The Media And Its 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.

Media has the ability to reinforce any stereotypical image with most viewers unaware that they are being unconsciously exposed to this material (Kenschaft et al. 2015,

Illusions have been melded into our society, especially through media. On social networks, only the highlights of people’s lives are captured, which creates unattainable standards for those who are exposed to the content. In movies, televisions and novels, people

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.

As Brooke Gladstone stated in The Influencing Machine, “The media machine is a delusion. What we’re really dealing with is a mirror: an exalting, degrading, tedious, and transcendent funhouse mirror of America” (Gladstone xxi). It often goes unnoticed how frequently the media reflects America as if it were a mirror. Popular culture, television, and nearly every social media platform essentially showcases a mirror of American society as a whole. The media typically displays exactly what society wants to see which evidently, is just an exaggerated or glamorized mirror of themselves and their own lives, thus creating a distorted view of reality. Similar to Gladstone, David Foster Wallace also refers to the media as a mirror in Television and U.S. Fiction. He explains this further: “If we want to know what American normality is- what Americans want to regard as normal- we can trust television. For television’s whole raison is reflecting what people want to see. It’s a mirror” (Wallace 152). One important aspect of society that is reflected through the media are Gender roles. A gender role is defined as any behavior or characteristic that is put into a “male” or “female” category. Society has always had gender roles that help to add structure to everyday lives. Although gender roles have changed greatly over time, they have always been an important part of society. In the TV series Mad Men, audiences are able to see how main character Don Draper’s life

“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

I often wonder about our humanity given the current state of affairs in our nation and abroad. America has been a powerful and abundant nation through a lifetime of wars and financial crisis but today is a different time for many of us. What is the media producer’s role in our very own implosion? What is our, the “media user” role in it?

The media industry is the state of our actuality. Society expects for the news to keep them informed on what is going on around the world. There are several different kinds of media; there is the newspaper, radio, and television. Each category has its own different stage that has modeled the media to be as influential as it is in society today. Along with all other forms of media, newspapering has played a huge role in the way society view the media industry. Through time many changes have occurred, are occurring, and will continue to develop in the future. The media have an immense impact on society.

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 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

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

This image saturated world is sold to us by the superficial manifestations of the mass media, advertising and propaganda. These have been able to invade and corrupt not only our society, but also our inner beliefs and values. (G.Debord,1967). The prevailing market society reveals itself by degraded representations, in the form of advertisements, reality shows or any kind of program