mass media influences us!
In the 50 years the influence of news media on society has grown constantly with the growing technology. First there was the telegraph. Then with newspapers and through radio the news were presented; magazines and television followed and now the internet and the new media including cell phones etc. give us access to the news.
Firstly, before I will discuss the influence of mass media on us or rather on society we should retrieve the three basic functions of mass media: they are providing information, entertainment and education. The most important function of the media in a society is to provide information to the masses, therefore our era is often called the “information age”.
Our society is in need of constant information and news for different reasons: on the one hand news are used to socialize and on the other hand it helps us to make dicisions and build up our own opinions. But there are of course further reason why we are consuming news: we want to be entertained! Watching, reading or listing to the news are mostly used to amuse ourselves in present day hectic environment.
In a time of globalization our society depends on news or information and communication to stay connected with the world to keep doing daily activities as working, going to university, general entertainment, health care, travelling and anything else that our society does in everyday life. In our routine lives, decisions or even household chores we strongly rely and depend on the mass media in order to get information about what is essential for our lives.
Society trusts the media as an authority to provide us with information, education, entertainment and of course advices. After watching or reading or listening thousands of advertisings we decide what we want to buy, based on what we saw on tv, newspapers, magazines or listened to on the radio. We buy what we are told to buy.
That mass media is shaping the public opinion is not only typically for advertising. Mass media can modify the public opinion in many ways: for example in a political campaign. The candidates that can spend more money on media exposure have a greater influence to form the public opinion and therefore have a better chance to get more votes.
I personally find this very frightening, because when I think about what some tabloid newspapers, as the Bild, publish, it’s alarming that most of the readers will believe what this media says!
The Bild distorts the perception of refugees and the situation as a whole: people who read Bild could think when reading this article that refugees are allowed to go by public transportation for free even if they get money for it from the government, but the poor german need to pay everything.
Bild doesn’t mention what the HVV also mentions in its internal record: namely that every not-german-speaking person with a non valid ticket should be treated with a sense of proportion, this includes tourists, visitors, refugees AND also natives of Hamburg.
As we can see in the reaction to this topic, in which mainly everyone showed anger, this distorted perception of a special treatment for refugees is alarming. People show anger, but are they angry at the HVV or maybe angry at refugees in general??? It’s horrifying …
But on the other hand there is nothing we can do about it, we can just hope that not everybody does believe everything they think is truthful information!
