If someone were to film me right now and show their recording to an audience who didn’t know me personally, that audience could come to certain conclusions about me. They could assume I am on my laptop browsing Facebook, they might assume I am younger or older than I actually am. They could think I was a young mother lazily sitting on the sofa doing nothing, as I am surrounded by babies toys.
The reality is I am sitting writing a blog post for part of an elective I am taking as part of my fifth year of college, they would not be able to know for sure that I am educated. They don’t know for sure that I am 21 years old, and that the toys that surround me are my nephews. They don’t know anything about me, they can only assume, as this is my reality not theirs. Everything they see is a representation of my reality.
The same thing happens when we watch media representations of events (the news) whether it be locally or internationally. We are relying on the reports of others for an understanding of the outside, non-local events that take place across the globe. There are several factors that influence the broadcasts we consciously choose to watch. Rarely do we think about prejudice, bias, or any other influencing factors that may change the way in which a story may be mediated to us. Instead we choose to absent-mindedly accept any information a news anchor tells us to be true, as we have chosen to allow this person to educate us on events that we didn’t personally experience. Most people who are not visually literate, believe everything they see to be real and thus, let it shape their own realities.
Our realities are heavily influenced by the media, we no longer read and research full news articles. Instead we opt to read short snippets on Sky News or Twitter feeds. This shortening of the news into around 140 characters or less is allowing us to partially know of current news without knowing hard facts about the topic. We tend to believe what we read, even if is only 2 sentences long. This has led to the distinction between reality and the media’s representation of “reality” to become blurred. Our realities are constantly being shaped by the media, what they choose to show us, and how they choose to tell us a story.
As media analysts we must learn how to be visually literate when it comes to how the media re-presents the message they are trying to get across. We need to be able to understand what is real and what is presented to us as “real”. We are constantly immersed in media and it is sometimes hard to differentiate real experiences/scenarios and images of them that are mediated to us daily.
Boorstein categorised 3 different events in which the media report on:
- Genuine Events – Events that will happen whether the media is present or not e.g A tsunami or an earthquake
- Media Events – Events that may still happen without the media being present but it is different to genuine events in the way the story may be covered e.g. Chilean Miners
- Pseudo-Events – These events are created by the media for the media. The producers of these events are the ones to benefit from them. They are usually created to generate interest in a subject. A pseudo-event often leads to several different interrelated pseudo-events – e.g. The Oscars (Red Carpet Show, Xpose Specials) and the National Television Awards (Twitter reactions – spark conversation and interest)
It is important to differentiate between the three. Once we know what type of event we are watching, we can begin to understand the techniques used by the media in order to achieve a certain emotion from the audience e.g. Close ups of protesters crying in a media event. News broadcasters no longer recite news, they are now totally immersed within these three events, using specific language to grip their viewers and instilling fear, worry or happiness into the lives of their viewers. This relationship between broadcaster and audience can sometimes be the reason in which viewers trust what they see and hear in the news.
Everyone has a different reality, and when it is put into perspective, we all have very boring lives. We can not remember ever second of every day, because it is a) impossible and b) we don’t want to know every second of our silence, and every second of our mundane daily lives. Important life events are captured by images we save in our brain, we recall memories through these images. We know our memories are representations of something that was once a reality. However, we fail to associate images shown in the news to be the same thing as our memories.
I am aware of my reality and representations of other people’s realities are not real. However, people who may not be visually literate may fail to differentiate these two realities. Some people have “preferred realities”, where they consciously choose to accept representations of realities as real, in order to escape their bleak daily lives. Watching pseudo-events often helps people to escape these realities. Watching a celebrity wear a $10,000 dress down a bright red carpet having her photo taken with all eyes on her can often transform you into a “preferred reality”. It is okay to live in this “preferred reality” for a while, but the question still remains, and it is important to know – “Where is my reality?”
Rachel McDonnell CM4 