Media 's Influence On Media

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.

Journalism is an industry that provides a source of information and news for the public, while popular culture is a source of portrayal of the image of the journalist. Popular culture provides a glimpse and “shapes the people’s impressions of the news media”, whether it is portrayed in a positive or negative light. There is no denying that popular culture possesses a large effect on what the public perceives and thinks about journalists and the industry through how the characters, plotlines are presented. Sociologists have even argued that “popular culture’s depictions…of real world professions” have a major influence on the public’s realistic perception of that respective field. Thus, it is not a surprise that in the 1930s, journalist organizations deliberately advocated positive portrayals of the press in Hollywood. An example of a film that stands as a positive representation is The Front Page. Although the film presents reporters and editors “lying and hurting innocent people”, the audience is able to fall for their unique charm and charisma—they are brash, fast-paced, intelligent, composed, independent, passionate and investigative. They embody what America ultimately champions: self-reliance, drive for action and accomplishment. However, popular culture also perpetuates negative, unlovable notions that “journalists [are] hard drinking, foul-mouthed social misfits concerned with only twisting the truth”. In novels like John Andross written by Rebecca Harding

History has changed. Ideas and standards have also changed. Back in the day, when the media or movies showed a hint or a dash of blood, the reaction of the average person was shock and disgust at the blood and gore shown. These scenes and clips shown have become more and more extreme over the years to the level of being hazardous to society. Even in the videogame industry, certain scenes that may have caused outrage and commotion fifteen years ago are now seen as childish and may even be considered as humorous. To put it candidly, most of the mass media has been used widely to its ability to influence and persuade, to glorify, and diabolize thoughts and actions of individuals. Yet people of this generation still spend a great percentage of

Malcolm X once said “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that is the power. Because they control the mind of the masses.” According to Study.com “Mass media consist of any means of communication intended to reach a general, public audience. Note that mass media is widely used to reference the entire public communications industry, including newspaper, magazines, flyers, billboards, automated telemarketing, radio broadcasts, television broadcast, internet articles, and social media posts.” (Dugger, Development of Mass Media) Mass media is in our everyday lives, and as Malcolm X said it has the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent. That’s how powerful our media is, and news reporters are fabricating the story and twisting headlines and creating their own story. Isn’t about time the news starts reporting the facts? The media is racially bias because they sugar coat Caucasian people and their actions, they over represent African-American crime rates, and they always find a way to justify a Caucasian police officer killing an unarmed African-American male.

The first headline that we saw was, “The best place on Earth” and they were talking about Seahaven. They used this headline because Truman low key wants to leave Seahaven and he is searching for Lauren Garland who is in “Figi.” And they don’t want Truman to leave. The next headline we saw was, “Who cares about Europe,” which that was the headline because Truman wants to leave Seahaven and explore but they do not want Truman to try and leave. Which those were the only two I had but all the headlines were to try and talk Truman into not leaving by talking about how great Seahaven is and how everywhere else sucks.

Media is a very powerful factor in today’s world, it influences the way that the public thinks about situations and problems in today’s society. News and social media put out there own thoughts of a problem in the country. When they do this, it gives a perspective to the general people to base off of and make a conclusion on the situation. The media such as news on television and internet can be manipulating minds of the general public to believe what they say. Media actually has there own opinions and that is what they portray to the people.

Our American legal consciousness is affected by media and popular culture. How we view the law and the ways in which we understand the law are influenced by people, movies, tv shows, and news which attempt to represent our justice system. There are two popular movies that represent our civil justice system regarding civil procedure in particular. The movies are Erin Brockovich and Legally Blonde, both have representations of civil procedure and the pursuit of justice. The film Erin Brockovich is based on a true story and portrays the case Hinkley v. PG&E, a water contamination case in a small town with hundreds of victims. The film Legally Blonde, is a fictitious movie that follows a young girl named Elle Woods in law school taking on a murder trial in order to defend her role model, who is also the accused. Popular media takes hold of American legal consciousness and molds it through movies like these.

The last several decades saw an explosive growth in new technologies, leading to the adoption of the internet, mobile devices, and many others that allow easy access to information. More than ever before, the latest news and breaking events are more accessible for everyone at any time and place. The prominence of the media on people’s daily lives, whether it is from a newspaper, television broadcasts, to websites accessible from the internet, is even greater than before. There has been concerns over the media in the past; many feel that its power and the potential to influence the public should not be ignored. The emergence of new technologies, which allow easier access to the different forms of media, means that these concerns are even more relevant today. The aim of this paper is to explore one of the consequences of media influence on the public, namely, the concept of “moral panics,” and discuss and the importance of said consequence, as well as the motivations behind them.

Sports have always been a leisurely activity, and a way to escape the reality of the world. But the actions that certain athletes, teams and fans have taken, changed the potential that sports now hold. Whether it is athletes that kneel during the national anthem, athletes that hold a fist in the air before the beginning of the game, or fans who protest in unity; sports can be used to spread political messages. Even so, the media has an influence on the way people perceive the message being displayed, and in a sense, it may be up to the media whether or not they want to help spread the messages being sent in sports across.

Information and news media have radically changed the way our society both consumes, and views the news today. It used to be that we would reach for our morning paper, or turn on the evening news after a long days’ worth of work to catch up with the events going on around us. I can recall a time when I would sit down with my father to watch the evening news. Those days have since evolved into something not many could have predicted. News and information is now available to us whenever we please, accessible via a smartphone, tablet, computer, even all-day news channels keeping us up to the minute current with events. As such, the media networks have an obligation to its consumers to report accurate, and unbiased stories. With that said, many news organizations exist for the sole purpose of shaping and serving specific political ideals. With the explosion of electronic media outlets, the ways in which we consume news, and how news is generated, is ever evolving.

The media controls society, whether we agree with this or not. Their depiction of acts constitutes our image of the world around us. They shape the public perceptions, and create moral panics. Human by nature are attracted to violence, as proven “[b]y age 18, it is estimated that the average child will have seen approximately 200,000 violent acts and 16,000 murders on television alone” (Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 1999). This shows violence is a part of our daily lives. This is entertaining to people and therefore the media picks up on this and reports it religiously. Stanley Cohen (1972/1980), Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994) laid out the ways in which the media captures our attention, and capitalizes on it in many instances to push their own agendas. This and the cause of moral panics is a repercussion of the problem frame.

As crime continues to remain as a universal problem, members of society are continually keen to know the status of crime on a regional and global level. The mass media not only acts as a vehicle for delivering information and to entertain (i.e., infotainment), but it is also the main public instrument for sourcing crime (Dowler, 2003). However, with the media now focusing more heavily on crimes they deem as newsworthy, it has become evident that this boundary between media as a source of information, and as a means to entertain has progressively blurred. As such, the media has a negative influence on the public’s perception of crime because it tends to report more on violent and rare crime whilst commonly showcasing Blacks and Latinos as perpetuators and Whites as victims of criminal activities (Edmiston, 2004; Bjornstrom et al., 2010) To corroborate this argument, this paper will utilize research to delve deep and uncover how and why the media, particularly print and TV media outlets, chooses to filter and over represent certain types of crimes, victims, and perpetuators. It will also discuss the implications of this distortion among its readers and viewers, particularly focusing on their increased fear of crime.

Unrealistic body image and eating disorders are perpetuated by the media in women of ages 5-24

It’s pretty clear that the elections are much different than they used to be, and we can blame our easy access to media for that. The people learn everything they know about politics through things they see on television and the link they just shared on facebook. But is that even real, are they polluting our minds with unnecessary drama? Anything from magazines to the social media on our iphones help influence the opinions of voters, set the behavior of the candidates, and the public agenda.

Over-all this documentary made me feel very defeated and overwhelmed. Possibly it is just my mood tonight, but it is clear that a few really wealthy companies run the media in the United States.