Impact of Media on My Health and Attitudes to Notions of Health - Essay Example

ME AND THE MEDIA Name Course title Instructors’ name Date Week 1 Impact of media on my health and attitudes to notions of health According to the social cognitive model, media types have contributed to who I perceive myself to be (Bandura, 1989). I am a victim of media pressure as the media I consume influences my lifestyle, opinions, beliefs and values. The perception and ideas I have of the world around me is dependent on the content of media that I expose myself to. The television series may portray a certain family lifestyle as normal creating the urge to live a similar lifestyle. This happens despite the fact that most television families are fantasy (Harper, Marika, 2007). Media affects me by influencing the socializing patterns I choose. Most forms of media are highly luring and have the long term effect of becoming habits because they are exciting (Durant, 2008). This is common in advertisements wherein clever strategies are used to lure the consumer. One media I access is the internet. I use the internet for socializing, gaming and content creation. The internet is also a major connection to other media. Through the internet I get a lot of freedom because there is no control to what content I create or access. This implies that there is a world without restrictions in which I can access alternative views and post my own without any hindrances. Personal discipline is however imperative as the internet is also full of doggy information. I therefore have to a show great personal discipline in my life on the internet and this trickles down to how I relate to information I get from all other sources. It is however a matter of great concern, the ease with which one can access socially inappropriate behaviors from the internet. Wars are morally wrong but with the internet we now have the opportunity to blurt out at whoever or whatever we are against with the same damaging effect of physical wars (Armstrong , 2002). Other media I access are magazines from which I get a lot of attractive images portraying glamour. Magazines setup unrealistic goals of the perfect life and in effect lower self esteem for those who do not match up. From accessing and consuming this media type, I adore my celebrity’s lifestyle and strive to live up to the standards they set. The influence media has on us is similar to how we program computers. This is the society’s way of creating uniformity in social patterns and spreading life skills. Media may also have negative influences if uncontrolled. Reference Armstrong , D. (2002) A New History Of Identity: A Sociology Of Medical Knowledge. Bsaingstoke: Palgrave. Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory . In R.Vasta (Ed.), Annals of child development. Vol.6. Six theories of child development (pp. 1-60). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Durant, R. (2008) 'Viewing Professional Wrestling On Television And Engaging In Violent And Other Health Risk Behaviors'. Southern Medical Journal, February; 101(2):129-137 Harper, B. & Marika T. (2007) The Effects Of Thin Ideal Medial Images On Womens Self Objectification, Mood, Body And Image. 59:649-657 Week 2: My constitution to the young and how the media represents us The young are constantly being depicted as scandalous and dirty because of their constant defiance with the norm. The young are also occupying the space between childhood and adulthood. News media portray the young in a negative fashion with emphasis on their problems and negative connotations around the world youth. Media has also patronized and ignored completely the achievements of the young(Lawrence, 1994). There exists a binary of the negativity with slight positivity in their fun culture. The media profile for the young is overwhelmingly negative. A content analysis of Australian media indicated that the young mostly appear in the media as being part of the problem (Australian Institute of health and wellbeing, 2003). There is a lack of context in representing issues of the young in media. This is partly due to the fact that young people are often not included in the debates on issues directly concerning them. This is so because they are not considered authoritative and credible in the information they give (Henry, 1996). The denial of opportunity to articulate means that most young people do not get the chance to define issues that affect them and come up with solutions to those problems. The young are at the same time depicted as fun. This stems from the historically held perspective that the young are in a period of care-free time. In the early 70s the ideology that the young are fun was connected with the marketing strategies targeting the youth. This ideology was later incorporated into hegemonic discourses as a result of increased advertising and fashion. The young are more media savvy, they have tendency to save but still spend big (Vincent, 2006). They are very brand conscious with little appreciation for advertising. The society is becoming heavily consumerist in nature, however, young adults are found to be conscious of the prices of what they consume. The discourses of the young are contradictory and are common with the merging of fun and problematic. Most stories of the young are about hanging out, irresponsibility and destructiveness. Media reports majorly focus on lack of control, disorder and crime among the youth. However, it should be noted that hanging out is a mark of the independence that young people enjoy. Independence creates a platform for social interaction. References Australian Institute of health and wellbeing. (2003). Australia’s Young People 2003: Their Health and Wellbeing. Retrieved from: [[http://www.aihw.gov.au/publicationdetail/?id=6442467534|http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication Henry G. (1996), Fugitive Cultures. Race, Violence and Youth, Routledge, New York, , p.118. Lawrence, G. 'The Deconstruction of Youth', in J. Storey (ed.) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, Harvester Wheatsheaf, Hemel Hempstead, 1994, p.183. Vincent, W. (2006). "UK Generation Y male fashion consciousness". Journal of fashion marketing and management, 10 (2), p. 169 Week 3: Personal advancement in analytical skills of health issues To get deeper understanding of what authors imply in their articles demand a higher degree of analysis. The Shirley Dally’s model is an excellent deconstruction of media representations (Wilson, 2007). By analyzing articles using the 8 questions, a reader gets a holistic perspective of articles. Dally’s model implements the deconstruction by focusing on the gaps that may exist in these media representations. The average direction of the questions used is therefore inquisitive of the issues not directly indicated on the media. This in a way is directing the reader to read between the lines and query more than what the writer has focused on directly. After extensive comprehension of Dally’s model and the resources available for this unit, I have developed deeper analytical skills for different media that I access. I have developed a desire to ascertain whether the media I access creates stereotypes or reinforces the norm. The article on the representation of white and aboriginal women by Canadian press, stereotyping is evident. Gilchrist (2010) notes that the media focuses on highlighting only the plight of white women while ignoring the aboriginal. The credibility of arguments made in the media can be accessed on the basis of the level of consultation and research done in developing the argument (Zelizer, 2005). Gilchrist extensively uses quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis of media content to cement his arguments. From this information, I can gauge the scope of the argument by the extent of research and assessment of other personalities that could have been used in developing the story. This can be used to analyze the possibility of the perspective being different if different people were used in the topic (Wilcox, 2005). Gilchrist scope only extended within the confines of local Canadian press coverage. It also took into consideration only one case of abduction of white and aboriginal women. This is oblivious of the fact that there may have been other factors that led to the disparity in media coverage other than devaluation of aboriginals. Antagonistic views that oppose the media representation give different perspective to the topic (Crawshaw, 2009). Gilchrist research in this case fails to present opposing perspectives and counter arguing her view point. On concluding my study of this unit, I can critic the medias’ perspective with strong arguments for my own point of view and present conclusive recommendation. Good analytical skills are essential in deconstruction of media representation of health issues. With analysis one gets the real meaning of what the media is potraying. Reference Crawshaw, P. (2009) Mens Health: Practice, Policy, Research and Theory’ Critical Public Health, 19 (3)261-7 Gilchrist K. (2010): ‘“Newsworthy” Victims?’, Feminist Media Studies, 10:4,373-390 Wilcox, P (2005) ‘Beauty and the beast: gendered and raced discourse in news’, Social & LegalStudies, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 515–532. Wilson, S. (2007) ‘ “When You Have Children Your Are Obliged To Live”: Motherhood, Chronic Illness And Biographical Disruption’, Sociology Of Health And Illness, 29 (4): 610-26 Zelizer, B (2005) ‘Journalism through the camera’s eye’, in Journalism: Critical Issues, ed. Stuart Allan, Open University Press, New York, pp. 167–176 Week 4: Designing media for the population of sex workers The effectiveness of the media choice used in passing information depends on its appropriateness and relevance to the consumer. The media of choice has to be attractive to capture the consumers’ attention and hold it for the duration needed to pass the information. I would incorporate famous persons in my YouTube video. This will create a positive image of my point of view being advocated for by people of high integrity (Jemima & Riina 2011). Less focus is accorded to issues affecting the minority groups. The issue of prostitution is found to affect the financially less privileged and people who are socially devalued. This video will give them the opportunity to have their opinions heard. My video will be classified as newsworthy if it has the potential to attract the consumers, and secondly pass the intended information. News can therefore be defined as a media commodity which attracts consumers for duration of advertisement. The development of content worth being classified as news takes a long process of thorough scrutiny and social construction of the content. For a health video to attract and be used as an effective medium of passing health related information, it should satisfy the following conditions: much of the attention should be given to the issues that are serious and uncommon. The stigmatization of sex workers and the rampant incidences of murder of sex workers (Gilmore, 2013) will be the first issue I address. The issues will not be addressed in a repetitive manner to avoid redundancy. An effective video of health related issues should have different perspectives of the health issue to eliminate redundant arguments or repetition. The video should be to the level of complexity that the target audience can understand (Lupton, 1993). Most prostitutes are people of low levels of education and because of that my video will use simple language and low complexity. Incorporating real life stories of prostitutes who have suffered because of the nature of their job will create a sense of drama in my video. The video will have more weight if it has data of medical and other scientific data to validate the arguments I will present in my video (Lupton, 1994). The outstanding aspects of the scientific data will be used as the lead sentences. In conclusion, video are considered effective if they can convey the intended message. To achieve this there has to be element of attention in the audience. The message can also be credible if it is backed by verifiable scientific or medical data which is presented at a level of complexity of the target audience. References Gilmore, J. (2013) ‘Woman Brutally Murdered in Inner Melbourne’ The King's Tribune. www.kingstribune.com Jemima Repo & Riina Yrjölä (2011): The Gender Politics of Celebrity Humanitarianism in Africa, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13:1, 44-62 Lupton, D. in Chapman, S & Lupton, D. (1994).The Fight For Public Health: Principles and practices of media advocacy”. BMJ Publishing Group. Lupton, D. (in Mullane, M.E; Lupton, D; and Nove, T. (1993). Health advocacy and the media. Sydney: Western Sydney Health Development Committee. Read More