Essay On Mass Media

Introduction:
Media, which comes from the Latin word “medium”, which, in the simplest term, means a path, an intervening agency whereby news transports from the place of the occurrence to the public. In the beginning it was the newspaper which was conceived as the medium, transmitting news from one end to the other. With time going by, numerous innovative, high ends, easy to operate and efficient modes of information transmission have been invented which have come to be known as the agents of media. In this essay I will argue that though mass media in the post-modernist society is responsible for the social and cultural construct of the society and the individuals, it almost always is manipulative and creates a sense of reality, which is distorted and hyper real.
Media, today is an industry, a way of life, a pattern and an organization which has developed over the years and taken a gigantic shape so much so that in today’s world it influences the tastes, preferences, thought process, behaviour, outlook, fashion, food of the people around the globe. It is almost an instructor which channelizes the lives of the people, in this century.
In this essay we see how media has over the time shaped ideas, beliefs and even cultures across the globe and created ideologies and stereotypes which have determined the nature of popular culture across the globe, how the information mediated through the vehicles of media has shaped individual tastes and habits and finally how is the media power centralized in the hands of a certain group who mostly use it to satisfy their own interests (Angus & Robertson 2005). All these factors have led to the construction of a society which is often termed superficial, consumerist, and sensationalist and corrup...

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...y, he states, the agglomeration of media power in the hands of a group of corporate has narrowed the range and voices of opinions begin expressed via the modes of mass media and has is increasingly focusing on commercialization of the news and information.
Conclusion
Mass media today is the tool, the vehicle which creates, alters and defines the social and cultural patterns of the post-modernist societies. With globalization turning the world into a global village, the mass media has created a well-informed, politically, economically and financially sound society which has seen a disintegration of traditional norms and value systems to pave way for new ones. However, there is no denial of the fact that gender and racial stereotypes, altered patterns of communication and emergence of marginalized societies are also products of mass media and centralization of power.