余劲草unit9课件.ppt

English Reading and Translation Jincao YU How Mass Media Affect Our Perception of Reality? by Robert Sylwester 7. The U.S. Constitution underscores the importance of the open communication of information and opinion in our democratic society by granting considerable self-direction to the various forms of mass media. A marketplace mentality suggests that useful information and opinions will spread, and the useless will disappear. A free-speech society can thus tolerate instances of false information, stupidity, and vulgarity - assuming them to be a temporary irritant. 8. Mass media are very competitive. Folks today have many options about the TV and films they watch, the books and magazines they read, the cultural and religious institutions they attend. The challenge for a media program is to get and hold the attention of mass media shoppers -- who are channel surfing, browsing at a bookstore, checking out various churches. 9. In a stimulating competitive environment, a media program must score quickly. Since youre still reading this column, the title and opening paragraph must have sufficiently caught your attention so you continued. Emotional arousal drives attention, which drives learning and conscious behavior - so its important for mass media programmers to understand and present content that will emotionally arouse potential participants. 10. Our basic biological challenge is to survive and get into the gene pool, so avoiding danger and taking advantage of opportunities for eating, shelter, mating are cognitively important. Events related to these needs are inherently emotionally arousing, and successful mass media programmers understand this. 11. People complain about the amount of violence, sexuality, and commercialism in mass media, but lets look at the issue from a TV programmers perspective. Channel surfers will give a TV program only a few seconds before moving to the next channel, so programmers focus on content sequences with a high pr