Watching Television Can Change the World ("The Wire")

 . . . [P]opular culture reaches a different and much broader audience than “serious” nonfiction. Popular fictions not only reach a vast audience, psychologists tell us they are highly effective in changing readers’ or viewers’ attitudes towards the topics discussed. In fact, narrative fictions are actually more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction texts. Fiction designed primarily to entertain is a more effective teacher than nonfiction designed to persuade. The reason for this surprising fact is that reading or viewing fiction radically alters the way we process information. When we read nonfiction, we are skeptical of the ideas presented, but when absorbed in a story, this critical attitude dissolves, our emotions are engaged, and we tend to uncritically accept the narratives ideas. The better the story is crafted, the more effective its propaganda effect. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s role in changing the way Northerners viewed slavery in the antebellum era is only one example of the potent propaganda potential of popular fictional narratives. And The Wire is a very skillfully crafted fiction.

That is from a new paper by John Denvir (February 2013). The abstract:

Popular culture can have political impact. "The Wire" is not only engrossing melodrama; it also tells a compelling story of how and why the American political system fails us. Because a television series like "The Wire" not only appeals to a much broader audience than traditional political arguments, but also transforms abstractions into concrete images aimed at both our hearts and our minds, it can play a major role in efforts to change the world for the better.

How to teach economics after the financial crisis: Use "The Wire."

One can understand the complexities of socio-economics by looking at works of fiction, like this one. Gregg Ochaita told me about the very popular show, The Wire. Slate has a pretty good article by Drake Bennett about how social scientist are using this show as a teaching tool:

Asked why he was teaching a class around a TV drama, Wilson said the show makes the concerns of sociologists immediate in a way no work of sociology he knows of ever has. "Although The Wire is fiction, not a documentary, its depiction of [the] systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the urban poor is more poignant and compelling [than] that of any published study, including my own," he wrote in an e-mail.

For Wilson, the unique power of the show comes from the way it takes fiction's ability to create fully realized inner lives for its characters and combines that with qualities rare in a piece of entertainment: an acuity about the structural conditions that constrain human choices (whether it's bureaucratic inertia, institutional racism, or economic decay) and an unparalleled scrupulousness about accurately portraying them. Wilson describes the show's characters almost as a set of case studies, remarkable for the vividness with which they embody a set of arguments about the American inner city. "What I'm concentrating on is how this series so brilliantly illustrates theories and processes that social scientists have been writing about for years," he said in an interview.

I have used fiction to teach institutional economics, and science fiction to teach law and economics. What I like about this approach is that it presents a general equilibrium kind of environment. In other words, there is no "ceteris paribus" and everything is a mess, just like "real life."

A scene from The Wire: "it's about the product:"

HT: Gregg Ochaita