My Opinion on the Influence of Mass Media, Essay Example

Do you think the mass media (TV, Magazines, Websites, etc.) are more reflective of culture and society OR do you feel that the mass media in some way create our culture and direct the behaviors of individuals and groups in our society?

I think the very term ‘mass’ in ‘mass’ media reveals my response. The media works on the following assumptions; it wants to succeed, and ‘success’ means gaining as large a clientele as possible. It, therefore, needs to appeal to a mass audience, and, in order to appeal to that mass audience attempts to draw on their proclivities and commonalities. In short, the media conducts extensive research to discover the characteristics of this mass audience, and then structures its programs to appeal to those characteristics. In that way, we can argue that it is reflective of mass culture and society, and when we say ‘mass’ we mean the norm, or, rather, the archetypical contemporary American. But simultaneously, mass media certainly directs our behavior and thinking.

This dialectical influence reminds me of Peter Berger’s book “The social construction of reality” (1967). His claim is that society impacts the individuals, but just so does the individual – whether in macro or micro characteristics – influence society.  The media influences the individual, but in a similar manner does the individual (more usually, perhaps, an aggregation of individuals) impact the media. My response, therefore, is that the mass media is reflective of mass society, whilst, at the same time, directing the behaviors of individuals and groups. It is a recursive, entangled circle.

Discuss the results of your weeklong media habits survey. Are you surprised at how much time you spend “with” media?

I am not a big T.V. watcher but I am an obsessive T.V. listener. I have to have sound on all day – just simply background noise – so I put the T.V. on in the morning and I go to bed with it at night, but I continue doing my work. I abhor silence; find it too disturbing.

References

Berger, P.L. (1967) The social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday