Media's Influence video

Here is a copy of the PowerPoint I created.  You can use the spacebar to pause.

Importance of Media (by Meggean Bos)

The culture and society in which we live plays a part in our sexual behavior. We can look at media to what is considered normal and acceptable in America. Social learning theory has contributed to profound changes in sexual attitudes and behaviors. We have terminology like “sexting” and “cyber sex” that have come around in the 21st century.

If we explore more into a social learning perspective we can see that most media depicts sex in unrealistic terms. “For example, an analysis of sexual content in the most popular movies released between 1983 and 2003 found that most sex acts depicted (705) occurred among people who had just met. Moreover, almost every scene (98%0 failed to address that topic of contraception,” (Lehmiller, 2014, p. 14-15).

An excellent research article is by Jane Brown. It contains information on how the mass media are an increasingly accessible way for people to learn about and see sexual behavior. The media may be especially important for young people as they are developing their own sexual beliefs and patterns of behavior, and as parents and schools remain reluctant to discuss sexual topics.

Brown, J. D. (2002). Mass media influences on sexuality (statistical data included. Journal of Sex Research, 39(1), 11.

Instructions to students

To post your original blog entry to this site, please make sure you have been approved as an "author." You can do this by responding to the email that was sent to your UA email address on May 28, 2014. Your blog entries should be original work and should incorporate information from the course textbooks and other appropriate, academic, high-quality, and reliable information that you find elsewhere. Please provide links and other evidence when you make claims. You are invited to spice up your blog entry with images. The easiest way to include images is to turn them into jpgs or find them as pre-existing jpgs on the internet. Please emphasize sociological, psychological, and/or gender theories, analysis, and general approach in your blog entries. Encourage debate, comments, and general reader engagement through your writing. Your blog posts will be visible to the entire online world, and you must post using your real name. So make the posts excellent and show off how much you are thinking and learning in this class. The usual rules of civility apply.

To post your original blog entry, follow these directions: 1) use Word or similar word processing to write a well-organized, original blog entry that you save to your computer. 2) after you have been approved as an author (see your UA email for the invitation), go to this URL http://psycho-socio-sexuality.blogspot.com/ 3) click on Log In at the top right. Use your UA email address and your UA password to sign in. 4) To post, click, New Post on the top right. 5) Copy your blog entry from Word and paste into your blog. 5) To insert a photograph or other image--find an image online or create one and save as a jpg to your computer. Then click the little picture icon at the top of your blog entry, select the jpg you want to post, click okay. You will then see a line of options--click small or medium to resize your image, and select Wrap so the text will wrap around the image. 6) To publish your blog entry, click Publish at the top right. You can also click Save to save for later, or Preview to see your blog entry. If you use Preview, note that you will have to return to your original blog post by clicking on the tab at the top. If you decide to edit your post after publication, go back into your post by clicking on the little pencil icon next to your post.

If all else fails and you can't figure out how to do this, email your Word document and jpg to your prof and ask for her assistance.

It's psycho... it's socio... it's sexuality

Welcome to our blog! These are the posts of students in the Human Sexualities Across Cultures class at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The posts here may be personal opinion, but they are all backed up by social science. Sociology and psychology are the primary social sciences that we are studying this semester, and we have included a smattering of history, and ideas from women's & gender studies. Your comments are welcome. Thanks for visiting!