The Involuntary Memory and the Media
Lets do a small exercise.
What words, phrases and events do you think about when you see this image? Are they positive or negative?
In a tutorial of mine today, we were given an article about Kyle Sandilands defending what he said about Magda Szubanski's weight. Even before we had read the article, we all had already made our minds up about him, regardless of what he or the journalist had to say in the article. Funnily enough, the article placed Kyle in a pessimistic, unremorseful, negative light, which reflected our own perceptions of him.
This is a perfect example of what Proust described as our ‘involuntary memory’- memory that “involve recollection of an entire nexus of sensations, thoughts, and impressions from the past” (Epstein, 2004, p. 217. It is a memory that we don’t choose to recall, instead surfacing without our will. We see an image of Sandilands and instantly remember all those controversies he’s caused over the years. These are memories which we don’t choose to have, we don’t sit down and go ‘okay, I must remember that he said this bad thing’ and start studying. They’re just something we seem to remember, and the media knows it.
Such articles rely on the premise that we remember such negativity towards him, and so they reflect it, right? Is this why biased articles exist, because of our perceptions established in the past? Or is because the media want us to think a certain thing?
This comes back to the age-old question of does the media influence us, or do we influence the media?
I tend to think it’s a bit of both. I believe that we are presented with situations that, based on our experiences, we are going to think positively or negatively about, and in most cases, a large proportion of society has the same perception. As a result, the media reflects this common perception, even though they’re supposed to be neutral. This is where the media starts to publish a certain slant on a situation and we begin to believe it.
Therefore, my question is what comes first- our perception, or the medias perception?
Either way, once it’s there, it’s there, even if we don’t realize it.
Bibliography
Epstein, R 2004, 'Consciousness, art, and the brain: Lessons from Marcel Proust', Consciousness and Cognition, vol 13, no. 2, pp. 213- 240.
Lecture word- metacommunication