Dysfunctions of the Media

Charles Wright was the first to propound the theory that there were dysfunctions of mass communication.

 

Ethicisation

This is a phenomenon peculiar to mass communication. The mass media have taken over the functions of the elders in the family, such as parents, aunts and uncles, elder brothers, and elder sisters. Also, elders in society, such as priests and senior leaders of the community, have become inactive these days in the matter of counselling the youngsters in matters relating to growing up and interacting with the opposite sex.

A lot of wanted and unwanted advice is given through the columns of newspapers and through the so-called expert sessions on television and radio. Medical advice given freely by the media often misleads many teenagers who are prone to think that they have the extraordinary sexual problems which the media highlight. Family and educational counselling has been replaced by advice columns in the print media and special programmes in the electronic media. Thus, mediated ethicisation, or the media’s practice of setting ethical standards or norms of behaviour, has become a problem rather than a solution.

Wright calls it a dysfunction of mass communication.

 

Status Conferral

People appearing in the media, either for good or for bad reasons, may feel a certain ego-satisfaction of having appeared in the public sphere and gained public attention. Sometimes they get a wrong sense of their self-importance. The media may put some down; they may put some others up. This can happen by chance or by deliberate action. The ones that appear in the media gain some notoriety or fame. This practice is termed status conferral.

 

Narcotisation

Some psychologists and sociologists are of the view that the heavy dosage of negative news, including those of murders, rapes, and robberies, reeled off at every newscast or presented on the front page of every newspaper, will over a period make media users immune to the shock of such deviant action by wrongdoers. Similarly, portrayal of violence in movies and serials makes viewers benumbed and insensitive in the long run to such aberrations. This psychological phenomenon is called narcotisation.

This is a universal problem in the media. Media users all over the world watch a large number of deaths, murders, arson, fires, attacks on women, and gruesome killings in movies and serials. They also read about them in newspapers and magazines, including graphic and pornographic details. Some reality shows in the West include clips of scantily clothed women being mauled and bruised by animals, including humans with animal instincts. Nearly-naked girls and women are dismembered by tigers and lions. Some real events have occurred in forests and deserted places and reality TV producers lie in ambush for such events. Such mayhem is grist for the media mills these days. Viewers naturally watch the most obscene and brutal scenes often, and they become narcotised or drugged and hence insensitive to real-life accidents and tragedies.

 

Misinformation/Disinformation

Millions are misled by silly and serious errors, and wrong information about people, countries, and issues. At a minor level, one can point out how some TV presenters ignore “good, standard English pronunciation”; some of them pronounce the word “pro-nun-cia-tion” as “pro-noun-ciation”! What a big irony. Media mistakes are carried to millions in a trice and people are misled instantaneously.

On rare occasions, there are sustained disinformation campaigns, especially during election time. During the early days of the 2008 presidential election campaign in the United States, Barack Obama was portrayed as a Muslim with terrorist connections; it was not difficult for TV humourists to see the similarity between Obama and Osama (bin Laden). Even a few days before the election day, many Americans carried in their heads wrong impressions about their future President.

 

Information Overload

Finally, there is “information overload”, which leaves media users confused. Some newspapers are not “news-papers” but “ads-papers.” More than 50–60 per cent of their space is filled with ads. Some U.S. newspapers are heavy tomes, especially during weekends, running into 200–500 pages in 20–30 sections, such as World News, Domestic News, Travel, Tourism, Classifieds, Celebrities, Cinema, and Entertainment. Can any reader finish reading such newspapers at one go?!

On TV, there are at least 300 channels to choose from. The viewers select one channel and go on switching to other channels, not for different types of serious information but sports, entertainment, serials, and trivia. Like a bee flitting from flower to flower, the viewers indulge in the fanciful behaviour of “channel surfing” and get loaded with more than what their minds can normally assimilate.

In fact, many viewers are not effectively served by such “surfing”; they are just overloaded by wanted and unwanted information, mixtures of images and streams of news of events and issues at the bottom of the screen—news that has no relation to what the newscaster talks about at any given moment. The unwary viewer is confused by all this din and bustle, and this perplexing medley of images and bottom lines. Everything is further confused by some vignettes of product ads peeping through a corner of the screen.

This is not information but an overload of information, which the average person cannot easily absorb, although the selling of such information and ads can be highly profitable to the media company.

The average person is burdened every day with at least 500 messages from different media—newspapers, magazines, hoardings, transit ads in transport vehicles, radio, TV, wall ads on subways and tubes in big cities, cinema houses, and film shows. Even while driving, the radio may be on and there will be a stream of commercials bothering the inmates of the car. This exposure to ads is a fact of life in modern times, and this has been so even before the advent of the Internet. Now the Internet is another platform for ads.

Of course, the reader, listener, or viewer can easily escape this botheration by ignoring the ads, or switching off the electronic media. But this does not happen. In many Western countries, commercial free broadcast channels are available. The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States is an example, but big corporations and sponsoring foundations take up time for their corporate messages. However, these messages for short periods, running into a couple of minutes at the beginning of news or other programmes, do not bother the viewers during the programme. Viewers can enjoy the entertainment programmes or serious discussions of vital importance to the public without any commercial break. Big foundations, memorial funds, annual subscriptions, and donations from the public support this commercial-free venture. The PBS is a nationwide channel. The National Broadcasting Corporation, the Columbia Broadcasting System, and the American Broadcasting Company are the big commercial channels. Another private channel is the Fox Channel owned by Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media mogul who is now an American citizen. But the biggest channel of all is the Cable News Network, started by the big business adventurer from Atlanta (Georgia), Ted Turner, who was the originator of 24-hour news broadcasting all over the world.

Although 24 x 7 news telecast is quite common these days in India, many viewers are simply hearing the same thing all over again almost every hour until something new is broadcast. Till something new comes up, the ad nauseam repetition of stale news is nothing but a botheration. Moreover, for the sake of novelty, even trivial things are presented as important—to fill the time.

Do people need so many 24 x 7 channels? Do they really need news all the 24 hours? Is there not some kind of artificiality in all this? Who benefits from this—the citizen or the entrepreneur? Are not the media meant for the people? Or is it the other way round?

 

Social Responsibilities

When Doordarshan was established in Delhi on 15 September 1959, TV was projected by government officials connected with broadcasting and by others, including some foreign and domestic scholars in mass communication, as an instrument helpful in the economic and social development of the people, and in enthusing them with socially useful programmes and messages so that they will work for the overall development of the country. Let us ask ourselves the following questions:

• Do the Indian mass media work as catalysts for social change? 

• Do they promote national integration? 

• Do they stimulate a scientific temper in the minds of citizens? 

• Do they serve in disseminating the messages of family planning, public health and hygiene, and literacy promotion?

• Do our media provide essential information to stimulate greater agricultural production?

• Do they promote citizens’ participation in projects aimed at the maintenance of a clean environment and ecological balance?

• Do they highlight the need for social welfare measures, including women and child welfare, and the removal of poverty?

• Do they promote people’s interest in games and sports? 

• Do they create values of appraisal of art and cultural heritage?

• Do they promote secularism and a secular form of education?

 

An analysis of TV programmes will show us that no channel is promoting these objectives in a sustained manner. Here and there, some programmes are telecast to fulfil some of these objectives, but overall Indian TV is promoting cinema-oriented entertainment in a big way. Zee TV, STAR, Asianet, Surya, HBO or any of their associates and subsidiaries are all overdoing entertainment of a filmy kind. 24-hour news is brought to the people by BBC, CNN, NDTV, CNBC, CNN–IBN and other networks, but national development in India is not their main concern.

Commercialisation of the media has good and bad aspects, and we should be aware of them. What acted as a means for the development of big media is its commercialisation. Without it, the media would not have expanded so easily and so rapidly as they have done during the past three decades. But if the media have social responsibilities to fulfil in India, there should be a national communication policy aimed at national development, rather than imitating what is being done in the rich, developed countries of the world. This is a separate area of concern and we shall deal with it in the future.