Throughout the centuries ever since a new medium would enter the society, the panic about it would follow. This trend dates back to as far as the Ancient Greek times. One of the most famous philosophers of the time Plato commented on the ability to write in this manner: “If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks“. Moreover, the publishing J. W. Goethe’s masterpiece “The Sorrow of Young Werther” resulted in a chain of suicides, as young men in the 18th century found the course of action of the hero of the book worth following (Werther, the main character, killed himself because he loved a girl who loved someone else). These tragic deaths forced the governments all across Europe to ban the book in the 18th century. In later publications, Goethe addresses the reader with the words “Be a man, do not follow my example”. Similarly, there were fears surrounding the 19th century dime novels and dance halls about 100 years ago. There are some more recent examples as well, regarding every single medium one could imagine. Reality TV, explicit music lyrics, movies like Clockwork Orange or Child Play 3, video games – you name it, every one of these had difficulties with entering the scene without causing a heated discussion. These types of societal reactions are called “media panics”. In this post I will try to take a look at media panics that were caused by the internet and its many applications.
But before doing so we have to define what a media panic is. Oddly enough, however different the mediums might look from one another, the panics about them are quite similar. As Danish professor of the field Kirsten Drotner once put it, media panics always happen in the same manner, they have the same cycle. Firstly, the discussion starts, then some sort of governmental or industry self regulation is introduced and finally the panic disappears. This pattern can be applied for all the above mentioned panics. Another similarity is that these fears are always caused by the introduction of a new, unseen media that more often than not are created for the entertainment purposes. Finally, media panics are always about the young users.
Media panics arise from reports about the shocking cases of a possible abuse of new mediums. To make this clearer, let’s take an example of Columbine school shooting. 15 people were killed and 24 were severely injured when two students arrived to the school armed to the teeth. Until this day the general opinions make out that the killers were influenced by a first person shooter video game Doom. Many other factors – such as drugs used by the perpetrators or their acquisition of guns – are left aside. This tragedy was a big hit to the FPS developers’ industry and not to pharmacy or gun industries.
So by now the reader probably understands what is meant by the term “media panic”. Let’s take a look at the internet. Created in the second half of the 20th century it started to become massively used in 1993 with the introduction of the World Wide Web and the internet browsers. The internet firstly was looked at as a perfect field for communication. It was a place for virtual communities to be established, people could experiment with their identity and the possible reach of it was not seen ever before. However, it was not too long until the first panic took place.
“Researchers find sad lonely world in cyberspace” – shouted a press release from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The quote was immediately caught by the New York Times, CNN, BBC and other press corporations. In the year of 2009 it was used in 1633 academic papers! “The Internet has the potential to make us socially isolated, lonely and depressed”. Well, of course it has! A cat has a potential to kill its owner in his sleep but is it likely that it will do it? It was also found that the internet usage may result in decrease in family and social contacts and that the teenagers are the most vulnerable societal group. It is vital to know that in 2002 the participants of the survey of 1998 (on which the results were based) were revisited and had to answer the same questions. It was found that the aforementioned effects of internet usage are not likely to happen. This second research that denied the results of the first one did not get a press release. Ever.
Current academic consensus on the internet usage stresses out that online communities build on offline communities; online contacts are related to offline contacts; and that family and friend networks are maintained. The internet is seen as reinforcement to strong and weak ties rather than a thing that can make us alienated and lonely. Its importance for dispersed groups (such as migrants or homosexuals) is invaluable.
Rarely a talk about internet and its’ many evil sides can happen without mentioning online predators. In the USA an extremely popular show called “To catch a predator” has been broadcasted on the national television. You can watch an excerpt from it here to see what I mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZhsfT9wGp0 . Even though this show seems to be doing a good job of hunting down possible peadophiles and other types of bastards, it usually draws away from facts. It is a proved fact that most of the cases when teenagers meet adults that they met online, they know what they are doing, they know that they were talking to someone who is a lot older. The problem about chatrooms and online predatoring is a bit different thatn adults hiding behind the curtain and pretending to be of the same age as their victims. The real problem is that the teenagers are curious about meeting these people. And again, it‘s not the internet that is to blame for that, is it? According to, for example, UK law (where this problem has been in the spotlight for a long time) cases like that look more like statutory rape ("consensual sexual relations that occur when one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior”) than predatoring.
And finally, we move to our beloved Facebook and friends. In April 2009 several publications were printed in the British newspapers (Daily Mail, The Guardian, and Sunday Telegraph), causing a media panic about social networking sites. “Social network use may alter the brain structure” – said Susan Greenfield: a member of parliament, a professor and a baroness. Moreover, Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster said that “Social network sites produce transient relations that can cause trauma and even suicide when they collapse”. I would suggest to focus on the words “may” and “can” in both quotes. It basically is the same argument once again: social networking may make you feel lonely and depressed (like the internet itself in 1998) and can alter your brain structure (like the video game that has been blamed for the Columbine tragedy). Even though this panic is still happening and the cycle is not yet finished, one can try to foresee its finish. There will probably be some industry self regulation (it is already happening with, for example, checking of photos that are uploaded on Facebook. I simply am expecting the wider range of these actions). There will probably be some tragic event that SNSs will be blamed for (actually, one already took place in Lithuania this winter, when a psychologically unstable teenager killed a girl. You can guess where they met each other). And in the end this panic will die out. It always does! Who knows, maybe we’ll hear people talking about the harmful effects of Nintendo WII (“it teaches our kids the robotics of unwanted actions like shooting a gun”), maybe the new iPad will be torn apart. I will conclude by simply putting it this way: the developer of The Next Big Thing, brace yourself and be ready to be under attack. Because you will be.
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