Hello World — The Influence of Mass Media
In today’s society, mass media partakes in a major role in almost everyone’s daily life. Whether that be using your phone to check the weather or watching the morning news and catching up on current events, avoiding media of any kind is basically impossible. Having recently switched to a Communication Studies major, I am fascinated with just how large the influence of mass media extends and how it impacts different people, issues, and societies overall.
This question of what the effect of media and how it causes certain perceptions to be made cannot even begin without trying to figure out what exactly media is and how we interact with it on different platforms. Living in a very technologically advanced society, media is readily accessible to us and the amount of information and material is unfathomable. So how do we choose what we see with all that’s out there? What makes certain ads, shows, and products appear so that we have the basis for what type of culture we are engaged in?
For the most part, people control what they want to see when they are using media. How it influences them, however, is the topic that I am more concerned with. Currently there are only 6 major companies that are in control of about 90 percent of American media, according to the Morris Creative Group. With just a certain few corporations controlling a plethora of content that is easily available to so many people, another question that arises is what is being said/portrayed by these companies and how are they influencing their, both intentional and unintentional, audience. Through television, movies, and social media, people gain an idea of what is going on in the world outside of their first-hand experience and interactions. These views of other cultures and events are based almost solely on what information is being provided to them through the media. Having such a large amount of data to deliver can offer companies in control to push messages and certain beliefs through to such a broad spectrum of people.
Living in a society with so much social turmoil, the media’s portrayal of events is scrutinized more so now than it ever has been. Showcasing certain stories and the varying of what language is used for these stories impacts the receiver’s notion of not only the circumstances and people involved in the highlighted situation, but also links ideas of a much broader notion to people only related to the scene through one common status. The issues of how African-Americans are portrayed in the news and the amount of times they are shown creates a correlation in people’s minds from people of color to crime. In a similar manner, issues regarding race, gender, and especially political stances are all addressed in the mass media and have extreme leverage on how a person perceives almost everything in their lives. I would love to dive into the many issues being talked about and look at them from a perspective of investigation of influence, rather than as a bystander reading his “morning paper.”
