Urban dictionary, the open-source authority on popular phraseology, defines the phrase "Don't hate the playa, hate the game" as:
"Do not fault the successful participant in a flawed system; try instead to discern and rebuke that aspect of its organization which allows or encourages the behavior that has provoked your displeasure."
This phrase popped into my head several times over the past few days. I've been visiting home, and each time I speak with people outside of communication/media studies about the media, I usually end up on the receiving end of a diatribe against "the media." Although "the media" is blamed for pretty much every social or psychological ill one can conceive of, it might help to focus on one recent example: the over-coverage of LeBron James's free agency. The problem, as I understand it, seems to be misplaced priorities. Why are we giving so much airtime/webspace to something so frivolous when more pressing matters (e.g. global warming, BP oil spill, the economy, Israel/Palestine) are clearly of more importance? Similar arguments have been leveled at reality TV, human interest news, soft news about television shows, celebrity news, etc. Usually, the people to blame are "the media" and the people who care about such things are helpless, ignorant addicts and dupes.
The argument is countered by many cultural critics or those with some reason to defend such fare (e.g. those in the entertainment business, fans, etc.) on the grounds that it serves as the basis for discussion and debate of important cultural mores. LeBron's free agency decision is about loyalty, reputation, and avarice. The Jersey Shore is about our love/hate relationship with our own bodies and those of others, classism, and ethnic identity. Sandra Bullock's divorce is about the meaning of family, sex, and marriage in 21st century America. Pretty much all so-called frivolous media fare is, in some way, about romantic love: how we define it, how we find it, how we keep it. When people put down these debased forms of culture, so the argument goes, they are performing an act of cultural elitism, holding preferred forms of discussion and debate of mores in high esteem because they were created by rich, white, heterosexual American men and not because those forms are inherently superior. To use another colloquialism: haters gonna hate.
I'd like to offer a third viewpoint on LeBron coverage, Jersey Shore and its coverage on the news and in the blogosphere, and coverage of Sandra Bullock's divorce. Yes, despite their apparent frivolity, they all contain elements which could, and indeed do, lead to what anyone might recognize as productive dialog about important issues. But they also contain elements that lead to negative outcomes: narcissism, hostility towards out-group members, and poor self-image, for starters. If we can't get to a point where we recognize these possible negative and positive outcomes of the content, then we can go no further in discussing whether any type of media is good or bad. But if we acknowledge those ground rules, then we can move forward. What determines whether one who watches or reads this stuff gets something positive or something negative out of it?
I think the answer lies not in exposure to the content or the mere existence and availability of the content, but in use: quantity, level of engagement, and motivations for use. Plenty of media effects research bears this out. If you read a lot of tabloids, comment on blogs about celebrity gossip, and do so after a hard day's work (showing signs of an "escapist" motivation as opposed to an "information seeking" or "social" motivation) and you exhibit higher levels of narcissism and lower levels of self-esteem and civic knowledge than someone who reads the same content but less often and for other reasons, well then, you've got something.
My hunch is that the people who use media in ways that end up being associated with negative outcomes have poor impulse control and trouble delaying gratification, and that these attributes were established early on in life. If they weren't watching too much celebrity news, they'd drink too much or spend too much time on Facebook, or overeat. They can still train themselves to steer clear of things that trigger the undesired outcomes, but first they have to recognize the links between the behavior and the undesired outcomes.
Let's get back to LeBron. I suppose members of the media are culpable on some level, in that each time an editor leads with a story about LeBron or another person tweets about it (making all tweeters members of the hated "media"), they make it easier for everyone to pay attention to LeBron and ignore more serious matters. Regarding the "if you don't like it, change the channel/website" counter-argument, this assumes that people freely choose what to watch or what to read (the old "rational agent" fallacy) when, in fact, they watch or read what is easiest to access and if all of the easy-to-access sources concern matters that contain frivolous elements, it becomes more likely that many people (even very media-savvy people) will find themselves accessing more and more of this fare and exhibiting undesired outcomes for reasons unknown to them.
But if your objective were to curtail the negative outcomes of narcissism and the lack of civic awareness and engagement, trying to stamp out "frivolous" media seems like the wrong way to go about achieving it. Better to establish the links between certain kinds and amounts of use of certain kinds of media content and agreed-upon negative outcomes. Give these facts to people in language they can understand and in metrics that they care about: how does this affect your happiness, your lifespan, your ability to earn money? Let them make their own decisions. Consumer-driven change helped drive the recycling movement as well as the organic food movement. Why couldn't it change what we see in the news?
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