Passive thought within media is the mass audience subliminally/ unconsciously taking on the opinions and beliefs that the media inject. Censorship is used within media to prevent the mass audience being exposed to explicit contents. The Hays Code was introduced in the 1920s as they recognised their responsibility to mass audience to prevent explicit contents as media could inject audiences with thoughts that go against society and traditional views. For example it was unacceptable for Media to show such things as; white slavery, ridicule of the clergy, misusing the American flag and misusing words such a Christ, Lord or God in a rude way. Although we are not faced with same views that are unacceptable, our mass audience are still given restrictions on what we can watch- for example certain music videos are given an age restriction. As well as this "Watershed" within television is the time in which adult contents can be broadcasted; in the UK it is 9pm as this a time in which we expect children will be asleep. The reason why children are restricted to see this contents is because the Media are aware that they can subconsciously influence the audience to believe what is acceptable. Moreover we have been injected with the Media's perception of positive and negative stereotypes; genders views are different as mass audience has been told what is right and wrong for each gender.
I agree that mass audiences are still passive recipients of media text, to an extent because we are still given guidelines of what we should and shouldn't watch due to the influence it can have over a person subliminally. Moreover we have been desensitized as a mass audience to certain things which, if the Media did not show we wouldn't- for example violence.
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