The Characteristics Of Some Modern Romanian Mass Media Heroes And Their Educative Effects On Public

1.1.Psychological effects of mass media consumption

The psychological studies on the mass media effects developed considerably as the media impact

on society also increased. Many studies centred on the negative effects of the violent content of mass

media on public and especially on children. Related to the amount on violence in the mass media

products, some authors considered that “the average overall size of the effect is large enough to place it in

the category of known threats to public health” (Huesman & Taylor, 2006).

“The Marilyn Monroe effect” shows that the widespread coverage of a suicide in the media has

been capable of triggering copycat suicides among mass public. This effect can be explained by the

theory of social learning (Bandura, 1986). The aggressive behaviour can be learned directly or by

observing the other’s actions. And mass media is a perfect environment for exposing the other’s acts,

attitudes, beliefs.

A more complex set of explanations revolves around the learning process of differential

identification. Depending to the extent that people identify with a type of story, that type would be

expected to have more of an impact. For example, if people tend to copycat the suicides of superior

people, they would be expected to copy the ones of famous celebrities more than the suicides of ordinary

people. A third variety of explanation focuses not on story characteristics but on audience mood. The

central thesis is that stories which appear when suicidogenic conditions are high in society will have more

of a copycat effect since more people are on the verge of suicide (Stack, 2003).

Media has an important cognitive impact on values. Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur (1976) defined the

values as „very basic beliefs that people hold about either desirable end states of existence or preferred

modes of conduct” (1976, p. 13). The authors considered that “mass mediated information can play an

important part in creating the conditions for value clarification” (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976, p. 13).

This function is realized by presenting information that precipitates value conflict within audience

members and between social groups. Once these conflicts are explained by the media, the audience is

moved to articulate their own value positions.

The affective effects of mass media content on audience consist in the activation of some feelings

and emotional states. The literature mentioned: fear, anxiety and happiness as emotional states generated

by the media content.

Alteration in moral and alienation, such as: the sense of collective wellbeing, the “we feeling”,

sympathy or anger are also a result of some media messages.

These changes in cognitions, attitudes and affection can lead to behavioral effects. The main

behavioral effects of mass media on public are the activation and the de-activation. Activation refers to

situations in which the audience members do something that they would not otherwise have done, as a

consequence of receiving media messages. The strategy of actions formulated by groups in order to

support their protest or to make public their points of view have a large spreading through mass media

(Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976).

There are very few Romanian studies about the national media content and its psychological

effects on public. We should mention an important research about the violence presence in the Romanian

mass media and its effects on children (Drăgan et al, 2009). The authors measured the weight of violence

in the Romanian TV programs, following the classics indicators used by Gerbner.

They analyzed a sample of Romanian television broadcasts, during 5th and 11th January of 2009,

stretching over 348 hours and 15 minutes of broadcasting. They showed that “children are living in an

adult world of television. People are forgetting that the media aren’t just an image of the world and ways

to signify the facts, but a real symbolic universe we use to approach existence. We are forgetting that the

world of television has the strength of reality, has an intrinsically reality effect and that the fiction and the

real facts are two faces of the reality, in the television’s content and broadcasts” (Drăgan et al, 2009, p. 4).

The psychological effects of the violent television content on children are: the imitation of the

aggressive behaviors, through the identification with the negative heroes; the assimilation of the violent

style in human relations; the disinhibition, becoming prone to act violent; desensitization toward violence;

fear, anxiety, insecurity.

By promoting violence, making a show of it, the mass media cultivate in public an attraction and

even a fascination toward it.

Another Romanian study centered on the values and the models that mass media offers to the

public. According to Abraham (2005), the television has the most important impact on imposing some

attitudes and values to the public, especially to the children and young people. The author showed the

contribution of mass media in learning some type of values by these category of public: star wannabe (71-

84%); sexuality (40-67%); unscrupulousness (30-53%); violence (67-77%); pleasures of life (26-45%);

vulgarity/ aggressiveness (55-66%); lie (33-49%); sensational (59-67%); enrichment (33-47%). The

impact is major on the 15-18 year old children.

1.2.The impact of mass media models

In their book suggestively entitled “Carne in scatola” (“Canned meat”), Bolla and Cardini (1999)

highlight the many facets of the presentations of bodies in television’s broadcasts. They show how the

intimacy disappeared and the bodies have been exposed like merchandise in a shop window. The “perfect

bodies” presented by television appear to be “empty” of the human content, lifeless, with the unique aim

to impose a model to follow, a reference image for the audience.

“Television launches the rules of the look, new styles, fashion, imposing a normativity to which

the public can align their corporeality, entering into the magic mirror of telegenic” (Bolla and Cardini,

1999, p. 10). Beauty models and standards, promoted by mass media, have a large impact on public.

The characteristics of the bodies promoted by mass media are mythic: everlasting youth, endless

life, the invincible heroes, the strongest force, perfect beauty and health. The time of these “modern

heroes” is also mythic, repetitive and reversible. The psychological effects on the persons that are

comparing their “imperfect” bodies or images with the mass media models are important. Some of them

are: anorexia, sexual identity issues, low self-esteem, obedience, low authenticity

5.1.Pre-analysis of the content

In order to establish the most press promoted characters, we selected the most accessed Romanian

journal, according to the Romanian Audit Rating Bureau: “Libertatea” (“Liberty”), the online edition. We

followed the content of the lifestyle section of this journal during one week: 1st-7th September 2016. Thus,

we selected the journalistic content that had as prime goal not providing information, but emphasising the

personality and actions of one character in particular.

This type of articles differs from the informative ones by some particularities: they are centred on

a public or common person in order to underline, to analyse, to emphasise some of their actions, goals,

characteristics, in the same way that a writer presents one character in a book. These “journal” characters

often fulfil banal actions, they have some common “peculiarities”, their actions and their goals are

important only for them and for their relatives or friends, thus, they have no social impact on the other

people. So, this type of journal content has none of news’s characteristics. Instead, they are focusing on

describing a person whose actions, goals and characteristics are invested with importance, creating a

social model to follow or a “modern hero”.

The journalists are paying a specific attention to these characters, which are presented

continuously, with tireless vigilance, seeking new and new facts in their ordinary existence and

emphasizing any of their acts.

5.2.Content analysis procedure

We evaluated a total of 115 articles published in the newspaper “Libertatea” during September 1st,

2016 – September 7th, 2016. We analyzed articles containing stories about certain public figures or

ordinary people, raised at the rank of "heroes". The articles were accessed through the online edition of

this newspaper. The selected articles were part of the lifestyle section.

We considered for each item the main characteristics of the subject such as age, sex, area of

activity, the public or common status of the person; the behaviors manifested by the characters that were

described; the goals and the values associated with them.

We evaluated also which type of these characters is the most present in the analysed content. We

used a qualitative approach.