deviance midterm 2

Chapter 4 → Deviance 2.0: The Role of the Media 

Media

• Past (eg. telegraph); Present (eg. smartphone apps) 

• Individual audiences (eg. handwritten letter); Present (eg. books, streaming movies)

• Media is the dominant means by which we learn about self, others, the world, etc

• How much time do you spend using media? 

• Time Spent Using Various Forms of Media among Canadian Adults, 2001 and 2018 (weekly minutes per capita) 

• Variations when comparing younger and older ages 

  • Tv viewing vs internet use → my generation is much less likely to have cable subscriptions, more likely to watch through streaming services 

  • People born after 2006 are digital natives → they’ve never lived in a world without social media 

Videos 

• Phones are designed to be addicting 

• The different media apps battle for your time 

  • Distraction 

  • Value and worth 

  • Addiction vs moderation 

  • Polarization 

  • Media literacy

Impact of Media on Individuals and Society 

• It defines social problems 

• Shapes public debates

• Defines boundaries between groups 

  • JFK vs. Nixon→ JFK is considered attractive and Nixon wasn't considered attractive. Before this people only heard presidential debates on the radio. Now they can see and aren't voting based solely on the argument. People listening said Nixon was the clear winner, but those watching thought it was JFK. 

Studying the Media: Two Main Approaches

1) Media and Individuals: Administrative Research → analyzes the effects of media messages, looks for cause and effect relationships, how does the media change behaviours? 

• Does the media control our minds? 

i. Advertising 

• Can impact how we think and consequently how we behave → the behaviour being buying the product

• Advertising works and we usually think it affects other more → it establishes positive associations with brands 

  • Billboards, tv, social media, magazines, product placement in movies, public transport, etc

• Persuasive ability rests on 3 key characteristics: 

1. Source of communication (model featured)

   • Famous people are usually used as a trusted individual → if they are someone you like, it can be more persuasive

   • Using an attractive person in the advertisement → for alcohol has been beneficial 

2. Message itself (language used) 

   • Can be seen as ‘giving permission’ 

   • Compelling language tied with a famous person in the advertisement

3. Audience (person viewing) 

   • Who is actually seeing the advertisement and when? 

   • Influence is directed towards certain audiences 

   • Needs of a person vary 

• Product Placement

  • Brands support a show → corporate sponsorship within the show/movie 

    • Starbucks → the Voice 

    • I am Legend movie → Ford Mustang 

    • Mad Men → Canadian Club Whiskey (unintentional)

ii. Violence in the Media 

• Does media violence increase aggression? 

• Complex and not easily determined relationship 

• Correlational Studies 

  • Small to moderate correlation (statistically significant) between media violence and aggression → in the short-term (immediate aftermath of viewing the violence) 

• Experimental Studies 

  • Short term → less empathy, more acceptance of aggression to resolve problems, aggressive behaviour 

  • Individual Variations

    • Environment → how much are they viewing/experiencing media violence or real-world violence? 

    • Prior levels of aggression/violence 

    • Prior level of experience and violence/aggression 

• Desensitization → exposure to violence makes people more tolerant of violence 

  • Emotional → lower levels of anxiety when watching violent content, when desensitized 

  • Physiological → lower heart-rate and blood pressure than those who are not desensitized to violence 

• As a population → have become more used to and expecting of violence in the media

• Overall, the administrative research finds that a relationship between media and violence exists → the precise nature is complex 

2) Media and Society: Critical Research 

• Does the media control culture? 

  • Focus on power, social control, patterns of struggle and resistance 

  • Media intertwined with all 5 levels of social constructions (Ch.1) 

  • Media constructs events, issues and identities (fluid process: ownership)

    • Bias will always happen → to varying degrees

    • Some forms of media are more prone to manipulate the media

The Media Frames Society 

Framing → the way that the media depicts a certain issue, thereby influencing how we perceive it 

• Impacts what we notice 

i. Conflict Frame → emphasizes conflict between nations, institutions, groups, etc. 

• The same news network can report the same story very differently, based on their programming 

  • ex) Fox News vs Fox News Latino 

ii. Human Interest Frame → focus on human life stories and emotions

• Heartbreaking, uplifting, joyous

iii. Economic Consequences Frame → highlights material costs and benefits for groups, individuals, nations, etc. 

• Economy/financial segment in the news

Framing Social Groups 

• Racialized media frames 

  • Indigenous representation/programming in Canada 

    • Absent in Canadian news stories, relative to population size 

    • Stereotyped portrayals 

      • Wise elder → healing. spiritual, in touch with nature 

      • Warrior 

      • Alcoholics/Addicts 

    • Positive and Negative Stereotypes can be detrimental → have to remember that they’re “just people” 

  • Chinese Canadians 

    • absence/inauthentic presence, racializing the body, social threat

• Issues of “whitewashing” in movies 

  • ex) The Martian and Ghost in the Shell 

    • Portraying a white person in the role of another race 

• Sexual Minorities 

  • Previously absent or subject to gross stereotyping → portrayed as highly deviant 

  • Now there’s more opportunities, but still sometimes limited → due to due of heterosexual audience discomfort, advertiser withdrawal

• Implications of framing 

  • Micro Level → understandings of self/affect identities  

  • Macro Level → hegemony, acceptance of stereotypes, social policies 

    • Media is an agent of socialization 

Media Ownership 

• Relationship between ownership and content 

Trends in media ownership: 

• Convergence → individual companies own multiple forms of meia 

  • ex) ownership of tv stations and the cable companies that deliver the service 

• Conglomeration → companies merge or buy out others, creating larger companies 

• Concentration → a small number of companies control most media products 

  • 1983: approximately 50 companies owned most of the world’s media 

  • Now, 5 (All American) corporations own the majority: 

    • AT&T Entertainment Services 

    • Alphabet Inc (Google’s holding company) 

    • Comcast 

    • The Walt Disney Company

    • Facebook

Concerns

i. Prioritization of profit for shareholders

ii. Conflict of issues

iii. A narrowing of ideas 

iv. Threat to democracy

The Media-Deviance Nexus 

1. The media causes deviance 

• As seen in administrative approaches to media studies 

  • ex) advertising → effects of alcohol ads with party-like scenes of underage drinking 

  • ex) media violence → aggression

2. The media constructs deviance and normality

• Critical to approaches to media studies 

  • ex) framing of ethnic groups 

  • ex) media portrayals of youth crimes (Ch. 6)

  • ex) construction of body ideals (Ch. 7)

  • ex) stigmatization of mental illness (Ch. 8)

3. Using media for deviance 

• Cyberdeviance, cybercrime, hacking

Cyberdeviance → deviant acts that are committed using computer technology

Cybercrime → internet offers many opportunities

• ex) hacking, hacktivism, phishing, cyberterrorism, cyberwarfare

Hacking → unauthorized access of computer systems sometimes includes alterations 

Divisions within Hacking Subculture 

• Intellectual pursuit of knowledge and technological proficiency vs malicious intent hackers

  • Most damaging forms of hacking → cyberterrorism or cyberespionage

• Ex) account hacking of major companies/institutions or state-sponsored hacking

Hacktivism → hacking as a form of social protest or activism 

• ex) ‘Anonymous’ organization → project chanology against scientology 

Digital Piracy → refers to illegally accessing music, software, and video for personal use

• Illegal but widespread form of low-consensus deviance → microdeviations 

  • Microdeviation because most people do it and not very well controlled 

4. The media and the deviance dance 

• Media can act as a social type of deviance 

  • ex) via framing 

• Can create debates around deviance

  • ex) participatory comments in online news stories 

• Media can be used for deviance and to socially control deviance 

  • ex) child exploitation

Media as a tool for resistance

• ex) supporting decolonization → framing issues from Indigenous Peoples’ perspectives 

• ex) Journalists for Human Rights 

• ex) importance of social media for marginalized social groups 

5. Deviantizing the media 

• Sometimes media products are typed as deviant 

  • ex) censorship of books and movies  

  • ex) Google, Twitter, etc. → banned in some countries 

  • ex) campaigns against/control of explicit content in music, movies, games, etc. 

Youth media more prone to social typing process 

• Presumed negative effects 

• Association with ‘deviant’ youth 

• A fear of change

Chapter 5 → ‘Deviant’ and ‘Normal’ Sexuality  

What is ‘Deviant’ Sexuality? 

• Elite discourses of sexuality underlie the social typing process 

  • Elite discourses come from those in elite positions

• In white settler cultures, elite discourses of sex, gender, and sexuality are based on binaries → but they are better understood as spectrums 

• A spectrum approach allows for inclusion of non-binary individuals 

Sex → traditionally and biologically understood as binary ‘male’ or ‘female’ 

• Based on sex chromosomes combinations and sex characteristics (eg. penis or vagina)

Gender → based on social characteristics and expectations around ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ 

• Roles assigned to individuals based on this binary → there’s no right or wrong way

• There is no ‘one-way’ to fit into ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ that can change across time and place → a spectrum

Sexuality → a broad category referring to activities (eg. kissing), attractions (eg. someone of the same sex), and identities (eg. straight, queer, etc.)

• Sexuality is socially shaped

• Perceptions, meanings, and social control of sexuality vary across cultures and over time 

  • ex) ancient Athens → emphasis on the needs and desires of aristocratic males 

5th C Athens (Aristocratic Men): 

• Aristocratic men at the apex of power → have the most control in society 

• Sexual relationships were permitted with wives, slaves, ‘foreigners’ (those who didn’t live in Athens), prostitutes and aristocratic adolescent males 

  • Prostitution was legal 

• Unidirectional sexual relationship → males held power 

• All men were regarded as bisexual → no boundaries on attraction 

5th C Athens 'Deviant’ Sexuality (Aristocratic Men): 

• Sexual acts between social equals 

  • ex) an aristocratic man could not have sex with another aristocratic man → there would be no power imbalance which was needed

• Sex with another aristocratic man’s wife → could not infringe on another’s property

• Anal sex between men 

  • The recipient would be considered ‘feminine’ and taking on the role of a woman if being penetrated 

• Same-sex activities between dusk and dawn 

Traditional Indigenous Cultures of North America → colonization, sex, gender, and sexuality 

• Variability of practices, but commonalities: 

  • Sexuality as integral component of life 

  • Sexuality was a part of the physical self, emotional self, spiritual self, intellectual self

  • Sexuality and its experiences were viewed as a sacred gift from Creator 

  • Sex was intended to be pleasurable (ex. Anishinaabe narrative) 

  • Some communities accepted same sex relationships and non-binary identities 

    • ex) “two-spirited” (anglicized term) 

    • Those who were considered to be non-binary were often healers, held in high regard by others, and were not stigmatized 

  • Depending on the community, norms and social control varied, but generally sex was not stigmatized 

    • There would be some form of hierarchy around sexual relationships but were not ridged 

European Colonization (15th C on): 

• Colonials → very different sexual norms 

  • Puritans brought over extreme and rigid norms surrounding sex 

• Considered the sex act as sinful 

• Seen sex only as a means of reproduction 

• No same-sex relationships allowed 

• Sexual control was essential for social control

  • Women’s sexuality especially to maintain ‘purity’ of the home → women were to maintain pure until marriage and then sex was only for 

  • The purer the woman was, the more socially controlled they were, the more pure the home was, etc. 

• Sex infused with guilt → religious ideologies 

  • Feeling bad if having pleasurable sex → fear of religious punishment 

• Husband/Wife sex restrained → internalized religious sanctions against sexual pleasure

  • Made it difficult for intimate moments in the relationship 

• Initially, European fur traders encouraged to marry Indigenous women (due to scarcity of white women) 

  • Indigenous women had language, trapping and diplomatic skills → could navigate between different attitudes and norms of different Indigenous communities 

    • These Indigenous women were called Les Femmes du Pays → “country wives” 

  • These men were mostly Protestant and not Puritan 

• Religious intolerance grew 

  • Happened when more white women were coming over 

• Religious authorities and Hudson’s Bay company branded Indigenous sexuality in terms of savagery and hypersexuality 

  • Indigenous women were labelled as hypersexual because sexual relationships were not stigmatized in their relationships 

• Adopted laws forbidding European and Indigenous unions 

• Imposition of colonial sexual norms and binaries 

North America: The Evolution of Meanings of Sexuality 

Reproduction within marriage (17th Century) 

Colonizers arrived and brought Rita growing population 

also brought very rigid approach to sexuality

• racialized differences: small number of white families that owned slaves, making the choices of who could reproduce with who, those children then became property of the families. 

• sets/class differences:people with a higher class were often punished less than someone in a lower class although committing the same crime

• sex based differences: men were more likely to be financially punished and women were more likely to be physically punished. 

Church, court, family, community regulation of sexuality 

• neighbours reported sexual ‘deviance’

• controled by the church 

• social control measure: public whipping, stocks, excommunication from church, even death 

Intimacy within marriage (late 18th-19th Centuries) 

• Sexual culture intertwined with social changes 

  • Industrialization, religious shifts, pursuit of happiness 

• Social control by women, physicians, social reformers, culture industry 

• Influence of socioeconomic status and racial ideologies 

New sexual control measures emerged through:

• Social control by women, men, physicians, social reforms, culture industry 

• sexual abstinence in women (to reduce pregnancy and death) 

• men too refrained from ‘too much’ sexual activity, so as to achieve greater economic success

• Growth of sex industry: burlesque shows, early erotic photography, etc. 

  • Young women in cities perceived as vulnerable and warned of the perceived dangers  

Social purity/sex hygiene movement 

• ‘social purity’ equated with ‘sexual purity’

• aimed at lower classes, prostitutes, divorcees, and male immigrants 

Personal Fulfillment (20th-21st Centuries) 

• Increasing idea of personal fulfillment → but still criminalization of some sexual acts and relationships 

- Generally by the 1960s → shift in thinking 

• Sex as fun, as normal 

• Moral entrepreneurs and deviance dance still exist though 

• Greater sexual freedom than in the past → but freedom is NOT unlimited 

Criteria for Determining Sexual Deviance Today 

1. Consent 

   • Sex must be consensual: agreement between parties to engage in a sexual act 

   • sexual assault — criminally deviant 

   • ‘date rape’ drugs e.g. rohypnol are illegal 

2. Nature of the Sexual Partner 

   • Criminal justice system> incest, bestiality; age of consent laws

   • formal controls > e.g. workplaces 

   • informal controls > first cousins 

   • evolving views of same sex. Relationships 

Social Control of ‘Homosexuality’ in Canada 

• Capital crime in 19th C → life imprisonment 

• Must of 20th C → gay men portrayed as sex offenders 

• 1969 → same-sex relationships decriminalized 

• Pierre Trudeau (Justice Minister) → “There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation” 

  • Discrimination continued though 

• 2005 → same-sex marriage legalized in Canada (first non-European country)

  • Still intolerance and bigotry → especially religious and masculine-hegemonic regarding same-sex relationships 

  • Progress though 

3. Nature of the Sexual Act 

   • What is ‘normal’ versus ‘deviant’ 

   • changing perceptions of master action, sex toys, sex acts, etc

   • indivdual preferences now more acceptable as sex is more of a private matter 

Sexuality and the ‘Deviance Dance’ 

• Pornography 

  • Is pornography harmful? If so, should it be controlled and how? 

  • Difficult to define pornography → idea of explicit sex, but what is explicit? Eye of the beholder 

Defining Pornongraphy 

Functional Definitions → anything that causes sexual arousal 

• pornography is ‘in the groin of the beholder’ 

• very broad definition e.g. Victoria’s Secret catalogue… erotic novels

Genre Definitions → pornography lies in the intentions of producers 

• is the purpose to arouse consumers—- romance novels as pornography 

Labelling Definitions → 

• How we label obscenity in our community 

• What society, rather than individuals, finds obscene 

• Written into Canadian Criminal Code, Section 163: “any publication, the dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely crime, horror, cruelty or violence” 

Recent shift to definitions in terms of harm 

• ex) child pornography: better labelled ‘child sexual abuse images’

• Educational, artistic and other depictions may be excluded from this definition 

• Problem of “barely legal” category 

• Blurring of boundaries 

  • Increased sexualization of children/minors more generally (ex. in ads, etc)

• Porn addictions can lead users to more extreme content (ex. child pornography) 

Among youth, pornography use is associated with: 

• More permissive sexual attitudes 

• more traditional gender role attitudes ‘

• higher likelihood of sexual intercourse 

• Higher likelihood of casual sex 

• higher likelihood of sexual aggression 

Interpretive Research with Young Adults: 

• Perceive pornography as normal and acceptable (use as fantasy, escapism, for masturbation, for ideas) → but they have feelings of ambivalence: 

  • Not as good as real relationships 

  • Gender inequalities in pornography 

  • “Tired” of it 

  • Find it disgusting/troubling, despite being arousing (women more so) 

  • Lack of love/intimacy 

Issues around Pornography

• Association with violence towards women 

• harm to users e.g. depression and anxiety 

• impact on interpersonal relationships 

• perceptions of women 

• morality in society