Covers a wide range of literature from Media framing and moral panics to contemporary disruption from social media, esports, online communities, and fake news.

1. State, Society, and
Culture
Week 10: Popular culture and the media

2. Structure:
 Why the media is important?
 Media framing
 Moral panics
 Traditional media – the decline of UK newspapers
 The Internet and Web 2.0
 Cultural changes – eSports
 Online communities
 Memetics

3. Importance of the media
 Media informs the public about issues in society
 Holds the powerful to account
 Builds public understanding of policy debates
 Frames public discourse
 Serves elite interests – builds consent for war or support for policy against the
public’s own self interest
 Commercial pressure
 Moral panics

4. Media framing
 All information is framed
 This process is an inherent part of media coverage due to the constraints of space
and time as a result Nisbet (2009, p. 15) argues that there is simply “… no such
thing as unframed information…”.
 Frames form the storylines that communicate an event or issue to the public of “…
why an issue might be a problem, who or what might be responsible for it, and
what should be done about it” (Nisbet, 2009, p. 15).
 Framing of information is very powerful for influencing perceptions of societal
issues.
 Sets the agenda for popular discourse

5. Statement “Imagine that the U.S. is preparing
for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease,
which is expected to kill 600 people”
 Participants were offered two potential solutions:
 “If Program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If Program B is adopted, there
is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability
that no people will be saved. Which of the two programs would you favour?”
 The majority of participants selected option A (72%). This was followed with
the choice between two other solutions:
 “If Program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If Program D is adopted, there is a
one-third probability that nobody will die and a two-thirds probability that 600
people will die”.
 Despite these being the same options as before program C only received 22
per cent of the vote with program D receiving 78 per cent (Entman, 1993, p.
54).

6. Framing of stem cell research
 Nisbet and Goidel (2007) into the impact of the framing of coverage of the
embryonic stem cell research focused on two main discourse frames.
 The coverage was framed as either an issue related to ‘Christian morality’ or
‘social and economic progress’.
 Individuals who viewed media outlets which took the discourse frame of an issue to
‘Christian morality’ were more likely to have a negative view of stem cell
research, while those viewing media outlets which used the frame that stem cell
research was social and economic progress were more likely to be supportive.
 Through selective use of media there is the additional effect of the media
spiral reinforcing pre-existing beliefs and attitudes (Slater, 2007).

7. Information processing
 Frames (or sometimes referred to in literature as schemas) are the unconscious
neural structures in the brain that process all information we receive (Lakoff,
2010).
 These frames are used for “all thinking and talking…” which develop, change and
strengthen over time (Lakoff, 2010, p. 71). These developed frames process issues
thematically which links to a direct frame and also “… closely related concepts
such as categories, scripts, or stereotypes connote mentally stored clusters of
ideas that guide individuals’ processing of information” (Dunaway et al., 2010,
Entman, 1993, p. 53).
 A study by Hoffman et al. (2016, p. 4) found that decision making of pain
management treatments were effected by racial biases in American medical
students.
 “… many white medical students and residents hold beliefs about the biological
difference between blacks and whites, many of which are false or fantastical in
nature…”.
 This bias in processing information from the patient’s condition resulted in reduced
accuracy of pain treatments when treating black patients due to these irrational beliefs
in racial differences.

8. Moral panics
 The population becomes concerned over
a new trend
 Media reporting increases and creates
moral panic
 Examples:
 Video games cause violence/school
shootings
 Video nasties – violent/disturbing (horror
films) films cause a break down of society
and violence.

9. Dungeons and Dragons

10. Dungeons and Dragons
 1980s there was a moral panic about the impact of D&D
 US centric with the Christian right leading the charge
 Panic that D&D was leading young people into Satanism and the
occult
 Bizarre claims that it would lead to young people committing
suicide
 Popular culture attacks
 For example the Mazes and Monsters film
 1984 Chick Tracks – Dark Dungeons comic

15. Popular culture
Cultural attitudes have changes with D&D referenced
in popular culture.

17. Moral panic summary
 While the example used seems absurd to us there are examples where moral
panics are about issues that exist
 Violence in schools etc
 Moral panics benefit both politicians and the news media
 These stories sell papers/get people to tune into the news
 Politicians can push for political change that would otherwise lack popular support
 Internet regulation is a good example of this

18. Traditional media – Decline of UK
newspapers
 Daily circulation figures are in decline.
 We have already seen the failure of the Independent which moved to online
only after their attempt at increasing sales with the ‘I’ newspaper backfired
and further reduced The Independents daily circulation.
 Tradition media is in competition with the Internet and losing.
 Why buy a newspaper when you can read the same content online for free?

20. Information society
Masuda (1980, p. 33): “The spirit of the information
society will be the spirit of globalism, a symbiosis in which
man and nature can live together in harmony, consisting
of strict self-discipline and social contribution.”
Bell (1973) instead argues that we are moving towards an
information based economy (Post industrialisation).
Equivalent to the industrial revolution.

21. Employment by industry in England and
Wales
0.0
10.0
20.0
30.0
40.0
50.0
60.0
70.0
80.0
90.0
1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011
%ofpeopleworkinginindustry
Year
Agriculture and fishing
Energy and water
Construction
Manufacturing
Services
Note: This graph was produced with data from Office for National Statistics
(2013). Important to note that Data for the year 1971 is not available so a trend
line has been used.

22. Critique of the information society
literature
 While visionary there were a number of
issues:
 Economically deterministic
 Environmental problems have gotten far
worse with electronic waste contributing
significantly
 Consumerism has remained
 We have simply moved dirty industry outside
of the West
 However, our society has changed with the
emergence of information technology and
especially the Internet.

23. The emergence of the Internet
 Early users in the 1980s were academics
 Viewed as a key way to share information
 By 1994 commercial users “… outnumbered academics on the internet by a
two-to-one ratio” (Everard, 2000, p. 19).
 Despite the Dot.com implosion the Internet kept growing and developing

24. Internet users per 100 people
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
80.00
90.00
100.00
Per100people
Year
Global average
United Kingdom
United States

25. Web 2.0
 Web 2.0 resulted in the emergence of social networking and online
communities with distance no longer being a limiting factor in the sharing of
knowledge and values
 Before Web 2.0 the Internet was an imitation of paper
 Benefits:
 Democratisation of information
 Online communities
 Perpetual awareness campaigns

26. Significance of the Internet
 Has absorbed every form of media and created new forms
 Radio
 Television
 Pod casts
 Blogs/vlogs
 Etc
 The loss of gatekeepers and the democratisation of information
 The rise of social media

27. Number of google searches
Note: Data taken from Statistic Brain (2016). There is missing data for 2001 through

28. UK Social media use by age
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
2007 2009 2011 2013 2014
%ofUKInternetusers
Year
16-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65+
Note: Data from Ofcom (2015, p. 32).

29. Web 2.0
 We have seen rapid and large scale changes with Web 2.0
 Cultural shifts
 Online communities
 Fake news
 Personalisation of the Internet experience
 Memetics

30. Cultural changes – eSports!

31. Esports continued – 4chan cup

32. Online communities
 Empowering users
 Especially those suffering from health issues
 Bringing together people with shared interests to share knowledge
 This can result in some surprising results and examples.
 The 4chan cup is an interesting example considering the users on the board are
completely anonymous.

33. Gamergate and organised
harassment campaigns
 What happened?
 Kickstarter campaign started by Anita Sarkeesian, asking
for $6,000 to fund a video series examining female
representations in video games
 Targeted by prolonged and still ongoing hate campaign.
 “… her Wikipedia page was vandalized, she was sent
(and continues to receive) rape and death threats,
images were posted of her being raped by video game
characters, and a flash game was created that allowed
players to “Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian” by clicking a
picture of her until it turned into a bloody pulp” (Shaw,
2014, p. 3).

35. Beat up Anita Sarkeesian game

36. Online harassment and online
communities
 Unfortunately it has become possible for users to organise within communities
to spread hate campaigns.
 However, there is a bright side to this example. Thanks to the media
attention created by the vile hate campaign she raised far beyond what she
original asked for and brought a great deal of visibility of the portrayal of
women in video games.

37. Fake news
 The loss of gate keepers means that there is a significant issue that fake
information is shared online.
 4chan Iphone jokes

38. Kony 2012

39. Anti vaccination movement
 Have successfully used the Internet to spread doubt
 Operate over social media
 Virally share false information
 Use scare tactics to produce worry over the safety of vaccinations.

40. Personalisation of the Internet
experience
 Algorithms tailor the Internet experience
 Google searches
 Facebook
 Instagram
 Even Twitter
 Personalisation
 Bubbles

41. Memetics
 Originally the term comes from Richard Dawkins
 However, we don’t study culture as small blocks
 The Internet adopted the term meme later.
 A meme is a image, video, or website virally shared online.

42. Memes a method of serious debate or
just entertainment?
 For example:
 A search for the term ‘Climate change’ produces 60 image results on Know
Your Meme with many not being relevant
 In contrast a search for ‘My Little Pony’ produces 230,323 images on Know
your meme

44. Model for virally successful content

45. Successful memes

46. Mutability

47. Re-emergence of memes
 Spooky Skeleton meme emerges each Halloween.

48. Conclusion
 There is a decline and disruption of traditional media
 New media offers new opportunities, but also poses new issues
 Fake news and information overload are significant issues that we need to
deal with.

49. Recommended reading
 ENTMAN, R. M. 1993. Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm.
Journal of Communication, 43, 51-58.
 HOFFMAN, K. M., TRAWALTER, S., AXT, J. R. & OLIVER, M. N. 2016. Racial bias in
pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about
biological differences between blacks and whites. PNAS, 1-6.
 NISBET, M. C. 2009. Communicating climate change: why frames matter for public
engagement Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 51,
12-23.
 NISBET, M. C. & GOIDEL, R. K. 2007. Understanding citizen perceptions of science
controversy: bringing the ethnographic - survey research divide. Public
Understanding of Science, 16, 421-440.
 SLATER, M. D. 2007. Reinforcing spirals: the mutual influence of media selectivity
and media effects and their impact on individual behavior and social identity.
Communication Theory, 281-303.