NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

OF MODERN LANGUAGES

Chapter 8 Review

Presented By:
ZAIN SAQIB 533

Subject: Presented To:

Gender & Media Studies Ma'am Shafaq
About The Book:
The Book Media Effects and Society provides an in-depth look at media effects and offers a theoretical
foundation for understanding mass media's impact on individuals and society. Working from the assumption
that media effects are common and are underestimated, author Elizabeth M. Perse identifies dominant areas of
media effects and provides a synthesis of those areas of research. She focuses on the theoretical explanations
for media effects, offering explanations of how media effects occur so readers can understand how to mitigate
harmful effects and enhance positive ones.
Chapter 8 uses Linz and Malamuth’s (1993) discussion of moralist, feminist, and liberal perspectives on the
effects of sexually explicit materials as an overview of thinking about the effects of pornography. Because most
of the concerns about this sort of content focus on connections to sexual violence, I apply what our field knows
about the effects of media violence to understanding the effects of sexually explicit materials. The chapter
concludes with a discussion of some of the controversies that surround this area of research because they
illuminate some of the larger issues in studying media effects.
 EFFECTS OF SEXUALLY MEDIA CONTENT
Sex is the most used topic in media and its content. Most sexual reference is found in 90% of all television
programs and in 60–75% of all music videos.
Although sexually graphic material can certainly contribute to child sexual socialization, most graphic material is
not as readily available to those audiences as the less explicit content found on television.
Television, unrated movies, adult magazines and books, public-access cable channels, videotapes, and the
WWW all deliver sexual content. It is difficult to get accurate estimates of explicit material availability, but there
are indications that they are widely available and used by a large audience.
Parents, educators, and public policy analysts all try to find ways to channel this explicit content, to keep it from
being easily accessed by younger children. Sexually explicit media content is often referred to as pornography.
In terms of sexual behavior, surveys have found that frequent exposure to sexual media content is associated
with increased reports of intentions to have sex, light sexual behavior (kissing, holding hands), and heavy sexual
behavior, such as intercourse.
 
 THREE RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES ON SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MEDIA
CONTENT
Moralist Perspective
Philosopher Immanuel Kant
• The Moral Point of View suggests that sometimes people have to set aside their own interests and act in the
best interests of others.
• Sexually explicit material is believed to cause a societal problem by creating an unhealthy or excessive interest
in sex.
• An overemphasis on sex could corrupt morals and lead people to act in ways that undermine marriage and
family.
• Sexual media content might also distract people from other important societal roles.
• Sexual behavior is private and making it public can only encourage distasteful or immoral acts.
Feminist Perspective
• This perspective is referred to as a feminist perspective not because it is endorsed by all feminists, but
because its focus is on the negative effects of sexually explicit materials on women.
• According to this view, sexual content is pornography or material produced for men that demeans and
devalues women.
• Pornography contributes to the sexualization of women, discrimination against women, and a societal
climate that is more accepting of violence against women.
Liberal Perspective
• In direct contrast to the moralist and feminist approaches, a liberal approach focuses on the benefits and
functions that pornography serves.
• Most of the research locating negative effects has been conducted in laboratory settings.
• This perspective grows out of liberal media theory philosophy and is based on a functionalist approach to
mass communication.
• A liberal media theory philosophy holds that knowledge and truth are available to everyone.
• To discover the truth and benefit society, everyone should have the right to free speech and all ideas should
be heard and evaluated.
THEORIES TO EXPLAIN THE EFFECTS OF SEXUALLY
EXPLICIT MEDIA CONTENT
There are few theories proposed to explain specifically the effects of sexually explicit media
content.

1. Social Learning
2. Information Processing
3. Priming
4. Attitude Change
5. Cultivation
Social Learning
• Sexually explicit behaviors in media content are usually quite salient.
• They capture the attention of the audience.
• Much of the audience is quite attentive to sexually explicit action because sexually explicit materials
usually present behaviors that are both relevant and adaptive.
• Sexually explicit media content often has some connection to the audience members’ lives.
• Some individuals expect to be able to learn about sex and get ideas for their own sex.
• Sexually explicit media content may be the basis for social learning of sexual acts as well as sexual
violence.
Information Processing
• According to the information-processing approach, the learned behaviors are not necessarily the same as those
observed.
• Through mental encoding and elaboration, scripts adapted from sexually explicit media content may be combined
with preexisting scripts.
• So, patterns of behavior might resemble the scripts used in sexually explicit materials, and integrate violence
against partners.
• Although there has been no research to test specifically audiences’ learning of scripts based on sexually explicit
media content, this process can explain some behavioral effects of exposure.
Priming
• There is research to support the priming effects of sexually explicit media content.
• Pornography appears to prime sexually-oriented schemas that lead male participants to see their own
partners as less sexually attractive.
• Long-term exposure to pornography might increase the chance that those schemas will be used to
guide how men interact with and evaluate women in daily life.
Attitude Change
• Research supports the conclusion that exposure to sexually explicit media content is linked to calloused
attitudes toward women.
• In both laboratories and natural settings, the more sexually explicit material that men watch, the more
likely they are to endorse rape myths and be accepting of sexual violence against women.
• Exposure to sexual materials has also been linked to less sympathy toward rape victims.
Cultivation
• Cultivation is a theoretical approach that hypothesizes that exposure to television leads viewers who watch a lot of
television to adopt a view of social reality that is consistent with television’s content.
• Cultivation might not be the most appropriate theory to apply to the effects of pornography.
• First, cultivation focuses on television as the medium that is most widely accessible and used in our society.
• Pornography is not used like television.
• It is not as widely available as television and because of that restricted availability, exposure to pornography might not be
so nonselective.
• Among heavy users of pornography, however, cultivation of a sort might occur.
• Patterns of certain types of images, however, do cut across most types of pornography: various sorts of sexual behavior.
SUMMARY
The negative effects of sexually explicit materials grow out of evidence that these materials are becoming even
more widely available with the increase in media channels, especially the VCR and WWW. It is also clear that
most sexually explicit material is degrading and demeaning to women; some even include depictions of sexual
violence and rape. All four models of media effects provide some explanation for the effects of sexually explicit
materials.
Evidence that exposure to these materials leads to sexual callousness, or acceptance of sexual violence, and lack
of sympathy for victims of sexual violence had led some feminists and moralists to call for limits on the
availability of these materials.
Communication scholars and students have shown that censorship does not have to be the only solution to
mitigating the negative effects of sexually explicit materials. Media literacy and audience education might be a
way to reduce the likelihood of negative effects and increase the possibility of for positive uses of sexually
explicit media content.