Russell
08/01/2014
Outside Reading: Peter L. Berger
Notes & Questions
• The topic of television violence has been posed in a wrong frame; it delivers no only real-life violence but also more than simply aggression.
• Cultural Policy—the certain area of policies that legally governs the publications and promotions of either the culture or its diversities.
• To figure out the actual way of coping with television violence, we need to make the problem posed more visualized. To ask certain questions are necessary as Gerbner suggest.
• Gerbner suggest the government once lost control of TV violence since the publishers of certain programs defended their position with creative freedom and human right.
• Gerbner believes children’s life experiences and many other factors are majorly influenced by the television rather than their parents, or the school, and keep being shaped their lives by the televisions. Actual communities gradually became meaningless. TV is considered as sort of vital resource that cannot live without.
• Culture Indicator project; a longitude research of audiences’ perceives of the reality correlates with the ongoing media policy and it comes with a representative database.
• To distinguish long term and short term lifespan transformation in the study, Gerbner tends to use the word ‘cultivation’ which delivers ongoing changes, and also ‘effect’, immediate change after certain exposure of message.
• Gebner labels people who had developed insecure attachment of their social group by Mean World Syndrome. He also believes that these people are more vulnerable to authority and violence behaviors.
The television, as the major carrier of culture and information is actually a double-edged sword. On the positive portion, the television accelerates the known of the world for the audiences and unintentionally heightens people’s adaptive abilities to the unknown world. However, inappropriate contents within the TV-programs are harmful to children either mentally or physically. Violence is definitely the majority of inappropriate. Gerbner defines the term ‘violence’ as ‘the use of intentional physical action either harmful or threatening against anyone or communities’. In sociology stage, I wouldn’t agree with this