The Role of Media in the Society Essay

In our society, media is constantly being used not only to communicate but also to learn about what is going around the world. The web gives the chance to share news and even lets people talk to one another. The internet spreads information and ideas quickly and reaches out too many people. Much of what our society sees and reads often come from sources provided by the internet. Based on these sources, knowledge is gained, wither it is real or fake. Constantly seeing media gives our society the idea that it is real. Videos, music, and photos are a way of spreading ideas clearly to more people. Due to this, ideas such as the end of the world sparks conversations and creates theories.

As we know the media plays a large role in society, it has a tremendous impact on our cultures, businesses, and relationships. The media is not responsible for telling you what to think, but what to think about. The media cannot independently dictate what specific type of views a person should have, but the media can influence our opinions in a major way. People tend to believe that we derived our attitudes, beliefs, and opinions from social structures including: religious entities, schools, family, and culture. However, mass media creates meaning and continuously shapes the way society views particular topics, ideas, and people. The way ethnic groups are portrayed, marketed and viewed through the lens of the media, serves as a how-to guide for particular audiences to treat them. Specifically, African American males who are portrayed in the media receive a negative connotation. From the media’s perspective black males are portrayed as a stereotypical prototype which translates over into real life. The problem with this is, people tend to attribute the media’s representation of African American males and characterize them base off of generalized assumptions. This topic is important because minority groups are the only ones traumatically affected indirectly and directly by the blatant misrepresentation and lack thereof positive representation of minority groups particularly, African American men.

Since its early days, the media have always had a hand at molding who we are as a society. It is an extension of our culture and who we are. It has been a conduit of knowledge and information from person to person. A consistent attribute of media is the desire of the elites to control it and a resistance from people that want more freedom from such influences. Today, it is all around us, affecting most, if not all, of our daily lives. It influences how kids grow up in our society. It creates ideals that we want so much to achieve; labels us in order to promote the consumer culture. Being filled with media all the time, it can affect our society in a way that most people would think are negative. It can be a source of unrealistic expectations, a distorted look on reality, a distorted image of beauty and a reason health to deteriorate, be it physically or mentally. The media is a blessing for us, but one must be careful with it for it will always be accompanied with things that can have a negative effect on us.

The early newspapers were very limited in their scope. A typical newspaper was four pages long, sold only by subscription, and aimed at a small, almost exclusively male audience, mainly interested in business and politics. The chief purpose of the newspaper, at this time in history, was to supply financial and mercantile information to businessmen and to promote the viewpoint of a political party. The news pages were filled with articles dealing with national, state and local governments along with editorials and news reprinted from other newspapers. Journalism had very little in common with the popular literature of this era ö poetry, romances and fiction ö in both form and subject matter (Robertson 2, 3).

There are two major perspectives on what role the media occupies in the current political landscape: Pluralist and Marxist. Those who support the pluralist perspective see the media as performing two essential tasks, “(1) it informs the public and (2) it acts as a watchdog on those in power” (Edkins, and Zehfuss 157). The second perspective on the media, the Marxist perspective, takes the following view, “For Marxists, the ruling class uses the media as a tool of persuasion: they try and convince everyone that the hierarchical structure of society is serving everyone’s interests, not just their own” (Edkins, and Zehfuss 158). The unifying trait of these perspectives is the belief that media is influential in the formation of public

People perspective of the real world is based on the issues the media makes aware to us. It is not identified which effects more, but there are absolutely two sides to the story in which public get stuck, we see pros and cons of each side. Media provides the knowledge in way that effect on our thinking. Moreover, many studies have been complete to choose but each studies provides different answers. The media has more power on politics than does politics on the media. The two have continuously departed and influence. Disagreeing with each other in newspaper, radio, internet, and television, but normally enjoying each other's company. The role of the mass media is to keep the general public educated and up to date with current news and events in their municipal, state, country, and around the world. However, in politics, the media is highly effected it can either benefit or damage a politician by shifting the public's opinion. Numerous people depend seriously on television as their source of information where they obtain political issues and events, because television is the most powerful foundation of world communication .The mass media is everywhere around us, from television, to radio, to newspapers, and now days the Internet. “The rise of new media – such as social media sites, blogs, email and other new media platforms – provides further

Equally vital, the media has played a part in civic forum. By facilitation the debate about the major issues of the day and mediating between citizens and the state, the freedom of press can strengthen the public sphere. For instance, the role of the media is particularly important during election campaigns, as balanced and open access to the information of both parties. The provide the essential conditions for informed voting choices, the media provides citizens with information to compare and evaluate the prospective policies, leadership characteristics of parties and candidates and the retrospective record. In the meanwhile, the role of the news media as a civic forum remains deeply flawed where major newspapers and televisions stations

We live in a world where everything and anything around us is somehow connected to the media, from our clothing to our lifestyles and also what we see and believe; in some way the media has had an influence in those, whether it was a big or small impact. In the past, media was used as a way of staying connected to the world around you, to educate people on many different aspects of life such as politics, business, and entertainment, just to name a few. It was viewed as a way to receive pure and authentic information with integrity on topics that were not just important to people individually, but also collectively. Fast forward some years to today, where

The first newspaper was created in the 1690’s and persevered as the main news source till the 1900’s. Newspapers during this time often reflected the opinions of their owners. Some even reflected the opinions of wealthy politicians who supported them. Bias was apart of the formative years for a long time; therefore, citizens disliked any unbiased reports. As time went on, newspapers grew less popular as their reports became more unbiased and as technology advanced. When the 19th century rolled around, technology

In today’s society, people believe everything that they see on the media. From the celebrity life to family time, every aspect is soaked up into normal everyday life and taken as the truth. Alex Williams, author of Quality Time, Redefined says that the way people use technology today can affect quality time within family and friends on a daily basis. In theory, media takes the view of family time and shows it only in one way; which, is ironic because media also destroys peoples view on sex. Jean Kilbourne author of Two Ways A Woman Can Get Hurt, she discusses how men and women in the media are misrepresented as sex objects. But more so that women are characterized as inferior in comparison to men. If media is able to show false information and make people have a different mindset on the way simple aspects of life should be, wouldn’t it just be easier if sex was shown as love, not just people as sexually objects and quality time was shown as togetherness and instead of family game.

Media creates identities and presents them to the public who is merely a bunch of receptors within the society. These people can be molded in whatever ideology or mindset and thus are open to different opinions. In other words, the majority of the people don't have much knowledge beyond the scope of the media. Not everyone goes on the journey of finding out what the real truth is or what is happening in their government. Thus, for these people, the media is the first hand and only resource to inform them about the present condition and the future predictions about their country.

It seems as if it doesn’t take much to amuse us now days. It is apparent that entertainment, specifically television, has changed drastically. All three of the articles discussed the change of television through the years. They all had interesting views and debated well. The article that I chose to discuss is “Reality television: Oxymoron” by George F. Will. “America is becoming increasingly desensitized. Entertainment seeking a mass audience is ratcheting up the violence, sexuality, and degradation, becoming increasingly coarse and trying to be shocking in an unshockable society (Will, 295). Television may not be the worst thing in America, but it is desensitizing us. Without even knowing it things don’t bother us as much as they used

Media has always played a huge role in our society. For a long time media was one of the methods of controlling people and leisure. Nowadays media is one of the main part of our lives and our society, because

The media, or communication outlets, has a huge part in the racial divide, prejudices, oppressions and discriminations in America. These outlets include newspapers, television, internet, and/or radio. Over the recent years, stereotyping and discrimination has been greatly enhanced by media outlets. Even though the media has enhanced these harmful issues, the media can improve all of the factors by making changes to how they portray different races and ethnicities. “The media can influence people 's perception about a particular topic or person, it can change attitudes, feelings or behaviors. The television has the strongest influence on the general public”(Mitu, 2011).

If you step outside depending on where you live you get your local newspaper each morning. Many people all around us enjoy the newspaper and the stories in it that provide us with local news as well as news from a couple cities down. Newspapers first began their journey in the 18th century, when the colonial newspaper was published. The first piece of news that would later help conjure up the newspaper only had one news item on it. A man named James Franklin who was the younger sibling of Benjamin Franklin wrote a simple one page news sheet. Some in the past saw the newspaper as a way of servicing god, therefore to them the newspaper would contain stories in which told about religion.