Media 's Influence On Society Essay

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.

Looks don’t matter, beauty is only skin-deep, you’re beautiful just the way you are. How many times have we heard this, yet we live in a society that appears to contradict this very idea. If looks don’t matter then why do women and girls live in a society where their bodies define who they are? If looks don 't matter then why is airbrushing used by the media to hide any flaws a person has? What exactly is causing this, why do we feel like we are just not beautiful the way we are? Its the media. It’s because the media promotes a certain body image as being beautiful, and it’s a far cry from the average woman’s size 12. The media may be great for entertainment but it also has the power to destroy a woman 's confidence and self-esteem. Young women are bombarded with this unrealistic standard everyday and everywhere. It gives them a goal that is impossible to reach and the effects are devastating. What is even worse is that society has become so accepting of the idea that size 2 is what defines beauty and perfection. And that needs to change.

Mass media has affected our view as a society on social class and what defines one’s social class. Throughout this article called “Making Class Invisible” by Gregory Mantsios, we evaluate the influence media has on our society and as Mr. Mantsios states how “media plays a key role in defining our cultural tastes, helping us locate ourselves in history, establishing our national identity, and ascertaining the range of national and social possibilities” (para. 1). Our social class determines what labor and or job title we will uphold, the quantity and quality of education and knowledge, and our well being in society along the lines of our health and safety. Media has forced the image on society of the poor and poverty as those who lack

Representation shown in the media is not something people should be taking lightly. It has strong effects on everyone, whether it 's fully grown adults, young children or teenagers. How the media present the 'real ' world to us can cause our beliefs and views to be skewed. Body image is an exceptionally big aspect of the media that should not be ignored. The ideal females being shown to teenage girls causes them to find many flaws in their own, non-air brushed selves. Body image extends beyond itself as well, into cliques of the social hierarchy and finding 'true love '. The three main focus texts Mean Girls, Creme Magazine and Disney Princesses all have strong representations of beautiful people being the most successful whether will love, popularity or exposure in the media. These perceptions cause girls to look at their body image negatively and therefore have strong implications on wider life due to low self-esteem.

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

Media plays a significant role in the way it can influence our culture. The media can produce positive and negative impacts on our society. It has the power to produce messages that can manipulate the way people think as well as influencing attitudes and actions taken towards the opposite sex. In the video Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity Jackson Katz discusses that the rampant of male violence that affects American society needs to be comprehended and concentrated as part of a much larger cultural predicament in masculinity. Currently, stereotypes exist in all societies. How we initially identify them, characterize each other can be determined through generalized assumptions about people which were constructed around specific traits such as race, sex, age, and sexual orientation (unwomen, 2011). Presently, the differences one may see between traditional gender roles have been reduced when compared to years past, however mass media still maintains conventional gender stereotypes, which affect the way someone can or will view the opposite sex. When mainstream advertisers send messages to their consumers, they know that their influence is significant and a great platform to control or at the least, shape the way people perceive our world.

In today’s world, the large problem with the way the media advertises the human body is growing every day. From digitally editing magazine ads, to starved models, to plastic people, advertising paints an unrealistic and unhealthy body image to the public. Advertisements that display these plastic people as the epitome of beauty, cause otherwise normal, healthy people to invest in unhealthy diet plans which can lead to eating disorders, and even premature death. Women desperately trying to compete with plastic models are not the only casualty of this cruel psychological war; men are envious of the perfectly toned six packs on underwear models just as much. Eager to compete, steroids clog up the hearts of those who just want to meet the

With reference to academic sources and focusing on one particular example of your choice, how do the media challenge or reinforce traditional ideas about gender.

More so than any other aspects of modern life, the mass media determines the public opinions on issues in the United States and around the world. Many different forms of media exist in developed nations along with many assessments about each of these innovations and their respective impacts on society. As with all sociological issues, there exist four major divisions of perspective: the interactionalist, functionalist, feminist, and conflict theorists. Each of these groups shares a few opinion connections with the others but all employ their own unequivocal views which establish them distinctly from one another.

Mass media has a very influential part in today’s society. Consisting of radio broadcasting, books, the Internet, and television they allow information and entertainment to travel at a fast pace as well to a vast audience. This vast majority of information can easily manipulate and or persuade people to have certain stereotypes on specific genders. TV commercials are one of the most influential structures in the media. Looking back 20 to 30 years, stereotypes were clearly welcomed on TV and in commercials, but today it’s starting to become a problem.

media, when you wake up, one of the first things you will do, and I

To what extent do you agree that entertainment media have had a positive effect on society?

Bloomingdale’s Christmas advertisement turned heads the instant it was rolled out. It’s slogan, “spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking” perpetuates the rape culture which plagues much of society. Advertisements ultimately are designed to target and entice buyers by playing into the status quo (GW p. 412). However, mass media has been very effective in directly calling out advertisements such as Bloomingdale’s. It is comforting to know that the widespread use of mass media is useful in this way. This advertisement clearly perpetuates rape culture, especially the use of drugs such as rohypnol to incapacitate women. This also preserves an ideology that women are men’s property and that they are enabled to get whatever they want, whether they have to forcibly take it or not. Additionally, the comment relating to her as his best friend rather than his partner indicates that they do not have any sort of romantic relationship. Rape culture is heavily built on a male power complex where an individual (typically a man) views another individual (typically a female) as his lesser and therefore he is entitled. Challenging the rape culture is difficult due to this power complex. It is difficult for men to challenge other men it because they fear being viewed as effeminate (Carlson 7). Therefore, hegemonic masculinity enables the rape culture to continue because society requires its males to be masculine, therefore powerful, successful, and superior to women.