Visual media is unarguably ever-present in America – it’s difficult to escape. We spend the majority of our day looking at (or trying to avoid) billboards, magazine racks, television, movies and the internet. Seeing is easy for us, and it’s generally the easiest way to get powerful, visceral messages across. It’s interesting, then, that as a society we are loathe to embrace the power of the visual and pass it on to our children. Instead we give it to those who can exploit our ability to visually multi-task and process information for profit.
We are certainly the most marketed-to and accordingly, the most educated-about what is marketed to us. We’re visually acute – skillful even – at recognizing logotypes and their corresponding products. For example, below is the first letter cut from the logotypes of 5 common grocery store products. See how many you DON’T recognize:
These products represent our perceptual prowess and media’s manipulation of that prowess through relentless repetition; yet, they also draw attention to the massive reshaping our reality has undergone in the last 150 years. Without turning this paper into a diatribe about American imperialism and its viral-like spread of consumer culture, I’d like to instead take a historical look at the cognitive effects of visual media on the masses and its present-day implications in educational development. Borrowing heavily from Gerbner’s cultivation hypothesis (that the media’s representation of culture shapes and influences perceived reality), this paper attempts to examine how the media is changing and has changed, the way we learn.
WRITING
A proper history of visual media would initially begin with some prehistoric cave paintings in France and then move on to Egyptian and Roman ruins, briefly mention a 1500 year reign in religious art, obsess over Guttenberg’s printing press and finally finish in the 20th century stopping somewhere near the end to dwell on Jon Stewart’s astute observation that indeed, “newspaper is dead” (2004). We could do that, but it’s been done. Let’s begin, instead, with an unorthodox look at writing as abstraction.
“The dominance of the verbal, written medium over other visual media is firmly coded and buttressed in conventional histories of writing. These go something like this. Language in its spoken form is a natural phenomenon, common to all human groups. Writing, however, is the achievement of only some, historically by far the minority of, cultures” (Kress, 1996).
While initially each culture began with pictorial symbols to represent objects; e.g., a wavy line to represent the Chinese word for water, the Phonecians managed to abstract the symbol further until the symbol no longer pictorially represented the word. By transforming the symbol for ox (alpha) to approximate the sound “ah,” the visual representation mode of communication was shifted to the verbal. “The problem which we face is that literate cultures have systematically suppressed means of analysis of the visual forms of representation…” (Kress 1996). The shunning of our most natural and proficient way of interpreting the world in favor of the abstract is the reason we have writing.
Fast-forward to today it is clear that we are a society that highly values the written word, but also relies heavily on the visual to communicate. We got here through necessity; technology is all about communicating more efficiently. Advances in digital media are bringing the visual into every modern mode of communication we use (picture phones, internet, video chat), even into traditional forms of communication like books. For example, below are images of textbooks throughout the last century.
Grammar Book (1920), Basil Reader (1980), Scholastic Reader (2003)
Kress determined that graphics used in science texts shifted from a supportive role to an overtly dominating role compared to text over the last thirty years (Kress 1996) and cited the increase in exposure to visual media as a major factor in this shift. Simply put, students are able to process and interpret larger amounts of visual information. Furthermore, after years of television, internet, and advertising exposure, they expect it.
Modern History: Moving Media
Winfried Nöth, author of “The Handbook of Semiotics,” retells Gustave Le Bon’s description of pictures as a medium to manipulate the minds of the primitive. “The masses can only think in images and can only be influenced by means of pictures. Only pictures can frighten or persuade them…To them, the unreal is almost as important as the real…” (Le Bon 1895, cited by Nöth 1997) The quote refers to Le Bon’s reaction to the first public demonstration of a motion picture shown using an Eidoloscope Projector. The movie was shown in New York on April 21st, 1895 to a barrage of press. Shortly thereafter in December of that same year, Auguste and Louis Lumière (brothers) showcased their invention called the “Cinématographe.” The device was a combination movie camera and projector capable of showing an image that could be viewed by a large audience. Their first public screening was held in a Paris café where they screened The Arrival of a Train, the first movie to ever induce a stampede. (Encyclopedia Britannica Online 2005)
Film
The people fleeing the Parisian café, genuinely frightened, were reacting to merely a representation of reality, yet engaging with it as if it were real. This example puts desensitization in context; we scoff at such a ridiculous response but we cannot fathom such emotion on our own part. The fleeing Parisians were forced to alter their “mental models” to include a world where monochromatic trains barrel out of walls. Returning to Gerbner’s cultivation hypothesis, their sense of ‘real’ was altered forever.
From then on, the imitation of the real in film was gaze-approximated by employing long, panning camera angles and eye-level compositions. “A realism is produced by a particular group, as an effect of the complex of practices which define and constitute that group. In that sense, a particular kind of realism is itself a motivated sign, in which the values, beliefs, and interests of that group find their expression” (Kress 1996). The ubiquity of television created a new realism and a new set of “values, beliefs, and interests.” As new realities are formed, boundaries between the real and unreal begin to establish themselves.
Movies in the 1930’s pulled the viewer in at eye level, allowing the viewer to sit quietly off to the side – watching – but ultimately invisible. These devices such as careful plot unfolding, intricate character development, and the establishment of complex relationships were heavily informed by literature. Film essentially informed reality by mimicking live theater. The rift between reality and the reality of the screen was minimal, but that would soon change.
Creating the ‘Real’
Hitchcock, on the other hand, reestablished the boundaries between the real and unreal by bringing psychological realism to the screen. In Psycho, Hitchcock placed the viewer into the role of the killer. Whereas before, film was a passive and almost voyeuristic activity, Hitchcock made it possible to place the viewer into an active role. By doing so, Hitchcock creates the opportunity for psychological manipulation of the audience resulting in plenty of controversy, especially with regards to the shower scene. While society as a whole found Hitchcock’s realism jarring and reminiscent of the train incident, the language of the film was eventually learned and incorporated into media understanding. Contemporaries can easily place Psycho into the realm of the unreal. If you show a 12-year-old American the movie ‘Psycho’ today, they will undoubtedly wonder what the big deal was all about.
As Psycho was released on the big screen, the small screen was quickly emerging as the world’s most common and constant learning tool largely thanks to the Federal Communications Commission and their presidential-backed demand to fund the expansion of receivers and broadcast stations across the country for educational purposes. (Hull 1960) Back then, television was fully expected to accelerate America’s children ahead of the Soviets so we could successfully put a man on the moon in ten years (no pressure, kids). Television success in the classroom was limited; however, the home is a different story. Just about every child born in the United States after 1960 has grown up with the TV box as a permanent fixture in the house. Chances are if you were growing up in the 60s, your family photo was taken in front of it (my mom’s was). The ubiquity and availability of television prompted experimentation of mediated realities early on; reaching so many people at one time proved an irresistable marketing tool. Quick cuts, zoom-ins, and varied content created an environment that favored the innovative and new; America was riveted. During this period, television-native children were beginning to come of age as an advertising target. Cartoons, Howdy Doody and Mr. Rogers soon followed.
Television
At infancy, researchers generally agree that babies interpret television as simply a random selection of shapes, colors, and sounds. However, as they begin to understand the function of language, “television may be perceived as a kind of ‘magic window,” states Buckingham (2003), “…by the time they are about two, children seem to have understood that television is a medium that represents events which have taken place.” Buckingham also contends that from the age of two, children are learning how to take the information presented to them and build understanding for themselves. Media does not simply wash over children; throughout development, children are taking in, evaluating, and learning from their world. Just as other kids and people teach us how to socialize at an early age, television teaches us how to watch and learn from it.
As cognitivism replaced behaviorism in the psychological community, interest in television’s effects began to take off in the late 60s. At the forefront of this movement was research in semiotics, or symbol systems. Gavriel Solomon was particularly interested in examining children’s grasp of semiotics. In the late 70′s he attempted to study children’s incidental mastery of specific mental skills by testing American children’s so-called literate viewing (LV) of Sesame Street as compared to the LV of Israeli children, a population previously without exposure to television. His findings determined that while LV raised most dramatically amongst the lower class populations of the Israeli children after a month of viewing, Israeli children scored higher overall compared to the American children. This finding was surprising to Solomon because he hypothesized a stronger grasp of television due to American exposure. What he found was that American children watch with their mothers, and mothers are channel flippers. Their de-emphasis of sustained attentiveness to the screen in turn deemphasized content learning. Simply, children learned to not pay much attention. Additionally, the importance of the program had been removed. Conversely, the Israeli children were instructed by their parents with great enthusiasm to “watch and learn” and therefore viewed with a more critical eye. Meanwhile, channel-flipping mothers lend credence to the ADHD-spastic television link.
When Sesame Street first appeared on the air on November 10, 1969, it was unique in several ways (Hendershot 1999). The show had roughly an $8 million dollar budget granted by the US Department of Education. In turn, the department asked that the show stress cognitive development. LBJ had declared a “War on Poverty” and believed that broadcasting a show which included children of all colors in urban settings would give disadvantaged children the same cognitive advantages that white, middle-class kids enjoyed. While the show was lauded for its concept, critics were less convinced by its execution.
Joan Cooney was put in charge of the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) creative development. With a background in commercials, Cooney aimed to take advantage of children’s love of Saturday morning cartoons, stating, “Children are conditioned to expect pow! Wham! Fast-action thrillers from television” (Cooney 1969, as cited by Hendershot, 1999). Sesame Street had crossed over into the realism created by advertising, much to the chagrin of parents. Presently the parallel between advertising and Sesame Street is rarely drawn anymore because of the shifting language of ad communication. Commercial ad semiotics is effectively no longer read in Sesame Street. Media constructed reality has since been altered.
Sesame Street was innovative in the way it crossed boundaries by taking the semiotic language of commercial advertising and rewrote its meaning. What we have here is a fantastic example of modern reification: the meaning and the sign do not coincide and are confused until they become one and the same. Although this may not be the first instance of blurring the lines between entertainment and persuasion, on one level it certainly appeared to many to be the most insidious. Sesame Street was taking advantage of already children’s mental models and altering them. “From the age of two, children are also developing an understanding of the ‘language’ of television. They learn that it follows rules or conventions which are different from those of real life” (Messaris 1994, as cited by Buckingham, 2003). By this age they have learned to perceive the differences between programs and advertisements (Buckingham, 2003). Sesame Street’s target audience is children between the ages of two to five. Literally from the get-go Sesame Street confused the boundaries between learning and advertising and entertainment.
MTV: Sesame Street Inspired
Ten years later MTV was launched by 29-year-old Robert Pittman who wrote in a 1985 edition of Adweek “Conversely–drastically conversely–the TV generation processes information in nonlinear manner” (1985). Pittman calls nonlinear viewers “TV Babies” and claims the job of the music video producer is to get their attention (Sherman & Etling 1991). The creative fantasy world that MTV provides in short bursts of ADHD-inducing frenzy has become the icon for youth culture. The launch of Channel One television in 1989 prompted advertisers to take advantage of the blurring lines between entertainment, education, and advertising. Advertisers knew exactly who their market was (middle schoolers) and exactly what they were watching (Channel One) to create commercials that played with already established rules of programming semiotics. Roy Fox, who studied the Channel One infiltration extensively, examined this phenomena through Pepsi commercials that mimicked documentary-style Public Service Announcements. “In imitating PSAs, Pepsi capitalized on a positive, respected, ready-made framework through which students could interpret the new ads. For example, one student said, ‘The hidden message in the Pepsi commercial is “Stop the Hate.”’ And the exact phrase used in a popular PSA is ‘Stop the Hate’” (Fox 1996). Fox notes that many students believed that the advertisement wasn’t an advertisement at all.
Blurring Away
Pepsi cleverly brought the commercial-cum-PSA advertisement into the realm of the ‘real’ thus fooling many watchers of its time. However, the commercial is now well over 10 years old an entire new breed of ‘TV babies’ would probably watch the commercial and reach the same conclusion we reach when watching the Parisian train: it’s not real. 10 years later, the semiotic meaning has been altered as a result of blurring the lines between entertainment and persuasion or, in this case, education and persuasion. Is it a PSA? Is it CNN? Is it a car advertisement?
“What I am claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience” (Postman 1988). While children are creating their mental models to make sense of the world they live in, television is cultivating subtle cues that masquerade as “facts.” For example, popular makeover shows “prove” that all your problems can be solved if you spend $2000 dollars on a new wardrobe and a day at the salon. Additionally, the same storytelling devices used in that makeover show work just as well for CNN which tells us that celebrities are just as, if not more important than those in public office. What is most empirically evident is that television teaches children they MUST HAVE IT NOW. Latest estimates show 8 to 12 year old American kids are responsible for 25% of all consumed goods while advertisers spend 12 billion in marketing directly to them (San Francisco Chronicle 2005).
A perfect example of the new real is the immersive, autonomous, virtual world of massively online role-playing games. What started with Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) has now evolved into a graphically rich environment where the player is usually alone in his room while interacting in a virtual world that symbolically represents thousands. Chat rooms and instant messengers follow in the same vein and can now be accessed via cell phones. ‘TV babies’ have now become ‘digital babies’ and they operate in a domain of connections. At home, the personal computer is a means of communication (IM, Email), entertainment (iTunes), and information (Google).“Compared with the demanding multimedia experiences many children have outside school, much classroom work is bound to appear unexciting” (Buckingham 2003). The disparity between how children gather and process information outside the classroom and how they are served information inside the classroom is quickly widening. While a house that is wired to the Internet does not necessarily produce children who are critical users of information – children who can actively use a search engine to seek out information – the chances are likely. That is not to say that children come to the classroom with all the knowledge they know to become a successfully digitally literate member of society: “they are uncertain, they lack information, and they are often frustrated by the failure of the technology to achieve what it promises” (Buckingham 2000) Buckingham suggests beginning with what children DO know. Yet that is precisely what our classrooms have been ignoring.
What media has been building upon for the last 150 years is the modern notion of intertextuality where texts are continually referring and drawing upon one another often in ironic or parodied ways. As television builds upon these assumptions, children will assume the role media has given them and “fill in the gaps’ through contextual clues and mental modeling. Hypertext benefits from such cultural models as it supports non-linear storytelling while shifting the child from the position of a follower to a driver or a reader to a writer. While researchers continue to develop a cognitive model to analyze these media effects on cognition, we can only observe behaviors and attitudes. It seems absurd to think sweeping changes in how we live and learn in society has had zero effect on our children’s cognition.
Bibliography
Buckingham, D (2003) Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Polity Press, Cambridge
Encyclopedia Britannica Online (2005) History of Film. http://www.encyclopediabritannica.com Accessed July 17th, 2005
Fox, Roy (1996) Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids. Westport, Connecticut; London
Hendershot, Heather (1999) Sesame Street: Cognition and Communications Imperialism. Kids Media Culture; Duke University Press, Durham & London
Hull, R. (1960) The Next Ten Years. Educational Commission on the Future of Television in Education. Washington DC Press
Kress, G. & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001) Multimodal Discoourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication, Oxford University Press Inc., New York
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Nöth, W. (1997) Can Pictures Lie? Semiotics of the Media: State of the Art, Projects, and Perspectives; Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York
Pittman, R (1985, May) MTV’s Lesson: We want what we want when we want immediately. Adweek, pp. 34
Postman, N (1988) Concientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education Vintage Press, New York
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Shaviro, Steven (2003) Connected: Or What it Means to Live in the Network Society. University of Minnesota Press
Solomon, G. (1979) Interaction of Media, Cognition, and Learning. Josey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco
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