Mass Media Influence

The new era of technology led to major developments in the evolution of mass media, worldwide. In our society, we originally communicated orally before the Internet and wireless devices existed. Individuals relied on traditional forms of mass media, such as the television, radio, newspapers, and magazines, to attain knowledge of the outside world. Thereafter, the development of new forms mass media evolved, and we were introduced to the Internet and other wireless communication devices such as IPads and tablets, smart phones and social media sites. Regardless of the rise and fall in popularity of certain forms of mass media, the evolution of mass media influenced the American culture greatly.

In this new day and age we are granted with advanced technology that helps every one of us. A major capability that we now have is the capacity to spread information like no other. The television and internet are major sources to access material and influence the masses. The question becomes whether these sources really inform the people, or just put information out that benefits the few. Evening news is where the breaking stories take place and where we can see the difference in channel ideology. Citizens have a right to know what is going on in the country but due to biases we see this fail. This causes televison to poison the electoral system, glorify conflicts, and polarize views.

Many people today rely on television and social media to stay up to date on current events. However, are those people really staying informed by what they’re reading or watching? Is the person they’re watching the news acting biased? What if someone doesn’t pay attention to the news at all? With the near endless amount of content on televisions and computers, many people have alternatives to watching the news and informing themselves. Today, it is imperative that, as a society, we inform ourselves ad stay up to date on the activities of our government. How is it beneficial to society if we are ignoring current events and issues that could affect them?

Popular Culture in the form of media does not always do a fair job of reflecting accurate characteristics of men and women. Society has added to this by creating what is known as gender roles among men and women. They are like a type of social guidelines which men and women follow in order to be accepted by today's society. Although this was designed with the best intentions it can have negative results.

Media in Society: A Brief Introduction’s chapters one, two, three, and four delve into detail about how we are able to understand and analyze the media, how we view the media as metaphors, all different ways images capture meanings, and all the various narratives that are presented by the media. Beginning with chapter one, this particular chapter discusses how we understand media in our society in various ways. It introduces the critical process to comprehend media content. This chapter also describes the diverse forms of media criticism named reflectionist, contructivist, and narrativist and how they tell stories about the media.

Society embraces the systems and symbols created to communicate in the search of belonging. The systems and symbols are used to convey information and assigns meaning and values to our lives. Often culture is defined as the symbols society uses to express themselves as individuals or groups. Culture is the practice that allows individuals to either agree or disagree with the values and ideas that are portrayed and communication helps to circulate these values.

Gender roles plays a very significant part in society and the way people are portrayed in the media. Men and women are portrayed differently in the media specifically based on how they are perceived in society. Men have a more predominant role in the media. Women are presented as delicate individuals with less predominant roles. There are stereotypes of women and men, especially those seen on television. “Virtually all groups of people suffer from stereotyping and men are no exception. Stereotypes are powerful because they affect our expectations of what men should and should not be like. They are damaging because they narrow our notions of what men can be and do.” (Femiano & Nickerson, n.d.)

Our world is surrounded by media. Media plays an enormous role in affecting the way we perceive gender and gender roles. Media as well as communications are known to be the key elements of how people live their life in the modern age. The media can be a very inviting place, since it has so many things inside of it that appeals to people worldwide. At the same time, the media can be a cruel, judging and corrupt area that can be scary to involve yourself with. That being said, the mass media has had its history with harsh stereotyping, particularly when dealing with women. Many people within the media view women as a gender that is only allowed to be at home, whether it is cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or being a slave to their male counterpart. Even with women who work inside of the media are usually overlooked, bashed by their appearance and do not get an equal opportunity as men do in order to succeed in life. This has been the case for hundreds of years, but there are still a myriad of problems that women face today, whether in the media or life in general.

Growing up as a child with parents that were both fairly busy with work I often found myself sat in front of a television either waiting for the day to begin or to end. I remember watching shows and seeing how the boys always seemed to be more outspoken, hyper-masculine and the leader in a given situation while the girls were always the passive ones who were depicted as shy followers. Now that I am older I find myself watching even more television, allowing me to see how the media depicts men and women in society. For example, The Big Bang Theory, in its earlier seasons, it only had one female lead, Penny. Her character was very stereotypical in the sense that she was the scattebrained neighbor. The way that men and women are portrayed has

Having control over an entire country’s population’s opinion is a powerful thing to have. Possessing that control would allow you to direct how the population spends their money or even who they like and dislike in politics. The mainstream media news outlets have this control and are expected to give us information that is unbiased, fair, and not meant to sway our opinion. The topic I will be exploring is bias in the mainstream news media and how it effects their viewers. This is an important topic in the field of communication because it has such a great impact on any country that uses mass media to disseminate information. The information can be given to the viewers with a certain twist to intentionally shape their view of an event, or it can be unintentionally bias just by the tone and manner they are reporting on the event. I am going to research how mass media news outlets influence the viewers opinion, and what goes in to picking the news stories covered. These are controversial topics to get into, but important to consider. They can have a very big impact on things like elections for a political office, support or dislike of a certain group, or can sway your opinion of who is the hero in a certain story. My sources will need to show specific examples of how the media is biased towards one opinion, what the effects are from this are, and who makes the determines the bias that is being displayed.

The consciousness, beliefs and culture that individuals in society adhere to are largely influenced by the ever-growing mass media. As a matter of fact, Americans devote an average of twenty-eight hours to watching television per week (Mantsios, 2008). Furthermore, they put in an undetermined number of hours listening to the radio, going to the movies and reading periodicals (Mantsios, 2008). It is clear that the media has an overarching impact on society, yet American mass media have highly concentrated control and ownership compared to other social institutions (Mantsios, 2008). Over 20 corporations own a majority of all daily newspapers, magazines, radio, television and movie studios (Mantsios, 2008). What’s

Behavior can be influenced by many different things such as the way someone was raised, how their family situation is, how their friends act, how the media displays certain actions, and so on and so forth. Each person has their own factors that have affected how they react to certain things. There are some factors or actions that the vast majority seem to have been effected by and therefore most people react the same way under certain contexts. This common action or reaction can be referred to as a social norm, simplypsycology.org describes social norms as, “Unwritten rules about how to behave. They provide us with an expected idea of how to behave in a particular social group or culture.” The website then gives the example, “We expect

The media has a strong influence on how societies receive and react to the context of the messages that the media displays to the public. From Disney movies on up to horror films there’s a plot that each film is trying to accomplish. The controversial issue comes into play based on how the film messages are portrayed. Films that use racial humor harm the particular race that the films are depicting. Films with racial humor that is enhanced to be seen as acceptable creates prejudge mental labels for certain races. The viewers of these films are more likely to view these stereotypes portrayed in the media as facts about whatever race that is being critically represented. Films that are created with this line of content harms individuals credibility based on the racial group they belong to. This harms a potential interaction of individual of certain races due to the knowledge they receive about that racial group through the media. The media sets the tone of our cultural experiences before they occur this happens within advertisements and movies. These storylines help to created trend and beliefs that might not be true or affective. These cause viewers who haven’t interacted with certain racial groups before to believe these stereotypes to be a reality versus that of a stereotype due to their lack of personal knowledge of how different cultures actually act.

Media is a huge part of people’s lives in today’s society. Through different forms of media people can now obtain vast amounts of information at the slightest touch of a finger. While it is convenient and comforting to have access to so much data, the question arises. How much of this information we receive shapes our lives? Mass media as an agent of socialization can prime and/or skew people’s belief system through mere exposure without the slightest clue of it affects. Mass media as an agent of socialization can structure people’s perception on society as a whole by simply using influence, control, and trust.

Media is mass communication regarded collectively, whether it is from broadcasting, publishing, or the Internet. Society, in general, uses these types of media  to shape beliefs that benefit them. Whether it is from coverage of the NFL protests, Muslim stereotypes or small national news, they all come up with different perspectives that enforce different ideas.