Gossip Girl, Sexual Exposure, and Impacts to Teenagers

Gossip Girl, the American drama television series released on the CW since September, 2007, revolves around the lives of privileged teenagers from elite class in New York City's Upper East Side. According to the U.S. Nielsen Ratings, though the ratings of this show are not attractive, Gossip Girl has held excellent attention among young audiences, especially for the female teenagers. The contents, characters and fashions showed in this series gave a huge impact for teenagers, and the influence still goes on. Today, I will analyze several sexual parts of the content showed on episode 10 season three (2009, Nov 16), apply the effects theory of desensitization given by Professor Tewksbury in his CMN277 lecture to predict possible effects to teenagers.

Desensitization
According to Professor Tewksbury’s lecture (Oct 27, 2009), the basic model of desensitization is three steps: the audiences received repeated exposure; then it reduced their emotional response to the exposure; in the end, they begin to be acceptable of depicted behavior. At the beginning of this episode, Dan, one of the main heroes, was walking along the street in the morning while thinking of the threesome sexual behavior happened between him and the other two girls last night. Then the scene switched to that night: the two girls were kissing each other on the bed while Dan was lying and staring at them with a very enjoyable expression. In this example, according to desensitization theory, audiences were exposed to the scene of threesome, and they feel shocked, strange and even disgusted in the first sight. However, after these kinds of sexual scenes exposed to the audiences again and again, they will be bothered less and less. In the long term, these cumulative exposures will bring the audiences’ affective changes on their value and attitudes towards sexual behaviors. In this case, the teenagers, especial female teenagers are more likely to be affected. They are staying at the age of sex exploration: shy, sensitive and conservative, but also easy to be seduced and deluded. Female teenagers may be cautious and object to unusual sexual excitements like threesome or premarital intercourse; however, after being showed these kinds of scenes repeatedly, they may turn to believe threesome is common and not that dirty as they think before, and gradually accept people do this behavior. For instance, if a girl watches series that depict the threesome again and again, she may soon change her perceptions about the frequency of the occurrence of threesome behavior in the real world. She may also reevaluate the amount of social and psychological harm this behavior causes. And she may even believe it will be possible for her to try it in the future.

As I showed before, the basic model of desensitization contains three steps; however, in my point of view, the effect may go further: from attitude change to the behavior change. It means people accept things which bothered them before, and the affective changes may lead to their personal behavior changes in their real lives. Some researchers believe there is a strong relationship between sex exposure and behavior change among teenagers. According to Rand Corporation (2008), “Exposure to sexual content on television predicted teen pregnancy, with adjustment for all covariates”(para.4). In my example before, the girl who watches threesome scenes, desensitizes to accept them, and changes her attitudes, then may also have the possibility to change her real personal sexual behaviors further, such as attempting more irregular sexual behaviors and so on.

Conclusion and Suggestion
Through these typical examples, we can see media exposure can desensitize our attitudes, and make changes for us in the long term. As media take such an important role in our lives, appropriate media message supervision and control are essential and meaningful. However, as I showed before, media can bring us both negative and positive effects, and the effects are not easy to measure and predict; therefore, media content control could be hard and controversial. The TV series Gossip Girl have received mixed reviews since it premiered to the public: opponents claim this show contains too much sexually explicit content which will give teenagers negative effects; supporters believe Gossip Girl is derived from society and reflects the reality. In my point of view, the best way of media control is not to restrict the exposure contents or teenagers’ right to access media message. On the country, we should encourage media be more neutral and show both of the sides of the society. Like in the show Gossip Girl, the content of threesome is derived from today’s young people’ real life, it is no need to avoid facing it. Instead, we can add more contents to show how the negative effects taking this sexual behavior could be. Teenagers will learn from both of the sides, compare, and balance their behaviors.

media exposure and effects

In my communication 277 class, we are talking something very interesting on media exposure and its effects to the audiences and society.The professor talked about 6 general effects theories, and today I will apply two of them to one of our daily medium exposure. I will show you how the media exposure can influence our thoughts and feelings based on the theories: one is exemplification, and the other is catharsis.

In my journal today, I will choose the scene showed on TV on the day that Chicago was announced losing the right to host the Olympic Games: on the TV show, audiences can see a lot of supporters cried and complained about the failure.Then, I will use the two theories to show you how this exposure can influence audiences.

To begin with, I will show you how the theory of exemplification explains this exposure's effect. Firstly, according to professor's lecture, exemplification theory indicates that media exposure examples in news, and then it will make audience recall the news in the future, which will be used in beliefs and judgment about issues; in many cases, these judgment and beliefs are extreme and incorrect.In this case, some people saw that these people cried and blamed to the President Obama's ego which led to the final failure. They watched it, and this exposure will influence the audiences impression and beliefs in the future. Next time when they are facing the decision whether to support Chicago again as the host city for the Olympic Games, they will think of this failure, and dare not to run the same candidates competition. Also, it maybe influence the impression of the President for the audience. They will recall of this exposure, the complaints' blame when they vote for the president's new policy. As you see, the exemplification effect could cause cognitive changes for audiences in the long term on different persons.

Another theory is catharsis, which means we audiences will feel better after we see people in the media exposure crying and suffering.It is obviously in this case, the opponents or some supporters for the other host cities will feel so happy and even be more proud when saw these people's frustrations exposed to the media; in the mean while, those who support Chicago to hold the Games will also feel their suffers are released a lot by watching there were also other people felt the same feeling as they did.So they will not feel so upset anymore. Therefore, Catharsis theory shows us the exposure may cause affective changes in short term for the audiences.

All in all, experts in communication field try to use and create different theories to explain how media influence our daily life and our perception of the society.These theories are both interesting and useful for us. After taking this class, I just become to think more when I am receiving media messages from the world.

Outline for research Paper

Thesis statement: Solving financial problems of public universites now turns to be a very controversial issue. In my point of view, enrollment expansion is the best solution.
1. Background for this topic
A. Background for financial probelms in Public universities now
B. history breif review of enrollment expasion in American public schools

2. some opponents belive it is not a wise choice for university to do so.
A.enrollment expasion of public universites impact education quality and universities' acceptance standard
B.there are also other ways for sovling problems
a. cutting expenses and its benefits
b. increasing tuitions and its benefits

3. The way of enrollment expansion has a lot of advantages
A. meet the increasing need of people for further education in financial crisis
a, more good students prefer public universities based on family situation
b, more people choose graduate schools since losing jobs
B. international students bring high quality and diversity
a, high competition bring high quality international studednts
b, diversity is valuabe for public universities

4. The other ways have potencial negetive effects
A. increasing tuitions may turn students away
a, increasing tuitions put family into worse situation
b, pull public universites into privatization
B. Cutting expenses may damage on campus students' benefits
a, cutting expenses may influence students' eduation quality
b, cutting expenses may lead to improper distribution

5. The potencial negetive effects enrollment expansion may bring can be avoid or not that worse
A. students education quality can be protect compared to cutting expenses
B. schools' acceptance principle can be adjusted based on society's change

Research log

A. topic: expansion enrollment of public universities in America