role of media (pro and anti social)

MEDIA PRO AND ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

Media is communication - whether written, broadcast, or spoken that reaches a large audience. This includes television, radio, advertising, movies, the internet, newspaper, magazines. Mass media is a significant force in Modern Culture, particularly in developed countries. It is refer to as mediated culture where media reflects and creates the culture.
Communities and individuals are bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude of sources including TV, billboards, and magazines, to name a few. These messages promote not only products, but moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is and is not important. Mass media makes possible the concept of celebrity: without the ability of movies, magazines, and news media to reach across thousands of miles, people could not become famous. In fact, only political and business leaders, as well as the few notorious outlaws, were famous in the past. Only in recent times have actors, singers, and other social elites become celebrities or "stars".
Media has greater role both in anti-social and pro-social behaviour. Moral panics about the anti social content of popular TV programmes detracts from the media's potential pro social role of education, altriusm, and frienly interaction. There is clear evidence of a comparable level of pro social content, with Greenberg et al finding an equivalent number of pro social acts in any hour.
Bandura's social learning theory says we learn by observation how to do things and whether it is acceptable to do them. We may later imitate those behaviours and the consequence of the bhevaiour will determine the liklehood of repeating the behaviours. The more the person identifies with the model, the more likely it is that they will carry out the pro social behaviour that they have learned.
Unlike the depiction of anti social acts (eg murder and fighting), pro social against reinforce rather than contrast with our social norms. This also means will we be rewarded for doing them, which increases the chance will will repeat the behaviour in the future. We might therefore expect pro social content to be at least as influencial as anti social content.
Secondly the stimulation hypothesis says that the media has great potential for education. This may be by providing children with a suitable model to imitate but may most effective when an indivdual is placed in a common situation and a soloution is provided eg. when an individual on TV is behaving in an anti social manner and the character deal with this in a pro social manner. Howvere, the danger here is that one may imitate the anti social behaviour, ignoring the pro social resolution. Huston and Lovelace therefore suggest the most effective way of communicating a pro social message is to present the pro social message on its own without any contrasting or conflicting anti social behaviour.
Increased pro social behaviour as a result of watching TV has been found in people of various ages. Friedrich and Stein found that american chidlren who watched episodes of a pro social TV programme remebered much of the pro social acts conained within the programme and also behaved in a more cooperative and helpful manner than those who wacthed neutral or aggressive programmes. Further support for the pro social effect of media has been provided by Haerold. After reviewing 230 studies on the pro socila effect of the media Haerold concluded that the beneficial effects of pro social programmes was almost twice as great as the effects of TV violence on aggression (this could be because pro social acts reinforce rather than contrast with our social norms). Howvere, Cornstock challenged Haerold's findings, suggesting it is not surprising such strong positve effects were found, as most of the studies were based on pro social programmes designed specifically to be pro social. 'Real life' pro social programmes may not therefore be as influencial. Furthermore, one of the problems with altruistic modelling is that behaviour is that behaviour is measured immediately after exposure to pro social behaviour, so it is questionable whether there are any real long term effects. Konop decided to test this in children ages 6 and 8 who saw cooperative behaviour being modelled. Both ages showed an immediate increase in ccoperation, yet 8 weeks later only the 8 year olds continued to show increased cooperation (and even this could be due to simple maturation/circumstances at the time). This suggects that the pro social effects of media is, in younger children at least, superficial. Hwoeverer, according to Mares and Woodland there may be influencial pro social messages in other types of pro social behaviour eg. children story books such as snow white traditionally carry pro social messages. Younger children are particularly fond of reading such stories over and over again, thus reinforcing the message. However, research in this area is somewhat dissapointing in terms of lack of research and moderate findings (especially when compared to anti social effcts of media). There needs to be more attention paid to this area as currently, findings are somewhat shaky.
*Along with the answer give example of Maharashtra MNS - incident that has provoked anti-state aggression etc.
*Sympathy towards women, poor (etc) (pro-social behaviour).
*Chandrayan-1 - Created the feeling of common acceptance, nationhood and promoted rational and scientific values (Pro-social behaviour).