Tag Archives: political communication

Tragedy in Colorado

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The news about the shootings in the Colorado movie theater  is like an addiction. It’s like cracking your knuckles. It’s like driving past an animal killed on the street and you don’t want to look but you just can’t help yourself. Of course we are being constantly fed this news by the broadcast networks and CNN. We are updated through every newspaper and all social media outlets. They are forcing this news upon us everywhere, but even if we wanted to, we couldn’t turn away.

This tragedy hits so many levels of our society, it touches upon all kinds of issues that maybe the nation should be compelled to address. Our hearts go out to the victims and their families because it could have just as easily been one of us, or our brother, or daughter, or girlfriend. Every theater across the nation was packed with the exact same kinds of people, filled with costume-clad Batman fans, anxiously awaiting this sequel, excited to tell all their friends about it. Everyone in every theater bought tickets in advance, stood in line for hours, bought popcorn and flooded these theaters. It could have been any of us. We were all in theaters that night. That’s why we can’t turn away.We hear the victims’ stories and our hearts cry out for them and we just can’t imagine what kind of person could do this, especially the person with that infuriatingly satisfied smile on his face that we see plastered all over TV’s and newspapers.

Twelve people have been killed, and 58 injured. This mass shooting has been compared to the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. It is the result of a sick person buying weapons and ammunition legally and easily and deliberately walking into a crowded theater and firing at people who had limited ways of escape. Maybe some things need to be re-evaluated in the wake of this tragedy.

The biggest issue that has been raised in the news is that of gun control. Journalists and politicians are saying that Obama and Romney should now have to address this issue in detail and take a public stance. On the one hand, it seems that the government should restrict gun ownership. Right now, we are giving guns out to people who obviously shouldn’t have them. The other side of the coin is that it is our Constitutional right to own guns and be able to defend ourselves. This may be, but so many people will be buying guns for self defense and firing away that we’ll just end up with more innocent casualties. Such laws like those in Florida where the Trayvon Martin shooting occurred not too long ago, allow people to shoot and kill if it is in self-defense and they’re in fear of their lives. But whose word do we listen to?

Perhaps gun licenses should be controlled just as alcohol is controlled. We are allowed to drink alcohol in the U.S., and the government can’t tell us not to. But we have to wait until we’re 21 and there are rules even after that. You can’t buy alcohol for minors, you can’t drive under the influence, bars are allowed to cut you off if you’ve had too many. Maybe people should only be allowed to have one gun and only a limited amount of ammunition. If you have a gun for self-defense, you shouldn’t need more than a few bullets–certainly not 6,000 rounds of ammunition.

Last summer, as a news intern, I sat in on the trial of a young man who killed three police officers. I watched the court go through every piece of weaponry he had in his home and was appalled. The sheer number of guns and amount of ammunition led the court to believe that the act was premeditated, along with other evidence, and I believe that is what we can assume from the Colorado shooter. No normal, sane person needs so much weaponry and I believe this needs to be regulated in some way.

A smaller issue that this shooting might bring up is the subject of violence in the media. Is violence and killing a direct result of seeing violence in movies and video games, or hearing violent song lyrics? Advocates of the direct effects of media might say yes. Children are taught from a young age that people shoot and kill each other in movies and games–why not in real life? Kids imitate things they see on the screen, they act out battles and fight with pretend weapons. Maybe this is only pretend for so long before they might try it out in real life. Opponents might say that all kinds of children see violence in the media and yet very few of them actually imitate this violence in real life. Whatever the case may be, this Colorado shooter may have been acting out his Batman fantasy, saying he was the Joker and proceeding to inflict harm on innocent people.

Underlying all of this is the societal issue that we as Americans apparently raise, teach and allow people to shoot and kill other human beings. We have a moral crisis at stake here. Crime is everywhere, even if it hasn’t been headlined in the news. Where did any person get the idea that it is okay to take another human life? What kind of morality is being promoted in this country?

We have politicians who are overly concerned with their campaign finances and advertisements, spreading rumors about each other and mud-slinging, just to win the “race.” We have public officials who are distracted by gay marriage rights, as if that pertains to anyone but the two people involved. We have news outlets that are sidetracked by celebrity scandal.

There are some things that are distractions, sensationalized pieces of news, and there are other things that are worth the addiction. We should take notice when we see a story that we can’t turn away from, when we can’t turn off the TV because we can’t believe something this horrible could happen. Maybe that’s our wake-up call, the red light going off telling us something is wrong and needs to be changed. Because how else could we keep watching this tragic coverage over and over and not want to fix it?

Apathetic Citizens–Unite!

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People might be spending more time with social networks and entertainment programs, but they still manage to unite for a common interest.

According to the theories of selective exposure, perception and retention, people either avoid information that is incongruent with their own beliefs, or if they do view this information, they consume it through biased eyes or remember only the parts that adhere to their beliefs. Earlier in the year, we also talked about how people seem to be paying less attention to hard news, and a new genre of infotainment is becoming more prevalent. People are actively choosing to watch the Daily Show, for example, because they agree with John Stewart’s more negative criticisms of politicians and governmental practices, or at least find him entertaining. If this is the only “news” people view, we would say that they are only exposing themselves to the ideas that already fit with their beliefs. It is widely known that conservatives watch FOX news and liberals watch CNN and MSNBC. Even on these generally hard news sources, we can see some evidence of infotainment. One of CNN’s recent tweets today was “Do allergies actually benefit your health?” One of the stories on the U.S. news page of MSNBC was “Teen banned from prom over Confederate dress.” On the ABC News home page, “Katherine Heigl adopts second baby.” And even on the home page of FOXNews, “Does the G-spot exist? New study fuels debate.”

We can speculate, then, that even though these are traditionally hard news sources, they are finding that people like infotainment. People like to be entertained and with so many other outlets to find entertaining information, games, and social media, the hard news sites are just trying to keep up and compete. Remember, news is a business.

So scholars argue—are people becoming apathetic? Are people becoming less involved in the governmental process and less knowledgeable about important issues? According to Facebook’s newsroom, there were 845 million active users at the end of December 2011. According to a Time Magazine articlein September 2011, there were 100 million active Twitter accounts, with an average of 230 million tweets per day. According to Wikipedia, television ratings showed that in 2008, The Daily Show had 1.45 to 1.6 million viewers daily.

With these statistics, it would certainly seem like people are turning more and more to media that can entertain, especially media that is available on mobile devices, and has quick and easy access. So are these scholars right? Do people care less about what’s going on in the world and more about what’s going on in their world?

I would argue that while so many people are turning to Facebook, Twitter, and entertainment TV shows, the media still has the power to move people to action. Even those who selectively choose the media that they watch decide what is important to them and they are moved to act on it. People who may appear so apathetic in their TV show choice and entertainment value still do care about the world around them.

For example, the MSNBC website prominently displays a headline reading “Autistic boy wired up to show teacher bullying” with a video next to it. In this video, a father is outraged by the abuse his son endured at school, which he secretly recorded, and he posts a YouTube video displaying his feelings and several of the recordings. This video post led to the school firing this boy’s teacher. The video has about 1.5 million views. On the page, there is a petition that sympathetic viewers may sign to show their support for the father and his son and to try to change New Jersey legislature so that teacher who bully students are immediately fired. This petition has been signed by over 85,000 people.

Another example of people stepping up as active participants comes from a story on FOXNews this morning about the Arizona immigration law Senate Bill 1070. Immigrants and pro-immigration activist groups are taking a stand today and protesting what they believe is a discriminatory law, a continuation of their protests two years ago when the bill was signed.

And finally, we see millions of people step up and rally behind Presidents, rally behind Presidential candidates, rally for low interest rates for students and the death of Osama bin Laden. Even recently on the University of Delaware’s campus, where a few years ago, the students here were known notoriously as apathetic, the students have become more involved; they left their houses in the middle of the night to march to Memorial Hall. The students here rallied for justice in the Trayvon Martin case. People may enjoy connecting with their friends on Facebook and they may like to see what their roommate has to say about her exam on Twitter. People might find John Stewart humorous and they might not want to look for every angle of every story every day. But when they find something they care about, many people in this country find a way to become active members of the community. Whether they are signing an online petition against teacher bullying or passing along the message about KONY2012, many people are still finding ways to be informed and be engaged. And while, their selective exposure, perception and retention might skew their information and might make them slightly biased, I think the most important part is that they found something.