Media Influence
In today’s world, the media has become a very powerful and effective source of informing society. Today’s media has grown dramatically from ten years ago given that there are three major cable news channels, millions of newspapers and magazines, and the ever growing internet. Media in this modern era generally consists of the internet, television, and newspapers to inform society. Media has become a valuable tool for society to use for staying informed and basing their beliefs upon. The media is an effective tool for informing the public by using strong emotions to relay the message at a personal level. Some believe that today’s media is effective because it is used only as an influential tool to tell people what to think or what to do. ... However, this society is very diverse and people use media to gather information and apply their own ideas, which are different from everyone else. The media is a tool used to inform the public of what is going on and is not an influential source of information. Society uses the media as a source of information on which to base decisions and validate opinions. The media is used only as a source for society to keep informed. Also, media can be a valuable communication tool if used properly (National Institute on Media and the Family). There are three main sources of media, the internet, newspapers, and television, that informs society by using strong emotions and radical personalities. Contrary to others beliefs, the media is not an influential tool in telling society what to do or what to believe because people have predispositions, previous inclinations, and use selective exposure when utilizing sources of media. Over the past ten years, the internet has grown to become one of the primary forms of media mostly due to the fact that it is one of the fastest ways to relay information from place to place. ... With new developments every day in the technology world from handheld computers to internet ready cell-phones, the internet media is soon to become the most popular source of information if it is not already. Despite the fact that information on the internet is hard to display with emotion or distinct personalities, it is still an effective tool of media. ... Another major form of internet media is news websites. ... The last part of internet media is basically every other kind of site found on the internet. ... The internet does not influence people to do certain things, but it does give useful information that society can utilize. ... This makes it really hard for the media to influence people when they already believe the issue that the website is trying to expose. ... Newspapers are another major form of media in this world. ... The newspaper is one of the oldest forms of media and it is still used today, which shows that it is a powerful and useful source of information. The main form of media in today’s world is the television. A television is found in 98% of American homes (National Institute on Media and the Family). ... The television news media provides the rest of society the opportunity to feel the true emotion and reality. For example, in the film Wag the Dog it shows how the television news media can influence the public to believe that America is at war in Albania when in actuality there is no war at all in Albania.