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| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 25 of 52 15 April 2009 at 5:28am | IP Logged |
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SCREENING ONLINE MIGHT Make You Immoral
CNN news flash! A new study on the neurobiology of admiration and compassion has raised some intriguing questions about the effects of media consumption. It's too soon to say that Twitter and Facebook destroy the very foundations of morality, but it's NOT too soon to ask what they're doing. In the paper, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 13 people were shown documentary-style multimedia narratives designed to arouse empathy. Researchers recorded their brain activity and found that empathy is as deeply rooted in the human psyche as fear and anger. They also noticed that empathic brain systems took an average of six to eight seconds to start up. The researchers didn't connect this to media consumption habits, but the study's press release fueled speculation that the Facebook generation WHO SCREEN MORE THAN THEY READ could turn into sociopaths. Entitled "Can SCREENING AND Twitter Make You Amoral? Rapid-fire Media May Confuse Your Moral Compass," it claimed that the research "raises questions about the emotional cost —particularly for the developing brain — of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter." The study itself neither posed nor answered the question, but the extrapolation was widely repeated. And while the underlying case for the extrapolation is entirely plausible, the focus on Twitter and Facebook may be a red herring. Compared to in-depth news coverage, first-person Tweets of on-the-ground events, such as the 2008 Mumbai bombings, is generally unmoving. But in those situations, Twitter's primary use is in gathering useful, immediate facts, not storytelling. Most people who read a handful of words about a friend's heartache, or see a link to a tragic story, would likely follow it up. But following links to a video news story makes the possibility of a short-circuited neurobiology of compassion becomes more real. Research suggests that people are far more empathic when stories are told in a linear way, without quick shot-to-shot edits. In a 1996 Empirical Studies of the Arts paper, researchers showed three versions of an ostensibly tear-jerking story to 120 test subjects. "Subjects had significantly more favorable impressions of the victimized female protagonist than of her male opponent only when the story structure was linear," they concluded. A review of tabloid news formats in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media found that jarring, rapid-fire visual storytelling produced a physiological arousal that led to better recall of what had been seen, but only if the original subject matter was dull. If it was already arousing, tabloid storytelling appeared to produce a cognitive overload that actually prevented stories from sinking in. Whether tabloid storytelling formats are becoming more frequent is uncertain, but anecdotal evidence suggests it's true in broadcast media. "Quick cuts will draw and retain a viewer's focus even if the content is uninteresting," said freelance video producer Jill Bauerle. "MTV-like jump cuts, which have become the standard for many editors, serve as a sort of eye candy to keep eyeballs peeled to screen." "The sense that we have here is that videos have become briefer," said John Lynch, director of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. While evaluating coverage of the plane that crashed in the Hudson in January, he noticed that producers "would intersperse a little video of the plane with the reporter talking and various New Yorkers who saw the event, then go back to another shot of the plane at a different point. With a similar kind of incident 20 years ago, they would have shown footage the whole time." If compassion can only be activated by sustained attention, which is prevented by fast-cut editing, then the ability to be genuinely moved by another's story could atrophy. It might even fail to properly develop in children, whose brains are being formed in ways that will last a lifetime. More research is clearly needed, but the hypothesis is plausible. "If things are happening too fast, you may not ever fully experience emotions about other people's psychological states and that would have implications for your morality," said study co-author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a University of Southern California cognitive neuroscientist. But what of Facebook and Twitter, the subject of such breathless warnings? Yesterday's findings add to the urgency of researching the neurological effects of different media, and the ways those media are used. In the meantime, social networking won't automatically make you or your kids immoral. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 26 of 52 15 April 2009 at 6:24am | IP Logged |
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This is why we need a new word:
Emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind from READING TEXT ON PAPER SURFACES AS OPPOSED TO SCREENING TEXT ON COMPUTER SCREENS, CALLED SCREENING, according to a new study from a neuroscience group. The finding, contained in one of the first brain studies of inspirational emotions in a field dominated by a focus on fear and pain, suggests that digital media culture, where people SCREEN TEXT ONLINE ON A SCREEN, CALLED "SCREENING" by editors at the Urban Dictionary at google, may be better suited to some mental processes than others. "For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people's social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection, such as obtains when we are reading text on paper surface, such as a book or newspaper or magazine" said the team. Humans can sort information very quickly and can respond in fractions of seconds to signs of physical pain in others. Admiration and compassion—two of the social emotions that define humanity—take much longer, the group found. Their study will appear soon 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 27 of 52 15 April 2009 at 6:57am | IP Logged |
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read Maggie Jackon on this stuff too.
Listening to Distracted (the play) April 7, 2009 “Are you listening?” cries the father character in Distracted, a play I saw last weekend in New York. “Name one friend of ours who really listens,” he demands of his wife. This fast-paced and often funny play focuses on a couple who are trying to decide whether to medicate their son, who’s been diagnosed with ADD. The play resembles a tv sitcom, with plentiful one-liners, quick-change staging and one-dimensional characters. There is the baffled mom wanting to do the right thing for her son; an angry, hyper dad who sees his son as just another rambunctious boy; an exhausted teacher; prescription-happy shrink, and on and on. But there are poignant moments, especially when 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 28 of 52 15 April 2009 at 7:15am | IP Logged |
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Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her penetrating coverage of U.S. social issues. She writes the popular “Balancing Acts” column in the Sunday Boston Globe, and her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Gastronomica and on National Public Radio.
Her latest book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, details the steep costs of our current epidemic deficits of attention, while revealing the astonishing scientific discoveries that can help us rekindle our powers of focus in a world of speed and overload. Her acclaimed first book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, examined the loss of home as a refuge. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Tokyo and London, Jackson has won numerous awards for her coverage of work-life issues, including the Media Award from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board. In 2005-2006, she was a journalism fellow in child and family policy at the University of Maryland. A graduate of Yale University and the London School of Economics with 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 29 of 52 15 April 2009 at 7:16am | IP Logged |
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Her latest book,
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, details the steep costs of our current epidemic deficits of attention, while revealing the astonishing scientific discoveries that can help us, er, re-KINDLE our powers of focus in a world of speed SCREENING and overload. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5735 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 30 of 52 15 April 2009 at 9:18am | IP Logged |
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What a bunch of bull ^^
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| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 31 of 52 25 May 2009 at 2:53pm | IP Logged |
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A writer in Norway tells me
"I like "reading", and i do not like SCREEnING....because when I read an article on the screen, I read. When I write, that's what I do. When I play a computer game, that's what I do. When I look at a movie, that's what I do. I think perhaps for the reading where the eye skips along from topic to topic, "browsing" is a very good word, and it's even done in a browser. Or, I can browse a newspaper. I have to admit I don't "get" the distinction you're talking about. Of coruse there is a difference between paper and screen, but those are more along the lines of 1) Can't google a word I don't understadn while inside a book. 2) Can't take the computer in the tub or on a camping trip and expect it to work at any time. 3) Can't draw pictures in the margins of computers. 4) Can't copy and paste quotes fro ma bood, have to type them, and I risk typoing them. Emotionally I react differently to reading on a screen vs reading on paper depending on content, not on the mode of writing. But this is not what I research, so I don't know." Signed T. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| danbloom Groupie Antarctica zippy1300.blogspot.c Joined 5749 days ago 42 posts - 42 votes | Message 32 of 52 25 May 2009 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
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A news reporter in DC told me today
"i don't think gaining information through our eyes, and imparting it through our fingertips, will long be our primary mode. i think it is already being supplanted for many purposes by voice-in/voice-out (VIVO), in which we get information through our ears and impart it with our mouth. hence my interest in translation. and cell phones. and all other machines that understand what we say and respond in audio." J. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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