Charlie Booker’s ‘How TV Ruined Your Life is an cynical look at how TV focusses on especially terrifying and macabre events – giving the impression that world is a much more dangerous, violent, and risky place than it actually is. It’s on iplayer for the next ten days only. Glad I taped it!

I could live without the ‘humourous reconstructions’ but the analysis is basically sound – focussing mainly on the different genres of ‘panic TV’ – from the 1960s Public Information Films, children’s television (anyone remember Noseybonk?), of course crime fiction, crime watch, all the way through to the ‘how aweful it would be if there was a nuclear attack type programmes’.  

There’s a nice summary of some research by Gerbner and Gross – who, in the 1970s researched the effects of TV on viewers. They developed ‘cultivation theory’ – the idea that Television alters an individuals perception of reality. Booker paraphrases this hypothesis by saying that because television focusses mainly on dramatic, violent and alarming news stories, then those that watch a lot of TV are more likely to accept the view that the world is a violent place.

Gerbner and Gross did actually find that heavy media viewers were more likely to perceive the world as riskier – they were, for example, more likely to think crime was going up even if it was going down.

Of course there are all sorts of problems with measuring media affects…. but that’s for another time….

 

 

If you want something much better about fear and society more generally – check out ‘The Power of Nightmares’ –