It’s Not the Media

Unrestricted sociality is what we enjoy nowadays on facebook – well, if we enjoy it; as according to our own experience with the cacophony of voices that interrupt our life or streams of thoughts at any given moment might not be perceived as so enjoyable, once it becomes rather overwhelming and uncontrolled. However as pointed out in the article, the control mechanisms on facebook, which after all might become necessary to regulate the permanent and incoming stream of statements and information, tend to take us to a kind of social spear that differs largely from our experiences in real life social spaces. It starts with the self definition, our original avatar with all its possible updates and news feed combined, creating a picture of a virtual self, that only allows to show ‘that much’ to each selected group/friend, according to the restrictions set by the user.
Other social roles are redefined too, compared to real life: An online friend is no longer a friend in a traditional sense, who, when met by us personally, would cause us to expect a variety of social situations to occur. Online facebook friends are highly regulated roles, and they are subject to control and censorships and can easily be ignored and shunned altogether, if one wishes – which ultimately will not trigger any negative feedback, as these mechanisms go unnoticed by the ‘friend’.
What I found interesting about this article was the discussion about the two perspectives on total openness versus restricted settings and their consequences. I agree that in areas, where we wish to achieve a genuine and authentic contact with people, we should abstain from restrictions, while in different settings concerning life situations or perspectives, we might be better of opting for a strongly restricted page. I am actually myself in this situation with my two facebook accounts. One of them is dedicated to promote my restaurant and to inform people about what is new to our offers and menu. This kind of site, for obvious reasons cannot fulfill its purpose in a raw openness with all kinds of risks of permeation. My second site, which even though it carries my name and some personal identifying information is primarily used for political activities and activism related to my home country Egypt. The personal information given is much selected to serve the purpose to demonstrate that behind this account is a real life person. News feeds are mainly dedicated to promote my latest videos on YouTube, which was originally the reason why I got a facebook page – it serves to reach a broader audience and helps to spread the links to increase the view count, which in return is rewarded by the YouTube search engine that positions your video according to the number of views. However, my ‘personal’ page has little restrictions and I actually encourage people to contribute in whatever way they see fit and to challenge my views. In this case the updates are considered useful information about the events I need to stay informed about in order to stay connected and involved in the discussions. I imagine the personal accounts I usually see in facebook are often created in a desire of sharing personal facts with others and therefore the need of filters is imminent; I especially see this need - and wish that these filter would be used more - when I check out potential employees’ facebook pages.  Another kind of accout, I often discover is what I call the campaigner account. These accounts are usually either empty avatars who through their restricted use only promote one certain kind of message (the person may have more than one and be friend with each other) or a rather obvious generic high pixel picture (taken form the internet?!) with some quotes or superficial texts trying to give the impression of a real person behind this account, which is then used again for only one specific subject over and over.  Discussing the different uses and purposes of facebook would be one interesting field of research.



A powerful and highly monopolized media, owned and directed by the upper class is according to Gregory Mantsios, behind the distorted perception of class in America. Even though about 50% of Americans are blue collar workers, the manipulative covering of class issues keeps the majority of Americans in the belief that they are all members of a large middle class, whose interests are ultimately and falsely transformed into the interests of the wealthy and rich. Through this strategy the rich are able to preserve the impression that their interests are the interests of the entire nation, and consequently the ‘right’ ones. By creating the ‘we’, an ‘other’ is automatically born. The ‘others’ are the poor, who are represented in the media through a mostly racist, demeaning, condescending and patronizing lens. Rarely, does one get to hear about the underlying reasons and mechanisms that cause their poverty, but often is one confronted with the ‘ugly image’ of poverty instead and the claims that these conditions are ultimately self inflicted or by ‘friendly fire’ of the otherwise successful system.
Ultimately, these distorted class perceptions only serve the rich, who are eager to keep the status quo, as this is the state that is most favorable for them. Change is not in their interest and as the owners of the media outlets, they are not going to initiate or promote change; as the author remarks, lobbying is not even necessary as they are already part of the ‘ruling wealthy class’. This situation is –in my opinion – even aggravated through the fact that the USA does not allow foreign media broadcast in America. While in most countries of the world, citizens have access to foreign media with its differing perspectives on certain issues, Americans completely lack this outlook. That makes them especially easy victims for those, who are trying to stay on the top through manipulation and deception of the masses.

  In Muslim Americans Represented in the News before and after 9/11, the authors are trying to shed light on the change in media coverage and content concerning American Muslims in the times before and after 9/11. They assert that after 9/11, the media covered more background and contextual stories about Muslim Americans, and as a result they claim to have observed an increase in positive perception by Americans towards their Muslim counterparts – until 2002.
I am honestly very doubtful, that this small lens these authors are choosing here should be truly considered research. First of all, they themselves fall into stereotypes and assumptions that cannot stand like this and as researchers they should know to question those assumptions: They are assuming that 9/11 was committed by Muslims without knowledge or participation of the American side. This is something that has not been clearly proven until today and many voices –and not just those of conspiracy theorists – have been increasingly bringing forward evidence that the story told is not the entire one. Secondly, they continue the Muslim-Terrorist stereotype as a prerequisite for their study. This stereotype has its origin in the years following the end of the Cold War and has been fed through the media ever since. At no point do the authors take the time to explain this or the circumstances that lead to this stereotype, neither do they weight the possibility that all this might have to do a lot with politics but not with religion.
The worst thing however is the study itself and the sources used as evidence to establish the results. Their lens is the American Muslim, and their data are the articles about American Muslims. At no time are they considering the entity of articles on Muslims (don’t forget that the US went to war right away with Afghanistan and was preparing for the Iraq invasion). Not only did they not count them, but they obviously did not evaluate them either. American Muslims do not live in a vacuum. Those people who made themselves available to the media and supplied the media with insights into what it means to be a Muslim in America were reading articles about Muslims abroad just or even more eagerly than the average American. And what they read most of the times was disturbing, and did not leave them any other chance, but to try to go public and defend their position as Americans. If they achieved a shift in the degree of perception and if –temporarily, as they authors stop their observations at 2002 – then that was linked exclusively to their group, but it might be especially in their case a result of a massive effort to counter the allegations and vilifications, they had to witness in the media every day.
Another problem of this study lies in the naïve assumption that there should be a distinction between positive and negative coverage. The problem with this assumption is first of all the determination of the criteria by with to distinguish positive form negative. But leaving this aside, if a group is already stereotyped in a negative way, it matters little most of the time, if the following report about them is positive or not. What it is more likely to achieve is to remind the audience of their existing experiences and stigmas related to this group and the positive will –in their perception- thereby turn into negative stereotype confirming affirmation. They also fail to consider that there is a common phenomena in stigmatization and generalization, when people tend to see the human face or their neighbor or coworker, friend or acquaintance, they might call them the ‘exception’ while anyone else of their group stays the ‘other’ because of lack of opportunity for humanization. This is most likely what the American Muslims temporarily achieved, letting the human face take predominance over the perception of the ‘other’.
I am also aware that after the events of 9/11 an increased number of Americans decided to convert to Islam;  I believe though that this was due to an outstanding effort of some American Muslim communities to battle the stereotyping and the vilification as terrorists that are still in use worldwide today. They serve one single purpose though: to create a sense of ‘us’ against the ‘other’ to justify and seemingly legalize political decisions and actions that are morally and ethically not justifiable. These stereotypes serve a political agenda and maybe some Americans were smart enough to see through this.


  The article ‘It’s Not the Media’ was interesting in so far as the author wants to revive the discussion about the effects of violence in the media on children. He challenges that there might be other reasons for the general focus on the subject of violence in American media and its effects on children. Karen Steinheimer argues that instead of addressing the real and more likely causes for violence, society prefers to concentrate on the TV violence as the culprit rather than facing the realities. She also makes a point that for the sake of this assumption, the discussion should stay open to gain deeper insights into the subject.
While I do not agree with all of her argumentations, especially the one that she expresses on neuroscientific studies and related behavior studies, I agree that TV violence is not the only or main reason for violence in children. She is also right to insist that an academic discussion is based on the cycle of result and doubt and updated results, and should therefore be held in an open-minded and controversy accepting atmosphere in order to serve the advancement of perspectives, ideas and insights. The results of our research should not be determined by their acceptability for the mainstream thinking or by avoiding to raise controversial issues and their true origins, like reasons for poverty or malfunctioning of public institutions. No society does itself a favor covering up failures instead of addressing its causes and working on them.