a film screen, we always see a complete visual image, even if only for a brief instant (one fiftieth to one seventy-fifth of a second), but the presence of a visual image alternates with periods of nearly equal length in which no image is present. On a television screen, we never see a complete image, since there is never more than a dot of light on the screen at any one time.
3.With film, the brain does not “fill in” the image on the screen—it fills in the motion between the images. With television, the brain must fill in (or recall) 99 percent of the image at any given moment, since the full image is never present on the screen.
Watching television, the eye is for the first time functioning like the ear. Film began the process of fracturing visual images into bits of information for the eye to receive and the brain to reassemble, but television completed the transition. For this reason, it is more accurate to say that television is an auditory based medium. Watching TV, the brain utilizes the eye in the same way it has always used the ear. With television, the patterning of auditory and visual stimuli is identical.
Media and Violence
There has been great concern about the effects of TV on children. If we found more violence only by children against other children, or by children against adults, there might be reason to investigate the harmful influence of TV on children. But the increased violence in our world is among all groups, including adults to other adults, adults to children, and by our society toward other societies. If there is a relation between TV and violence, it must be on a broad societal level, not just in relation to children.
Specific content on TV, in itself, does not foster violence. There has been a good deal of research attempting to show a stimulus-response relation between seeing an act of violence on TV and imitating that behavior in real life. Although some psychologists have managed to create this effect in a controlled laboratory situation, there is no evidence in society’s laboratory that supports such a conclusion. There is no increase in the number of gasoline stations robbed the day after thirty-six million people watch such a robbery on “Ironside.” And the news coverage of a skyjacking or murder does not cause others to imitate this behavior.
TV fosters violence, first, by conditioning people to respond instantly to stimuli in their everyday lives, and by focusing people’s attention on the current moment. On TV, the only thing that exists is the current, momentary dot of light or sound vibration—each exists for a millisecond. People develop an orientation to everyday life based on the patterning of electronic information. We become very impatient in situations where information does not move at electronic speed. And we process new information instantly, rather than think out decisions. The increased violence in our society is generated by impulsive reactions to stimuli in a situation. This is largely a perceptual problem. We seek meaning in the world that conforms to the perceptual patterning of electronic media.
Second, constant exposure to TV over a period of time, and the sharing of TV stimuli by everyone in the society, creates a reservoir of common media experiences that are stored in our brains. In a group situation, commonly shared media experiences may overpower the previous non-media experiences of each member of the group as the basis on which a collective response will be formulated. The same is true for interpersonal encounters that must later be communicated to many people. It is easier to explain or justify action based on some experience we share with others. For example, in a political demonstration, there may be a flare-up between a policeman and one demonstrator. Seeing this, other demonstrators may refer the incident to the body of stored personal experiences where similar incidents took place. Their previous personal experiences will all be different, and therefore are not likely to foster an instantaneous collective response. However, if they refer what they see to previous media experiences of seeing demonstrations (commonly shared by all who watch TV), a collective reaction is more likely. Furthermore, since TV tends to show violent moments in demonstrations, the stored media experiences of people in the crowd makes violence commonly available to everyone in the group—as an appropriate collective reaction.
In addition, media depiction of the good life as typical throughout our society contradicts the everyday experiences of many people. This can be an element conducive to violent behavior, when people who do not experience the good life attempt to get what everyone has. Here too, constant exposure to TV makes certain solutions to this dilemma commonly available. The important point here is that we will get nowhere if we try to establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between TV and violence in society. TV has a very mild effect in one sense—it makes certain knowledge available to us. The strength of the effect lies in TV’s ability to make this knowledge available to everyone.
Truth is a Print Ethic
Truth, as a social value, is a product of print. In preliterate tribal cultures, the truth or falsity of a statement is not as important as whether it conforms to the religious and social beliefs of the society. Similarly, during the greater part of the Middle Ages, an imprimatur by the Church superseded any question of truth or validity regarding printed material. As print became a mass medium, literacy emerged as a social value. In order to learn about the world and communicate this knowledge to others, a person had to be literate. But men soon realized that print information, unlike other sensory data, could be true or false, fiction or nonfiction. Philosophers and men of letters spent a great deal of time and energy on this question, and truth emerged as an important social value (though the “white lie” was reserved for those occasions when another social value took precedence over truth). They did not recognize that truth is a particular problem in one medium of communication: the printed word.
No one ever asked of a Steichen photograph, “Is it true or false?” And no one would apply a truth standard in analyzing a Picasso painting. Yet no one would argue that a painting or photograph cannot communicate important and powerful meaning. Likewise, the question of truth is largely irrelevant when dealing with electronic media content. People do not watch Bonanza to find out about the Old West. So it makes no sense to ask if the program is a true depiction of that historical period. And we could not ask whether a children’s cartoon program is true.
We can and should ask about the effects of television and radio programming. Electronic communication deals primarily with effects. The problem is that no “grammar” for electronic media effects has been devised. Electronic media have been viewed merely as extensions of print, and therefore subject to the same grammar and values as print communication. The patterned auditory and visual information on television or radio is not “content.” Content is a print term, subject to the truth-falsity issue. Auditory and visual information on television or radio are stimuli that affect a viewer or listener. As stimuli, electronically mediated communication cannot be analyzed in the same way as print “content.” A whole new set of questions must be asked, and a new theory of communication must be formulated.
The problem of applying a truth-falsity paradigm to electronic communication is illustrated most clearly in the case of advertising. Periodically, the Federal Trade Commission clamps down on advertisers, demanding that they substantiate the truthfulness of their claims. How, they ask, can three different headache remedies claim to get into the bloodstream the fastest? And how can every brand of toothpaste claim to make teeth whiter than any other brand of toothpaste? Advertising agencies, forked tongue in cheek, respond by assuring the FTC that truth is essential if they are to convince the public to buy a product. Ironically, the ad agencies are very much concerned with truth, but they simply want to appear truthful. However, both the FTC and the agencies are dealing with an irrelevant issue. Neither understands the structure of electronic communication. They are dealing with TV and radio as extensions of print media, with the principles of literacy setting the ground rules for truth, honesty, and clarity.
Many advertising agencies believe that if a claim is accepted as true, the product
