“The mass media
are becoming more and more pervasive and significant in terms of
our social perceptions and interactions with our
surroundings” (Lev, Emi 2006, p. 1).
The Mass Media has
become quite intertwined with almost everyone’s lives now a days. It’s pretty
hard to escape it seeing that media is in almost every direction we turn. We
have televisions, radios, computers, and eve now more prominently our smart
phones. Media has a direct effect on how we even decide to live our daily lives
and go about our business. Not all media we are exposed to is bad though. I
believe it all has to do with the individual and how they themselves choose to
use information.
Emi
Levi discusses the fact that the average American spends 9.2 hours using
consumer media. That’s quite a bit of time considering one only has 24 hours in
a day. Close to 40% of one’s day is taken up by consuming media; again, it is
not always necessarily a negative thing. If I had to guess though, I’d say that
the greatest place for media consumption now a days is either on a computer or smart-phone.
I think that television while it is still highly utilized and watched, the
masses are now online streaming content and other media. Google’s YouTube
platform has probably become one of the largest if not the largest places for
Mass Media to distribute its content.
The
Internet has become one of the greatest influences on human social perception.
Because of the fact that the Mass Media controls all of the major outlets on
the internet, it can easily “program” people or at least direct them to the
content they want them to watch. Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and
formerly MySpace have all become tools for Mass Media. What greater place to
infuse media than on the websites where hundreds of millions of people gather
on a daily basis. The internet coupled with the social networks has become what
I like to call Mass Media Weapons of Mass
Destruction.
It’s become pretty evident that
almost everything we do on a social level is influenced in some manner by the
Mass Media. As I stated previously though, it is not all that bad, because you
as an individual have the ability to filter out what you want and don’t want.
The Mass Media will always be around, and probably more prominently as our
technology and societies continue to advance. It’s up to us to determine how
much influence its bears down upon us.
--
David Peterson
David Peterson
1 comment:
Wow 9.2 hours of consumer media. That does seem like a lot, but when its so readily available maybe not. I got my haircut yesterday and within that hour. I had watched TV, surfed on my smart phone, and listened to the radio.It's hard not to constantly be interacting with some type of consumer media
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