Cynical or Comfortable?
Reflecting on some of my first memories of consuming mass media, I was highly susceptible to advertising as a child. Still, I quickly outgrew my awe for flashy commercials, false gimmicks, and shiny new packaging. I inherited my cynicism from my parents, who quashed most of my wants for trendy new toys or food fads, but I also gained some cynicism by being disappointed in some of those shiny new products.
As I got older and started to read and watch the news, my cynical attitude toward advertisements served me well, and I learned to be critical of the media. My relationship with mass media is inconsistent with the hypodermic needle theory of mass communication, which assumes that consumers and audiences are highly susceptible to being influenced by the mass media. Early media theorists created the hypodermic needle theory to explain the effects of propaganda on audiences during World War I.
The media landscape looks a lot different now, and with competing ideologies, it’s harder for audiences to take what the mass media says at face value. For some context of scale, in the 1930s, there were under 700 radio stations in the United States. Today there are over 15,000. During the time of the hypodermic needle theory, there were very few voices competing for your attention. Now there are countless perspectives you can weigh in on, giving you the freedom to decide what media you want to consume and which ideologies align best with your way of thinking.
We are experiencing a constant barrage of information from every angle in today’s society, and conversations about trust in mass media are prevalent. We often stop and ask where information is coming from and where biases may be present. Does the owner of a local paper have a vested interest in promoting a political agenda? How can we be sure that the stories the paper publish represent the community? Armed with modern tools such as the internet, we have access to an endless array of media publications and have the power to question what media lands in our laps. This video explores Americans’ growing distrust of mass media.
However, just because we have those tools doesn’t mean people use them. It’s not uncommon to seek out media that reinforce our own ideas and reject media that challenges them. In 2016, the Wall Street Journal published an interactive piece called “Blue Feed, Red Feed.” The purpose of the piece was to show that, particularly with social media, users exist within an echo chamber of their ideas and make conscious and unconscious decisions that shape their feeds to see their perspectives reflected back at them. Audiences have more power than ever to seek out differing opinions but instead find themselves consuming media that makes them feel more comfortable.
This uncomfortable truth is a perfect example of reinforcement theory. Reinforcement theory essentially says that the media has very little power to help change the minds of its audience and asserts that someone’s upbringing and community impact their opinions much more. The Blue Feed, Red Feed publication makes this 1960s theory feel even more timely now.
Just because I consider myself cynical toward mass media and critical of advertisements doesn’t mean I don’t fall victim to reinforcement theory now and again. It is much easier to be comfortable with my principles and have them echoed back at me than constantly seeking out different opinions and challenging my perspectives. As responsible consumers of media, we must be aware of the inherent biases we confront every day and understand how we react to those biases. It is okay to be comfortable, but it’s vital to remain cynical too.