The Frizzy Apprentice: Mini Research Project with bibliography

Influence of Television on boys and girls attitudes and behaviours.

In November 2009 four young people from a school in the west midlands and another six at a school in Hertfordshire were taken into hospitalisation after they drank ethanol in replace of alcohol. This was reported to be “copying a scene from the BBC drama Waterloo Road” The storyline saw one the characters Danielle Harker rise to peer pressure in order to ‘look cool’ drink a large amount of ethanol that another student had mistaken for the chemical name for alcohol resulting in her reacting very badly and being admitted to hospital with ethanol poisoning. The influence this school based drama has had on these teenagers suggests they are easily influence d by the characters they watch on television “A BBC spokesman said: ‘Last week’s episode clearly showed the dangers of using ethanol and did not glamorize it in any way” The episode aimed to raise awareness of the dangers involved with both alcohol and ethanol poisoning and made it known that it would have a negative effect and could potentially cause harm to anyone who should try it. The aim of BBC’s Waterloo road is to realistically portray a typical comprehensive secondary school with real life situations and school based scenarios.

“Television can be a powerful entertaining and educational tool for children given the right programming. However, studies have shown that television, and media in general, can also have a very negative influence” In this report I am going to investigate the influence that certain storylines and plots have had on boys and girls. I will focus on two main stories that made the newspapers because of the media’s influence on the behaviours demonstrated.

Another huge example of when the media of reported to have had an influence on audiences is in the case of Jamie Bugler’s murder. The murderers reportedly watched the film child’s play 3 and imitated a scene in which saw a victim being splashed with blue paint. This case lead to the amendment of the video recordings act in Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994). Although there is little evidence to prove that this was the reasoning behind the horrendous murder there is no proof that it did not. After looking into both John Venables and Robert Thompson’s recent activity at the time of the murder and the last film that they both took out and watched together was ‘child’s play 3’ and because the nature of the violence that they committed is similar to that in the scene this suggests that it could have been an influential part in there behaviors.

The way swearing is scripted in television today has also been said to influence the attitudes and behavior of the audiences.” [1]A new survey commissioned by the Daily Mail has found that most people believe swearing on television is behind an increase in swearing by young people” This suggests that by broadcasting certain uses of language and ways of behaving can be heavily influenced by what people watch on television.” Forty-eight per cent said they felt swearing on TV before the watershed was a problem, a figure which rose to 54 per cent among women and 59 per cent among the over-55s”

Ofcom have received complaints about many acts of behavior seen in our very popular soap operas saying that the way the characters are speaking is offensive and could lead people to believe certain ways of speaking/behaving are acceptable.

In conclusion” Individual, environmental, situational, and media-related factors interact in a unique way to influence whether or not individuals will mimic criminal behaviour they see in the media and popular culture” This shows that the individuals who choose to mimic what they see on television has an effect on their behaviour but everybody has the right to choose and has control over themselves. Therefore the television programme or film is not entirely responsible for this as it is an artificial representation of storylines and has an intended purpose to either inform, educate or entertain an audience and this is why they portray certain real life situations