3 Abstracts

McCall, Robert B. “Family Services and the Mass Media.” Family Relations 32.3 (1983): 315-22.

In this article, McCall expresses how service agencies can use mass media for the betterment of the community and their own preservation.  Despite the overwhelming fear of being misrepresented to the public, service professionals can use these guidelines provided by McCall to ensure their message and purpose is accurately translated to the people.  Since the main concern of these particular service agencies is the welfare of children and families within the community, it is necessary that a primary objective is to give them as much information as possible, instead of trying to tell them what to do.  McCall delves into the three types of information (events, feature material, and public service) which are all about keeping the public informed while still advertising the agency.  This information can be shared with the community via brochures and pamphlets, which is targeted communication, or they can utilize local newspapers and television programs.  Press conferences and interviews send your particular research through a translation process which is at risk for being distorted by the reporters and the editors.  In order to avoid these misinterpretations, McCall explains methods on how to be brief and concise; he also admonishes any professional in an interview situation to stay within their own realm of knowledge and don't get pulled into topics in which you have little experience.  Through the medium of talk shows, one doesn't have to worry about the distortion of his/her ideas but more the expression of complex thoughts in layman's terms; in order to ease this translation, McCall recommends having a number of examples on hand.  In all of these situations in which your research is being passed through mediums, as well as people, to get to the source (the public), practicing with non-scholarly friends and preparing some powerful quotations are among the many suggestions McCall prescribes to the service professional who fears the manipulation that is inherent in mass communication.

Bhowmik, Someswar. “Politics of Film Censorship.” Economic and Political Weekly 37.35 (2002): 3574-577.

This article discusses the history of censorship of film in India and how the constant alterations to the Indian Constitution have changed the restraints very little.  The three major areas of censorship (sex, violence, and politics) have put a leash on free speech since the British imposed film regulation in 1920.  The perennial dispute emerges through additions to Indian law:  How can we preserve free speech while assuring the protection of morality within society.  The government claims that the welfare of the people is its motivation, but Bhowmik shows us the signs that reveal an underlining political agenda which limits film exhibition to numerous strictures.  The press and the theater have found their way around censorship, while film is made subject to vague confines, making it simple for government to protest whenever they please.  While articles created by the government actually forbid film censorship through the guarantee of Fundamental Rights, the government itself refuses to acknowledge the incompatibility of free speech laid down in the Constitution and the regulation of film.  Bhowmik casts light on avoidance maneuvers of the Indian government; he unveils their methods of ambiguous terminology and exposes the continuity of the same old mind set by acknowledging the replacement of one censorship system with another system of a different name (but with no significant change in its function). 

Razel, Micha. “The Complex Model of Television Viewing and Educational Achievement.” The Journal of Educational Research 94.6 (2001): 371-79.

The article by Micha Razel discusses the relationship between television viewing and educational achievement.  Razel notices that no conclusive results have been published, and he takes it upon himself to gather information from six different studies that analyze the effect of television on the academic success of students ranging from 5 to 17 years old.  The results showed that kids have an optimal viewing time in which viewing television is beneficial to their scholastic endeavors; however, this optimal viewing time decreases with age.  For example, the optimal viewing time for a 9 year old is 2 hours a day while for a 17 year old only 0.5 hours a day would be beneficial.  Razel believes that viewing time is the cause of achievement and it has an overall negative effect since the positive viewing range is so much smaller than the negative range.  55% of the students view 3 hours a day more than their optimal viewing time which lowers their grades by 0.26 standard deviation.  These studies did not take into account the quality of the programming, which would explain why viewing is so beneficial for young children considering the shows they watch often promote educational development.  Razel contends that the next step in this research would be to take into account the quality of the viewing.