Term Paper on "Reality TV Reinforce Negative Role Models? Media"

Term Paper 17 pages (5002 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Reality TV reinforce negative role models?

Media effects the attitudes of society in many ways. It not only reflects norms, but also helps to shape these attitudes as well. Modeling is one of the most common means of learning social behaviors in humans. Children model those around to them to learn what is appropriate and what is not. This social learning does not stop when the child becomes an adult, but rather continues throughout their life. People look up to actors as role mode. As such, actors and popular personalities have a profound effect on shaping society.

Reality TV is one of the most popular genres in the mass media today. The viewership of these programs increases at an astonishing rate. Reality TV allows the viewer to combine both reality and fantasy in a unique blend. We know that the characters have some effects on the adults that watch. However, until now this subject has received little attention. Some of the characters on reality TV would not be considered role models a major portion of the society. The proposed research will examine the presence of negative role models in British Reality Television.

Methodology

The purpose of the study will be to determine the frequency of negative role models in British Reality TV shows. The data to be collected will have both a numerical component and a subjective component. The study will be conducted by watching a number of reality TV shows and dividing the characters into Positive, Neutral, and Negative role models and then comparing the three groups. The study will provide individual show data, as well as combined data to get an overall picture of the type of role models that British reality shows are portraying.

Rationale

Beattie (2002) found that television has a profound effect on our society and that it can be used as a means to gauge societal attitudes as well. Modern psychology reaches beyond the traditional Freudian analysis and has now been expanded to include portion of computer science, linguistics, sociology, philosophy, neuroscience, and the English language. This multidiscipline approach to psychology is a result of an understanding of the complexity of the humans psyche.

The goal of psychology is to predict how one will react in a certain set of circumstances. However, as research into the field of human motivation progresses, this process becomes more difficult to understand. We now know that human motivation and drives are the result of a complex set of factors, all of which interplay to produce the motivation required for action (Ziman, 2000). This complexity has compelled the field of psychology to include portions of many other disciplines. This creates a particular conundrum when it comes to conducting academic research. The following will explore the multidiscipline approach to understanding how reality TV affects our social behavior through modeling.

This study will draw from the areas of sociology and psychology in order to gain an understanding of the frequency of negative role models in reality TV. Some areas of psychology lend themselves to quantitative research, while other lends them to qualitative research. The area of sociology relies almost exclusively on qualitative methods. The method chosen must match the type of data collected.

Reality TV as a Social Observation Experiment

The concept of reality TV is that people enjoy watching other people. Let us consider the show Big Brother. The entire plot of this show is based on watching the behaviors of other people. The audience gets an inside view of many facets into other people's private lives that they would not otherwise be privy. Big brother is centered on the need to see what other people do and how they act in different situations. The audience, in this case, is playing psychologist and sociologist in an attempt to understand the characters. The judgments that they make are subjective.

Philip Zimbardo, a professor at Stanford University, feels that reality TV shows such as Survivor and Big Brother show the worst aspects of humans and represent the wrong human values (Shwartz, 2001). Zimbardo recently participated in the development of a reality TV series called the Human Zoo where contestants would be asked to participate in psychology experiments while being taped 24 hours a day. The experiment was an observational experiment.

Other psychologists agree that Reality TV shows reinforce negative stereotypes. For instance, the show "Growing Up Gotti" reinforces negative stereotypes of Italian-Americans, portraying them as semi-illiterate bums, bigots, and buffoons (Mason, 2004). Mason is concerned that these stereotypes will bleed into society and become reinforced. The connection between social psychology and realty TV are recognized by credible members of academic society.

Conducting Credible Sociological Research

Sociological research relies on qualitative data to support the hypothesis. However, conducting qualitative research that is valid can present many problems. The problems with validity arise from several areas including the nature of the data itself. The presence of a research in the group can cause members of the observed group to alter their behavior in order to either give the researcher what they want, or to hide undesirable behaviors from them (Patton, 2002). The researcher themselves may be a source of bias as they unintentionally may wish for a certain result and ignore behaviors that do not support the hypothesis (Hammersley, 1992).

As far as this research is concerned, one only has to be concerned about two of these pitfalls. The first pitfall is the nature of the data itself. The researcher in this experiment will be watching reality TV in order to make a decision as to which category a certain character belongs. The character will then be turned into a number (quantitative data) for the final analysis. This study uses qualitative data to derive quantitative results. This is known as a hybrid methodology. The decision as to which category to place the character is highly subjective. The initial assessment will involve the personality traits, social upbringing and other aspects of the researcher.

The gold standard for empirical research is to be able to reproduce the results at some time in the future to validate the study. In this case, it is unlikely that two people would judge the same characters in a similar fashion. Thus, the results would not be reproducible and the study would be considered invalid. Due to this scenario, a method must be devised that will allow the researcher to standardize their observations. In order to achieve this, a set of criteria will be developed that will include instructions for making the decision as to which category the character belongs. The research will be able to use these criteria to aid them in making consistent decisions.

The second pitfall of qualitative research involves changing behaviors of the test subjects. This will not be an issue in this study as the subjects are television characters. The third type of research bias stems from the expectations of the researcher. Once again, the information can be standardized using a set of criteria to aid the researcher in proper categorization of the characters. This list of criteria may include use of foul language, negative comments towards other characters, racial slurs and other negative behaviors. The use of criteria such as this will help make the study reproducible and will increase the likelihood that two different researchers will obtain similar results. Standardizing the observation process is used to eliminate or reduce researcher bias in qualitative research.

Qualitative research suffers from a lack of credibility as compared to quantitative methods (Wainwright, 1997). The problems explained above are the key reasons for this opinion. However, there has been a recent trend towards hybrid research techniques that combine elements of qualitative research with quantitative aspects. These research methods are gaining credibility as they have many of the formal components of quantitative research. This method will be used in this research study. It will transform observational data into numerical data and then apply quantitative methods to prove either the hypothesis or the null hypothesis.

One of the key reasons for the development of these new research techniques is the entrance of the social sciences into new areas. For instance, sociology is finding its way into the medical field in an attempt to find new ways to improve patient outcomes (Mays and Pope, 1995). The medical field is using the social sciences to find and treat the causes of many preventable diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Sociological factors are found to be a part of many disease cycles. Family dynamics have a significant impact on increases in depression, suicide and other emotional disorders. Sociology is no longer viewed as a separate science, but is considered another factor in many other formal areas of science. Qualitative research is a form method used in the social sciences. Therefore, it is logical that qualitative methods would find their way into the other sciences as well.

The marriage of qualitative study methods with quantitative methods meant reaching a compromise between the two methods (Wainwright, 1997). Validity and reliability are the… READ MORE

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