Media Affecting Culture
How
is culture affected by media? It’s a trick question, really. We can analyze how
media impacts culture, but since forms of media are abundant everywhere we
turn, and media in some form or another has been around for thousands of years,
it’s impossible to analyze how the absence of media impacts culture. For a
mature and healthy culture, however, can media play a role in its
development? For the purposes of this
question it should be understood that a mature and healthy culture is media
literate. With that understanding, the question of whether or not this kind of
culture exists is derived
The News
The
news gives us information of everything that’s happening from local to
international scales. Some news is good and some is bad. The news lets us
people that live in colder climates no how long a snow emergency is going to
last so we know if we have to park on a certain side of the street or not (Dec.
5, 2010, Wisconsin State Journal Online). We also are provided with horrible
news like 23 fur seals being clubbed to death in New Zealand (Dec. 5, 2010, Yahoo!
News). No matter what the news is, it’s there so that we know what is happening
everywhere in the world
Other Forms of Media
The
news isn’t the only form of media that informs us. Documentaries, news radio,
and even blockbuster movies are educating. Documentaries, obviously, are
nonfiction and they provide informative accounts of a situation. News radio
keeps us up to date on local, national, and world-wide events. A lot of movies
do provide us with useable information, as well; “The Day After Tomorrow” lays
out a very real possibility of what might happen in our future (2004)
In
the textbook, Media & Culture, Scott Lehigh of the Boston Globe is quoted,
“If we’re a nation possessed of murderous imagination, we didn’t start the
bloodletting. Look at Shakespeare… His plays are written in blood.”(pg. 475,
2010) This brings about the point that horror, blood, and violence aren’t a
product of media in the free world; they’re a product of humanity. Blame for
the things that are wrong with our culture always seems to shift to television,
music, and books, but the things that are wrong have always been there. Media
is just an easy scapegoat to point a finger at because people that would
otherwise not be exposed to these things that are wrong see them on the news,
and relate them to scenes that they saw on T.V. or lyrics they heard in a song.
What the media is actually doing by exposing the public to things that are
considered wrong and bad, is informing us on the way things are or could be,
giving us knowledge that we can use to protect ourselves and even change the
way that things are. A fictional movie that portrays the assassination of a
foreign dignitary on U.S. soil plotted by corrupt government officials doesn’t
mean that someone who saw that movie is going to play it out (2007, Hunter, S.,
& Lemkin, L.). What it does mean is that someone out there thought of this
as a movie plot, the idea didn’t originate from the movie. It’s easier to think
of a movie as a page in history that has never been written. It’s something
that we can be educated from even if it is fictional.
?How Much Are We Really
Affected by the Media
All
of the forms of media would be useless if we didn’t understand them. If we
believed the first thing we heard from the news all the time, we wouldn’t be
able to form an educated opinion or response. If we reenacted what we saw in
movies or T.V. shows because we thought that by watching someone else do
something it’s okay for to do it too, then we wouldn’t be allowing ourselves to
make our own decisions; it goes along with that excuse you made when you were a
kid: “But my friends do that.” Your mother would then respond, “And if all of
your friends jumped off a cliff would you do that too
Media
in all forms is there to help us better understand the world, form educated
opinions, and learn from others. According to Pew Research in June of 2010 the
average American spent 70 minutes a day listening, watching, or reading up on
the news (Sep. 12, 2010). That’s over 17 solid days of learning every year!
Yes, there is some entertainment in the news, but mainly it’s there for reporting
what’s happening, and even presenting some forms of research. There’s always
going to be some form of media out there that may be harmful to certain groups
or even to the vast majority of recipients, but in a mature and healthy culture
we should be smart enough to understand what is for entertainment and what is
important to know. With proper understanding, laws, and ethics media serves a
large role in a flourishing society
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