Media as a whole does not have a singular effect on the consumers behavior, cognition, and/or psychology, rather each person interprets media in different ways, which plays a different role in how they react to it. After further research on the issue, and looking into how individuals are affected by violent media such as violent video games, violent movies, and violent television, it was concluded that people respond differently from one another. Another topic of research is how young children and teenagers receive effects from media, providing facts that media does not have a singular effect on the consumer, but rather it differs based on the consumers age. Lastly, individuals of different races are not affected the same way. In particular, the protests going on in the National Football League and how the news and other forms of media are portraying them. In, all, people decode messages from media in all types of ways.
I would first like to start off with the three decoding positions people take when seeing any type of media. The decoding refers to how a person interprets a message, whether it is in music, television, or a movie. The first position is known as the dominant or preferred position. This would be where the consumer of the media takes the intended meaning from the creator and nothing else. An example of this would be seeing an advertisement for getting a loan on a new car, and the consumer sees the message as getting a loan to help get a car. The other encoding position is the negotiated position where the consumer partially understands the actual message but also sees more to it. For example, with the car loan advertisement the consumer accepts the message of getting this loan to help pay for a car, but also sees that it could get people in trouble with debt and believes it could cause problems for others. The last encoding position is the oppositional position. This is where the consumer gets the message but doesn’t share the common idea as other and are in direct opposition with the actual meaning. Relating back again to the car loan advertisement, the consumer would see the advertisement as making it very difficult to get a car and the loan making it even harder. This is where the person rejects the message that is being expressed. The three decoding positions go to show that people have different views on what the message is. The only way for media to have a singular meaning would be for all consumers to have a dominant position on what they view. The obvious answer to this would be that it is impossible for all consumers to form the same meanings therefore media does not have a singular effect on the consumer.
There are two sides to how a viewer interprets and reacts to media specifically violent media, where the talks of violent media such as video games and movies, and the correlation to children and young adults being violent have increased in recent years. To define singular effect, this would mean that each individual would have the same effect as everyone else who views the same type of violent media. Many people believe there is a direct correlation between people who consume violent media, and violence in the world. I find this to be a faulty argument for numerous reasons because not everyone has the same psychological make up and behavior. As for the two sides of the debate as to whether violent media has a singular effect on the consumer, I would like to focus on video games, which many people, including the government have used to give partial reasoning for violence such as mass shootings in America, particularly children. According to American Psychological Association, 90 percent of children in the United states play some type of video game, and 97 percent of children ages 12 to 17 play video games, where 85 percent of those children play a video game that includes some type of violence. With that being said, it is impractical to say that the entire 90 percent of children will go on to be violent after playing such games. This means that not every kid after playing a video game about killing people are going to start killing people.
In a study on the correlation of children playing violent video games and an increase of their aggression due to the video games, it was shown that the affect a violent video game has on a person is due to their personality traits. Dr. Patrick Markey ran a psychological study known as the Five-Factor Model, which is used to break down the five key personality traits in people to determine how vulnerable they are in such situations. These traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. After concluding the study, Dr. Markey stated that the children with high neuroticism, which include being easily upset, angry, depressed, or more emotional, as well as low agreeableness and low consciousness were showing signs of being most vulnerable to violent media and being the ones who were most affected. The children studied with the regular levels of the personality traits showed little to no effect on their aggression levels and emotions from playing violent video games. With this study being concluded, there is evidence that shows media does not a singular effect on an individual, rather it has an effect on those who have the personality to be influenced by violence. In order for media to have a singular effect on these children, the results would have needed to be the same for each individual.
Another of interest is how young children and teenagers are effected by media and how their effects are different. An example that media and in this case movies do not have a singular effect on individual was a social psychology study performed by the Payne Fund Studies. These studies were used to see the psychological impact that motion pictures had on people. In the particular study I am referring to, the subjects are teenagers and young children. Both the teenagers and the younger children were hooked up to electrodes and galvanometers in order to detect their responses to the movie that was being shown. The studies’ results showed that the youngest kids had the highest reactions to the violent and tragic movies and the older kids had a much lower reaction. It was also shown that the oldest people being studied had higher reactions to scenes that involved sexual content compared to those who were younger. Also, this study further proves media does not have a singular effect because people’s brains are developed differently, much like the study I talked about earlier from Markey. The maturity level of the person and their cognition is what is directly causing them to react in different ways when viewing specific types of media.
Media about racial topics is another reason why media does not have a singular effect. One example, which is more recent than others, are the National Anthem protests going on in the National Football League. This was a large topic that has been covered by the media on news stations everywhere and was a very controversial topic which many people disagreed on. While many people saw the NFL players taking a knee for the national anthem and being disrespectful to the United States and those who serve, others saw it as a peaceful protest about racial inequality. This was also reported by ESPN that President Trump denounced this over twitter stating, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b—- off the field right now. Out. He's fired! He's fired!'” Many players saw this as a disrespectful gesture from a man who is the president and supported the players, while others responded saying it was a first amendment right for players to protest.
Throughout my research that I have provided, media does not have a singular effect on the consumers. First, violent media such as video games do not cause all individuals to be violent, only those who have a personality that can be triggered by these violent games. Secondly, individuals of different ages will have different reactions to what they are viewing, such as younger kids becoming more scared of a violent movie rather than a teenager, proving there is not a singular effect. Finally, controversial topics on the news such as the one I selected on the NFL protests causes different effects based on what they believe in and what they hear for the media and news source. As a conclusion, someone could argue that there is not enough research to support the idea that playing violent video games causes violence in children therefore, having a singular effect on children, but the information provided about how children’s personalities can cause different affects cannot be denied. Also, how people reacted to the news about the president’s comments and the NFL protests are public knowledge about the national disagreement, which further supports my argument that media does not have a singular effect on the consumer. Overall, to say media has a singular effect on the consumers behavior, cognition, and/or psychology is impractical. Rather a better way to explain it would be to say that media effects the consumer based on who they are and what they want to believe in.