Media 's Influence 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.

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.

Women around the world face overwhelming oppressions in their daily lives. That is not news to anyone and these oppressions have occurred for so much of history, that it is often times overlooked by the mass majority; even the younger generations of women do not know the types of oppressions that they will soon have to face. To combat this, FCKH8.com, a well known organization that sells t-shirts and other merchandise with witty anti-racism, anti-homophobic, and pro-feminist catchphrases on them, created the video, “Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism”. As the title implies, the video contains little girls, ages six through eleven, aggressively yelling “FUCK,” towards the camera while rattling off facts and statistics about some of the oppressions women face because of their gender. The comment section of this video is erratic; the viewers often have conflicting views about the meaning of the video as well as whether or not it was successful in its purpose. One thing is for sure, the video makes an impact by using several rhetorical devices including word choice, pathos and logos; all which separate it from other pro-feminism videos that exist.

“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 's power. Because they control the minds of the [people]” (Malcolm X). The message of this Malcolm X quote is that society can control the mind of the individual. This is true. For many years, society has influenced everyone worldwide both negatively and positively. That is because society has the ability to control the individual’s decisions. They can control the individual in making their decisions that could affect people’s lives worldwide; it also has the ability to control their decisions that could affect the individual’s life. You might be thinking “But why should we care about this topic? This doesn’t seem really important to us” well it’s important because we all can relate to this as everyone has been influenced by society at least once in their lifetime. Just ask yourself this. Have you ever simulated a role model that you had by just copying the actions that they do just because you wanted to be just like them? Have you picked up habits from society that is around you like family or peers that has affected you in your life? Have you ever maybe tried something you found from your family members or from the Internet to get your personal needs? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are involved in this conversation. But there’s a problem. There’s an argument going on about this topic. The controversy of this topic

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 is a major contributor of how social groups are perceived in today’s society. Mediais around us every day almost all day, and it constantly sends messages about the world’s environment. There are many indicators shown pertaining to how media really affects society. One of the most prominent explanations of those questions is the way media influences stereotypes. There has been previous research linking media sources and biased attitudes. This research paper explores articles supporting media as an influence of stereotypes. The perceptions of society are influenced by media. The media influences perception in many different aspects of life. Stereotypes act as cognitive schemas, used to help us process and organize information about the social world. They help us to separate and group others as we strive to make predictions and interpretations about others. One of the most common cognitive processes associated with stereotyping is social categorization. Social categorization is the tendency to classify people into groups. Other sources of stereotypes are in-group/out-group categorization, which place individuals in categories based upon who may be similar to us, versus who is not. Negative stereotypes can lead to prejudice and discrimination, which demonstrates the unjust attitude, or unjustified negative behaviors toward members of other social groups. The generalizations can be negative, positive, or neutral. Stereotypes influence the way we perceive others and also

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

Are you comfortable in your own skin? As a result of spending too much time associating with the media can make you believe differently. While the media commence to advance and develop an incomprehensible factor, the appearance of civilization begins to mold and shape as a reflection to equally match. Despite the element of using false advertisement or infringement, society is charmed by the sense of exhilaration that is generated by the media. Yet civilization remain uncomprehending to the natural effect that the media leaves printed on them. The media is one of the largest and main sources to express ethnocentrism which leads to stereotyping, while intensifying and supporting the fact of self-consciousness. However society is partially to blame for the gossip and wrongful act of civilization in the media.

The media immensely affects how issues are perceived in the society. To constantine the cultural set up is, in actuality, to dismiss the world "as seems to be," and rather to demand twisting it to people’s inclinations, as though authority and predominance were outmodelled. The act of technological metamorphosis in culture is due to the media and its uses in our daily lives. Every conventional society comprehended the unprecedented change and viewed affliction as securely attached from, and vital to, the postulation of independent people.The media directs the political structure, the modes of business operation, the dressing code and even the behavior of different industries.

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.

When we look at the media’s impact in our world it reaches far beyond the individual. While we may spend a large portion of our day individually consuming media, it affects us all in a way that has begun to shape our society. What we see on the news, TV, movies, advertisements, and the internet, all influence what we think and how we act. A quick example is how body image is affected by what we see in media. Teenage girl’s body image is especially distorted based on what the media says they should look like rather than what is realistic. In many more ways, mass media has integrated its way into our lives and it affects us at a societal level when it comes to what we think, how we act, and how we perceive violence in our world.

In the modern era, the influence of the media has seeped into every portion of individual lives. The media has consistently broadcasted strongly patriarchal messages, which work to degrade women. This idea can be seen in the need of a news broadcaster to point out the fact that a doctor, lawyer, or any person in a position of power is female. Sexism, as a system of privilege, is so deeply rooted in our society that young girls cannot avoid its messages. The affects of these messages are starkly negative and directly correlate with educational gender gaps. The media overly and wrongly sexualizes women causing harsh negative mental consequences and educational deficits, which can only be rectified by abolishing single sex classrooms and teaching girls how to interact effectively with the media.

"Media Violence - American children and adolescents are exposed to increasing amounts of media violence, especially in television, movies, video games, and youth-oriented music. By 18, the average young person will have viewed 200,000 acts of violence on television" (http: //www.karisable.com/crssmv.htm)