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By Mass Media I mean the whole body of media reaching large numbers of public the major ones being newspapers, television and the World Wide Web also now as internet. The main purposes of mass media are to provide information, entertainment and advertisement. In this essay I will discuss the influence that Mass Media has in the general public and giving the evidence to support the statement People are more influenced by mass media than they think... The history of mass media can be said that started from the ancient Greece. Philosophers, generals and politicians of the ancient Society discuss issues and after spread to the public by the use of word of mouth.
The ancient Greek Drama and poetry can be considered as a form of mass media, communicates a message to the society. In other words since the early years people has always being influenced by Mass Media. In todays world people cannot leave without Mass Media and with the help of technological improvements to send messages to the masses is becoming easier and easier. As we are been shower with tons of advertising, information and other sort of materials by the different types of Mass Media has influence in our everyday life styles. Newspapers are typically daily or weekly publication that contains news and opinion of current events, featuring articles, and advertising. By fact there are now about 9000 daily newspapers around the world.
Therefore newspapers reach a wide audience worldwide, which is why newspaper is a type of Mass Media. The newspapers are an incredible influence tool in society; they can easily turn on people emotions in favor or against an issue or something. This is because we as readers tend to believe everything that is written in the newspaper even do it might be the wrong information. We can take the case around 12 years ago of the murder of James Bulger by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, the British press had alleged that the kids were influence to commit such an act because of a spiteful video that they had watched, at the end the end they two kinds had not seen that video. What does this tell us about the newspapers? They mislead information that goes to the public which immediately influences the public to react, in this case the parent of kids prosecute the media that had influence their kids, but they dont know that the same media is influencing them to do act that way.
The same case of the Bulger Killers according to Salmon Rusty they can only life the rest of their lives in anonymous peace although they had they had shown an excellent recovery according to the experts, so in this case what are the press doing? They are influencing peoples feelings regarding these two individuals for their past acts, which they already pay the time in jail. Newspapers can be very biased about a story. Although reporter tend of being impartial about a current event, sometimes is not always likely to be that way.
An example of this we can take the newspaper coverage of the Iraqi war; also know as war on terrorism. In this case the American Press influenced the readers to unleash feeling of patriotism about their army, which lead to feeling of prejudice against Middle Eastern looking people. If at the time or still a Middle Eastern looking person is to be seen in America bring fear to people, the articles published in newspapers help this influence of fear to spread. Television is the transmission of visual images of moving and stationary objects, generally with accompanying sound, as electromagnetic waves and the reconversion of received waves into visual images.
Television is of very big influence in todays world. It transmits images and as one has probably heard of the saying One picture worth's more than thousands of words this is way have a major influence in the viewers. Mainly in the consume habits of the public, yes, advertising is probably one the most influential item about Mass Media. Every the average American sees more than 38, 000 TV commercials now if we multiply that amount to 20 seconds, which is approximately the average commercial lasts will give us a result of 760. 000 second an average American sees of commercial advertising products. How does this affect their consuming habits? The fast food industry is a great example of the influence of advertising in people consuming habits.
According to the documentary by Morgan Spurlock Supersize me, only McDonalds itself spend $ 1. 4 Billion US dollar in direct media advertising, which includes television with the contrast of the 5 a day vegetable campaign that spend in his peak year the sum of $ 2 million US dollars. But what those this figures mean? These means that McDonalds spend a larger amount of cash into advertisement to persuade the general public to consume their food, especially kids; that are easy to influence with just giving them toys. What does this influence has on the general American population? More than 60 % of Adults in America are overweigh or obese. In others words the advertising of McDonalds and all fast food industries are working efficiently, they get large sums of profit because of their influence in the public of buying them.
The clothes industry also used Television as main type of media to advertise it goods. They also use celebrities and famous athletes in their advertising campaigns. These are very influential in the population for the reason that many of these athletes and celebrities are like role model for kids. Michel Jordan, David Beckham can be said to inspired kids to play a respective sport and to even wanted to look like them. Their popularity influence the society to a great extent that not only them, but also the clothing firms make large amount of cash of the influenced buyers to look cool wearing the latest Jordan Shoes. Propaganda can also be achieving trough use of television.
In Bush administration the television coverage of his speeches about War on Terrorism acquaint that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Around year and a half later no weapons of mass destruction have been found. And the American citizens were convinced about the unproven fact that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and were ready to sue it against America. This is other example of the influence of Television in the viewers. Internet also known as the World Wide Web (WWW), it contains of a web of computers working together and connecting to each other like a spider web, and it allows the person to research all kinds of material on their computer and learn more and the topic or issue they are after. this is the newest type of Mass Media there it reaches world wide, if one has a webpage made in Thailand someone in Colombia can see it.
That is how amazing Internet is, distances become shorter and shorter. One of the main problems is that Internet is very addictive; games influence kids to spend hours and hours sitting down in front of the screen practically wasting time. This have an effect on less kids developing social skills, therefore it link to the depression problem that most teenagers are suffering from in the 20 th century. One can find anything, absolute anything in the Internet; if we got that The number of World Wide Web pages indexed by the Google search engine is 3, 083, 324, 652 pages.
One look for lets says the lyrics of the cucaracha in Russian language; there is a pretty high chance of finding it. This is way Internet is so controversial, finding web pages that helps revels produce weapons, show druggies to grow drugs, they can influence people to do acts that society consider wrong, I mean extremely wrong. But at the same time the Internet has help million of people like me to finish their work more efficiently and I short time. Other example of the increasing influence of Internet on society is the next fact 2002 online sales rose 34 % to $ 47. 98 billion from $ 35. 87 billion in 2001. Of which, $ 17. 4 billion were in the fourth quarter alone, up from $ 12. 4 billion in 2001.
these number show the increase of use of the internet in business, therefore advertising in internet is very influential and persuasive too. Overall I conclude that Mass Media does have an effect of society. For the simple fact that is become part of our daily routine. Every morning the family guy reads the newspapers to get inform with out any type of criticisms. Citizens of society spend hours and hours watching Television to get entertain, the same case with the Internet. So as becoming part of our daily life, we can say that has a unconscious effect in our habits, like the shopping habits that people has these days, if they something on television, the Internet or the newspapers there is a high probability that they will consume it.
Or the way society acts, if the Media said that something is wrong, like the Bulger killer case, society believe it.
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