mass-communication-theory

THE RISE OF MEDIA INDUSTRIES
AND MASS SOCIETY THEORY
CHAPTER 3
Singer Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime show of the
2004 Super Bowl football game reinflamed the endless debate about media’s
corrupting influence on society. Jackson’s three-quarters-of-a-second of exposed
breast produced congressional hearings on indecency in broadcasting and Kansas
Republican senator Sam Brownback’s claim that the pop star’s momentarily bared
breast “gave ammunition to terrorists in the ‘cultural war’ being waged in Iraq”
(Eggerton, 2004, p. 1). The Federal Communication Commission’s subsequent
crackdown on offensive content, including even “fleeting expletives” (offhand, live
comments caught on air), was eventually upheld in a 5 to 4 2009 Supreme Court
decision highlighted by Justice Antonin Scalia’s written dismay over “foul-mouthed
glitteratae from Hollywood” and the “coarsening of public entertainment” (Savage,
2009, p. A4).
Peek-a-boo half-time singers and cursing celebrities were not the only media effects
controversies of the first decade of the new century. Among other things, the
American Psychological Association issued a national report documenting and condemning
the “increasing commercialization of childhood” (Kunkel et al., 2004); the
scientific journal Pediatrics published one report tying teens’ consumption of online
and other media violence to subsequent “seriously violent behavior” (Ybarra et al.,
2008) and another linking exposure to sexual content on television to teen pregnancy
(Chandra et al., 2008); the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent
Medicine presented evidence of lagging language development in children as a
result of infant television viewing (Bryner, 2009); Circulation: Journal of the
American Heart Association published research demonstrating that every daily
hour spent watching television was linked to an 18 percent greater risk of dying
from heart disease, an 11 percent greater risk from all causes of death, and a 9 percent
greater risk of death from cancer (Dunstan et al., 2010); boycotts were called
against the Campbell Soup Company because its ad in the gay magazine The
Advocate gave “approval to the entire homosexual agenda” (Edwards, 2009); and
boycotts were also called against the NBC television network because of its
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