Comments on: Media Non-Literacy and Representational Authoritarianism

By: Western Dave

Western Dave — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 17:24:38 +0000

As a teacher at a girls school, we get a lot of this stuff thrown at us. Here is what I thought was an interesting correlation. Girls at girls school tend to stayin the culture of middlebrow girldom longer than similar girls at co-ed schools. Examples of this include things like knowing all the lyrics to Broadway musicals past and present, choosing American Girl Dolls vs. Bratz, not listening to Top 40 radio and so on. Girls who go to girls schools are also statistically more likely to have their first sexual experience later, less likely to do illegal drugs (and if they do try them later), more likely to have their first consumption of alcohol later and so on. Now, I realize there is a cause and effect problem here. Parents that choose girls schools are probably very vested in not letting their kids have Bratz dolls, pointing out how awful they are on tv and so forth. I know any parent that allowed her kid to bring a Bratz doll to the daycare my children attend would get a stern talking to from the director and nasty, nasties from the other parents (including me).
One downside to girls schools. The girls are statistically more likley to have eating disorders although that may change as we do a better job of parent education on the subject. To wit, it is not appropriate to discuss the diet you are on or your reasons for being on it with your 6 year old. Yes, it is ok to have candy or cupcakes for in-school birthdays, etc..

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 05:58:46 +0000

If you read the Task Force report, it does in fact cite a number of studies by psychologists. I would want to read them before making any serious judgement, but I would be very surprised if they did not have the same methodological problems that I see through most of the “media effects” literature, which makes very bold pronouncements from very limited kinds of data.

By: Jmayhew

Jmayhew — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 05:04:13 +0000

I had a similar reaction to that BBC story. I kept waiting for them to offer up some evidence of harm, but the story ended with a mere reiteration of the fact that these images are out there. There is no description of the mechanism by which the actual harm is supposed to occur. It’s supposed to be self-evident from the presence of certain images in the mass media.

It’s not that I believe or know the images to be innocuous either. I just want more of an argument, less of a simplistic assertion.