This weekend I read about a study which found that fiction television may be more effective at convincing young women to use birth control than a news program offering the same information. Researchers at Ohio State University found that college-age women who viewed a televised drama about a teen pregnancy felt more vulnerable two weeks after watching the show, and this led to more support for using birth control. However, those who watched a news program detailing the difficulties caused by teen pregnancies were unmoved, and had no change in their intentions to use birth control. (Read more about it here).
And then today, a study was released on how medical dramas give bad information about seizure treatment (read it here). The study looked at the depiction of seizure care for all episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy,” House, M.D.,” and “Private Practice,” and the last five seasons of “ER” and found that in 46 percent of seizure cases, characters on these shows delivered inappropriate treatments such as holding the person down, trying to stop involuntary movements or putting something in the person’s mouth. (In case you are wondering, the appropriate thing to do is to clear the area of dangerous objects, put something soft under the head, rotate them onto their side, make sure they don’t hurt themselves while convulsing, and NOT to stick something in their mouths).
The seizure study did not look at how many television watchers ended up utilizing this misinformation, but in light of the birth control study, I’ve been thinking about how people process and store the information they see in a fictional program. As a person who easily cries at anything I see on TV, I can understand how college women were swept up in a teen pregnancy story and then able to apply it to their own lives. I mean, isn’t this what good fiction is suppose to do – make us identify with the characters we are watching? In contrast, a news program feels almost alienating. When watching the news, we see what’s happening to “other people” whereas on the OC (or what have you) we see what’s happening to people just like us. So as a public service announcement, I can see how drama would be more effective.
That said, because we are so easily taken in by a fictional narrative, is it important for that fictional narrative to be 100% accurate at all times? If I stick a wooden spoon in a seizure victim’s mouth, whose to blame? The episode of ER where I saw a doctor do it, or me for believing that the doctor on TV was accurately treating a patient? The answer to these questions, of course, comes down to whether or not we believe that TV audiences are taking factual guidance from the shows from which they are already reaping emotional and ethical guidance. It’s an interesting question.
For instance, I watch HOUSE – a show predicated on the simple fact that Dr. Greg House (played by Hugh Laurie) is a brilliant doctor and diagnostician working at a hospital in Princeton, NJ. And over the course of many seasons, I’ve gotten to love this character and even trust him to do “the right thing”. So, if House does something medically inaccurate on TV, it’s very unlikely that I will ever realize it. Does this mean that if I find myself in a similar “House” emergency, I will reference the show to figure out what to do? I might just.
Your thoughts?