It’s evident that humanity has achieved seemingly impossible feats through technology and inventions; yet, it’s equally clear that technology can be a mindless distraction from unavoidable life issues that individuals try to escape. Though technology was intended for good, something people can benefit from, it’s become a quick escape for people so that they may easily sit and drool before a colored screen instead of applying themselves to something meaningful. Television and social media has hindered humanity because of its uselessness. It is an unnecessary addition to people’s daily routine that ultimately allows people to pretend to be involved in society, but in reality it creates a means to evade responsibility and endeavors.
Media are platforms of mass communication that can be categorized as either new of traditional media, with new media being forms of communication that make use of technologies such as the Internet, and traditional media being more conventional forms of media such as newspapers. Media, primarily new media, is getting more popular and influential, especially in today’s day and age since we are exposed to it a lot more than in the past and also since media is more easily accessible now. The media can shape our behaviours, perceptions and opinions, and it is important to know how people are influenced and impacted by it. The media can influence someone’s perception of social reality, or perceptions of beauty or even influence people’s behaviours and habits and therefore, the media does shape who we are. One way that the media can shape who we are is by influencing our perception of social reality.
Chris Hedge’s article, “Our Country Is Lost Believing in What It Sees on Screens, and We Are Going to Pay a Nasty Price for It,” highlights the negative influence electronic media has on society. The author provides a realistic insight into the negative effects of electronic media. Hedges states, “It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are” (Hedges, 4).
The author of the article Attention Students: Put Your Laptops Away states that laptops should be put away because they take away beneficial factors of learning from students while taking notes. One of these factors are not obtaining and processing information well because writing helps people retain information. I learned this from a study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer, and I agree with this because I’ve had first hand experiences taking notes on both a computer and by hand. Personally, writing by hand can become aggravating after a while because my hand will start to hurt, but it’s beneficial for me later on. When it’s time to take a quiz or test in class, I remember what I wrote and I can always have the notes with me to study because
From reading the article, “Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away”, by James Doubek, a NPR journalist that interviews Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University. I agree with the idea that taking notes on pen and paper are better for recalling information. “Because people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they 're hearing,"(Mueller). When students just type what they hear involuntarily, they are not processing the information; the students are typing without thinking. In a similar article, “What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades,” written Maria Konnikova, a journalist that interview several scientists, quotes Daniel M. Oppenheimer, psychologists at the University of California,
As what was mentioned on the three paragraphs above, researches have shown that television changes people’s behavior and how it able to propagandized the society through advertisements. Just like the television, the social media poses negative threats to the society such as cyber-bulling and how it shapes ones idea to have suicidal thoughts and making them believe that suicide is the only way to resolve problems. The radio also plays an important role in shaping the people’s idea. As radios don’t have visual contents, it all depends on how attentive the people are towards the radio as the lack of attentiveness may lead to the wrong information and audience may have different views or ideas about certain things. The researches given in this essay are evidence to show that mass media plays an important role in people’s life and how it able shapes the people’s idea.
It helps to explain the motivations behind the media use and habits of media use or the actual needs satisfaction by the media are called media gratifications. Contemporary U&G is grounded in the following five assumptions: (Papacharissi & Mendelson, 2007) (a) “Communication behaviour, including media selection and use, is goal directed, purposive, and motivated”, (b) “People take the initiative in selecting and using communication vehicles to satisfy felt needs or desires”’ (c) “A host of social and psychological factors mediate people’s communication behaviour”; (d) Media compete with other forms of communication for selection, attention, and use to gratify our needs or want” (e) “People are typically more influential than the media in the relationship, but not always. (Rubin, 1994). 18 Applied to context of this research paper, U&G supports the understanding of viewer motives and predisposition, while placing Reality Television on the larger spectrum of communication channels that are more or less available to audience. It permits the study of both Instrumental and Ritualised uses of media, both of which could drive the appeal of Reality
The theory explains “how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs” (Burgeon, Hunsaker and Dawson, 1994, cited in Udende and Azeez, 2010, p. 34). The theory holds that “people influence the effects that mass media have on them” (Anaeto et al, 2008 cited in Edegoh, Asemah and Nwammuo, 2013, p. 23). The assumption of the theory is that people are not just passive receivers of media messages; rather, they actively influence the message effects. Media audience selectively choose, attend to, perceive and retain media offerings on the basis of their needs, beliefs, etc., thus, “there are as many reasons for using the media as there are media users”
The wellsprings of the media picked are unmistakable. As Jay Blumler brings up in his book The Use of Mass Communication, where he asserts that studies have demonstrated that crowd satisfactions can be gotten from no less than three particular sources: media content, introduction to the media in essence, and social connection that encapsulates the circumstance of presentation to various media (Blumler 1974). It is clear that groups of viewers invest energy utilizing the media as a part of different ways. Whether they are killing time or utilizing it as a social instrument, every medium is novel in its motivation.
Photoshop the picture—Photoshop the truth, Photoshop the perception Digital technology is continuing to evolve in many fields, including photography. Although photo editing applications were originally aimed to assist photographers in enhancing the beauty of reality, there exist people who use them to distort the truth. In John Long’s essay entitled “Ethics in the Age of Digital Photography,” he accentuated the consequences of overusing photo editing software: distorted perceptions and damaged credibility. Nowadays, the excessive use of Photoshop in the media causes viewers like me to become increasingly skeptical about the outlets that produce them.
Do companies create consumer demand or simply try to meet customers’ needs? I believe advertising shapes as well as mirrors society. A case in point, advertisements can shape society's perception of ‘beauty." For instance, in magazines and movies, quite often young girls strive to look-like and emulate the digitally enhanced images of women in magazines. As such, some critics argue that advertising abuses its influence on children and teenagers in particular, amongst others.
For years people have played the “blame game” with media and its effects on society. It has been questioned whether the media helps or hurts more in its overall impacts. The media consists of magazines, advertisements, TV shows, and social pages such as Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, and Facebook, all in which society seems to be addicted to. The real question is, is having all of these sources of media positively or negatively affecting society? Some people blame the media for harming society by causing eating disorders and a low self esteem.
This is because the content of mass media is very powerful and it has become a agent of socialization which can shape people’s behavior or even influence the ways of how people think. There are many agents of socialization that can influence an individual lifestyle and one of the agent is mass media, which means that mass media can affect an individual self-concept, attitudes, or other orientations toward life especially the adolescents. The fact that there was a time when the internet, television and cell phones were considered a necessity but now the mass media seems to be more of a commodity to teenagers, because we can see that most of the adolescents tend to spend more time on the electronic devices rather than going for outdoor activities. Based on the researched, we found out that every people in the society
According to Baran (2012) mass communication can be defined as “the process of creating shared meaning between the mass media and their audiences.” This essay aims to discuss the degree to which we are shaped by our interaction with the media. In order to achieve the aforementioned aim of this essay I will focus on the following: limited-effects theory, two-step flow theory, attitude change theory and agenda setting. The limited effects theory sets out that media influence is based on individual and social characteristics.
Media has become an integral part in society. The idea of media has changed throughout the century along with the change in media technology. Media went from print media to modern media that can be viewed via screen and now modern media can be controlled by the user/viewer itself. It is a powerful tool that can be accessed almost anywhere with a smart phone or computer and internet. Social media is a newer media that has changed the way in which society interacts, face-to-face communication changed to screen-to-screen communication.