Just Change the Channel: Media Violence and the Lack of Sociological Imagination

Abstract

The lack of sociological imagination (Mills, 1959/2000) exhibited throughout U.S. American culture functions as a rhetorical obstacle that constrains Americans from understanding the media in ways that are oppositional or media literate. In this study, I administered a qualitative questionnaire to 127 students at a liberal arts institution, in which students were asked to discuss their opinions about media violence. Their responses suggested a lack of sociological imagination in three ways: (a) They understood the impact of media violence in personal, but not political, terms; (b) they understood media "effects" in simplistic and unsophisticated ways; and (c) they understood themselves to be passive media consumers, as opposed to active media citizens.