Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

The mentally ill individuals have been significantly portrayed in contemporary Hollywood movies. However, literature claims that their awareness to these individuals has not led to positive outcomes because of the extent to which they are stereotyped and negatively presented in movies. This research analyzes twelve movies that are chosen as non-randomly based on the reviews written on them. These movies portray schizophrenic patients between the years 2000- 2012 through quantitative content analysis based on a number of criteria such as demographics, symptoms consistent with DSM-IV-TR, unpredictable behavior, causation and treatment. Surprisingly, 11 out of the 12 movies had schizophrenic patients who were white Americans with either high medium or low socioeconomic status. Delusions and hallucinations were present in all twelve movies (no other positive symptoms were found) and in eight out of twelve movies the patient did not present acts of violence but 10 of the movies showed the character as behaving aggressively. In five out of twelve movies the patient had an exceptional talent and one out of the twelve movies showed that patients got schizophrenia because of a genetic predisposition while seven out of twelve movies showed that the character got the illness because of psychological trauma. It was not mentioned how the patients got the illness in the other four movies. Regarding the treatment that patients received. Moreover, five movies portrayed their patients to be treated by both psychotherapy and medicines while one movie portrayed them as treated with medications alone. In the other six movies there was no reference to the type of treatment that the patients received.

The aim of this research is to find out the effects of Pakistani television news coverage of crime on the emotional response of youth. This study is conducted to explore the negative effects of crime news coverage on the youth. It was hypothesizes that “Watching crime news makes young people feel that they live in uncertain conditions”. The study is quantitative in nature and a questionnaire with open ended questions is distributed amongst the drawn sample to assess the effect. Convenience method is used for collection of data from the target population of 150 males and females respectively, living in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Cultivation theory is used for the current study. While carrying out the research it was observed that after watching crime news people have developed an insecure and perilous feeling about the society and people around them. They avoid interacting with strangers and are careful to move around and have developed concern about their families. It was concluded that females are much more affected by the impact of crime news than males.

In the past decades, climate change and global warming issues have been recurring in the media and public sphere. Despite the continuous calling to stop environmental destruction, deforestation continues at an alarming rate. More than a medium to transmit information, the media can play important role to influence decision making of government and other stakeholders forest management. This paper studied the case in Indonesia where the media industry is thriving and deforestation is growing. Discourse analysis on 150 forestry related articles from three online media found that there is a difference in the focus of national and local media. The national media coverage tends to discuss the problems of an issue while the local media provides solutions to those issues. To overcome this mismatch, the local and social media can create trends that would be resonated by national media. Then, the role of media as ‘social watch’ can be effective. In fulfilling such role, this paper proposes a framework of action plans in which the media can act as social watch. Within this framework, the action plans include the role of media in agenda setting, capacity building, bridging, monitoring assessment and reporting and documenting.

Review of literature shows that the current scholarship lacks research on the ethicality of the social movement organizations. This paper examines the moral and ethical paradigms of a well-known social movement organization of America-tea party patriot (TPP), and its consumer directed health care social movement. This paper employed a textual analysis approach and used the communication campaign materials of TPP’s social movement to find whether the TPP’s communication campaign met five ethical principles, called TARES. The research found that truthfulness and authenticity of TARES principles are the strengths of the campaign, while equity and social responsibility of the campaign are not strengths, and respect for the audience is highly controversial. The paper recommends that TPP as a social movement organization should attempt to strike a balance between a consequentialist focus on health outcomes and costs, and a due respect for autonomy and integrity of individual freedom of choice.

One of the controversial topic advertisers must deal with is the issue of advertising to children. Studies have also shown that television is an important source of information for children about products. Critics argue that children are especially vulnerable to advertising because they lack the experience and knowledge to understand and evaluate critically the purpose of the persuasive advertising appeals. They also feel that the pre-school children cannot differentiate between commercials and programmes and cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. Critics charge threat advertising to children is inherently unfair and deceptive and should be banned. On the other hand are those that advertising is a part of life and children must learn to deal with it in consumer socialization process of acquiring the skills needed to function in the market place. Some feel that parents should be involved in helping children interpret advertising and can refuse to purchase products they believe are undesirable for their children. The issues of advertising directed to children have been receiving great attention recently. There is also a growing concern over how advertisers are using internet to communicate with and sell to children. Advertising to children will remain a controversial topic. Some groups feel that government is responsible for protecting children from potential harmful effects of advertising while others argue that parents are ultimately responsible for doing so. It is important to many companies to communicate directly with children. However only being sensitive to the naiveté of children as consumers will they be able to do so freely and avoid the conflict with those who believe children should be protected from advertising. One group feels that banning television ads will deny advertisers the right of speech to communicate with other audience members. They also feel that no authority has the professional competence to serve as the ‘national nanny’ deciding what children should be exposed to. They say children are aware that fruits and vegetables are more nutritious than the highly sugared foods. There have been attempts to ban sugared food products directed to or seen by children with nutritional and or health disclosures. It is reported that children between the ages of two and eleven spend about 25 hours per week watching television and see approximately 20,000 ads per year and 7,000 of these ads are for sugared products. Realizing that children are imaginative and that make-believe play constitutes an important part of the growingup process. Advertisers should exercise care not to exploit the imaginative quality of children. Unreasonable expectation of product quality or performance should not be stimulated either directly or indirectly by advertising. Recognizing that advertising may play an important part in educating the child, information should be communicated in a truthful and accurate manner with full recognition by the advertiser that the child may learn practices from advertising that can affect his or her health and well-being. The controversy on ads aimed at children has generated an ongoing steam of research on the effects of children’s advertising. Although may influences affect a child’s personal and social development, it remains the prime responsibility of the parents to provide guidance for children. Advertisers should contribute to this parent-child relationship in a constructive manner.