use this theory mainly to explore the 2000 Election between Gore and Bush.
Gore's many misstatements through his political career led the press to frame him as dishonest. Bush's flubs through his short political career convinced the press to put him in the frame of unintelligent. The result were campaign stories that asked voters to choose between the smart, but untrustworthy Gore and the dumb but affable Bush. The examples of media coverage in the book support this theory pretty well.
Next the authors cite the examples of Gore's untruths and basically defend each one as a misunderstanding, leaving Gore as a more honest individual than painted by the media. As a reader, I anticipated the authors next explaining that Bush was actually a smarter man than he was given credit for, after all he has an MBA from Harvard. Instead the authors quote a New Yorker article where a reporter cites George W. Bush's average grades at Yale. This is was a surprise, because the story was unverified by Yale and it doesn't take into account that grades have much more to do with ambition and drive than intelligence. There was no attempt to give Bush the same credit that the authors spent giving Gore. An opportunity to support their main thesis was left on the floor, which gives one the feeling that the real purpose of the book is to defend Gore not shame the media. This same pattern is repeated when the authors discuss the Florida recount.
It's unfortunate that Jamieson and Waldman abandon the scholarly for the advocacy role because there is a lot of other research in the book that seems dead on. They bemoan that fact that reporters do a terrible job of verifying the evidence and drawing conclusions. Instead, the authors argue that the media play into the "he said, she said" game of political strategy. The story becomes about how the candidates disagree with each other on their positions more than the actual substance of those positions. They also state that the media loves to play psychologist when they should instead be playing fact-finder.
I found the basic theories in the book supported by good evidence. But the advocacy of Gore and the silence on Bush in the analysis sections detracted from the book's purported goal of exposing the media's laziness. I'm sure that the authors would say that they had no intention of propping up Gore, but parts of the book seem to strengthen the media frame on Bush which weakens the overall argument of the book. This is surprising since Bush could have been defended as easily as Gore.
Anyway, I think the authors do a fine job casting a spotlight on the media's "follow the leader" approach and that's enough recommend it despite my other misgivings.
one of the most important books of our time.......2003-08-12
One of the most bothersome things about journalism today is how frequently lies and distortions promulgated on all sides of the political spectrum, particularly the right side, become accepted as truth. To a large extent, as this book points out, this is the fault of journalists, whose primary job is, or should be, to discover and report the truth about important issues of the day. Democracy cannot function well if the public is constantly mislead. And simply presenting opposing views does not help the public determine the truth. Truth telling needs to be rewarded and deception needs to be punished. This is not happening now.
Real journalism is not about repeating the "spin" but finding the truth.
As the book says: "Reporters should help the public make sense of competing political arguments by defining terms, filling in needed information, assessing the accuracy of the evidence being offered, and relating the claims and counterclaims to the probable impact of the proposed policies on citizens and the country."
This can be hard work. It is much easier to focus on the "horse race" and personalities and that is why over 70% of elections stories in 2000 did not mention any issue at all.
This book should be required reading for all journalists and concerned citizens.
Solid, well researched, and balanced.......2003-04-24
Jamieson and Waldman offer a highly critical overview of media coverage, focusing on the 2000 Presidential election, but also touching on historical issues such as the Nixon Presidency and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. They are equally critical of the coverage given to Bush and Gore, in an impressive display of non-partisanship that is lacking in our media today. They encourage reporters to research the statements by candidates and to not simply accept the frame given to them by interested parties but to investigate and to put a truly fair and balanced frame around it. One issue that they note but could have gone into more detail on is that the media almost universally present issues as a for/against disagreement, whereas in reality there are often (I might argue almost always) more than two points of view on a given issue and the press ignores all but the two that are most easily reduced to sound bites.
A must read for all journalists.......2003-01-08
The press is in crisis--it no longer serves its most important role, which is to cut through political spin to get at the facts. Jamieson and Waldman make a convincing case that the press is so intent on creating compelling storylines that it has lost its critical edge.
For all journalists out there--please read it!
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Broadcast Television Effects in A Remote Community (Lea's Communication Series)
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0805837353 |
Book Description
This book reports findings from a major, multidisciplinary study of the impact of broadcast television on the remote island community of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Broadcast television was introduced to the island for the first time in March 1995. This introduction represented a major event on the island, whose only televisual experience had been through video.
In the years leading up to the introduction of TV, the researchers who wrote this book collected data by observing the island's young children in classroom settings, and during free-play. In addition to these observations they asked the children's teachers to rate their students' behavior, and invited the children to explain to them what leisure time activities they engaged in. With the data they were able to amass on these key variables they have assembled and coded the results into baseline measures central to the study. Once TV had arrived, they collected data annually on the key dependent measures to determine if the introduction of broadcast TV had any discernible influence on the behavior of the children.
Amazon.com
The Medium is the Massage is Marshall McLuhan's most condensed, and perhaps most effective, presentation of his ideas. Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village.
Book Description
30 years after its publication Marshall McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage remains his most entertaining, provocative, and piquant book. With every technological and social "advance" McLuhan's proclamation that "the media work us over completely" becomes more evident and plain. In his words, 'so pervasive are they in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, or unaltered'.
McLuhan's remarkable observation that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication" is undoubtedly more relevant today than ever before. With the rise of the internet and the explosion of the digital revolution there has never been a better time to revisit Marshall McLuhan.
Customer Reviews:
Very good book. Almost prophetic........2007-05-16
Some of McLuhans stuff is really unaccessible for average readers... It's deep stuff... BUT we see much of what he was talking about occuring in our modern day. It's really interesting. I think if he could have found a better way to present his philosphies he could have really made much more of a difference to our "global community"
My view of the world ..........2006-12-16
... was profoundly influenced by this book. I read it about 30 years ago. I'm pleasantly surprised to find it still in print.
Where are the Audio and Video Versions?.......2006-10-21
Yes, back in the late 60's or early 70's there were both audio and a movie version of this title. I use to own the LP album and frequently watched the short movie version that played on college campuses more than 35 years ago. Hopefully, the LP and movie will eventually be transferred to CD and DVD? Better yet: podcast? clyde
Wisdom from the Prophet of the Internet.......2006-06-20
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) never conceived of the Internet. But the great communications theorist understood where communications was going, and the revolutionary effects of its direction.
This book takes his sometimes impenetrable prose and places it in a context of compelling photographs, advertisements, and cartoons in order to dramatically illustrate the meaning of his words, and the radical effect that changes in communications technology have on the lives of all the world's citizens. "It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of the media," he writes.
The Medium is the Massage begins and ends with quotes from Albert North Whitehead. The first is that "The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur." The last is that "It is the business of the future to be dangerous."
There always are jeremiads against the new by those who are accustomed to the old. McLuhan quotes Socrates: "The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves...You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing."
The effects of the media on individuals are profound. "All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, pyschological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty--psychic or physical."
Media affect you, the individual citizen. "Electrical information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim to privacy and the community's need to know. The older, traditional ideas of private, isolated thoughts and actions--the patterns of mechanistic technologies--are very seriously threatened by new methods of instantaneous electric information retrieval, by the electrically computerized dossier bank--that one big gossip column that is unforgiving, unforgetful and from which there is no redemption, no erasure of early 'mistakes.' We have already reached a point where remedial control, born of knowledge of media and their total effects on all of us, must be exerted...."
Media affect your family. "The family circle has widened. The whirlpool of information fathered by the electic media--movies, Telstar, flight--far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world's a sage."
Media affect your neighborhood. "Electric circuitry has overthrown the regime of 'time' and 'space' and pours upon us instantly and continuously the concerns of all other men. It has reconstitued dialogue on a global scale. Its message is Total Change, ending psychic, social, economic, and political parochialism. The old civic, state, and national groupings have become unworkable. Nothing can be further from the spirit of the the new technology than 'a place for everything and everything in its place.' You can't GO home again."
Media affect your education. "Today's television child is attuned to up-to-the-minute 'adult' news--inflation, rioting, war, taxes, crime, bathing beauties--and is bewildered when he enters the nineteenth century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules. It is naturally an environment much like any factory set-up with its inventories and assembly lines."
Media affect your job. "From the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, there is a steady progress of fragmentation of the stages of work that constitute 'mechanization' and 'specialism.' These procedures cannot serve for survival or sanity in this new time. Under conditions of electric cicuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and 'human' service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty."
Media affect your government. "Nose-counting, a cherished part of the eighteenth century fragmentation process, has rapidly become a cumbersome and ineffectual form of social assessment in an envrionment of instant electric speeds. The public, in the sense of a great consensus of separate and distinct viewpoints, is finished. Today, the mass audience (the successor to the 'public') can be used as a creative, participating force. It is instead merely given packages of passive entertainment. Politics offers yesterday's answers to today's questions. A new form of 'politics' is emerging, and in ways we haven't yet noticed. The living room has become a voting booth. Participation via television in Freedom Marches, in war, revolution, pollution, and other events is changing EVERYTHING."
Media affect our relationships with groups of other citizens. "The shock of recognition. In an electric information environment, minority groups can no longer be contained, ignored. Too many people know too much about each other. Our new environment compels commitment and participation. We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other. There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."
This book is, in short, a superb introduction to McLuhan's thinking. Ideally, it would be read before any of McLuhan's other books. Understanding McLuhan takes some time and thought, but the effort is well worth it to understand today's media and today's world.
"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing," McLuhan quotes Meister Eckhardt as saying. McLuhan erases preconceptions of media being relatively insignificant, and demonstrates how the media affect the way each of us sees the world in which we live.
A memorable photo in the book is one of a middle-aged man dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase standing upon a surfboard, riding the waves. "In his amusement born of rational detachment of his own situation, Poe's mariner in 'The Descent Into the Maelstrom' staved off disaster by understanding the action of the whirlpool," says McLuhan's accompanying prose. "His insight offers a possible strategem for understanding our predicament, our electrically-configured whirl."
The last cartoon in the book--from the New Yorker in 1966--summarizes McLuhan's essential theme. A young man with a guitar discusses McLuhan with his father in a well-appointed library. "You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says the enviroment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential, thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?"
We all should get McLuhan. The development of Internet--likely even more transformative than television--has greatly revived interest in McLuhan's view of technological changes as changing us as people, and of creating a global village for all of us to live in. "We impose the form of the old on the content of the new. The malady lingers on," McLuhan warns. We should heed his warnings and recognize, embrace, and work for constructive improvements in the ever-changing world in which we live.
To Digital or Not to Digital; Was That The Question? Chocolate/Vanilla, Either/Or Options?.......2005-12-05
Do printed Words create a sick society of antisocial eggheads with their noses hovering habitually above pages of ink? Duh, what? He said what when?
Here are a few of the words McLuhan used to politely and perceptively express this concept and much more.
>> Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication.... The alphabet and print technology fostered and encouraged a fragmenting process, a process of specialism and of detachment. Electric technology fosters and encourages unification and involvement. It is impossible to understand social and cultural changes without a knowledge of the workings of media. Anxiety is, in great part, a result of trying to do do today's jobs with yesterday's tools, with yesterday's concepts.
<<
Of course, the above quoted passage makes more sense today; imagine the awesome brain blower it would have been to a regular Jane or Joe reading it in 1967.
Possibly the only concept McLuhan hadn't yet tasted on his perceptive palate, was the idea that we could choose both chocolate AND vanilla, as we now do.
On other words, what is Amazon.com?
Possibly one of the best examples of a chocolate/vanilla marbled merger (what IS it with all these "M"'s) is the existence, style, and success of Amazon.com, where a graphically-enriched, ethereal electronic medium sells BOOKS... which have WORDS in them, on printed pages! Oh my, (dear McLuhan) we (humans) still like to bow out of the global, communal bombardment and READ in isolated luxury, in addition to enjoying the social, "interconnected" facets of electronic ease (sometimes coming through as sleazy cheese, and now we have Velveeta, too).
The 60's were truly gooey with phobias of solitude. Wonder what THAT was all about?
When composing my review of Jill Churchill's FEAR OF FLYING (posted 11/24/05, on Thanksgiving morning, with 2 other gourmet, sizzled turkey offerings), I was Right-Brain kicked into mentioning McLuhan's Massage, which hadn't crossed my mind in ages. In the FoF review, due to the Right Brain being basically non-verbal, my syntax around McLuhan's hallmark, landmark book tied itself into a Freudian slip-knot which I was forced to untie with a postscript:
P.S. Marshall McLuhan wrote THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE (implying more than "message"). I visited the Amazon buying page for that book to check spelling of his name. The editorials and 15 customer reviews there were amazingly insightful as well as delightfully (and crisply) worded. Even the slight criticisms felt clean, clear, and honestly helpful. Without reservation, I voted "Yes" on each of the reviews. They told me more about the book than I "got" when I read it in college (umpteen Ages ago) and they returned to memory and life what I did get. Born in 1947, I'm in the Baby Boomer crowd. (Maybe I should go post this P.S. into a review?)
(End of P.S. added to my review of Jill Churchill's FoF.)
In the last half of the 60's, my soul was still asleep and my body was off base with the hormones of youth (no OUT-of-the-body's personal repertoire of drugs were intended, needed, or used). In this condition, my mind was somewhat in a state of "Duh, Maynard" when I read McLuhan's Massage picture book. The reading was done as a university class requirement, along with Joseph Wood Krutch's desert book (Alvin Toffler's FUTURE SHOCK came a bit later), and a few other offerings of that type of mind-blowing, nearly hallucinogenic publication which seemed to come out in waves in that cultural push-&-shove period. I didn't/don't use drugs, but for all practical purposes some of the "Hey, DUUUUDE" peer-poking effects were "totally" unavoidable. (Admired the uniqueness of the review written with Hippie slang syntax.)
The fascinating thing (a la Spock) is, though, that a surge of shocking, sometimes brilliant conceptualization was being published then. While some of it exposed prolific, prophetic genius, some appeared to be a result of fried brain cells flashing toxins on their way to being an ash.
Was that time-frame also when shock treatment was initiated as a cure for depression, to give the brain a cellular-zapped clue that life was supposed to be a bed-of-roses, not a pain-in-the-patootie? What irony.
And, were heart-shocker paddles originally put out then to keep a soul trapped in a body when it was attempting a back door exit? What horror.
When will Pet Sematary reach its age of prophesy undone (my review 10/16/05). Okay, I'm drawing an extreme here. Electrically convincing the heart to begin-again beating when it had hiccuped and halted doesn't always return an unwilling soul to an almost cold, warn out body. Sometimes that medical miracle extends life as a very good thing for all concerned. And, how would I know whether shocking a heart back to beating is good or bad? I don't know.
However, for me, Stephen King's Pet Sematary makes a good point to ponder.
When is Death doing us a favor?
I'm going to have to reread (or would that be "redo") McLuhan's book from my current state of having worked a Quantum particle beyond "huh?" The reviews here on TMITM have peaked my curiosity for a return visit, though my taste for culinary mystery novels will probably take the cake and be the frosting on it as I read it, too, for a while yet.
What I got from The Medium then was, "Big things are happening, babe; better watch out! The Future is going to be lightning electrified. Not only is God dead; words are out."
I don't recall much Left Brain stuff from that time-frame, but I may have hoped that mass electrocution wouldn't be the Last Hurrah of Our Species." Looking back, it seemed then that some of the intellectual eggs were trying to scramble the Right Brain into the Left, using words so full of "meaning" they had leaped the gap of comprehension.
I love electronic mediums and the messages I'm able to send and receive through ozonic ether. And, I still love the grounded pleasure of reading a good book. A delightful, carnival-marriage of the best of both worlds is "Now Playing" on Amazon.
Strange how the future sometimes creates the whole (ball of wax, basket of eggs, whatever) as more than the sum of its pasts; and the future continues to arrive in spite of the best published intentions of Chicken-Little twinges, as enlightening and insightful though the small, salmonella-slinging-species may be.
This is not to say that any of the books I've mentioned are examples of Chicken Little syndromes. They are not. They are gems to be treasured in their prophetic intensity of down sides, which come to pass, somewhat, in uncanny manifestations of words made flesh, even as the future continues to save itself as it comes to pass by the present in one grand leap of time.
I'm not sure, but I may have just channeled a message from Confucius (or maybe Buddha), still receiving...
Who is (are?) the Author(s?) of The (actual) Laws of Physics?
Who designed this reality so precisely that we're allowed to make the messes we're in and still somehow grow out of them (to varying degrees, rather than to the Nth)?
Or... How many times have we started over?
All I know is I love books, and cozy escape fiction is my cup of vanilla-bean tea. As a chocaholic, I also love DVD's. All these mediums titillate my brain and (sometimes) make my soul glad it's agreed to this tour in a body glued to a planet by gravity.
Thanks, Amazon, for allowing us to be here and spout. A Fountainhead (see my review 10/15/05) I'm not, but my mouth often runs off without me...
I'm still wondering what McLuhan had against paper and ink.
I understand that he would have been disgusted with peoples' fears of electric and electronic progress, since he clearly saw the beauty of potential and sheer release of creativity in that mind-enhancing evolution. And, I'm beyond thankful for his contribution to holding gateways open for that evolution.
Even understanding McLuhan's obvious need to fight fears of progress, I feel there's more to ferret about his deal against paper/ink technology.
Certainly he would have been impatient with being forced to communicate that way, since his brain consistently made sonic booms beyond the speed of his typewriter clicks.
Yeah, and how hard would it have been for ancient scribes painstakingly etching records of existence with scratchy pen tip & sloppy ink bottle?
Likely, McLuhan was incensed with the lost time it took to communicate his brain farts & sparks, when he wanted to be OUT side playing in a (symbolic) sandbox with his friends. This man clearly had Sagittarius, Jupiter, and/or the 11th House in play at his time, place, day and year of birth. He was probably born right after a fresh New Moon had made its debut, maybe even right after the peak of a Solar Eclipse. He had more to say than several lifetimes would allow him to express. Who wouldn't be impatient with the slowness and lack of "out-of-the-house" drama of working on a typewriter or even one of the types of electronic mechanisms available in the early 60's (actually he probably began that surge-to-scribe-and-communicate process in the 50's or earlier).
I remember well how I felt when I realized (in 1986, when I was typing a 500 page ms for the first on an 8000 IBM Clone PC w/out a hard drive) that I didn't have to retype each and every page of 500 every time I needed a "clean copy" to work from. Oh man! I could do so much MORE in a given amount of time by chust (ironically, I'm reviewing Amish novels, too, see my Listmania's & reviews on Tamar Myers's PenDutch series and IN DUTCH AGAIN by Barbara Workinger) reprinting a page or so each time I needed to make a correction or edited improvement.
Unless you've composed, typed & re-typed, edited & revised several drafts of a 500 page ms, you might not be totally aware of this awesome feeling of relief to an intensely creative mind. Most book-length mss (manuscripts) done prior to PC & printer capacity, had to be retyped a few to several times, as revisions darkened the page with hand-scrawled changes, so much that the author was no longer able to see through the mess, and had to make a complete fresh copy of the whole work, with page-numbering-sequence corrected, which would often take even the best typist about a week of full-time-effort.
Oh yeah. I can see what caused McLuhan to develop such a putrid disgust of printed-word-technology, when I take time to empathize with the sheer drudgery of this tedious, mundane process to a mind surged with so much creativity it could design, in a few days, every detail of a new world in a strange universe (or "merely" explain the essence and fundamentals of our present world and its cultures).
Of course, given the level of minds we (as a species) have (and sometimes use) now, we might be able to design at Quantum Level a new world to be communicated within the pages of a novel (a book of printed words) or within a movie on DVD (yea, McLuhan we have THOSE goodies now!). We aren't quite yet at the level to design (then seed, activate or implement) whole physical universes with varieties of functioning sets of Laws of Physics to hold them together, from a massive core of gravity, and allow them to expand and contract, maybe even grow/evolve a few species of interacting critters on various world and galactic venues.
Or, would you like to be trapped in a physical world designed by our current state of mind? Oops. Maybe that's what's wrong with us? Still, there's a lot right with us, too. A species which created the novel isn't all bad (see my spotlighted review of THE NOVEL by James Michener).
In awe of a Consciousness so far beyond mine it actually created Time,
Linda G. Shelnutt
P.S. As a student English teacher in 1970, I was set up in a Denver suburb high school to teach a new class called "Filmic Statement." The class exposed a revolutionary concept of the Language of Film. Fresh out of college in 1970, still trailing tangents from graduate seminars in Language, Linguistics, History of Language, Semantics, etc., I didn't fully realize how much that high school class owed its existence to McLuhan. I can certainly identify with the English professor side of McLuhan. I'm still trying to recall through which course of study his Medium/Massage book was touted, English Lit or Sociology.
P.S.S. I see that the medium of communication says a lot more than many of us would have realized, without a mind like McLuhan's having burst its seams. But, I don't quite "buy" that the medium says more than its content. If so, why did I take days to compose this review, and why would you read it. You could just sit there and do a Right-Brain-"oohhhhmmmmm" to a blurry monitor screen without reading word one. Try that and see if you can comprehend what I've struggled to communicate. Words. Gotta love em. Syntax is sensual. And, as to the concept of Language, yes, we have to consider that it will probably grow well beyond these packages, eventually. I mean. After I pop out of this body for that Final Time, am I going to be forced to use words to express the experience? I ask you. Will I need a Notebook PC, on "the other side"? What link will I use then to get messages back to planet? Death is more than The Great Equalizer, and maybe it should be proud of its alternate set of Laws of Physics. Whew. What a release.
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Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate (Communication and Society (Routledge (Firm)).)
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Violence in Society
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The influence of the media remains a contentious issue. Every time a particularly high-profile crime of violence is committed, there are those who blame the effects of the media. The familiar culprits of cinema, television, video and rock music, have now been joined, particularly in the wake of the massacre at Columbine High School, by the Internet. Yet, any real evidence that the media do actually have such negative effects remains as elusive as ever and, consequently, the debate about effects frequently ends up as being little more than strident and rhetorical appeals to "common sense." Ill Effects is a guide for the perplexed. It suggests new and productive ways in which we can understand the influences of the media and question why the effects paradigm still exerts a tenacious hold in some quarters. Refusing to adopt the absurd position that the media have no influence at all, Ill Effects rethinks the notion of media influence in ways which take into account how people actually use andinteract with the media in their everyday lives.
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Branding the Teleself: Media Effects Discourse and the Changing Self
Hakanen Ernest
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An ongoing topic of debate in our times is how exactly the media affects the public. Hakanen analyzes that debate as it has developed in media effects research in order to reveal the changes from a modern to a postmodern self.
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The Effects of United States' Political Communication and the Liberian Experience (1960-1990): An Afrocentric Analysis (Distinguished Dissertations)
Edward Lama Wonkeryor
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