Film, Television and New Media

Film, Television and New Media

Research Proposal

Research Project topic

The impact of film, television and new media and their related content on attention spans

Research Question

Do themes and content of specific television shows reduce the attention level of viewers?

Hypothesis /

Argument

Programs specifically designed for children contribute to reduced level of attention.

Plan (200-300 words)

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the critical cultural history of media, and in particular to show how new media formats and technologies came to be seen as contributing to a collective shortened attention span. This paper will consider the way this connection has been made in popular discourse in relation to American media aimed at young people, and also in the thinking of media creators, beginning in the late 1960s and continuing to the present day. It considers the positioning of media as a threat, in particular to young viewers' minds. The central concern of this paper will not be to judge the validity of the (dubious) claim of media's power to stunt cognitive functioning, but to trace the way that the very idea of media affecting attention has circulated historically in American culture.

Research Project Case Study: Sesame Street

Sesame Street began as an effort to bring pre-school education to poor children; it was a program, like Head Start, born out of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. It aimed to prepare poor children in America's cities for education in the three Rs and to foster values of community and tolerance. To have its desired effect, it would have to win and maintain the attention of young children who already watched a lot of TV. One objective of Sesame Street in its planning stages was to create a program format that children would want to watch - that would be appealing to them. Sesame Street adopted the style of commercial television, including the 'sponsorship' of the show.

One need not look far to find claims in popular American discourse that today's attention spans are short. Central causes of shortened attention are typically assumed to include media technologies and forms of media content, especially those characterized by brevity and fragmentation, such as television commercials and web videos. The putative victims of this supposed condition are often children or members of younger generations whose entire lives have been suffused with electronic media. The linkage of attention deficit with emergent forms of media functions as a technophobic discourse of media effects, pathologizing a civilization too eager to adopt new tools of communication. If the attention span is imperiled, this can hardly bode well for society. The idea of a connection between a culture's media and its collective habits and patterns of paying attention has been appealing to a number of influential thinkers, including Walter Benjamin (1968), Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Adorno, 1974; Adorno and Horkheimer, 2002), and Marshall McLuhan (2004). It is especially pertinent when critics and intellectuals ponder the social significance of new media, assessing the costs and benefits of new technologies of communication such as ...