Media 's Impact On Society And The Individual

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.

Media plays an important and influential role in society. The media effects so many different institutions throughout a society that researchers have began to wonder how the media is really effecting these processes. Over the years many models have been developed to explain this process. The models that I will look at, include the hypodermic model, the mass society theory, the minimal effects model, and the agenda setting and priming model. Before looking at these models, we must first look at some of the challenges researchers ran into while trying to understand the media effect. Many researchers believed that media had influence on the public, but did not change or have an effect on what the public believed in. However this was false statement, “This idea contrasted sharply with the public’s general perception that media play a very influential role in society. There are three major reasons for this gap in perceptions” (Graber 2009a). The first reason for this misperception was because of how narrow researchers looked at the effects on media issues. An example of this is when researchers looked at voters and whether certain media exposure would alter their vote. They concluded that there was no media influence, but the catch was that these studies were conducted during a time when party loyalty was very strong. This would be an important factor in the reasons why media did not influence the publics vote. To gain a better understanding researchers should have,

Throughout the years the use of technology has increased, and expanded. Mass media plays a vital role in society. Mass media can be defined as any means of communication, to an extremely large group of people. Technological advancements have been extremely beneficial for prior generations, the generation we now live in, and will be for the future generations to come. Such as, providing news for the world to hear, entertainment, and much more. Some examples of media would be television, films, newspapers, and the Internet. Unfortunately along with benefits, there are disadvantages concerning gender discrimination, and sexism. Such as, women feelings forced and obligated to stay at home with their children instead of working, and the representation of beauty involving both men and women. Examples of how the media can accomplish this would be through the use of advertisements, movies, magazines, and the radio. The media has an enormous effect on people within society today.

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.

“Comcast” is one of many companies that own’s and works in the media industry, they not only own two very important primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal but are known as the largest cable television operator in the United States. They offer their customers a large variety of entertainment technology from video, high-speed Internet and phone providers, to residential customers under the XFINITY brand. As “Comcast works in the media industry they are always “aspiring to evolve to the next level of a corporation” and they are nearly there. They are already known to have the largest broadcasting and cable company in world by revenue, and from further research, we known that they are already America’s largest media conglomerate. Their name, “Comcast is a blend of the words “Communication” and “Broadcast”.

In a subsequent section, Turner explains the vital role of big corporations and how it can be compared to the vital role of small corporations. These smaller corporations are the ones with the big ideas – such as Turner’s idea with the Atlanta Superstation or CNN – and when the small corporations are not allowed to thrive as they are overshadowed by the big corporations, then the emerging ideas cease to exist. Another factor that contributes to the lack of big/small corporation interaction are the rules set upon by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that sets rules to the amount of smaller business the big corporations can own. It goes back to the loss of the smaller, innovative corporations that are not allowed to thrive because they have no means to do so on their own – even if corporation owners have houses to mortgage, the financial implications are a lot more than what they were in Turner’s earlier times. It is through Turner’s times that we have a seen a major change in media as it became more commercial than about journalism, another threat for the smaller corporations, and another threat to

Until the 1980s, the control of the media was in the hands of the national government. From then, the control shifted to private outlets and by the 1990’s, there were more than fifty multinational companies who controlled it (“Mass Media”). Today, only about six major companies control the larger fraction of media in America (Williams, Par. 1). Norman Solomon wrote in the New Political Science Journal that most reporters and editors work for just a few huge companies. These journalists and editors are on the payroll for “mega-media institutions”, of which, only about six exist (Solomon 297). How much will the public learn if these companies generally control the output of information?

In order to further emphasize the amount of power that truly lies within these nine dominating companies I would like to bring into light the most profitable, AOL Time Warner. “Time Warner makes 20 percent of its money from the music business, another 20 percent from the news division (magazine and book publishing and cable television news), 10 percent from its US cable systems and the rest from its film, video and television holdings.”3[3] This is an incredible amount. Not only does AOL Time Warner make twenty percent profit from the news division of media, but they also have a vertical integration throughout our nation. There should be warning lights going off in every American. If one single company can have this much control over so many aspects of our life, there

For over 40 years, Viacom, the American media conglomerate has been able to successfully reach millions. Viacom sits as one of the six major media companies, but has been rapidly falling to the wayside. The organization struggles publicly with maintain and executive that can effectively lead them, their stock prices are down 50% of its high in 2014, and the viewing habits of the consumer are no longer the same.

“In 1983, 50 companies owned 90 percent of the media consumed by Americans. By 2012, just six companies — including Fox (then part of News Corporation) and Time Warner — controlled that 90 percent.” (Stewart) Throughout the years, media has become an industry where certain companies are the ones that dominate the market, as the quote says. 21st Century Fox, also called by just Fox, and Time Warner, two of the world’s largest media conglomerates, are the main discussion here.

Much change in the global media by means of mergers and increased concentration has resulted in the limited diversity of content. In addition, the media consolidation does not only effect the content but the ownership and employment opportunities. Winseck (2011) and Havens (2014), both discuss the media mostly in the United States and other parts of the world; comparisons can be drawn to relate to Canadian media. Different theories have been developed around the capitalistic nature of the media corporation on the creativity and diversity of media (Havens, 2014). The following will examine the current standings of the large media corporations in the United States and other countries. In addition, the focus will be put upon the effects of consolidation

Time Warner INC is considered one of the biggest conglomerate. Starting out as a publishing company that now own networks like HBO, AOL, Cartoon Network, CNN, TBS, etc. This company also owns magazines such as Sports Illustrated, TIME, and PEOPLE. According to Lutz (2012), “178 million unique users read Time Warner News every month” (Lutz, 2012). Media conglomerates have both advantages and drawbacks. One of the advantages is that they have a huge power base to push their agenda with minimal government control but must be ethical in their approach. One of the drawbacks is most of these conglomerates are more concern with sponsors than their

The biggest companies in the media business ranges from Disney to Facebook. These big companies buy other smaller companies to control what information the smaller company's puts out over tv, internet, and other forms of media, These type of companies are called media conglomerates, One of the biggest media conglomerates is 21st Century Fox

Media ownership today can be traced back to five main companies: AOL Time Warner, Viacom, The Walt Disney Company, Vivendi Universal, and Sony (VC, 2010). The chart provided below summarizes the more popular media.

There are implications regarding production and distribution of media content to a public audience. “In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are their own bosses. They are independent thinkers. They know they can’t compete by imitating the big guys–they have to in- novate, so they’re less obsessed with earnings than they are with ideas. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher product and service quality, more jobs, and greater wealth. It’s called capitalism” (Ted Turner). “Today, the only way for media companies to survive is to own everything up and down the media chain” (Ted Turner). I believe that conglomerates thrive better when they aren’t in the hands of many, because the idea of the company can get changed into something it was not intended to be. With more people in the ownership, ideas can flow and possibly broaden the company, but I feel that too many people are unnecessary. In the sense of large companies, many advisors may be needed. “The