It has been said that “…mainstream media have evolved into the defining characteristic of contemporary culture and society.” This essay will discuss how the media construct social reality and are themselves socially constructed and will argue in favor of this statement.
Social construction is a term that is often thrown around, but what exactly does it mean? The core idea is somewhat straightforward, as something is socially constructed when it is dependent on the contingent parts of our social selves. There is much in our society that we could attribute to out own (social) doing (construction). Had we lived in a different society with different needs, we would socially construct different things.
[...] This places them in a powerful position within society and shows that power bases of media representation. The mass media has become the most prominent form of information gathering in our society, and this is especially true when it comes to politics. Media has done much to shape the direction of politics in our world, especially in Canada, the United States and other liberal democracies where election campaigns decide who will be chosen to govern. In fact, Communication and mass media has historically been linked to politics, and in this day-in-age, they rely on each other. [...]
[...] The entire election campaigns in liberal democracies are designed to use the media, as the media is the most significant tool in reaching the millions of voters that are scattered across a large country or even a smaller electorate. Unlike news coverage where the leader must always be on, and gaffes can be costly, advertising is carefully crafted to shape image in a deliberate way. Political parties and candidates can use advertising as a way of shaping the content of the media in ways that they would otherwise not be able to do. This is why television and the internet have changed politics. [...]
[...] It is these privileged people who play the most significant role in society in terms of arranging how people look at things. What this means is that the elite media (big business media) creates the framework that everybody must operate within. The Associated Press is a good example of this as they are an example of elite media that sets the framework that the smaller media has to abide by. The Associated Press serves the function of creating the news for the smaller media outlets that do not have the resources to do it own their own. [...]
[...] This essay will discuss the understanding of mainstream media as big business as this provides a useful slant in exposing the underlying logic and concealed power bases of media representation. From this it will be clear that the elite media hold much power over society due to the way they control the dissemination of information. The media is an interesting topic of study particularly because of the many forms that it takes. The media comes in almost infinite forms, and projects itself on our lives on a daily basis, from the non-stop news ticker on the buildings downtown to the free newspapers in the subway to the advertisements we consume on television, radio and the internet. [...]
[...] The role of the media in social construction should be elaborated on for it is true that everything people know and have come to learn is in some way socially constructed. When people are born they do not have innate knowledge of the world, it is learned after the fact and therefore socially constructed, so how does the presence of the media affect this? The media has become the dominant medium with which information is disseminated, and therefore it plays a powerful role in social construction. [...]
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