Problematic and Beneficial Effects of (New) Media Use
Session 1: Between euphoria and moral panics
Dangerous Media? Panic Discourses and Dilemmas of Modernity by
Drotner (1999).
Media panics:
Emotionally charged reactions on the appearance of new media.
Author: media panics are intrinsic and recurrent features of modernity.
- Represent a complex constellation of generational, cultural, existential power
struggles through which adults seek to negotiate definitions of character forming
(Bildung) in order to balance fundamental dilemmas of modernity.
Example of one of many anecdotes about Internet that has come in global circulation,
invoking strong emotions with experts an lay people:
- Launching of ourfirsttime.com in July 1998 (silly season): 2 people claim to stream
their first time for edification. A lot of reactions: from Christians to ironic people.
o Webmaster: Oscar Wells
o Managing director of ‘Internet Entertainment Group’ (Seth Warshavsky)
claims it’s fake.
o Hackers inform about the fraud.
- Like Kimberly Young (1998) says in Caught in the Net: these are results of the dark
sides of the Internet.
- Mothers who lose custody because of an Internet addiction.
These problematic Internet use cases are seen as newsworthy
Al Gore sees it as beneficial: “Information super highway” that advances technical,
economic and social growth.
Discourse of optimism and pessimism:
Positive feelings about computer (rational): possibilities of storing, retrieving/processing
data, info search.
Negative about computer (emotional): games, images of sex/violence, ‘mere’ chat groups.
The discussion of a media panic has 3 phases:
1. Beginning with a single case
2. Peak of public/professional intervention
3. End (fading-out phase): resolution to perceived problems
Panic studies
Moral panic (by Stanley Cohen, 1972):
Conflicts of interests – at community + society levels – and presence of power differentials
which leave some groups vulnerable to such attacks.
- Pertinent (toepasselijk) for 2 reasons:
, o 1. Young people become symbols of larger social contradictions.
o 2. How contradictions are power struggles.
Moral panics serve as ideological safety valves whose effect it is to restore social
equilibrium.
A lot of scholars have tried to do more research on other factors of moral/media panics. One
thing that may be gained is insight in the most striking feature of panics:
Recurring patterns of evolvement and common forms of expression over time and borders:
la longue durée of media panics. Focus on print vs. visual media and issues of recurrence
and similarity in panics.
Poison of the Mind: Popular Fiction
First media panics: print media, in 1795: French Revolution was a social issue.
2 important aspects of media panics:
1. No simple side effects of commercial mass production or technological innovation.
2. Panics are deeply politically implicated in issues beyond immediate causes.
All media panics are based on political, social and cultural discourses of power.
Popular print media were issues of public discussion from 1840’s in Denmark:
- 1870: Societal Task debate: first hint of Danish media panic.
o Fast-growing circulation of publications.
o Turned into question about general character of common man, encompassed
by dannelse/ Bildung: general learning.
o ‘Populair Lekture’ (Borchsenius): the common man’s reading: but did not
reach the poor.
Socialdemokraten (newspaper): poor and over-religious education of
poor children were real causes for concern.
Recurring themes in all panics: questions of general character formation of groups of
people (other than writers’ own) – and obstacles to that – combined with aims and means
of cultural politics.
- Used to be focused in terms of class, now it’s more based on age.
o The Century of the Child (1900, Key’s): symbolic mark that children become
objects of adult interests, control and concern.
o Germany: Wolgast claimed that modernisation’s redemption is that it brings
new aesthetic potentials: children’s appreciation of proper books may create
a wholeness of being that is undermined in other areas of life.
Broader historical perspective of culture (incl. popular forms of representation): strong
tradition of general character formation and general learning may be analysed as reaction
against popular forms of culture in general + commercial media (weeklies, film).
Wider terms of cultural politics: foundation radio and TV as public-service institutions is in
accordance with general learning.
,Film: A prostitute and Contaminator
Film was very different than the print media: they don’t share their means of expression
with print media as art or info: ability to listen, move can be developed beyond confines of
formal training. Cannot be controlled by like reading.
- Attracts wide sections of population: also children.
- Cinemas are public places, visibly publicised on posters objects of debate over
possible regulation of juveniles’ use of public spaces. Judged by 2 things:
1. Imitation: will viewers imitate in real life what they see on screen?
2. Non realist forms of representation: most dangerous; fiction, violence, sex.
Hierarchy of representational dangers:
Innocent: print media without pictures
Print media with many pictures
Realist film
Most dangerous: non-realist film portraying everyday like sex, violence.
After WWI: imported films (from USA) took over Danish cinema conservatives: concerns
over future of ‘Danishness’ “American finance capital made film a prostitute and
contaminator at large”. Wider concerns of Americanisation and ideological seduction.
Opposition against capitalism and national pride: (Britain) “has not been proved that
juvenile crime is consequent on the cinema.” However:
Racialist overtones, also in German film panics: nationalist overtones + direct ant-
Americanism: film is linked with seduction of the masses (Jhering, 1926).
A Communal Softening of the Brain: Common Assumptions
In media panics, public discourse changed from pessimist elitism towards optimistic
pluralism. Norm of moral elevation has been challenged:
Ideal of democratic choice: children know quality when they see it. consumerist ideal:
advertisers use this reference to defend media commercials around children.
Panics from elitism pluralism
Parallelled by: cultural politics: democratising culture cultural democratisation.
Similarities of panics:
- All panics are united by firm belief in rational argumentation (if people know
dangers..)
- Belief is facilitated by intrinsic historical amnesia: every new panic is seen as the first.
- Another characteristic of panics: historical incorporation: older media is seen as
accepted.
Similarities are rooted in 3 basic assumptions underlying all panics:
1. Cultural hierarchy based on differences of production, turns into social and
psychological distinction of use
2. Social psychology: arguments are being internalised as media penetrate deeper into
our social lives (e.g. violence on screen: become criminals).
3. Relation between culture and social psychology: fusion of cultural and mental
development is shaped by fundamental importance played by general character
formation in development of modernity (children are seen as objects/victims).
, Modernity:
Modernity fosters individuality as a social norm: everybody must learn the lesson of
modernity: live with the change, while actual experiences vary across people paradox of
sameness and difference.
Paradoxes can’t be solved, contradictions may be tackled and mediated.
- Difference: gendered individuality, nurtures it by: social norm.
- Cultural and human development become equivalent in dominant discourse of
modernity.
Through panics, adults seek to redefine parameters of character formation: what do our
children need. Try to overcome paradox of modernity: cannot be overcome panic activists
continue their struggle.
The Dark Side of the Moon: Underlying Reasons
In modernity, children and young people have occupied a pioneering cultural position.
- Young have a threat of new media.
- Media contents often emphasise emotional involvement and bodily expressiveness
and experimentation.
- Social level: media panics attempt to re-establish a generational status quo that
youthful pioneers seem to undermine.
- First time effect: first time in childhood/youth often stands out.
- Cultural struggle: media panics focus on the young, because their development is
most decisive and vulnerable.
- Sociological and cultural analysis: there is an opposition between form and contents
(reason vs. emotion): e.g. food can be described as poison or insipid fruit: it’s the
same object, but has a different emotion than just ‘food’.
- High/low divide in cultural criticism.
- Panics: equal self-forgetting involvement, abandonment, spontaneity. The realisation
that people cannot go back and be a child again, makes childhood a ‘paradise lost’.
Realisation of loss is a fundamental experience. 2 ways: negative (loss), positive
(cultural quality).
media panics reveal broader problems of modernity: panics are a way of trying to balance
the modern paradox, while it feeds on a paradox.
Beyond panics?
One cannot argue with panic proponents: panic discourses cannot be countered.
- Self-reflexion
- Analysis does not close the panics, but may clarify the basis of discourse and our own
position in it.
o It opens a space of dialogue between adult and juvenile judgements, tastes,
pleasures – a space that adults may learn as much from as children.
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