Media Reporting And Its Effects On Society

Everyday we see many images in the media and they suggest what we should be like. While the media says how we should act or look, these suggestions invade people’s thoughts. The images the media portrays make it hard to break out of socially constructed stereotypes in our lives. The media reflects dominate and social values of people’s lives. The media also portrays gender by creating stereotypes and gender roles showing how men, women, and transgenders are seen as deviant. In the media, men are portrayed to be “masculine” while females are shown to be “feminine”. Transgenders are viewed in many negative ways and they are stereotyped. Gender stereotypes are expressed more in mass media because it reaches large audiences. The media can influence people to think that what they see is reality. Most of the time the media shows men to be more dominant than woman. This is a way the media influences people to be someone they aren’t.

Society is frequently subjected to moral panics when any crime is committed. Humanity repeatedly blows crimes and incidents out of proportion until the entire society is somewhat controlled. Stuart Hall, in his book, ‘Policing the Crisis’ explained that “the media, in conjunction with the bourgeoisie, create moral panics in order to perpetrate fear and maintain control over society, as a whole.” (Hall, 2013, s. 1) Moral panics are created as a hazard and rising threat to shock both society and culture into changing the way it thinks and acts about problems in the real world. In this essay, moral panics will be looked at in detail with a specific interest in the case of James Bulger. There will too, be a focus on the influence the media,

When you are young you don 't realize that what you are watching on the television is shaping many of your beliefs, distorting what is fictional and what is reality. The media plays a huge role in stereotyping black people compared to white people which has a major impact in how we view the people in our world. When we are watching tv or listening to the radio and it is constantly relating the color of a person 's skin to their actions. This causes the audience to associate these actions with a certain racial group. It is important to note the ¨danger of a single story¨ because we can 't let one perspective be our only perspective.

Moral panic is a phenomenon, in which people’s reaction to events and/or actions is exaggerated by the massive influence of the mass media. Public reaction is believed to be triggered by the hypothetical threat from groups or actions (even statistically insignificant), which are considered as deviant. Negative attitude to the phenomenon may develop even if the recipient of the news has never directly encountered it.

Michael Tonry in his book “Thinking About Crime” brings up the subject of moral panics (pg 86). A moral panic as defined by Stuart Hall is as follows

These headlines − from google news − are both explanatory in what Stanley Cohen meant in his definition of moral panics. Sociologist Stanley Cohen defines the concept of moral panics as a wide-spread panic created within society, predominantly by the media, that holds threat over social and cultural norms and values in that society. There is some debate on whether Stanley Cohen’s concept is of relevance and if the subject

Not only is the interest of the owners of large companies pushed out to the public, but also the interest of the companies who pay these media companies in advertising to citizens to sell their goods. Advertising is an important influence in what the public sees in media and has a direct influence on the public’s interest in the product (Rinallo, Basuray; 2009). Companies such as Nike and Coca-Cola can pay networks such as ABC and FOX large sums of money to advertise their companies through their programing. As Herman and Chomsky explain, networks such as ABC and FOX are selling their audience to these companies (1988). Media outlets such as FOX News depends on funding to make a profit and since there is no system in place where the funds

Mass media has been known for sensationalised reporting where certain news stories are singled out and amplified to make them appear more dramatic than they actually are. When this goes out of hand, it results in a phenomenon called moral panic.

Moral panics have been a topic of interest by those who are concerned with criminal and deviant behavior for many years. The term first appeared in criminology in a book written by Stan Cohen, in 1972 and involved a general misinterpretation of the situation, with an exaggerated reaction to a perceived threat, when the actual threat that is being offered (Cohen, S., 1972) (Walters, R., & Bradley, T., 2005). This essay will attempt to explore this concept in further detail, with regards to the literatures findings and explanations of the motives, processes and finer details of a moral panic. It will then explain the media’s role in perpetuating the cycle that is involved with a moral panic. This will include the justification that is used by those in media roles, and the “melodrama” (Anker 2005) (Wright, S., 2015) that is often used in the reports of the issues that give rise to the panics. Lastly, the outcomes of the media’s influential role in the process will be examined through the literature, and also through examples of moral panics in recent settings. This will hopefully provide an overall understanding of the development, perpetuation, and lasting effects that are involved in a moral panic.

There is a lot of controversy about how the media affects people, but in my opinion I think the influence we get is more negative than positive. The media is one of the things that impact people the most because in today’s society it is impossible to ignore. It influences the ways in which we dress, speak, act and think. Media is fed to us through movies, television, radio, social media, music, and magazines. I believe mass media is pressuring the way woman and girls want to look, twists reality, and is sexist towards woman without people even realizing.

Growing up, children are predisposed to TV shows and literature that tend to shape/place ideas in their mind as to how relationships form and what a relationship consists of. The famous saying goes that opposites attract and it is never more prominent than in the media of today 's society. It is evident in various comic books, animes, cartoons, and well-known books acknowledged by people of different ages. Opposite attraction is shown in the media as a very natural and constant occurrence while this tends to get overexpressed it still holds some truth in everyday relationships.

When a person thinks of the word “criminal” they will probably say it is a corrupt, unintelligent individual that has committed a horrible crime. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word “criminal” is defined as “any person involved in illegal activity”. They are often portrayed in novels and movies as horrible and sometimes even inhumane creatures, but being labeled as a criminal could mean the individual has done a crime that was ethically wrong also. Once a person is labeled as a criminal they often face an onslaught of unfair and sometimes unjust prejudice. In addition to being looked down upon, people tend to disregard the accused’s moral stature and their personal dignity. Long ago people thought criminals were awful beings, but today people have less of a harsh definition of criminals. In some ways people today idolize the way criminals act and what they do. The media portrays criminals to be a certain way and that allows society to somehow admire criminals more.

Mass media is perhaps the most powerful tool in the world for creating, changing or perpetuating society’s ideas about an issue or group of people. It works both blatantly and subconsciously by deciding which issues are important, how to frame those issues, who to show as affected by them, and, increasingly, providing personal commentaries on the matters at hand. Because the majority of media outlets are owned by corporations dominated by white heterosexual men, many minorities are portrayed in ways that perpetuate negative stereotypes – if they are portrayed at all. Even though men have made great strides in regards to power, but with the black male they continue to experience both misrepresentation and underrepresentation in the modern

While there have been ideas and mass media in which we have access to, there is small changes in which The United States as a whole has been affected. There have been many discussions on how social media has played a part on American culture as we are becoming more reliant on computers and technology as well as we have in communicating. Social media and mass media has an affect modern society as technology has grown, so will its effects on people.

Kabooom! The explosion erupts from a busy and crowded street, the windows are shattered, hot-fiery debris flies, the desperate and pleading cries of children, adults, and elderly are so loud you could hear them for miles. Many of these unlucky people just became victims of a type of extreme crime, terrorism. Terrorism is a great extreme that threatens the safety of America and American citizens everyday. The threat is so serious it has caught the attention of the national and international governments, impacted the lives of millions of people, and is growing more dangerous as technology advances.