media-----TV

Lay critics, social observers, and occasional social scientists have been asserting for over a decade that movie viewing, radio listening, and especially TV viewing are passive occupations which may wither the critical acumen and creative abilities of the audience. The more alarmistic have foreseen a populace reduced to lethargic acquiescence and a nation in which active democracy has atrophied. Virtually none of these writers has offered any documentation in substantiation of these fears.
2 A number of psychologists and psychoanalysts, interviewed in regard to this topic, agreed that”excitation in passivity” could be harmful to children, but is unlikely to afford children healthful opportunity for vicarious role-playing. These experts offered no documentation for their beliefs, and did not offer opinions regarding the effect of viewing on adults’ orientations.
3. Relatively little empirical research bears directly on the question at hand.
A Numerous studies have compared the behavior of TV viewers and non-viewers, or have compared the behavior of viewers with their own behavior before they became viewers .These studies vary widely in methodological validity, and the behavior with which they deal is too grossly described (e.g., ”visiting”) for observed differences to be validly regarded as manifesting increased or decreased passivity.
B. Two studies (Hamilton and Lawless, 1958, and Belson,1957) respectively propose that television viewers experience a “lessening of cognitive conquest of the world” and that television reduces viewers’ interests, activities, and initiative. The present author considers that neither of these conclusions is justified by the data which the authors report.
Bailyn (1959) found that children who were highly exposed to pictorial mass media were less likely than light users to aspire to an occupational status higher than that of their fathers. She regards such an attitude as an index of passivity. Bailyn found no meaningful differences between the two groups in relation to preferred activities.
c. An elaborate study of British children and British television (Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince 1958) indicates that viewing does not produce any of five types of effects which British teachers regard as kinds of passivity.
The present author considers that empirical research to date indicates that television viewing does not induce passivity. Implicit in this view, however, is the present author’s rejection of the conclusions of Hamilton and Lawless and of Belson, as noted in paragraph 3b above. If the conclusions of these authors are taken at face value, empirical research to date must be regarded as having provided contradictory answers to the question at hand.
4. Theoretical Considerations. The generalizations advanced in the introductory chapter of this book are supported by the present author. The generalizations also suggest that further research might fruitfully take a phenomenistic and psychoanalytic approach, and that such an approach would find that all media, including television, are selectively utilized by passive and active persons to reinforce and exercise their existing and otherwise en gendered orientations.