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Many people have never been to jail, never been shot at, have never been awake in an operating room, lived in France, or had to escape from prison, yet an image will come to mind if we are were asked about it. We have opinions about places we’ve never been to, people we’ve never met, and things we have never done.
Somehow we find ways of taking our limited real-world experience and combining it with images and sounds from mostly the television or other media to produce knowledge. The cultivation of certain representations of people, places, and things are essential for our construction of knowledge. Our cultivation of these representations do vary from culture to culture and person to person based on life experiences, but when a majority of the concepts come from one source, such as TV, it sets the stage for a narrow window of possibilities in relating to the understanding of the world (Shannahan, Morgan).
It is important to understand that a source of information cannot go unchecked. We cannot allow the limited number of representations of Men and Women, Blacks and Whites, Rich and Poor, etc., to limit our possibilities. Even the broad man-made categories I just mentioned are far too limiting, and the fact I just used the term "man-made" is showing how hard it can be to remove oneself certain cultural frames and norms based on what we digest from the media.
Somehow we find ways of taking our limited real-world experience and combining it with images and sounds from mostly the television or other media to produce knowledge. The cultivation of certain representations of people, places, and things are essential for our construction of knowledge. Our cultivation of these representations do vary from culture to culture and person to person based on life experiences, but when a majority of the concepts come from one source, such as TV, it sets the stage for a narrow window of possibilities in relating to the understanding of the world (Shannahan, Morgan).
It is important to understand that a source of information cannot go unchecked. We cannot allow the limited number of representations of Men and Women, Blacks and Whites, Rich and Poor, etc., to limit our possibilities. Even the broad man-made categories I just mentioned are far too limiting, and the fact I just used the term "man-made" is showing how hard it can be to remove oneself certain cultural frames and norms based on what we digest from the media.
If violence is 10 times more prevalent in Prime Time, than in real life, then we may be more fearful of our world. The "Mean-World Syndrome" can be better understood if you can find a neighbor that doesn't watch TV, or atleast is a very selective viewer, and you compare them with someone who watches the average 7 hours of TV a day. It may be surprising how two next door neighbors can have such different views of how dangerous and evil the world is(Gerber).
Not to say everyone should stop watching TV, but we need to understand that Violence and Fear sells. This is why we recieve a regular dosage every night on the news. They don't report every violent act, just a few of the most exciting ones, and then balance them out with a few other stories that usually go with their sponsor's commericials or stories that are actually not much more than an Infomercial for a product. The news is not much more relevant than any other television production, it just so happens to be really profitable format for a certain demographic.
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