The Media's Influence Of Social Media And The Media

Due to the advancement of technology, the media has become a significant force in modern day culture. Media has been influencing society's perception of reality ever since the printing press was invented in the early 1900s. People are unaware, or subconscious to the fact that the media has a tremendous impact on culture, business, politics and the world-at-large. We find ourselves turning to social media from a very early start of everyday. When we turn on the news, open up the paper or listen to the latest headlines on the radio, we instantly expect to be informed. However, most of us are oblivious to the fact that we might be being manipulated rather than informed. We are furthermore unaware of just how biased and sensationalist the media can be and how it ultimately influences our views. “When people or groups are exonerated, the media is unlikely or reluctant to print a retraction, or to give it the same level coverage, as positive news is just not “newsworthy” enough to entertain its consumers.” This goes with the well-known saying” if it bleeds it leads” and reflects the idea that graphic stories and pessimistic news leads to curiosity, as well as engaging and uniting consumers around social norms and orthodoxy which additionally draws in advertisers. (Gardner, 2015)

The media controls our lives, and is powerful in the sense that it is instrumental to our sense of who we are, as well as how we relate to our environment and surroundings. We are very much influenced by what the media shows and tells us, because we begin to perceive it as the “norm”. Due to technology being so readily available, media platforms are able to have simultaneous audiences; the medium transmitting the message rapidly to a variety of audiences at the same time, ultimately reaching their