Mass Media No Doubt Dominates the World Today

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Mass media no doubt dominates the world today. It has a very firm grip on something that we call persuasion. It can make the audience believe in anything it wants to. It can spread information as well as disinformation. Some of the biggest propagandas of the world have been known to have started by mass media. If we talk about film, specifically, we have to admit that it is the kind of a medium which may not only entertain the audience but with its fusion of appealing visuals and music, it may inspire or we can say subliminally make its audience believe in something that was intended for the audience to start believing in or in other words psychologically impose an opinion on the audience. Films may also escalate hostile behavior in people. Some researchers have actually conducted experiments to prove that some films have encouraged violent means of solving social problems or conflicts.

What are Propaganda films? 

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Propaganda films are films which provide information that may be politically biased or in simple words films which are intended to make the audience be pro or against something. They may be animations, documentaries or proper fictional feature films which are financed by political parties, the government or the army in some cases. A very good example of propaganda films is Walt Disney’s production during World War II. Walt Disney contributed to the war by producing propaganda films for the US army and the military to inspire them and to win the public’s support for the war. The war films would be focused on anti-German or anti-Japanese sentiment. The government approached Disney more than any other studio at that time to request him to produce war films for each and every sect of the military and the government. Some of the films that he produced were “Der Fuehrer’s face” which was an episode of the famous “Donald Duck” series and the film aimed to mock Nazi culture and Hitler. Another very famous episode of the Donald Duck series was “Commando Duck” in which Donald the duck destroys a Japanese airbase. “Education for death-making of a Nazi” was a wartime film which was about a German boy named Hans who is exposed to Nazi culture and the more he is exposed and inspired by it , the less he values human life. Such films did build public morale and the training videos that Disney produced for either the Navy , the army air forces or the public did help the government in a lot of ways.

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Have films promoted violence?

A very famous and important research about this subject was conducted by James Weaver and Dolf Zillman at the University of Alabama. They chose 53 male and 40 female college students with different psychological behavior types to see how watching violent films affects their attitude towards decision making. They were asked to watch five films , one each night and judge the film. Half of the films were about problems which were solved without any aggression or violence and half of them were violent films. The students weren’t told what the researchers were actually intending to judge. After watching the films the students were told that the researchers had enough material for their study and now they could participate in another project to earn their full credit. Now in the other project it got very obvious that the hostility in their attitude had escalated. And as a result of watching those films it the hostility in their attitudes remained for a while. Therefore the study proved that watching violent films does actually influence your attitude in a bad way and prolonged exposure to violent films may actually escalate hostile behavior in both men and women.