Hilbert College	Issues in Mass Communication From God to Bill Gates: A Look at the Communication Theories Surrounding the Y2K Panic	- Home - Students - Tutorials - Student Papers -
by: Denise Levereaux November 23, 1999   "It is too compelling a story for audiences that thrive on countdowns to the unknown."-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, on the public's reaction to the Y2K problem.   "We need help, the Poet reckoned."-Edward Dorn   With New Year's Eve less than two months away, we've all been exposed to a ton of information about the coming of the year 2000. From elaborate advertising schemes, news articles, federal regulations, and doomsday soothsayers, the public has been inundated with facts and myths about the change of the millennium. But what's the reason for all the fuss? Is it Y2K? Is it the end of the world? Or is the panic just a media-driven attempt to raise ratings and sell products? Who's telling the truth? These questions become more and more noticeable in the public arena as the clock ticks down to New Years. The population speculates, and the tone becomes more and more panicked with each speculation. Threats of bank runs, economic depression, mass computer failures, and rioting abound. (Feder, 1999). Sensationalistic media coverage of the impending millennium increases daily, depicting people who are stocking up on food, clothing, and ammunition in anticipation of societal disruptions. Fanatic religious groups gather steam as well, using the coming millennium as the perfect reason to preach louder, harder, and faster, convincing an unestimated amount of people that the world may end or change drastically before the start of the third millennium (Singer, 1997). With the media milking the controversy for everything it can get, the public can't help but be disturbed. The troubling question surrounding the Y2K issue is: Who started the panic? Was it the people or the press? Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to this question, no obvious piece of evidence that allows us to name one group or the other as the culprit. The first known article on the year 2000 problem appeared in ComputerWorld in 1984. Surprisingly enough, the author lost his job at an auto manufacturing plant for pushing his management "past the point of irritation" on the subject. Obviously, the world wasn't quite ready to discuss the Y2K issue seriously yet. This unwillingness to discuss the year 2000's effects on the computer industry, and, ultimately the entire world changed drastically in the decade that followed. As computer systems in business and banking began having date-related errors on an increasingly regular basis, the industries began to take note. They demanded answers, and the computer industry had to stand up and explain what it had done wrong, and how it was going to fix it (Ulrich, 1997). When computer designers began working on systems thirty years ago, no one was thinking ahead to the turn of the century. Systems designers programmed computers to recognize dates in a condensed format: year/day/month. They chose to use two-digit numbers to represent each part of the date. That seemed most logical, because abbreviating dates in that manner was already a common habit for people by the 1950s. This yy/dd/mm format has a fatal flaw, however: it reads dates occurring after the year 2000 as happening before the year 2000, because of the fact that it only reads the last two digits of a year. In this two digit system, the year 1998 reads as "98" and the year 2000 reads as "00." This means that things like eligibility dates for life insurance and other benefits are seen by the computer as already expired, rather than happening at a date projected in the future (Ulrich, 1997). The implications of such a large-scale computer malfunction are serious, and with the ever-increasing amount of computer involvement in daily life, the possibility for disruption increases as well. If left unfixed, the Y2K bug could seriously impact such industries as the banking industry, the transportation industry, the telecommunications industry, the government, and, of course, small business (Ulrich, 1997). The public's lack of understanding of the situation has affected the issue twice. First, the public refused to believe the seriousness of the Y2K issue. Many consumers wrote the problem off under such ideas as "We have plenty of time," "Someone will invent an automated solution," or by figuring that because their systems were new, they were already equipped to handle the rollover (Ulrich, 1997). This skepticism forced the computer industry and the government into Y2K overdrive, spurred on perhaps by the fear that no one would be prepared at the turn of the century. They did a little too well at convincing the public of the threat to come, though, because the pubic then constructed an image of the coming millennium as a time of computer failure and crisis. This reaction of the public has its base in several media theories, most notably cultivation theory, agenda setting, and, ultimately, socially constructed realities. People often think of media as the vehicles for reflecting the world around them. News programs report what happened that day. Sitcoms and dramatic programs reflect the values, lifestyles, and habits of their society. Richard Harris says that from this perspective, media acts as "a sort of window on reality" (Harris, 1989). This is applicable to the public's perception of the Y2K problem in that they internalize what they see on television as reality. For example, 60 Minutes made the statement that "The federal government's General Accounting Office has warned Congress that the Y2K situation is so bad here that the nation's capital may be unable to effectively ensure public safety, collect revenue, educate students or provide health-care services." in its May 23rd broadcast (60 Minutes, 1999). Using the "media as view of reality" theory, the public then assumes that governmental preparedness for the year 2000 is in sorry shape, failing to take into account the perspective or context of the statement. "Logic" then dictates that if the government isn't adequately prepared for the turn of the century, there are going to be some very serious complications. Harris presents a second view of media that explains why people are so terrified of the year 2000 as well. He says that the media does not simply reflect the world, but makes a world of its own that becomes a reality for the audience. The key factor that allows media to construct such realities is that the media is responsible for choosing what to tell the audience about what is going on in the world. The media chooses the angle from which a story is presented, and the audience accepts that interpretation, which then becomes part of its collective experience. It is largely because of audience passivity that the media can get away with creating slanted realities, which, when accepted by the public, merge and become "the reality" (Harris, 1989). According to this "social construction" theory, if someone preaches doomsday and technological chaos for long enough, eventually his audience will believe him. For example, Pedagoguery Software company created a stir in the Macintosh realm when it issued a statement saying that it had found that Mac's weren't really Y2K compliant, despite Apple's claim that "most Mac applications can handle internally generated dates correctly all the way to the year 29,940"(Apple Corp., 1999). The buzz lasted for several days until Pedagoguery spokesperson Jeff Tupper was forced to clarify by saying "It's not a problem with the Mac itself, it's a problem with some older documentation. If programmers use older documentation, they may introduce Y2K errors into their Mac software" (Kahney, 1999). The Mac's reputation emerged relatively unscathed, but for a time it seemed that Mac users almost willingly believed Pedagoguery's misleading original statement. Mass communication theories used to describe public reaction to media issues surrounding Y2K are varied. Harris mentions several key theories to explain our social constructions created by the media. Most notably are the theories of agenda setting and cultivation theory. Both if these theories discuss the impacts and effects that information presented from a biased source has on an audience. While communication theorists of the past argued such theories as "magic bullet" and the "hypodermic" media, recent research shows that media is selectively influential on any given audience. Different people understand a message in numerous different ways, and have just as many varied responses (Harris, 1989). This notion explains why some people, when presented with information concerning the year 2000, hardly blink an eye, while others stockpile food and build bomb shelters in the wilderness. Agenda setting plays a direct role in the media's presentation of Y2K, for it examines how the media influences the public by "setting an agenda" of what issues are important and what people should think about. Agenda setting directs public thought away from some issues and towards others (Harris, 1989). The question behind agenda setting, however, is "who is setting the agenda?" Logic dictates that media's moneymakers-the businesses that pay a media source's bills through advertising-are given a fair amount of weight in deciding which issues are going to be trumpeted as important and which issues will be quietly pushed aside. Who are the most influential businesses in the world today? Why, the computer-related businesses of course. And what have they been worrying about since the late 1980s? That no one will feel the need to prepare computer systems for the year 2000. So how do they ease their minds? They push the Y2K preparedness issue, through advertising and exerting power over the media. Companies like Microsoft have poured millions of dollars into creating information centers on the year 2000 as a means of freeing themselves of liability in case of failure, as well as generate an increased awareness of the potential threat of Y2K (Microsoft Corp., 1999) Cultivation theory takes the agendas set by the media and explains why they impact the public in the way that they do. It depicts media as a "socializing agent," and shows how an audience's perceived reality is directly affected by what it is exposed to in the media (Harris, 1989). George Gerbner's "mean world theory" is particularly relevant to the Y2K panic because it explains how passive audiences internalize the fatalistic attitude presented by the media and come to see it as reality. A February article from the New York Times describes the increasing paranoia of the American public as the end of the year draws near. The article says "polls show that around 10 percent of citizens expect to withdraw most or all of their money from banks. A Gallup poll in December found that 17 percent expected to buy either a generator or a wood stove"(Feder, 1999). These percentages show a drastic increase in the public fear of technological failure from 1984 when hardly anyone outside of the computer industry knew about the Y2K problem. After looking at the communications theories applicable to the year 2000 crisis, it becomes obvious that the media and the public are equally responsible for the panic that has grown up around the turn of the millennium. The media is responsible for creating panic-stricken and doomsday headlines, but the public is responsible for its reaction to those headlines. While no one can say with complete confidence that the turn of the millennium brings with it no problems of significant technological impact, no one can say for sure that it doesn't. As John Koskinen, chairman of the President's Commission on Year 2000 Conversion, says in the New York Times article, "overreaction becomes one of the biggest remaining problems"(Feder, 1999). No matter what the result of the approach of the year 2000, it will surely progress more smoothly if the public and the press calm down and approach the situation with more rationality and less fatalism. Perhaps if it were possible for the media to suspend its quest for thrilling headlines, more progress and less panic would surround the transition from 1999 to 2000. Bibliography: 60 Minutes. (1999)."Y2K; LOOK AT HOW LOCAL GOVERNMENTS, INCLUDING WASHINGTON, DC, ARE LESS PREPARED FOR A POSSIBLE Y2K CRASH THAN MANY THINK." http://www.y2k-bug.to/defaultframe.html   Apple Corporation. (1999) Year 2000 page. http://www.apple.com/about/year2000/   Cappella, Joseph N. and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.(1997) Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. Oxford University Press: Oxford.   Feder, Barnaby. (1999) "Year 2000 Glitch Meets People Problem: Possible Panic." The New York Times on the Web. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/02/biztech/articles/09panic.html   Harris, Richard Jackson. (1989) A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: New Jersey.   Kahney, Leander. (1999) "Much Ado About Almost Nothing." Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/17808.html   Keogh, Jim. (1997) Solving the Year 2000 Problem AP Professional Press: Boston.   Landes, Richard A.(1997) "The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Millennial Fever and the Origins of the Modern West." The Year 2000: Essays on the End. Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn, eds. New York University Press: New York.   Micrsosoft Corporation. (1999) "The Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure." http://www.microsoft.com/Seminar/1033/FAQ/Y2KDisclosure.htm   Quinby, Lee. (1999) Millennial Seduction: A Skeptic Confronts Apocalyptic Culture. Cornell University Press: London.   Rushkoff, Douglas. (1999) Coercion: Why We Listen to what They Say. Riverhead Books: New York.   Singer, Margaret Thaler. (1997) "On the Image of 2000 in Contemporary Cults." The Year 2000: Essays on the End. Charles B. Strozier and Michael Flynn, eds. New York University Press: New York.   Ulrich, William M. and Ian S. Hayes. (1997) The Year 2000 Software Crisis: Challenge of the Century. Yourdon Press Computing Series: New York.

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