By Dan Henrich
Introduction
It has always been of concern to those of us studying the mass media exactly what effect international programming has on Third World audiences. What effect, for instance, does the airing of dramatic programming that deals with non-cultural relationships between the sexes have on semi-rural village viewers? This journal article attempts to address these questions. Although this data is older, applications of mobile device use and internet use can substitute.
Using data collected between 1982 and 1990, the authors detail the arrival of modem media in the village of Zawiya, Morocco. Their methodology is referred to as a ‘panel study’ or ‘longitudinal study’ due to the widely separated data collection. This type of approach is essential to the study of attitudinal changes before and after the arrival of a mass media like TV.
Television was introduced to Zawiya in 1967, a town of 12,000 in northwestern Morocco. By 1982 a majority of the homes had black and white sets. By 1994, satellite dishes began to appear with access to Star-TV and other services (90 plus channels). Most of the programming was international in nature due to the high local production cost vs. the purchasing of dubbed programs. In the early 1980’s, more Egyptian serials came on the air. Most had a romantic storylines and addressed the theme in a far more sexually explicit manner than was normal in Zawiya. Television viewing in Zawiya is a social event with the family gathering in the largest room of the house. In the past, few people paid close attention and conversations “went around the set.” Occasionally there would be a pause for an adolescent to explain the French programs plot to their elders.
In an interview, an 18-year-old said he enjoyed French films on TV, but not
Egyptian ones. He said, ‘With the French films you ‘see some of the world,’ while the Egyptian films only allowed you to see ‘inside the house.'” The authors go on to discuss the impact TV made on dating and relationships between the sexes. It is significant that although only 25% of each sex interviewed wanted to make marriage choices themselves, most fell back on the traditional parental choices. The percentage wanting a role in mate selection increased significantly as youth increased in age and education. Among the girls, television has become a new avenue of information about boys and marriage. “The boys have cafes to go to and talk, the girls are restricted now we have TV,” commented a young woman from Zawiya.
The author’s study of youth and media is important because it starts to answer some of the essential questions of communication. For example, what effect does our programming have on the people who view it? Does television programming produced in near-culture countries communicate more effectively (in this case, Egyptian programming vs. French)? For example, the authors state that the visual character of television makes language differences less important. “Youths want to be exposed to the outside world on television because they see it as a way to escape from their current situation. The authors quote anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, “The imagination expressed in dreams, songs, fantasies, myths and stories has always been part of the repertoire, in some culturally organized way, of every society. There is a peculiar new force of the imagination in social life today. More persons in more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than they ever did before. One important source of this change is the mass media.”
It would be possible to use this study to argue that existing dubbed American programs can be used to reach Muslim youth just as effectively as more expensive locally produced programs. However, there was a marked difference in how viewers paid attention to television when a locally produced program was on the air. One of the problems with this type of study is that it is “post-dictive” and does not address what the producer was attempting to say in his production. In order to understand the comparative effects of a “produced for America” language dubbed show versus a locally (or near-culture) produced show with the same communication goals, a research component at every step of the production and distribution process would be required. This is called ‘formative evaluation.’
In conclusion, the authors cited other studies that noted that media viewing has changed women’s self-perceptions, but that these young women are “caught between several worlds that the new media technologies can cross but most individual lives cannot.”
Lessons Learned
It may be easy to dismiss this study if one were working in parts of Asia, or among Hindu’s and Buddhists. However, there are some good lessons learned in the article:
- International programming can open the minds of youth to new ideas. This is similar to the finding that new urban migrants may be open to new ideas and led to the concentration of reaching the megacities with new information.
- There is some evidence that sitcom type entertainment-education television programs are “culturally-sharable” in studies by Arvind Singhal and Peer J Svenkerud. This is partially supported by Davis and Davis’ findings as they wrote about the effects of French and Egyptian “soaps” had on the attitudes of youth. The difference is that Singhal’s studies related to specific programming designed to communicate specific issues like small family size, etc. Singhal and Svenkerud discussed the critical issues of cultural-proximity and the importance of “grassroots construction of meaning, identification and use of common cultural symbols.
- Television in general and specifically locally or near locally produced programming can change (or help to change with the help of other media) attitudes towards such foundational concepts as marriage. But that even if attitudes are changed, behavior may not due to other cultural restrictions.
Bibliography
Journal Citation: Davis, Susan and Davis, Douglas “The Mosque and the Satellite: Media and Adolescence in a Moroccan Town,” JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE, vol. 24, No. 5, 1995
Singhal, Arvind and Svenkerud, Peer J. ‘Prosocially Sharable Entertainment Television Programmes: A Programming Alternative in Developing Countries?” The Journal Of Development Communication, No 5, 1994.
