Table of Content
Preliminary Contents UNIT 1 Media and Social Issues 37297 Issue 1. Are American Values Shaped by the Mass Media? YES: 20950 Herbert I. Schiller, from The Mind Managers (Beacon Press,1973) NO: 26769 Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch, from "Television as a Cultural Forum," Quarterly Review of Film Studies (Summer 1983) Critical scholar of modern mass media Professor Schiller argues that mass media institutions are key elements of the modern capitalistic world order. Media, he argues, produce economic profits and the ideology necessary to sustain a world system of exploitative divisions of social and financial resources. It is the job of the citizenry to understand the myths that act to sustain this existing state of power relationships. Professors of communication Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsch in their classic article counter that television serves as a site of negotiation for cultural issues, images, and ideas. Viewer selections from among institutional choices is a negotiation process as viewers select from a wide set of approaches to issues and ideas. 37299 Issue 2. Is Television Harmful for Children? YES: 31543 W. James Potter, from On Media Violence (Sage Publications, 1999) NO: 26260 Jib Fowles, from The Case for Television Violence (Sage Publications, 1999) W. James Potter, a professor of communication, examines existing research in the area of children and television violence. Such research is extensive and covers a variety of theoretical and methodological areas. He examines the nature of the impact of television on children and concludes that strong evidence exists for harmful effects. Jib Fowles, a professor of communication, finds the research on children and television violence less convincing. Despite the number of studies, he believes that the overall conclusions are unwarranted. Fowles finds that the influence is small, lab results are artificial, and fieldwork is inconclusive. In short, he finds television violence research flawed and unable to prove a linkage between violent images and harm to children. 700249 Issue 3. Are Representations of African-American Women in Media Accurate? YES: 47211 Thomas A. Mascaro, from "Shades of Black on Homicide: Life on the Street , Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 2005) NO: 47212 Janis Sanchez-Hucles, Patrick S. Hudgins, and Kimberly Gamble, from "Reflection and Distortion: Women of Color in Magazine Advertisements," in Ellen Cole and Jessica Henderson Daniel, eds., Featuring Females (American Psychological Association, 2005) Thomas Mascaro comments on the long history of examining how people of color have been portrayed in various forms of media. He makes the point that African-American women have often been stereotyped in television sitcoms, but during the seven seasons of the hit TV show, Homicide: Life on the Streets , African-American women were given a venue for portrayals that were more socially significant and socially relevant. Janis Sanchez-Hucles, Patrick S. Hudgins, and Kimberly Gamble conduct an analysis of many images of women of color from magazine advertising in six female or family-oriented magazines, and found that women of color were portrayed differently; in this issue, we examine African-American women in particular, but we include comments on other women of color, for further
