During our lecture this week and important and seemingly simple question was posed to us; what is media? Immediately my head starting buzzing with ideas and images of media. I was thinking of things including film, social media, music, art, ect. Which reflecting on it now, these things are more just examples of media. But what does media actually do? What’s the purpose of it?
Taking my examples of media texts into consideration I came up with a few ideas. Firstly, media can be used for communication. Whether that be expressing ideas/meanings/cultures to a large group of people through film/tv/music or something as simple as messaging your best friends on Facebook. Media is used to connect a network of people within society. The more I thought about this idea of connection, the more I began to consider other examples of media that do different things. Journalism for example conveys news and other information through media. Music is used to express emotion. Teachers use media to create an engaging classroom environment through graphics, YouTube clips and soundbites.
The power of media is also something we considered in class. Media has the ability to shape public opinion and expose human nature. Personally, I feel like this is even ore true in the modern world where technology allows media to be readily accessible from any place and anytime. Its kind of scary in a way that we could be influenced by something we are seeing without even realising it. Through media, our individual and cultural identity can be influenced and controlled. Whist discussing this in class I got serious big brother vibes and couldn’t help but playing words from George Orwell’s 1984 over and over again in my mind. Would I be a completely different person today if I’d be exposed to different media? Of course we can never know for sure, but I’m inclined to think that I would be.
This brings into question the moral responsibility of media. The idea of media POWER having such a huge influence over our daily lives is a bit frightening when you think of possible ramifications. Through things such as censorship, media ownership and political influence, what we see in the media may have a negative impact on our views and therefore our practices.
Although it really isn’t all bad. The educational purposes of media stand out to me as a highlight. Even now, being able to write out my thoughts on a blog and share them with a huge community, is a gift. I would have never been able to access such a wide range of information and ideas to further enrich my knowledge without the influence of media. So for that I am truly thankful.
Rose @)—