Reflections

After careful consideration of several studies, I have figure out the topic for this assignment. Inter-connectivity or underlying pattern between media and love is my choice of discussion. I believe love is the essential element of life and everybody carries a certain degree of enthusiasm towards this topic. In brief, love is an extra complicated topic as humans are complicated. So, I will ignore the complications of love and focus my work on correlations between media and love. Besides the relationship between the two subjects, I am also looking at how we can make use of media to build more intimate relationship between couples.

Mass media is the type of media that can deliver message to the public by broadcast television, radio, newspaper and magazines. On the other hand, niche media is a much more limited scope media but allows interaction between producer and audience, and even between the audiences through the internet. In mass media, love that is presented influence depends a lot on producers’ subjectivity or experiences. Corresponding to mass media, audiences also convey their love through niche media either in words, audio or video form. Thus, I have recognised the general pattern of couples’ relationships currently and also in the past by studying the media presentation of couples. Besides, Linke (2011) states that mediatisation occurs inevitably reconstructing our relationships.

Besides that, media is not a passive body but reacts actively by conduct its power of affection through its inescapable proliferation to all classes of society. Media has accelerates the evolution of couples relationship from a more secretive and conservative pattern to a relatively modern pattern. Thus, traditional concept of marriage is losing its dominance. On the other hand, the individual expectation towards a life partner has been shaped by media. By portraying an ideal partner as good-looking, high socio-economic status and caring characteristic, audience expects their spouse to meet certain criteria. This is especially significant in an information flourish country like Singapore where public receives images and description of a possible ideal partner. Thus, it is more likely that they are having difficulties in choosing a life partner as their expectations become higher.

Though complication exists in constructing a love relationship, the applications of media should be utilized to its fullness to navigate this phenomenon. We can manipulate media as a tool to build closer relationships between either people or couples. As Leah A. Lievrouw (2004) stands that new media is a product of political interests, so the real political interests will shape media’s direction. In this case, fertility rate is one of the common political concern of Singapore reputable politician, Lee Kuan Yew. Although Lee Kuan Yew has mention before in his written book that Singapore’s media is independent of government’s control, I would like to propose that fertility issue or couple issue is more suitable to consider in social context rather than politic context. This is because as status or economic achievement of women becomes higher, affecting their chances of getting married as they are more independent. Hence, promoting closer relationships through media is necessary to advance this politic concern.

(Picture showing  homosexuality)

Besides these, we should also concern about the love of minority group, such as homosexual relationship. There are a lot of movies portraying homosexual relationship; some of them are “BrokebackMountain”, “Bent” and “Boys don’t cry”.Despite the fiction part, there are a lot of talk shows and articles reporting on real individual cases.  Anderson, Fakhfakh, and Kondylis (1999) puts in although the purpose of talk show is actually making profit for the producer, this kind of shows has actually provided a platform for the homosexual to voice out their homosexual relationship. Public has gain a chance to know more about homosexual relationship and hence gradually accepting homosexual relationship is only another kind of love and not a disease. Thus, media unquestionably affects the public attitudes towards homosexual relationships either in a positive way or negative way.

(Picture showing the movie "Boys Don't Cry" , a dramatization of a real life story)

In conclusion, the flow of information between media and public is not one way and thus creating new perception of love. Although the perception of love is subjective to individual, it is clear that media is an integrated part of relationships. The love that media portrays is more likely to influence the public without conscious effort especially the youth which are vulnerable to media’s effect. 

Online Dating

Have you ever tried an online relationship? Have you ever tried speed-up match-making? Well, if you do, that means you are in the new stream of generation that carries very different perspective from your father’s generation. While my concern is, how genuine online relationship is?

Online relationship is very common in social networking websites. Examples of social websites are Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. In these social networking websites, identities are determined by the information that you choose to expose online. People tend to re-create an identity, though they currently do not really possess some of the characteristics of this new identity and would like to possess in the future, With all these information, people get to know more about each other and fall in love eventually with the intellectual communication which made easier.

In online environment, people tend to expose more of personal feelings and therefore there were more emotion intimacy between two parties. In some of the cases, people are just trying to explore themselves instead of getting into a long relationship. Besides, people are devoted to select only the favourable information or false characteristics about them to be posted online. The individual that we know may be a kind of imitation role play where personality is distorted. Thus, we must beware of the possible scams and cybercrimes because what you can see online may not be the truth.

In a nut shell, social networking websites are beneficial and convenience at most of the time. Still, we need to handle with cautious to prevent undesirable consequences.

Resouces:

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/docview/209883970

Media's New Role: The Love Constructor

All kinds of media regarding love and passion between couples affect us whether we are conscious of it or not. Movies such as “Titanics” made us believe in eternal love even after death. Advertisement using love story easily touched us. Thus, media can be used as an effective weapon to boost fertility rate or marriage rate. 

This issue is significantly important as the chances of getting married are slimmer and slimmer in developed and developing countries. In China, media is used to conduct many match-making  programmes to enhance marriage rate in the country. This is a typical example of mass media in television programmes.  Media programmes do arouse people’s wishes to get in a relationship as Cacioppo, Fowler, and Christakis (2009) stand that loneliness spread through social network.

Besides mass media, new media can also facilitate the relationship between couples in order to build love in society more sufficiently. This is because interactivity and accessibility of new media has hiked after the invention of internet. For example, speed dating is much more acceptable by those who want fast result. Thus, internet match making can also be expanded to help those having difficulties in meeting face-to-face. Research suggests that Internet relationships are just as intimate as face-to-face and even closer in some cases (Bargh, McKenna, &Fitzsimons, 2002).

In addition to that, media can be used to shape people expectation towards marriage. This method is supported by research conducted by Straub (2004),concluding that viewing of romantic genre programming was positively associated with idealistic expectations about marriage. So, unrealistic expectation towards marriage can be minimized by portraying the image of realistic ideal marriage. Indirectly, increases successful marriage will subsequently provoke increases in birth rate, which is one of the concern in Singapore.

(Video clip reporting on Singapore's fertility rate)

In a nut shell, media is a useful tool that can be used to build love between couples.

References:

Bargh, J.A., McKenna, K.Y.A., & Fitzsimons, G.M. (2002). Can you see the real me? Activation and expression of the "true self" on the Internet. Journal of Social Issues, 58, 33-48.

Revolution of Media vs. Evolution of Love

     As we know, generation alteration is the natural law of life that is unchangeable, but how much do we realize that our love to our life partner is being affected by media? Media affects us in all our life aspects, including our affinity towards our lover.

Couples today have a very large difference from last generation despite of culture variations. The changes do not happen in a blink. Subsequently, media affects us day by day and it actually accelerates the evolution of our perception towards love. As media exposes many sexual related information, public are relatively more open towards sex (Brown, Greenberg,& Buerkel, 1993). In addition to that, the average age of having first relationship has decreases as media often portrays young couples in an acceptable way. However, media that portrays young couples too lead to controversy such as "Juno" in United States and "Jenny, Juno" in Korea.

("Jenny, Juno" - A Korean movie on 15 years old teenage pregnancy)

When media creates gap to couples of different generation, digital gap in media also attributes to unequal woman status in a relationship in different countries. As media in developed country portrays independent woman image, the perception towards the role expectation in a relationship changes. Consequently, female status in a couple’s relationship is dramatically evolves to a more advance position. Interactivity of media allows nationwide discussion of woman’s need in a relationship which changes the woman’s passive attitude to a more active attitude in constructing a relationship.

In relevant to that, media also contributes to maintain a long distance relationship. Far distance relationships have never been so easy by using social network to connect far-apart intimate couples. Baron (1998) indicates that internet is the ideal tool contributing in building or maintaining a social relationship. Compare to last generation where couples can only contact through phone line which are much more costly than internet, we made a revolution by bringing two people closer.

(Major social network logos)

In conclusion, media penetrates our life by all aspects through communication in one way, mass media, or both ways, niche media. Thus, whether we like it or not, media is definitely changing our perception towards love physically or psychologically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6joTk9v19HE&feature=youtu.be

References:

Baron, N. (1998). Letters by phone or speeches by other means: the linguistics of e-mail. Language and Communication, 18. 133-70.

Love Reflections Through The Eye Of Media.

Media is a medium that is approachable to the public and by today, we can even contribute our own ideas to the media. Love is part of life that we encounter it every day. Thus, the relationship between media and love is unbreakable as media portrays our attitude toward love.

One of the media that uses love as theme is advertisement. This is because through Pavlov’s (1927) theory, classical conditioning modifying our perception towards the product. This modifying mechanism happens when a pleasure feeling is generated once we watched the advertisement. As we watch the advertisement associated with loving couples, eventually the image of the product will become more loveable.Thus, feeling towards a sweet loving couple is an effective tool for commercial purpose.

(A Thailand commercial advertisement using love story - part 1)

Alternatively, media also reflects our desire for love or real life couple relationships as McLuhan (1971) propose: “media as an extension of man”. Love story in commercial movies or popular dramas bombarded our life, where fairy-tale love story was being written over and over again. Audiences even express their desire for the couples in the show to remain together by creating a new ending to the film or continue the storyline with their own imagination. While art films portray our complicated relationship with love one.  For example, several Mediacorp’s dramas show couples quarrelling over financial issue or educational issue of their children, which is very common among normal real life couples.

(A Thailand commercial advertisement using love story - part 2)

Lastly, life is colourless without the existence of music. Public commercially or casually listen to songs of love since in our ancestor time. Today, romance songs bombarded our everyday life, attributed by increased portability and interconnectivity of new media. Rhythmic melody is more easily accepted if accompany by love feelings or story of either a happy relationship or a hurt one. This is proven by Youtube most viewed video song in history, “Baby” Justin Bieber, followed by  “Bad Romance” Lady Gaga , both of which using love and romance as their themes of songs.

(A Thailand commercial advertisement using love story - part 3)

As human continue to evolve both in relationships and media, the connection between this two subjects are so strongly bonded that we cannot deny the power of new media.

(A Thailand commercial advertisement using love story - part 4)

References:

Pavlov, I.P. (1927). Conditioned reflexes. Oxford, England: Oxford University.

McLuhan, M. (1971). Os Meios de Comunicação como Extensão do Homem. SP: Cultrix.