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.