Perkembangan Teknologi dan Komunikasi: 2015

Kutipan dari Buku

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COMMUNICATION THEORY

Stephen W. Littlejhon – Karen A.Foss

Halaman 997-1001

VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE

IN MEDIA SUDIES

Violence in the media has been among the most vehemently discussed issues in public debates about media and a major concern in numerous scholarly traditions of media research as well. Typically, debates about media violence have centered on the question of causality specifically, whether violence in the media causes real-life acts of violence. Researchers in the effects tradition looked for evidence of the impact of exposure to media violence, while scholars in later approaches like cultivation research and cultural studies addressed broader long-term implications of media violence on culture and politics. In light of questions raised by the latter approaches about the meanings and consequences of violence in the media, the philosophy of nonviolence has also been proposed as a global theoretical framework within which to critique media violence.

Nonviolence, as adopted from the thought of Mahatma Ghandi, shifts the focus of inquiry from questions about media as a possible cause of reallife violence to broader questions about the place of media discourses of violence in the context of real-world violence, especially in the form of terrorism and war. Nonviolence, like cultural studies,

shows how certain narrow, historically and culturally specific ideological views of violence become naturalized in media discourses into appearing as natural, universal, and commonsensical. However, nonviolence derives from a broader set of concerns than cultural studies in that it is driven by an ethical imperative not only toward politics or social justice, but also toward the recognition and reduction of the conditions of violence in the real world. Nonviolence, in other words, informs media studies with the critical intellectual resources to contest the naturalization of violence in media discourses and by extension the consequences in the real world of such discourses as well.

Violence in Media Studies

Violence in the media has been a long-standing concern of researchers, regulators, parents, and media creators. Even in the early years of mass media, concerns about the possible impact of violent depictions in media leading to real-life violence appeared from time to time. One of the earliest large-scale media research projects, the Payne Fund Studies of cinema, examined among other topics the possible relation between juvenile delinquency and movie watching, lending support to public concerns that children engaging in criminal behavior may have been influenced by movies. By the 1950s, concerns about crime and media had extended to comic books with their graphic depictions of crime, violence, and sexuality, leading to Senate investigations on the topic as well. In the following decade, as concerns about social and political unrest grew, television violence was studied elaborately as part of a broader commission on violence. Since the 1980s, popular music and music videos have come under scrutiny and criticism, most notably from the efforts of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center, for allegedly promoting violence and glorifying criminal lifestyles. In more recent years, the graphic depiction of gory violence in video games has been a matter of concern as well, especially in the wake of unexpected acts of mass violence like

those in Columbine High School. Although most concerns about media violence have revolved around graphic portrayal and possible imitation by audiences, somewhat different concerns have emerged about the media’s role in representing another form of violence: war. Television news was criticized for sanitizing coverage of the 1991 Gulf War, and media coverage since the attacks of September 2001 and the subsequent war on Iraq have all been critiqued a great deal from various standpoints.

Causality and Effects Research

Violence in the media has been a long standing concern in public debates about the media. However, theoretical approaches to its study have varied. The question of causality, which often underlies debates on violence in the media, has been more central to some theoretical approaches than others. Effects research sought to investigate the causal hypothesis closely, employing rigorous laboratory methodologies and experiments. The findings of such studies have not necessarily provided closure on the question of whether media violence causes real-life violence. According to one review of such studies, roughly the same percentage of lab experiments claim evidence for and against the existence of media effects, and a fairly large percentage of experiments find no evidence either way. Despite the enduring importance of the causal question in debates about media violence, other questions have since emerged to usefully guide the field in its engagement with this topic.

Cultivation Research

Cultivation research sought to shift the focus of inquiry from immediate, short-term, behavioral responses in laboratory settings toward more naturalistic, long-term influences of the media environment on audience perceptions of reality in general. The work of George Gerbner has explored various aspects of media violence in terms of institutional imperatives, textual features, and audience perceptions. Gerbner’s critique begins with the recognition of the institutional factors that lead to the production of what he calls commercialized violence on television, refuting the common argument made by media producers that they are merely responding to the market’s demand for violence. The critique of commercialized violence has been supported by numerous extensive content analyses of television violence, which show a skewed world of characters and interactions. Cultivation theory does not propose a direct model of causal influences from this skewed world upon its audiences, however. Following Gerbner’s predilection for approaching television as storytelling, cultivation examines the broader sensibilities about violence that television viewing cultivates on a long-term basis. Cultivation research suggests that violence in the media does not cause real-life violence, but certainly affects the way audiences think about

real-life issues, including violence and crime. In particular, heavy television viewers tend to believe television’s overrepresentation of crime and violence and overestimate real-life violence more than light viewers (the mean-world syndrome), leading to criticism that the cultivation of fear by a media environment skewed by commercialized violence has led to support for harsh law-and-order policies and politics.

Cultural Studies

Cultural studies approaches to media violence have been concerned with shifting the focus of debate from moral panics and questions of causality towards a discussion of the meanings of media violence in everyday life. Some scholars have questioned the validity of the notion of media violence altogether, preferring to approach it not so much in terms of its relationship to real-life violence, but more so as one more element in the production of media texts. From this approach, media violence is seen on the same terms as say, music, lighting, drama, or comedy, and not as the object of public concerns. Cultural studies approaches have also engaged with other dimensions of media violence sometimes neglected in other approaches, such as aesthetics and pleasure. At the same time, cultural studies approaches seek to situate violence within broader discussions of politics and power as well, particularly in terms of class, race, and gender. Following the important role played by television during the 1991 Gulf War, scholars sought to bring together the concerns of cultural studies and cultivation research. Justin Lewis called for empirical audience research using cultivation’s precise techniques, but informed by cultural studies’ broader philosophical and political predilections. His study with Michael Morgan examined the way American audiences thought about war in relation to their knowledge, or lack thereof, of U.S. politics and foreign policy. Later studies demonstrated how violence in the form of war was made acceptable to the public through selective media discourses and misinformation. The attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were also examined in numerous studies about the role of media and particularly television. Drawing on some of the approaches discussed above and using methodologies such as content analysis, scholars offered critiques among other things of the news media’s complicity in taking a brand marketing rather than a serious journalistic approach to the coverage of war.

Summary

Although recent theoretical approaches in media studies have broadened the discussion of violence from a focus on instances of violent actions in the media and their possible causal relation to individual acts of aggressive behavior, certain fundamental questions remain about the deeper assumptions that underlie how violence is considered. Certain assumptions about violence in media and media studies have been traced to larger paradigms in modern intellectual history, associated most notably with Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud. For example, the unquestioned use of ideas such as survival of the fittest in a range of popular culture and everyday life contexts from reality shows to wildlife programs may be related to a narrow interpretation of Darwin that emphasizes the role of conflict and competition at the expense of cooperation and coexistence. Certain approaches in media studies, such as effects research, may be based directly or indirectly on Freudian assumptions about aggression and violence. Even in critical approaches that engage more explicitly with broader themes of social history, violence may be treated as secondary to other master concepts. For example, cultural studies critiques may approach media violence essentially as a symptom of a wider social and political condition, such as a capitalist political economy, in which commercial media fail in their duties towards informing democratic citizenry and may not explicitly question certain assumptions about violence itself. A more direct engagement with the question of violence in media and media studies may be possible by turning to the philosophy of nonviolence.

Nonviolence

Violence in the media can be critiqued, from the perspective of nonviolence, in a manner that engages some of the foundational assumptions about violence in nature and human history. Nonviolence illumines violence in the media and how it constitutes the social, political, and economic relations of modern society. In order to appreciate how nonviolence works as a critique of violence, it is useful to dispel some common misperceptions about it. Modern and Western observers sometimes conflate nonviolence with pacifism and see it only as a political tactic. Other simplifications view it as a personal belief in refraining from retaliating when harmed. However, the political, tactical, and personal dimensions of nonviolence are only a part of a much wider philosophy that grapples with violence and existence at various levels ranging from the spiritual to the environmental.

Origins

Known in Sanskrit as Ahimsa, nonviolence is associated with three religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent: Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. In more recent and modern contexts, nonviolence has been interpreted extensively in Gandhian thought. Gandhi’s explication of nonviolence was by no means confined to his own Hindu upbringing, but emerged from his encounters with it in other traditions as well, ranging from other religions to the writings of Leo Tolstoy. Although Gandhian nonviolence has gained global appeal for its political implications, what is relevant to students of social sciences is the broader critique of modernity as a way of life and a way of knowing, a critique often taken up in postcolonial approaches as well.

Gandhi’s Critique of Violence and Modernity

Gandhi viewed nonviolence not merely as a tool for political protest, but as a universal truth. Truth, for Gandhi, was inseparable from nonviolence, and virtually a paramount ideal. Having once said that God is truth, Gandhi later began to say that truth is God. From this perspective, Gandhian thought sees nonviolence as an essential method for understanding the truth of things and conversely, sees as truth the innate nonviolence of nature and humanity. Gandhi, in other words, viewed violence as an aberration from nature and from human nature. He attributed the pervasiveness of violence in contemporary society largely to modernity’s ways of knowing and living. Modern science, for him, failed to apprehend truth because of its avoidance of emotional experience and ethical guidance in observation leading to partial knowledge at best, and a tolerance for untold cruelty at worst. Modernity, or what he often called modern civilization, was an expression of violence at every level, from intrapersonal violence in the form of fear, selfishness, and competitiveness to interpersonal violence between groups and nations, and finally violence in numerous forms against nature in general. For Gandhi, European imperialism was an expression of this violence rather than the other way around. It was a failure of knowledge as much as a failure of ethics.

Nonviolence as a Critique of Violence

Gandhian nonviolence did not, however, advocate a total rejection of either modernity or the social world, but instead informed his engagement with both in the form of his notions of universalism and of social and environmental justice. Gandhi, in a sense, broadened nonviolence from a religious philosophy and practice into a critical social philosophy. Scholars have described two forms of nonviolence in his thought: heroic nonviolence, which is more akin to religious renunciation in a spirit of martyrdom even, and civic nonviolence, which is engaged with the world in all its forms. As part of such a worldly engagement, nonviolence became for Gandhi not only a strategy, but a critique of violence as well, premised on one key intellectual and ethical recognition: that completely avoiding violence may be impossible, but minimizing it was not only possible but necessary.

Gandhian nonviolence may be summarized as follows: (a) Truth and nonviolence are identical, implying that only the avoidance of harmful thoughts and intentions could lead us to understand the truth, and conversely, that human nature is in its true form nonviolent (implying that violence is thus an aberration); (b) even if human nature is in its true form, human existence, like any life in nature, is based on some amount of violence for its sustenance that cannot be completely eliminated, but human beings have an obligation to nature and society to minimize the violence their existence imposes on the world; (c) minimizing violence is thus the main ethical imperative of nonviolence, and doing so requires an ability to recognize the conditions of our existence in terms of environmental, economic, or political relations, and this ability is better derived from a plurality of cultural perspectives rather than a singular or unilateral one (e.g., by seeking universal sensibility among different religions rather than proclaiming the superiority of any one over the others).

Nonviolence in Media Studies

Nonviolence draws attention to the broader assumptions media may be naturalizing about violence and human nature. From the perspective of nonviolence, media discourses seem to depict violence as something natural, eternal, and inevitable. Three themes have been proposed for further research on this note: nature, history, and culture. Nature may be largely seen as violent by media audiences because of the overrepresentation of hunting and killing in wildlife programs and the subsequent glorification of the same in titles and promos. History may be seen as more violent than it was, once again because of the selective emphasis placed on weapons and battles in certain television-history genres. Culture may be seen as a cause of conflict especially in the context of the rise of the clash-of-civilizations thesis as an explanation for recent conflicts.

However, each of these themes finds specific critical refutation in Gandhian nonviolence. Gandhi’s distinction between acknowledging the existence of violence in nature and accepting all violence as somehow natural, shows how media discourses may skew the representation of the place of violence in nature altogether. Gandhi’s views on history are also instructive; he argued that if history appears as a sequence of wars, it is not because it was innately violent, but because

these wars stand out at as exceptions to an otherwise peaceful course. Finally, Gandhi’s views on cultural differences and causes of conflict provide a strong critique of the clash-of-civilizations argument. For Gandhi, cultural differences were not

the real source of conflict since he believed deeply in a universal notion of humanity. Violence, according to him, arose when there was an alienation within from that humanity, caused, for example, by modern industrial civilization, and not by mere differences in faith or culture.Nonviolence in media studies thus broadens the scope of the discussion on violence, in the media, and in real life. It shifts the focus from direct, behavioral effects, and instead approaches media depictions of violence as part of a broader cultural problem that stands in the way of a more truthful recognition of the conditions of real-life violence. It adds to the findings of cultivation research about the implications of systemic media messages for audiences and to cultural studies’ broader concerns about violence as a category of popular understanding. It provides a theoretical foothold to engage with media violence not merely in terms of instances of depictions of violent actions, but in terms of broader discourses such as accounts of conflict and war in general. In particular, it enables a close reading of popular contemporary media mythologies about violence, nature, civilizational difference, and war. Finally, nonviolence encourages a more central place for violence within theories of communication in particular and society in general rather than as a secondary consequence of other master concepts by following the Gandhian injunction to recognize and minimize violence as a condition of existence.

Vamsee Juluri

See alsoCultivation Theory; Cultural Studies; Hindu

Communication Theory; Media Effects Theories; Peace

Theories; Postcolonial Theory; Public Opinion Theories

Senin, 21 Desember 2015