Anger Sells

First, a disclaimer about my disposition: I don’t like anger. I guess there’s nothing wrong with it per se, but I’m of the opinion that, like any strongly felt emotion, it can cloud people’s judgment. Want to get angry at the Slayer concert? Knock yourself out (literally). But if you’re trying to make some sort of judgment about the world around you, I think that being angry can only lead you astray.

And yet, I have to admit, right now, after reading about last night’s mass murder, I feel angry, angry and fatigued, because I know the cycle: violence happens, then people want something to be done about the violence, but that typically involves restricting or monitoring others in some way (restricting gun access, making your mental health history available to authorities, monitoring your web use, censoring (or at least condemning) certain kinds of expression). Then a group of people will become angered by the effort to control or restrict them, citing their right to be free and how it is being infringed. When I think about the seeming inevitability of the cycle, I get tired. I also think, “What can I do about it?”

Maybe my small contribution as a researcher and media educator can be to further understanding of the role of anger in this whole cycle. Being angry at some group of “unfamiliar others” (e.g., not some ex-boss or some ex-girlfriend who pissed you off) seems like a necessary-but-not-sufficient criterion for committing mass murder. The violent acts seem to grow from expressions of anger and hatred, and they seem to inspire anger and hatred.

Maybe there’s something about the way media allows us to stay “immersed” in an angry state that perpetuates this cycle. We all get angry from time to time, sometimes at individuals, but other times at groups of people we don’t know personally (Republicans, Democrats, politicians in general, liberal media, Fox News, Comcast, etc.). How much time do you spend in that angry state, and does exposure to certain media messages keep you in that angry state? My guess is that in order to engage in an act of mass violence, you need to have been in a prolonged state of anger against unfamiliar others, and that media (mainstream media messages and interpersonal content via online communities) likely plays some role in helping to sustain that anger. In this respect, I suspect it is different than violence against people you know, which might be prompted by one incident and happen in the heat of the moment.

But here’s why it’s hard to just say that expressions of anger are uniformly bad. Sometimes, you have anger at an injustice, and the anger seems to be what motivates people to take action. Without the emotional “fire” of anger, people might not take action, and injustice would be allowed to persist. But, of course, that concept of “injustice” is subjective: the people perpetrating the initial act of aggression often see themselves as bringing justice to the world. So, too, do the angry people who respond.

Maybe it’s what you do when you get angry – some people act aggressively while others take political action. While it is obvious that those who respond to mass violence do not (thank god) respond with acts of aggression that are of the same degree, I can see the responses as acts of aggression (albeit on the less harmful end of the continuum). Often, people don’t respond to acts of mass violence by being motivated to vote, which is in many ways a slow, complex process involving numerous compromises and, as such, not exactly anger-sating. They are often verbally aggressive toward others that they feel are somehow part of the “other side”. I see protests as somewhere in the middle: sometimes, they are acts of political and civic action; other times, they are not much different than coordinated verbal aggression directed at an ideological “other”.

Moreover, any attempt to say “don’t be angry” or “don’t expose yourself to anger-inducing media” to anyone will likely meet with the response: “you’re just trying to pacify and distract us from the injustice!” Who am I to say that anyone else shouldn’t be pissed off at the state of the world, or should avoid news that makes them angry and watch more cat videos instead (or this damn dog getting licked by cows, which is pretty cute), or at least maintain some balance between the two?

But still, I do want to talk to people about how anger in media, at least potentially, at least sometimes, only appears to be about rectifying injustice and improving the world, when in actuality, it is just a kind of emotional button-pushing, just working on a vulnerability in our brains, this ancient instinct to be tribal, to find a threat, to identify some Other as the source of evil or injustice. I cannot tell anyone what kinds of messages are button-pushing and what kinds will help motivate people to take action that will make the world a better place. To do so would be imposing my concept of “justice” on them, and I just don’t think people dig that.

But maybe they’d be receptive to this message: If you’re in the business of producing or circulating media content, you’ll never go broke overestimating consumers’ appetite for content that appeals to their sense of righteous anger. Put simply: anger sells. And we all like to think it’s not the media we consume, but that it’s the media the other guy consumes. So, take a step back. Take a good, long, hard look at the media content that you consume that you know makes you angry. Be open to the possibility that the messages you choose might just be, at least in part, button-pushing. Even if it (and you) is/are on the right side of justice, maybe there’s some part of it that just ends up keeping you angry and keeps you pushing the buttons for more. Keep asking, “what can I do to make the world a better place?” And if the answer is “shoot someone”, think a little harder.    

The Gamified Life

Video games are a worthwhile leisure experience, something that can have positive effects on the players. If it occupies a certain place in a person's life, gaming can enrich a player in many ways. In fact, I think we've only scratched the surface on the positive effects gaming can have on individuals and communities. Even if it's a means of relaxation that allows one to more fully engage with reality after playing the game, that's a plus.

On the other hand, if gaming occupies another place in a person's life, it can substitute for real-world experiences. Even if gaming doesn't cause people to kill other people in real life (or some such horrible real-world behavioral consequence), I still wonder about what gamers would have done with the time they spend gaming, and how the gaming experience shapes their non-gaming, real world interactions and experiences.

My key interest is in how gaming is disconnected (and disconnects the player) from reality. A good game creates a kind of alternate reality with challenges, goals, and hazards and, increasingly, a social structure. All of that, it would seem, makes it easy to feel immersed in the gaming experience, to at least temporarily forget about the world outside the game and to focus exclusively on achievement and survival within the game.

There is an attempt to bridge the gap between the substitute reality of the game world and the real world: gamification. The point of gamification seems to be to incentivize a certain real-world behavior (exercise, civic engagement, etc.) by linking it to a reward.

The motive is laudable: instead of just getting people to spend time getting a high score or achieving status in a world that is disconnected from reality, you get them to do something good in the real world: learn about the world, become more civically engaged, etc. So, let's assume that gamification works: it gets people to engage in whatever behavior you're trying to get them to engage in when they would not have done so otherwise. Great! But here's what I'm wondering about:

How challenging is the game, or the gamified aspect of real-life, relative to the un-gamified aspects of life? The rules of games are tweaked so that they are challenging but not too frustrating. If a game were too frustrating, the player would stop playing (and likely pick up a less-frustrating-but-still-challenging game). But real life doesn't adapt to the individual in this respect. Even a successful gamification of reality is not all encompassing. Sooner or later, gamers must confront the un-gamified world.

Here are a few possible consequences of this discontinuity.

Gamification could create the perception that life isn't fair. The experience of the un-gamified challenges in their lives failing to adapt to their ability levels will seem increasingly unfair to gamers. To someone who has no experience with a gamified reality, the fact that day-to-day existence (work, interactions with loved ones, local politics) is very often frustrating is simply a part of life; whether or not it is "fair" isn't really an issue. This perception would be easy to measure: do you agree/disagree with the statement "often, life is not fair" (or some variation of this).

Gamification could create the desire to play more games, particularly the kind of games that adapt in some way when they become too frustrating for the user. Gamers would then disengage with any aspect of reality that does not adapt, including relationships and civic involvement. They go further and further into the adaptable world of the games.

But here's the weirdest possible consequence I've been thinking about.

What if the majority of certain people's realities become gamified? When they encounter an aspect of their realities that are frustrating or boring, they gamify it. They keep doing this until their entire realities (how often they exercise, what they eat, how they interact with their spouses, work, volunteering, local politics, etc.) are gamified, so that no aspect of their daily lives becomes too frustrating or not rewarding enough. I can imagine a small group of people doing this, but I can't imagine every human doing this (at least not for awhile, but who knows?). The problems will occur when the gamified society meets the un-gamified society.

Life is a kind of game, with challenges and goals and a "score" (money, happiness, status, righteousness, or whichever metric you want to use). But the key difference is that life lacks a "user experience" designer. It is continuously and simultaneously created by things that are often indifferent to the needs and desires of the individual. One of the worst consequences for the gamer who becomes increasingly frustrated with un-gamified life might be a kind of despondence that, left unchecked, causes them to quit the game of life.

This, of course, wouldn't be the fate of most gamers. So what is it that causes some gamers to eschew reality? And when we gamify another aspect of our lives, how does this change the way we view the rough edges of the world outside the game?

The Werther Effect 2.0: Psychogenesis in the Internet Age

One of my favorite films from the last few years starts and concludes with an idea that, aptly, took root in my brain and has been something I think about long after I saw the film for the first time. It is articulated by the main character Dom Cobb: "An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you." Soon after seeing this film, I learned about the Werther effect. 

The idea of the Werther Effect is simple and unnerving. When people are informed through news reports or fictional stories of the fact that other people have committed suicide, they are more likely to commit suicide themselves. The message (e.g., a news report of suicide or suicide statistics or a story about someone committing suicide) likely makes the message receiver believe that the act in question is something that people, perhaps people similar to him or her, do. That isn’t to say that it makes the act socially acceptable or condones the act. By conveying that it has happened and that someone else did it, the message makes the act salient to the receiver, introduces it as a possible course of action, and may imply that it is common. Some theorists say that it may just be a simple suggestion-imitation model of behavior. In either case, it is more likely that the message receiver will commit suicide than if they had not heard the message at all (see Etzersdorfer, Voracek,& Sonneck, 2004; Gould, 2001; Hittner, 2005; Phillips 1978, 1979; 1982; Wasserman, 1984 for details, Thorson & Oberg 2003 for a contrary view).

In the top-down world of mass media production, news editors have been encouraged to downplay suicides, making them less likely to inspire readers to commit suicide. But if we assume that the same relation holds between exposure to the message and suicide in the age when exposure is "viral" (i.e., spread through online social networks) and/or search-based (i.e., determined by in-the-moment interests), then how do you curb imitative suicide? The story of someone’s suicide might spread through a group of people who are already preoccupied with the idea or seek out this kind of information. It may spread through people who are trying to offer support. 

This might be part of a more general problem in the age of the internet (where messages reach people through social networks or based on their consistency with people’s pre-existing pre-occupations/preferences). There might be other kinds of behaviors (anorexia, cutting one’s self, abusing drugs) and even other ways of thinking (depressive thought patterns) that are similar to suicide in that they are capable of being directly influenced by messages (i.e., not entirely physiological in origin), they are generally considered to be undesirable (i.e., painful for the individual and community), and are stigmatized (that is, not talked about). This particular kind of stigmatization makes these behaviors and thought patterns different from acts of aggression toward others, which, as a culture, we seem to have no problem discussing. This stigmatization leads, in certain communities, to an attempt to overcome the stigma through communication, through sharing experiences with the behavior or thought pattern and through support, to let people know that they are not alone. This reaction to the silence of the stigma is unquestionably well intentioned and it may have positive effects, but the evidence of suicide contagion makes me wonder if there are unanticipated effects. It may make message receivers who do not yet exhibit the undesirable behavior or thought pattern (or who do exhibit it but to a lesser extent than the extreme examples they hear about) more aware of the negative behavior or thought pattern, believe that it is more common or that what they are experiencing is more serious or more intense than they would have otherwise thought, and believe that it is something that people like them do or, worse yet, something that people are (as in: a permanent, defining characteristic, e.g., a depressed person, an alcoholic, etc.). 

Possible stimuli that may lead to a negative behavior or thought pattern becoming more common include advertisements for drugs or programs treating depression, anxiety, and other psychological conditions; online support groups; social media messages (Facebook and Twitter posts) related to the topic; news stories encountered via major news sites (e.g., NYTimes) or circulated virally via social media (e.g., Twitter). Make no mistake: there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these tools are useful in combating the spread and intensity of suffering and so they should not be discarded unless there is evidence that they do more harm than good. Its unrealistic to think that they ALL do more harm than good, but the evidence of suicide contagion via mass media suggests that it is worth examining whether some of thee messages, under certain circumstances for certain people, may, in fact, backfire. Establishing whether or not any messages designed to curb suffering that is not physiological or physical in origin backfire is the first step. Then, it is essential to understand why this happens, when this happens, and be able to modify the messages so that it doesn't happen anymore: all possible given the wealth of data on Internet use. 

Television is not a toaster with pictures, and Facebook circa 2005 is not Facebook circa 2015

Most people have likely formed an opinion about media effects: the degree or type of effects certain types of media use has on us. They likely talk about this in terms of media technologies (TV, radio, internet) or types of media texts (violent video games, Fox News). I think that we're using an outdated way of talking and thinking about the question of media effects.

We know that we spend more time using media - at home, at work, on the move - than ever before. And we know that there is a greater quantity of media options (in terms of content options and affordances of the technologies or applications) than ever before. I think that these two facts, by themselves, should prompt everyone (even skeptics) to reconsider the degree and type of media effects, and the ways in which we go about assessing these effects.

First, things have changed on the level of media technology. The question of media effects arose at a time at which the types of media (identifiable by their affordances) were limited. Producing and distributing a widely used communication technology that was functionally different than another communication technology took a lot of capital. Once the vast broadband and mobile online networks were established, it became significantly easier to create and distribute applications that, functionally, differ from other communication technologies. Much the same way the establishment of the electrical network permitted growth in the variety of machines in our lives and the establishment of the highway and railway systems permitted the growth of transportation, this network growth has increased diversity. Before the establishment of the electrical grid, you could make plenty of generalizations about machines and their effects on humanity because the number of widely used machines was quite limited. Afterward, those generalizations didn't make as much sense given the variety of machines that people used. Was the effect of a television the same as a toaster? Using pre-electrical network logic, the answer was yes.

Lumping all the uses of the internet or all the uses of Facebook together creates a similar problem. We still want to use the frames that were established by scholars and researchers during the 20th century for understanding media now. We talk about (and study) the effects of Facebook, of the internet, of texting, in the same way we talked about the effects of television 30 years ago: as if these things were discrete entities. But this approach doesn't make sense in a world in which the media forms to which we give names quickly change in fundamental, functional ways. The internet of 2011 is likely no more similar to the internet of 2000, in terms of its uses and effects on users, as radio (or a toaster, for that matter) is to the internet of either era. Yes, some useful things can be said about the effects of all online experiences just as some useful things can be said about the effects of the use of all machines (studies of modernity), but most of these general ways of thinking are just reflections of a time when "machine" or "online experiences" were easier to generalize about, before the network made new technologies and texts easier to create and distribute.

There is a similar problem with the way we think about the effects of types of content. If we talk about the possible effects of a particular film or television show, we do so because we believe that the principles at work are generalizable beyond that one text and that one audience. A film scholar writes about their experience viewing a certain film, but implicit in their writing is the assumption that other people will experience the film in a certain way and/or that other people will experience other similar films in a certain way. When the number of texts explodes, as it has done for the past several years, the question of what one particular person (or type of person) does with one particular text reveals less about the overall experience of media consumption. This just wasn't a problem when the number of texts was lower, when readers could be expected to have seen "classic" texts.

This isn't to say that there won't likely be some media texts that will be experienced by large numbers of people over long periods of time. Our thirst for common experiences will ensure the persistence of canons, but these canons will consist of a smaller and smaller sliver of our overall media use. Figuring out the effect of the two hours I spend watching Citizen Kane is worthwhile, but what about the effects of the thousands of hours I spend online? How do we go about assessing that? Do we break the texts into genres, like we did before? Do we pretend that Facebook or social networking sites are media technologies in the way that radio or television are media technologies? What happens when Facebook's online movie-watching feature takes off? Is its effect on users the same as it was 5 years ago? This seems ludicrous, and yet studies that purport to be about the effects of "Facebook" do not take it into account.

How do we adapt? We identify characteristics of media experiences that cannot be made obsolete by developments in technology and we base our theories on the presence or absence of those characteristics. How many people does a media application connect a user to? How often is it used? Is its use planned or spontaneous? What emotions is its use typically associated with? What parts of the brain light up when we're using it? What are the gratifications sought by the users? If you look at technology this way, you can make sense of the effects of television and toasters without having to conflate the two, and without having to re-invent your theories when the next contraption is invented. These approaches to media effects seem suited to an era in which there will be too many different texts and media technologies for any human to keep track of.

Assessing the big, infrequently occuring effects of films and novels

Sometimes, I'll be asked by someone who knew what I was interested in years ago whether I'm still writing about film. I stopped and thought about why I'm not as interested in film anymore. I think its because I wanted to understand some principles of communication that have the most explanatory power, or that explain the highest percentage of the total human experience. Films, like novels and theater before them, used to occupy a great deal of our time and, probably, our consciousness, influencing what we thought about the world. Then came TV and the internet. My sense is that TV and the internet are like the air we breathe. They make up hours of many people's days.

Its not that films aren't still "important" in some sense of the word. They provide a lot of the content that people watch on TV. Large numbers of people still watch, discuss, and are influenced by films via Netflix. Films can still start a conversation about something in a way that TV and the internet seem unable to. But still, if I had to rank the most influential media, I would put the internet at the top, TV in the middle, and film after that.

However, I've always had this suspicion that film, like novels, though they are both experienced very infrequently, can dramatically change the worldview and trajectory of someone's life. This is pure speculation on my part, but I imagine the effects of these various media this way:

• TV and the internet erode our brains (but not in a bad way). The change happens very gradually through frequent exposure. Over the years, profound changes to our individual and collective mental landscapes can take place. These might be easier to observe and predict. People's encounters with religious texts seem to operate this way. Sure, maybe it was a revelation when they first discovered the power of the bible, but it really only has profound effects if you keep reading it over and over. Personally, I feel like the online version of The New York Times has gradually shaped the contours of how I think. I've been perusing it for the past decade.
  
• Film and novels act like earthquakes (again, not in a bad way). They can completely reconfigure the landscape in a short period of time. All you need is one story to hit you at the right time in your life and you might decide to change the entire trajectory of your life. These are probably less easy to observe and much harder to predict, but no less significant for the individual or society. Take the books of Ayn Rand. I'm guessing that not many people have read them. but if particularly influential people have read them and have been influenced by them, then they are capable of having profound effects on society. Personally, reading White Noise might've been part of why I decided to try becoming an academic. The main character of the book was a professor. That character (and by extension, the author) thought the way I thought. Its not that he had a glamorous, desirable life, but just that I identified with him and the way he thought. And so I thought "maybe I should look into becoming a professor." There were many other factors that contributed to that life-altering decision (an uncle, parents, former professors of mine), but this one brief encounter with this novel had something to do with it.
  

This isn't to say that some TV shows or some websites or online communities can't be revelations in the way that novels and films can be. In any case, I think its important to think about how you could test these significant effects of these media, these earthquakes. I guess you could start with interviews, or maybe surveying people and simply asking them: what was the most influential TV show, book, movie, etc, you ever experienced? How often do they reference them, talk about them with others, write about them, or think about them? One possible way to assess this would be by looking at people's online profiles. Are there any quotes from movies or books? Any tattoos of characters (I'm thinking of you, Twilight fans).

Also, I think it would be useful to assess the state in which the user found themselves at the time of their encounter. I'm guessing that in most cases, the user was young and in a period of transition (to extend the seismological analogy a bit further: this is like looking at buildings constructed on fault lines). One can imagine a well-made movie that is tailored to young men or women that has a certain pro-social or anti-social message having a profound effect, not on little everyday actions, but on choices like what job to pursue, or whether or not people are generally good or bad. It would be unsurprising to find that movies that glorify war or wall street boost enlistment and b-school applications. I also like to consider a particularly vulnerable population: the mentally ill. The trouble is that when you start this conversation about whether exposure to video games or vitriolic political rhetoric contributed to violent actions, people take sides based on their own behaviors or their political beliefs. But if we could set those aside, it seems clear that unstable folks are just another population that may react differently to certain media texts and that this is worth knowing. Maybe nutjobs like Jared Lee Loughner or John Hinkley, Jr. would've eventually latched on to some media text and used it as inspiration for an assassination. Or maybe not. Maybe there was something special about the interaction between one particular media text and an unstable mind that results in acts that are profoundly disruptive to society.

We can't just take anecdotal evidence (e.g. most murderers read A Catcher in the Rye when they were teenagers or something like that). We need to subject this evidence to rigorous statistical analysis, comparing those who were exposed to the text and didn't change their lives to those that did. What makes them different? How many of them are there? How drastic and costly to the individual and society is the behavior change? What would be the cost to society of somehow limiting access to the text? There is not reason why we can't do this, but we have to start looking in the right places.

Hate the sin (use of media) and love the sinner (the media/the user)

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?

The Politics and Psychology of Academic Language

The most lively panel I attended at this year's ICA conference was the "Keywords: Effects" panel. 4 panelists were, in their own ways, demanding that we move beyond "effects," or, to put it another way, were proclaiming the death of effects research. One problem with effects researchers: they proclaim to study actual real-world violence when they actually study people's tendencies to administer sound blasts to other people in a lab setting. Another problem is that effects studies only measure an effect at a set point in time when it is likely that true media effects take place gradually and constantly over time (so it would be better to call them "processes" than "effects"). Afterward, Ron Tamborini had a great comment, basically saying that the argument over effects research was a semantic one, and that proclaiming that "effects research is dead" is just a good way of scaring those new to the field that what they're doing is worthless. His comment garnered applause from some members of the audience, and I have to say that I agreed with what he was saying.

I've read and seen more disputes similar to this one. Basically, they take this form: one group of researchers does some research with obvious, acknowledged limitations. Despite the limitations, the research moves us beyond what we used to know about that phenomenon. They select a word for their work. Time passes and methods improve. Another group of researchers comes along and pokes holes in the work of the first group of researchers. At this point, two things can happen. The first group of researchers can take heed of the criticism and modify their methods while retaining the original term they used for the phenomenon or their study of that phenomenon OR the second group of researchers can come up with a new name, decry the old names for the old methods/constructs to be obsolete, and move the field forward.

Note that in both cases, the actual research, the actual methods and the actual bits of information that we know about a phenomenon are exactly the same. The debate is not over what we know, but over how much and in what ways language shapes our ideas of what we know. For decades, we've known that language matters, that word choice constricts and opens up ways of thinking. But this valuable observation has been used in only one way: to point out the ways in which existing power structures foreclose the possibility of new meanings. Unfortunately, it has not been applied to an equally common and equally problematic use of language: the invention of new words and terms to further one's career or to aid the progress of one's in-group. The side effects of this political use of language are that we get bogged down in semantic debates and the growth of our collective, public knowledge of actual phenomena is retarded (while smaller groups in the private sector accumulate vast amounts of knowledge about people). Though the intentions may be good and the observation that "language determines and is determined by power structures" is a valuable one, those making this observation have released a cacophany of go-nowhere neologisms that sell a few books and then are lost to academic linguistic history.

What I see too often is the construction of straw men by up-and-coming researchers who, instead of helping to build knowledge for all, make careers for themselves (nevermind whether they intend to do this; their motives don't determine the outcome). In order to do this, they deny the possibility (indeed in many cases, as with "effects research," the plain reality) that researchers working within the existing paradigm can modify their methods to accomodate things we've learned about the phenomenon or new tools we have for studying the phenomenon. Effects researchers have acknowledged the weak construct validity of earlier studies and have adapted accordingly. They've tested various outcome variables at various points in time, developing data on trends rather than static outcomes. They've changed their ways. Do they need to change their name? To what end?

Along with "effects," the words "rational" and "cognitive" were hotly contested words at ICA this year. The debate over whether people are "rational decision makers" fits this pattern. Just because people decide, at a certain moment, to weigh the importance of one thing (be it their marital bliss, their libidos, their faith in God or community or justice) and just because they had certain restrictions on the information available to them doesn't mean that their brains worked in a fundamentally different way than they would if they had more information or valued different things at that given moment. To say that people are "rational" or "irrational" decision makers (or "cognitive" or "emotional" decision makers), to me, implies that people's brains work in fundamentally different ways, which is not the case. The circumstances under which decisions are made change, but the mind still works the same way: take in information, consider how it changes our belief that an action will help bring about a state we desire at that moment, and act accordingly. This applies to every human action I can think of, no matter how supposedly "irrational" it is. Yes, I'll acknowledge that different parts of the brain are activated when making certain kinds of decisions (what we might refer to as "emotional" decisions), but I think that the brain is still taking in information and acting based on a desire. The word "irrational" implies that its either random or totally at the whim of some other guiding force. In reality, the thinking is just based on different temporary priorities and limited amounts of information. There is also confusion over whether "rationality" assumes that we are deliberate in our actions. Again, I don't think that it means that. We can be rational even if we make rational decisions on an unconscious level.

Ann Gray's preference for the words "research material" in lieu of "data" provides another example. She claims that " 'data' has strong associations with 'evidence', 'information' and 'proof' as well as being associated with the products of more conventional sociological research methods." Its hard to deny this, and yet won't using the term "research material" confuse a lot of people? Those words already are loaded with their own meanings for every reader. How do you weigh the consequences of your word choice: causing confusion vs. freeing us from the restrictive nature of old paradigms?

In the giddiness of having seen the connections between language choice and power, we've gotten bogged down in debates over words, overestimating the power of an academic to alter language and misunderstanding the ways in which languages actually evolve over time (I have the feeling that language interventions are destined to fail, though I'd welcome any evidence that suggests otherwise). These debates serve to turn off anyone outside of a small number of in-group academics (as Tamborini noted, they even turn off and confuse undergrads and grad students) and, again, allow other people in other fields to advance knowledge of the world while we quibble over what words to use.

There have been some failures of those actively seeking to change language for political/ideological reasons, as well as some successes. Why do some words fail to catch on? I would argue that even if a word is loaded with meaning that hinders the population who must use it, the change in language will only take if the substitute is clear and concise enough.

Who uses the word matters (Wanda Sykes PSA for not using the word "gay"). If a more and more diverse set of people use a word or stop using a word, the word will have more/less of a stigma, or will gradually stop being perceived as a grammar rule that P.C. academics are trying to force us to adopt.

In the end, the internet has taught us that language spreads like a virus (though its hard to say how long some of the neologisms will be with us). Language is important and it affects how we behave and think, but changing it is quite difficult. It seems that you cannot change it simply by presenting evidence that a word is somehow discriminatory. If you really want people to use your new word, or to stop saying "faggot" or "nigga," I think you can't just lecture people or point out that powerful people dictate language. There has to be a more nuanced understanding of the spread of words throughout a population. I don't study linguistics, so for all I know, there is such an understanding. I'd be interested to learn what it is.

What else would you have done?

In reading a shit-ton of media effects articles for several classes, I've come back to some of the same questions about their worth. I should say that I generally subscribe to the idea that most of these studies really do reveal something about what media cause us to think or how they cause us to behave or feel. Just so we're clear, I'm talking about the articles about the effects of violent video games on aggression, or of advertisements with skinny models on reader/viewer's body image. I accept the findings that say that, even when you control for things like pre-existing trait aggression and low self-esteem and latent racism and various attachment styles and SES, the media can have a negative influence on you, even though you might not be aware of it.

The findings imply that if you don't want to be problematically aggressive, bigoted, self-hating, or anorexic, you should avoid exposing yourself to certain media. OK, fine. But what do you then do to satisfy that craving that you would've satisfied with that media, and are we sure that the media in question wasn't providing you with some positive influence that might outweight the negative influence?

This occurred to me while watching a talk on UMich's Channel 22 about the causes of cancer. There were some things, like wine for instance, that caused women's risk of breast cancer to go up a tiny but measurable amount. However, it caused their risk of cardiovascular disease to go down a bit. And wine tastes good and makes you feel good. So, even if we accept that initial bit of information - that wine makes you slightly more likely to get breast cancer - we still may choose to drink wine for other reasons. Similarly, even if you know the risk of getting lung cancer from smoking, you may choose to smoke. You may also watch violent porn even though you know it will make you more likely to be callous towards rape victims.

I think we need to ask what people would have done if they didn't do something that they know is bad for them. It is possible that if a person chose not to smoke those cigarettes, that they might use booze to fill that void, becoming an alcoholic. It is possible that even if they resist all temptation in the form of substance, they may just become more ornery and hard to be around, driving people away which, in turn, makes them more depressed and hostile towards others. It is also possible that, after a rough patch of having to do without those vices, that the person breaks their bad habit and finds things that make them a happier, healthier person.

In order to make a judgment as to whether or not an individual or a group of people should stop doing x (be it smoking cigs, watching violent porn or slasher films, drinking wine, eating bacon, whatever), you have to consider the choice to engage in that vice in the context of that person or those people's lives. That's damn difficult, and when it comes to addicts, we know that they can't be trusted to make that judgment. But to simply say that just because a vice has an established negative effect and expect people to use that information to stop doing whatever it is that they're doing doesn't make sense to me.

I guess what I'm advocating for is a holistic study of why people engage with media that is known to have harmful, anti-social effects. That doesn't mean that you're advocating its use, necessarily. Too often, conversations I've had on tabloids, Jerry Springer, soap operas or other "trash media" turn into arguments between people who think it really fucks w/ people's heads and other people who think that it helps them cope with the troubles of everyday life and its just being attacked b/c it doesn't appeal to the wealthy, white male heterosexual establishment. We get it. Both of those things could be true. Study of the effects of media, and indeed the worth of media, needs to move beyond that petty argument. We need to ask, with open minds, what are the good things and what are the bad things about each bit of media for each different type of person.