Media\'s Effect on Culture Annotated

MEDIA'S EFFECT ON CULTURE

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAHY CONTINUED

Factors Causing Ill-Health in our Culture: Normal Girls Pressed to be Abnormally Slim (2003) Web4Health Online available at http://web4health.info/en/answers/ed-causes-culture-example.htm.

This work asks the question of "How does media affect body image of women and which risks are associated with these effects? What is the media effect on body image of women? Are Normal Teen Girls pressed to be abnormally slim? The questions are answered in the statement of a certified psychologist and certified psychotherapist Gunborg Palme who states: "The message society gives to those girls is full of contradictions. On one hand it emphasizes an abnormally slim female figure as ideal and on the other they are tempted to eat unhealthy fattening junk food. This media effect on the body image of women is dangerous. It is not surprising that some teenagers become ill when subjected to such contradictory propaganda." (Web4Health, 2003)

Davis, Aeron (2006) Media Effects and the Question of the Rational Audience: Lessons from the Financial Markets. Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 28, No. 4, 603-625 (2006) Sage Publications.

Aeron Davis states that the work in writing "Media Effects and the Question of the Rational Audience: "... offers evidence for an alternative perspective on the media effects debate. Early work on media influence, be it conservative or critical, assumed a causal link between mass media and mass behavior. In contrast, decades of effects and audience research has established the inadequacy of this 'strong effects' paradigm. The main thrust of this counter-research is the realization that audiences actively consume and use the media for self-serving purposes. The alternative perspective offered here comes from a study of elite fund managers, their communications and decision-making in the London Stock Exchange. The research findings suggest that such individuals do respond actively to media, but, collectively, the results can be both self-defeating and on a mass scale. That is, individuals do not have to be ignorant nor act irrationally to contribute to media-instigated, collective irrationality."