Media Needs to Consider Impact on Society: IVOH

During a more than 15-year career in the media Judy Rodgers says it was the one question people weren’t asking that drove her to co-found Images and Voices of Hope (IVOH).

The then CBS and 20th Century Fox producer says due attention was given to ratings and what people were enjoying, but no one was asking how these public images and messages were impacting society.

“It just seemed wrong that they shouldn’t be raising this question,” recalls Rodgers, IVOH executive director. “Here was our biggest export and nobody was asking what we were exporting.”

Founded in 1999, IVOH is a non-profit organization that works with the media to raise awareness about how its choices affect society.

It teaches Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and other strength-based approaches for public conversations in an effort to shift media from the “if-it-bleeds-it-leads” mentality to a more balanced perspective of news and events.

Rodgers says journalists often stand behind the argument that they are simply an “observer” that  tells the “truth” by bearing witness to an event and collecting the facts to tell the story.

“They really didn’t see that there was any choice in the matter and that they were influencing it in any way,” says Rodgers, who points to media’s coverage decisions as one aspect within their control.

“The idea that there were half a million things that might go on in Toronto on any given morning and they were going to pick 6 of them  — that didn’t occur to anybody that this was a factor.” 

After spending the last 10 years hosting more than 50 national and international conversations that engaged media about its role, U.S.-based IVOH is broadening its approach with the goal of extending its influence to journalism schools.

The organization is creating an essay series called Voices and Values in Journalism that will be written by eminent journalists exploring core ethical values and issues regarding the media, to be made available online.

Rodgers says through this essay series they are hoping to influence curriculum in journalism schools where students can currently go through their entire education without being asked to consider how their work impacts society.

She says while the media sector is lagging behind in this research, studies in positive psychology are highlighting the correlation between media and worldview.

Rodgers points to research by Jonathan Haidt, a professor at the University of Virginia, who found that showing people certain images can evoke positive emotions, such as a picture of Mother Theresa that evoked emotional “elevation,” including responses of hope and wanting to associate with the person and their work.

It's these types of outcomes that most interest Rodgers, who’d like to see more research that explores how the role of media can contribute to greater positivity and cultural transformation.

“Our point is if that media in those research situations can result in that kind of heightened empathic and philanthropic impulse than we need to consider the impact of these stories on whole societies,” says Rodgers.

To learn more about IVOH, click here.

Related Story:
IVOH Teaching Appreciative Inquiry to Transform Media

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