The Media And Its Impact On Society

Many members of the general public have caught onto the ruse of mass media outlets, and are starting to not trust them. A Gallup poll from the somewhat recent year of late 2016 has shown that Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record setting low. For the general population, only 32 percent of Americans trusted the media outlets’ reports with a “great deal of trust” or a “fair amount of trust”. A deeper look into the polling shows that only 14 percent of population who classify as Republican trust the media a great deal or a fair amount. This could be due to the bias against Republicans in certain media sources, or it could fall into something deeper. As for age groups, ages 18-49 have shown 26 percent in the same trust rating, while 50 and older shows 38 percent. The difference in percentages due to age are most likely due to the technological fluency of younger generations. Better understanding of technology can allow for a person to dig deeper into what is true or false in the media

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

In this day and age, it’s assumed that our information is unfiltered and uncut. This should hardly be a surprise in the internet era, with popularized search engines that provide unbiased information in a matter of seconds. To that end, society has numbed itself to biases found in media and tends to follow what is proclaimed to be true and ethical. This is particularly true in regard to print and televisual media. Due to society’s failure to question these media forms, it frequently becomes coaxed into converting its ideas to those made by the media. In other words, media outlets consistently have political leanings that manipulate our understanding of information, particularly in regards to the public’s political beliefs.

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.

Every day we rely on the news to keep us abreast of the state of affairs in our lives. From the tiniest of towns to the largest sprawling metropolis we need our news to be accurate, objective and we need it fast. As times change not only does the way in which we get our news change but in how it is presented to us. Biases in our media have always existed but the public’s distrust of the media because of these biases is quite high. Recent polls show that nearly 80 percent of Americans believe that the media influenced by influenced by the powerful and that they tend to favor one side of issues over another (Keiner, 2013, p. 401). A Pew Research Center poll conducted in 2011 found that 77 percent of respondents believed news organizations tend to favor one side over the other (Keiner, 2013, p. 405).

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.

These days, sexism in the media is one of the top issues confronting women in Canada. Female political candidates often experience a toxic environment that can adversely affect their campaigns. The constantly changing media scene regularly permits harmful remarks to exist without responsibility. The under-representation of women in media is an all-inclusive wonder. Despite the fact that there have been improvements, women still fall behind men in numerical representation in government. The sexual orientation depiction studies have recorded that the media have been careless in reacting to sex equalization. Women are either overlooked totally or are lessened to imperceptible status through under-representation in innovative and basic

Despite there being numerous sources and names for media and information, large conglomerate companies have emerged over the last several decades that own a majority of media outlets in the United States and throughout the world. These conglomerates operate in an assortment of business opportunities. The “big six” as they are commonly referred, own up to 90% of the American media market share (Lutz), and that number is growing. The big six companies include G.E., News Corporation, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. To demonstrate this growth of consolidation, that same 90% of the American media was owned by fifty independent companies in 1983 (Lutz). These figures are outstanding, as they relate and intersect with Stuart Hall’s idea of

Violence is much more socially acceptable in today’s society than it was hundreds of years ago, which is mostly caused by technological advances. As technology expanded, so did our generation’s tendency for violence. With all the breakthroughs in social interaction using technology, the media has become a large contributor to society. Coinciding with the first amendment to free speech, the media is a very valuable and powerful tool in spreading information when used for important purposes. However, many people abuse this power and sometimes spread the wrong message. Due to the vast amount of people promoting the wrong values, our society suffers the consequences through the immature minds of those who are easily swayed. Therefore, this

The media plays a huge role in molding the public mind. The public has a collective thought process of the world and the media is always there to shape up that perception of the world. The Running Man takes place in a dystopian future where the masses are fully controlled by the Government and people are oblivious to their surroundings like a herd of sheep, steered any way the Network desires. The media is the largest outlet for propaganda and there are no competitors to the Network for they have complete power over everything. No one questions them and no one has an opinion. TV has the highest power over people and they rely heavily on it for news and entertainment. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and with a system having complete

Ever since the creation of the first technology, inventors and creative minds have progressed the development of those devices. Whether an entirely new gadget was developed to replace an existing one or a product was improved to run more efficiently, corporations have always strived to provide the public with services that satisfy our craving for entertainment and information while remaining lenient on our limited time and wallets. The 2010’s have been defined by the emergence of smart devices and tablets, and therefore the media has had to accommodate their services to the individuals with those devices in order to make business, thus abandoning the previous technology. Americans are not halting their readership or watching of traditional

Media has played an instrumental role in shaping society especially Canadian society. There are many types of stream in media that has allowed Canadians to have a sense of closeness with their community and the country. A type of media that exemplifies this is the news. The news plays a crucial role informing the public about certain events that are happening around individuals’ lives and how these types of news are affecting them. In addition to that, the news also provides an entertainment purpose, which sometimes allows individuals to use as way to distract themselves with what is happening in their lives, but most importantly news allows individuals to feel connected to what is happening around them. News plays a