Matakuliah : O0394 – Teknik Reportase dan News Caster
Tahun : 2010
Pertemuan 23 - 24

This section will discuss the impact of the media especially the impacts of television to the community.
The discussion will be focused on 2 (two) aspects: (1)
Theories of Media Impacts, (2) The Aggregate
Impacts of Media towards Community.
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1. Cultivation Theory
Heavy exposure to television imparts a worldview that is consistent with the ‘world’ of television
(George Gerbner). The viewers who adopt this distorted worldview might tolerate violence in their communities and families and in their own behavior.
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2. Priming
The activation of one thought activates related thoughts (Berkowitz, 1984). This theory offers a possible explanation for lurid “copycat” crimes.
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3. Agenda Setting
This theory describes the effects of that process in the media audience: The rank ordering that the audience assigns to important issues of the day tend to match the amount of coverage that the media give those issues (Wanta, 1997).
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4. Catharsis
This theory argues that the media sex and violence have positive effects by allowing people to live out their antisocial desires in a mediated fantasy world
(Feshback & Singer, 1971). The theory has resurfaced in a critique of the research about the effects of television violence (Fowles, 1999).
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5. Critical Theories
This theory focus less on behavioral effects on individuals and more on large-scale cultural impacts, such as permitting some groups to practice violence against other groups.
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What are the aggregate impacts of media towards community?
 Communication Media and Social Inequality
The unequal opportunity in accessing information due to gaps in income, racial, and education groups may cause a certain condition called digital divide.
Knowledge gap hypothesis argues that unequal access in information is unrelated to social equality. The gap is just between the information “haves” and “have-nots”.
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 Discrimination in Media Industries
There is discrimination of occupation in computer profession for women and minorities. Although there already significant improvement in education quality for women and minorities; however, the industry responses that there is still lack of qualified minorities and female applicants.
For example, in math and computer studies, women are discouraged by cultural biases that provide better access and recognition to males (AAUP. 2000).
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 Media and Community
The media may bring both negative and positive impacts for the users.
For negative impacts, it may cause depression and social isolation for heavy users (this especially applies for on-line media like internet).
For positive impacts, the media will increase social involvement among users.
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 Media and the Economy
New media technologies have influenced the demand in workplace in terms of quality and quantity of work.
a. The quantity of work
With its continuing and innovative system, information technology improves productivity by eliminating employees.
There is a phenomenon called the “lights out” factory which means that the replacement of workers with technology requires not to keep the lights out.
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b. Work gets worse
Information technology could reduce skill requirements among workers, a process called de-skilling.
The decrease of working skill is the result of human replacement with machines.
There is a term called Fordism (named after Henry Ford) means that each employee performs a single, narrowly defined task over and over again.
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c. Work gets better
The computer networks brings hope for work decentralization as computer networks make it possible to integrate the office work place with home living. It is now possible for employees to work from distant and avoiding the unnecessary aspects that may happen during working time (traffic congestion, air pollution, etc).
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 Health and Environment
Communications media affect physical health as well as mental health.
It is noted that heavy television viewing among users may cause brain seizures, obesity.
A research (Lim, Sauter & Schnorr, 1998) argues that: Up to a quarter of all computer users suffer repetitive stress injuries, mostly a result of poor posture, and psychological stress.
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 The impacts of advertising
The advertising may cultivate materialistic values, delicately convincing that the key to happiness lies in the consumption of goods.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1967) argues that advertising is a type of propaganda that places consumers on an endless treadmill of work to fulfill wants created by ads.
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 The impacts of political campaigns
The political campaign coverage could be in the form of opinion polls, public opinion, debate performance, etc.
The technology and media have proofed to inspire the innovations in political activities.
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At the end of discussion, it is expected that the students will understand on the effect of broadcasting towards community. The broad impacts of media toward community can be measured from its physical, economic, and human aspects.
In short, the impacts of media is fundamentally important for human being.
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