Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture: Why Media Is Not the Answer
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Tackling the essential social problems in America through a popular culture lens, this original book debunks the notion that the media is to blame for society’s ills. Publishers Weekly Sternheimer (Kids These Days) unpacks the media's penchant for sensationalizing and misdirecting public discourse about the real causes of poverty, disease, materialism, sexual license and substance abuse. She argues that news coverage engages in misleading "media phobia"-blaming popular culture for entrenched social problems by fingering convenient scapegoats (e.g., movies, video games, rap music) for teen pregnancy, lower educational attainment and violence. Sternheimer illustrates how reports of children's increased violence after video-game use are based almost entirely on spurious or contradictory studies, and how arguments about media phobia deflect attention away from such basic issues as unequal access to skills, education, jobs and resources: the "real culprits" and causal links the media ignores. Revealing how frequently-and perniciously-social research is manipulated, Sternheimer demonstrates how to hold the media accountable while addressing the more entrenched and salient problem of child poverty that she believes is to blame. (Aug.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgments ixIntroduction Media Phobia: Why Blaming Popular Culture for Causing Social Problems Is a Problem 1Media Phobia #1 Popular Culture Is Dumbing Down America 21Media Phobia #2 Popular Culture Is Ruining Childhood 47Media Phobia #3 Media Violence Causes Real Violence 75Media Phobia #4 Popular Culture Promotes Teen Sex 123Media Phobia #5 Popular Culture Promotes Teen Pregnancy and Single Parenthood 157Media Phobia #6 Popular Culture Makes Kids More Materialistic Than Ever 179Media Phobia #7 Popular Culture May Be Hazardous to Your Health 211Media Phobia #8 Popular Culture Promotes Substance Abuse 231Media Phobia #9 Rap Music Promotes Misogyny, Homophobia, and Racism 257Conclusion Understanding Social Problems Beyond Popular Culture: Why Inequality Matters 285Selected Bibliography 301Index 307
