Our mass media has developed drastically over the last century, and each change has influenced American culture. Understanding media and the role it plays in society is key to forming educated opinions and having control over the media’s influence and the information it presents. It is for this reason we must ask ourselves, “Are we in control of the media, or is the media in control of us?”. Popular culture itself now helps shape our world views and create a basis of judgment otherwise absent from our personal experience. Besides, people who were tuning in to the radio, watching television, and reading the newspaper were now exposed to more marketing campaigns, visual violence, sexuality, suffering and relief, and celebrity idolization than ever before. As of today 90% of media that we read, watch, or listen to is controlled by six media super giants: Time Warner, Viacom, Disney, NewsCorp (i.e. Rupert Murdoch), Comcast, and CBS. Compare this to almost 30 years ago in 1983 where as 90% of media was controlled by over 50 different companies (Critchfield). This gross lack of diversity in public opinion and information exposure has steadily diminished the perception of minority populations by failing to give equal and fair representation. The key components presented in this paper will address further the history of unequal distribution of power in the media, ask whether different races are being fairly represented as individual groups, and discuss the power of media over our culture and the difference in coverage between countries. In addition, I will help to provide a subsequent plan of action to relinquish its influence in our daily lives.
As of today, the top 10% of wealth outweighs the other 90% combined (Domhoff). This...
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...ed racism have survived due to the sustained power of the need for media. So, how do we strive to overcome this current system? Although the solution may seem quite utopic, we must strive ourselves to self-informed free-thinking creatures of our surrounding influence and question information given rather than taking it by the word. In our age we have the amazing ability to cross reference and dig deeper into a story, or a piece of information presented. Many forms of “news”, sitcoms, and commercials we see today still perpetuate these false beliefs and it is our duty to be active in the re-civilization of our society, evoking an almost Don Quixote sense of mentality. Due to the power over the general public the media and its members have to control how we view the world, collectively the general public must take back control of their own identity and integrity.
In Michael Omi’s chapter “In Living Color: Race and American Culture”, he expresses his resentment towards the media and how they handle race relations. The essay discusses how the media in popular culture represents minorities, and how it leads to perception of race based on what the public views and hears (Omi 116). Omi believes that the way minorities are portrayed in visual media provides people with a false impression of their race, and media only adds to numerous judgmental stereotypes that surround minority races (Omi 117). Thus, creating a culture of citizens that have prejudices based on the stereotypes depicted on television or in movies (Omi 119). Discrimination and racism are still very alive in the culture of America, popular
The media’s influence over the masses of society is great. With every passing generation, the media’s ability to access and relay information to the general public with seemingly the greatest of ease continues to impress. Given the expanse of time that has passed since the 1990s, the media, even more so to this day, shapes our lives, our perceptions, and influences our opinions greatly. The 1990s served as an important decade in our country’s young history. Since the mid-1800s, and even before that time, our country has experienced its share of societal issues, from racism to sexism, to religious bigotry, and police brutality, to name a few.
The usage of media is huge in nowadays. People rely on different kinds of media to receive information in their everyday life because they are thirsty for the diverse and informative content. However, inaccurate portrayals of people from different races always appear in the media and audience will exaggerate those portrayals by their inflexible beliefs and expectations about the characteristics or behaviors of the portrayals’ cultural groups without considering individual variation (Ting-Toomey and Chung, 2012); in fact, it is also called as stereotypes. According to a study by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University (Stein, 2012), racial stereotyping continues to occur in media and the mainstream media's coverage of different cultural groups is full of biased reporting, offensive terminology and old stereotypes of American society. It specifically emphasizes that majority of the stereotyped characters in media will only bring out the dark side of their cultural groups which many of them might not be true, especially for the portrayals of black community: African American.
Mass media has become one of the most common ways to get information in society today. A poll done by The National Hispanic Media Coalition shows that about 66 percent of Americans watch major network and cable newscasts, while only 30 percent rely on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to get their news and information (Rutgers). However, media does not only provide viewers or listeners with news, but it also moves the stereotypes, beliefs and values of the society to reproduce the existing order of social life (Bryn Mawr). Regardless of whether people believe what they see and hear in the media, people are aware of the stereotypes and images that surround minorities. The negative representation of minorities are conveyed to the public through many forms of media, such as: the news, film, music videos and other forms of media. One of the minorities that is portrayed negatively in the media is the Hispanic race. Over a span of many years, the media has consistently failed to represent and accurately depict Hispanics, and this misrepresentation continues in the media today.
Traditional American values such as hard work, freedom, and team work, confidence and standing up for ones beliefs have been drastically shaped and changed by the mass media. The mass media is any type of media outlet and just listening to it and being exposed to it changes people attitudes and perspectives more then we realize. The traditional values that we have always clung to, as a nation may not be as intact as we would like to believe these days.
Racism and discrimination continue to be a prevalent problem in American society. Although minorities have made significant strides toward autonomy and equality, the images in media, specifically television, continue to misrepresent and manipulate the public opinion of blacks. It is no longer a blatant practice upheld by the law and celebrated with hangings and beatings, but instead it is a subtle practice that is perceived in the entertainment and media industries. Whether it’s appearing in disparaging roles or being negatively portrayed in newscasts, blacks continue to be the victims of an industry that relies on old ideas to appeal to the majority. The viscous cycle that is the unconscious racism of the media continues to not only be detrimental to the white consumers, who base what they know about blacks on what is represented on television, but also the black consumers, who grow up with a false sense of identity.
“The media serve as a tool that people use to define, measure, and understand American society” (Deo et al., 149). Thinking of the media as a tool for the American people also extends into the realm of race and ethnicity. The United States has had a long and difficult history pertaining to the racial and ethnic identities of the many different people that reside within and outside of it’s borders. That history is still being created and this country still struggles with many of the same problems that have plagued this area since before the founding of the U.S. As stated above, the popular media has a large impact on the way that race and ethnicity are understood by people, especially when considering the prevalence of segregation in the U.S.
In order to identify how the mainstream media perpetuates racism, we must first understand its...
The use of media has always been very tactical and representative of a statement or purpose. The issue of race has always been a topic of immaculate exploration through different forms of media. Mediated topics such as race, gender, and class have always been topics represented in the media as a form of oppression. The widely use of media surrounds the globe extensively as the public is bombarded with media daily. There are many different types of media that circulates the public making it widely available to anyone. Media can hold an immense amount of power as it can distort the manner in which people understand the world. In our society the media creates the dominant ideology that is to be followed for centuries in the classifications of race, gender, and class. Media can be a powerful tool to use to display a message which, is how “…the media also resorts to sensationalism whereby it invents new forms of menace” (Welch, Price and Yankey 36). Media makers and contributors take advantage of the high power that it possesses and begin to display messages of ideologies that represent only one dominant race or gender. It became to be known as the “dominant ideology of white supremacy” for many and all (Hazell and Clarke 6).
Nowadays, it has been difficult to notice the harm media is doing to society. It has become too normal that we are already used to deny the reality. I have read several readings that have opened my eyes to the reality of media; A Crash Course on Hollywood’s Latino Imagery by Charles Ramirez Berg, (Re)presenting: Muslims on North American television by Amir Hussain, True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu. These readings include an important message about minority races, which I believe society should be aware of. All of the readings that I previously mentioned have something in common, they all examine the way race is portrayed in media. Moreover, they also include how media can potentially shape our perceptions of who we are and who others are. Our young community are the ones that are being most affected by media. Children receive messages in T.V shows, cartoons, movies and books of how different races supposedly are, and they immediately start assuming that those messages are true and continue growing up with that ideology.
According to a report by ZenithOptimedia, people spend more than an average of 490 minutes of their day consuming some form of media or text (Karaian). In a society that’s driven primarily by the media, we as consumers have been constantly exposed, yet desensitized, to the various perspectives and theoretical frameworks that media has historically illustrated and produced. The most common concepts that are explored involve ideas of race, heteronormativity, whiteness and white privilege, female objectification, class identity, and gender. Each perception is complex and is seen differently in media depending on who you are and the way that you see the world through the lenses created by your own beliefs and culture.
As we interact with popular culture, our intersectional identities do not enable us to resist hegemonic power structures. To the contrary, they make us more subservient to hegemony. The media structures itself so that ordinary citizens conform to a certain image that they deem acceptable. Therefore, the more identities a person has, the more susceptible they are to the media’s messages. Based on identities like gender, race, and age, a person is given labels or ideals to conform to.
When analyzing racist situations or scenarios, an anti-racist approach can be applied by critically breaking down the problems involved within the contexts and providing a solution towards it. When diagnosing the two central issues with racism in media, over-popularization and regulation, one can provide many solutions to the numerous problems displayed. Firstly, the problems with the ‘over-popularized’ portion is that media is too accessible and rarely has age limits. The World Wide Web has made it extremely effortless to obtain access to almost any kind of information, including the news, and targets all types of consumers from old to young. This is a major problem as literally anyone, at any age, can go online and find millions of articles
How mass media is using both Ideology and Popular Culture to develop societal expectations and social identities. This essay will look at how Ideology, Hegemony, and Popular Cultural Theory shape common values and expectations of society and media’s influence and compare and contrast differing approaches to understanding the relationship between media and society. The discussion will be contextualized through the use of gender roles and expectations, and how these theories develop and affect the female social identity.
If one asked “What is media literacy?” a majority of people would be puzzled. Some would say that it is the ‘written’ part of media that is not usually seen or a written layout of how media should be produced. The bulk of people would say they have no idea what media literacy is. People in today’s society should be informed about media literacy. Society should be informed of what media literacy exactly is and how it applies to the field of communications.