The Media's Effects : How The Media Affects 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.

Media plays an important and influential role in society. The media effects so many different institutions throughout a society that researchers have began to wonder how the media is really effecting these processes. Over the years many models have been developed to explain this process. The models that I will look at, include the hypodermic model, the mass society theory, the minimal effects model, and the agenda setting and priming model. Before looking at these models, we must first look at some of the challenges researchers ran into while trying to understand the media effect. Many researchers believed that media had influence on the public, but did not change or have an effect on what the public believed in. However this was false statement, “This idea contrasted sharply with the public’s general perception that media play a very influential role in society. There are three major reasons for this gap in perceptions” (Graber 2009a). The first reason for this misperception was because of how narrow researchers looked at the effects on media issues. An example of this is when researchers looked at voters and whether certain media exposure would alter their vote. They concluded that there was no media influence, but the catch was that these studies were conducted during a time when party loyalty was very strong. This would be an important factor in the reasons why media did not influence the publics vote. To gain a better understanding researchers should have,

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.

When you are young you don 't realize that what you are watching on the television is shaping many of your beliefs, distorting what is fictional and what is reality. The media plays a huge role in stereotyping black people compared to white people which has a major impact in how we view the people in our world. When we are watching tv or listening to the radio and it is constantly relating the color of a person 's skin to their actions. This causes the audience to associate these actions with a certain racial group. It is important to note the ¨danger of a single story¨ because we can 't let one perspective be our only perspective.

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 more exposure to media messages the more this is linked to reality and therefore risks are overestimated (Dominick, 1990). More exposure to negative media messaging means the individual will present with less arousal and be more tolerant to negative behaviour due to desensitisation (Carnagey, Anderson and Bushman, 2007). Danger perceptions in reality can be distorted by media messages such as the overestimating violence from strangers and underestimating domestic violence (Heath, Gordon and LaBailly, 1981). Cultivation theory suggests that media presents a distorted view of reality (Gerber et al, 1980) and therefore can influence perceptions of crime or risk (Romar, Jamieson and Aday, 2003) (Lowy, Nio and Leitner, 2003) rather than individual's using their own experience to influence their beliefs. Media perceptions could impact on how individuals behave (Streigal-moor et al, 1996). This has been seen in the influence of media body perfections (Swans et al, 2000). The impact on such influence could be eating disorders and low self-esteem were their body is not the same as those in the media (Shomaker and Furman, 2010).

The media has been influencing society’s perception of reality ever since the printing press was invented in the early 1900’s. According to Delascio, when CNN first aired in 1980, it was the only television station devoted to around-the-clock news broadcasting. But by the end of the 1990s, it faced significant competition from MSNBC, Fox News, and others. As more twenty-four-hour news stations appear, many resort to attention-grabbing headlines that emphasize disasters and tragedies more than cooperation and good deeds (Delascio 2015). Does the media negatively or positively impact psychological perspectives? Who does the media influence the most men or women? Media tells you how to look at your world, yourself, and how to think in regards to them. It tells you what to be afraid of, what to hate, what to embrace, etc. If the idea of wanting to observe the effects of media on society, just look and listen. The messages that the media is transmitting are reflected in our societal values and behavior.

“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

Mass media influence many aspects of people’s everyday lives. However, sometimes the impact they have can be harmful. One example is the positive correlation between media and eating disorders, especially among young children and adolescents. Because so much of what people see is focused on appearances, it can create harmful and unhealthy behaviors, or eventually,

According to McLuhan, the media is an invisible force surrounding us. Media is everywhere, sending messages to the public. He argues that the media is “so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” We don’t realize how powerful the media actually is. It can change the way we look and feel about ourselves, the attitudes and beliefs instilled in us, and change the way we think. Because the media is everywhere, it is hard to avoid the effects of it. We can see that McLuhan’s argument still works today. We constantly hear cases of body shaming on the internet, causing young adults to develop low self-esteem. Teenagers, especially female teenagers, may feel the pressure of having a slim body because they constantly see slim figures in the media. This may lead to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Popular movies and television shows, such as Mean Girls and Pretty Little Liars, may influence the way we talk and dress. Politicians use television campaigns and online advertisements to swag the public to vote for them. Even television news, such as Fox news, may endorse certain politicians and promote that politician to their audience. The internet is filled with advertisements

Over the past decade, media has become a major part of day to day life for the average person living in the United States of America. Media finds its way into your household in a wide variety of ways, including television, movies, music, and the internet. With society’s growing obsession with media, it is easy to see how it plays a role on impacting the lives of children, women, and men. Mass media effects people’s body image, self-esteem, and the overall way society is portrayed. There is a major link between media and a person’s mental as well as physical health.

Media is one of the four main agents of socialization. In an age where it is hard to escape, media has a huge impact upon the way a person views themself. The media has created an epitome of beauty that for most, is unattainable. People must be thin to truly be attractive, and it is best that they have clear skin. For women, they ideally must also be slightly curvy, while maintaining thin arms and legs and a flat stomach. For men the ideal is large amounts of muscle. Being constantly exposed to these standards is believed to lead to Depression, Anxiety, low self-esteem, and other issues. Studies have been done to learn whether or not media exposure does lead to these things.

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?

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.

Scholars have debated the media’s increasing influence within contemporary society, and shaping of identities. It has been suggested that the media provides us with limited notions and materials to brand ourselves, which involve the notion behind being a man or woman and differentiate the means of bad or good. There are various prominent mediums used by the media to convey or direct a message. Images from media arbitrated precepts tend to become the conception of the individual’s self. Vigorito and Curry (1998, p. 136) indicate that pop culture is increasingly visual and images seen in the media tend to convey the ideal cultural norms, values and gender relations. These images are not subtle, but explicit notions of what is acceptable in society and how we as individuals should look and think in the public eye. In the twenty-first century, gender equality has been held in high regard both in the macro and micro levels of social and professional contexts. Gender is defined by the features society expects from a male or female depending on their biological sex. According to multiple scholars, research on masculinity and male depiction has become a major focus due to gender becoming a social construct subject to historical change. In the following study I wish to determine how the ideal male and masculinity is understood and defined, how the male identity and masculinity is portrayed in film, computer games and advertising, and how these representations have changed over time.