Task 3

Wanting another theory on how the media works on a mass audience. The hypodermic syringe effect I hear you say? Everyone run, the media is coming!
The hypodermic syringe effect theory is what you'd call something that injects ideas (a bit like a syringe) attitudes and beliefs from the media into its audience, sometimes the audience being just a big powerless mass who have little to no choice in what way they are being influenced by. For example, you see a cold refreshing bottle of drink with a catchy tune accompanying it in an advert. Then what do you find yourself doing? Reaching into the fringe for something to refresh that sudden thirst of yours, preferably for that drink you just saw. In the 1950's Blumer was writing about the media and commented on how people such as Hitler and Stalin had used the media as propaganda, using films, poster art and radio etc to influence and persuade people to vote and side with them, which comes to no surprise why people thought the media was being used as an evil tool if it fell into the wrong hands, capable of persuading millions to follow them. I think that when it comes to elections, no matter how many posters that cover Britian's roadside's (even though it does help), people will still have their own opinion (and will stick by it), and they are not likely to be really influenced by it, at least not so much to change the final outcome of an election.
The theory is particularly popular in society with politicians, because they like to see it as a reason why society has become more violent, instead of blaming it on themselves. An example being in the theory is that of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, as before every one of his murders he would watch a clip from his favourite film - Star Wars - to get himself excited. This evidence proves the hypodermic syringe theory to be slightly true, even though the film Star Wars very clearly meant different things to him than it does to most people.


"He really loved the power that Darth Vader had to intimidate and influence those around him," muses Dietz.
 Never got banned.
Dr. Park Dietz must have one hell of a bedside manner. A forensic psychiatrist who's interviewed, and testified at the trials of, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Hinckley, Andrea Yates, and many of the most notorious murderers of the last 30 years, Dietz is an expert at deciding whether the perpetrators of violent and unusual crimes were sane at the time they committed them, and he's known for his ability to understand the extremes of human behavior from the inside out. Last night, I caught a documentary on A & E called Conversations With Killers, in which Dietz recalls his intimate encounters with some of the most infamous criminals of our time.




 

It is obviously easy to find reasons why the hypodermic syringe theory could never apply to everyone equally. But do you think it could work sometimes? What about you - can you think of any media texts which you feel have had a big effect on you and made you behave in any way differently?


In my personal opinion, I think the theory is a little simplistic in the way of how it stereotypes everyone, taking into no account of individuals, like me for example. Yes, the media is a big influence in many peoples lives, an example being how looking ''perfect'' has now become a big pressure on young people, skinny models and air brushing of photos in magazines, morphing the ideas of both girls and boys of what beauty should look like.