Session Type: Poster Accepted by MIG(s): Time Allotted: 60 Description: In a 2.0 era entertainment media as a source for communicating leadership messages cannot be ignored. This research utilizes Laub’s APS Model to explore the leadership paradigms portrayed in the television series, Lost. The study raises questions concerning leadership perspectives in media and their relationship to real world leadership. Abstract: Understanding leadership in the 2.0 era requires an understanding that citizens of the most modern and advanced societies of the world today co-exist in two realities. One is the reality a person wakes up to everyday, that they attend work in and build relationships with family and friends in. The other reality is much more manufactured. This is a digital reality dominated by television, box office hits, surfing the Internet, video gaming and more. This reality has become such a large presence that people have begun to blend their realities even to the extent of building relationships with other human beings without ever meeting them.
Over the last fifty years this phenomena has caught an intense interest by many communication scholars. The works of these scholars create a foundation for what is understood as communication’s impact on human reality. Pearce and Cronen state that, “persons in conversation co-construct their own social realities and are simultaneously shaped by the world they create (Griffin 66),” and theorist Neil Postman explains that communication is the, “dominate influence on the formation of the culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations (9).” Despite the strong implications of these statements, leadership scholars have lagged slightly behind the curve in exploring the effects to modern leadership due to newer communication mediums, especially when considering entertainment media. Leadership scholars are consumed with understanding how to raise up the next generation of leaders, but many fail to fully recognize the dilemma of the younger generation’s dual-citizenship in these co-realities.
For every amount of knowledge and information a student obtains in school, is there at least an equal share of knowledge and information retained from the digital world outside of their time in the classroom? If this could be true for students, what implication does this have for the working person? After a long days work and a busy early evening, when a person clicks on to their favorite primetime television show, is it purely mindless entertainment meant to distract from the real world or is this person also absorbing ideologies, mindsets and messages communicated through this false reality? If the studies conducted by Gerbner et al. are true, that the more time a person spends watching television the more they begin to see the real world through the context of the television they watch, then could it not be argued that this false reality is on some level of consciousness being stored as true reality (47)?
Conducted as undergraduate honors thesis for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University, the research for this paper serves as a wedge to open dialogue on this topic. This research is an analysis of the leadership paradigms portrayed in a primetime television drama series. The purpose of such an analysis is to lay the foundation of this discussion by asking the primary question, how is leadership portrayed in media? Once this topic has been thoroughly explored then questions of a deeper nature more appropriately surface.
As this study was designed to explore the more subliminal forms of media encountered in people’s lives, primetime television drama was chosen. Primetime television drama fits this criteria due to its principally entertainment value and its high visibility to a large audience. An analysis of the most popular television shows airing at the time of the original research and meeting both the qualifications of primetime and drama, surfaced only a few solid options, including the chosen series Lost. The plot of Lost allowed for characters facing rich leadership experiences and challenges.
Leadership scholar Jim Laub’s APS Model defines three broad paradigms in which most leaders tend to fall; autocratic, paternalistic and servant. Laub’s APS Model, six characters demonstrating leadership potential were scrutinized through their language and actions and rated accordingly on the ten facets that reveal autocratic, paternalistic or servant mindsets about leadership. The study gives specific examples from season and episode to support the position each character was assigned on the APS spectrum.
The original study consisted of an analysis of seasons one thru three. As the final and sixth season of the series will come to completion in 2010, observations on developments and shifts over the complete series that may affect the characters’ ratings on the APS model will be shared at the presentation.
In addition to these developments, insights and implications of this research will be highlighted. A series like Lost in itself may not shape a person’s entire perspective, but as a devoted audience member bonds and attaches to a character, there is a sense of “knowing” that often hinders the audience’s ability to separate that character’s experience from their own. This study sets the stage for the question to be asked as to whether or not individuals who absorb media such as this take what they see and from that create an idea or expectation for their own leadership and for the leadership they encounter in true reality. Also, this type of study encourages questions to be explored involving the nature of media creators and how explicitly they are or are not submersing their own ideas and agendas into their creation.
It is easy to overlook entertainment media as a shaping source of leadership. But for those who seek to understand and communicate the best and most effective practices of leadership, this area of societies second reality cannot be ignored. For this kind of media is the one that most people accept without applying critical thought. This research should challenge the way leadership scholars approach and engage entertainment media and wedge open a dialogue to what role communication, in particular media, plays in a 2.0 era of leadership.
Kristyn Eske, Center for LIfe Calling & Leadership, Indiana Wesleyan University
Bio: Kristyn Eske obtained a bachelor's degree in Communication Arts and Leadership at Indiana Wesleyan University as well as graduated from the John Wesley Honors College. She is currently a coordinator in the IWU Center for Life Calling & Leadership where she oversees communication/marketing and co-teaches in leadership courses.
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