Assess the Functions

1. The term "Mass Media" is a very fitting phrase to describe what we have going on in America. It describes the many many ways we can receive information and how much media is released and how wide it is spread and how many versions of the same story we can hear and how many different opinions and biases it can be delivered in. Let's take a look at the internet as a media outlet. Not everyone gets a newspaper delivered to them, not everyone listens to radio news and with how much technology there is, who even knows how many people actually watch the news on a tv. I don't do any of the above, but I do, like many, many other people, have to go on to the internet at the very least, once a day.

The first thing I see is Yahoo news, and then the second thing I see is YouTube where there's often video bloggers talking about recent news, and then there's people on my chat lists (msn messenger, etc) who will send me links of news stories, it's in my email, there's even usually some form of news on the Yavapai College website. Pretty much, if there's anything you ever need to know about, you can find it on the internet, but you have to be careful, a lot of what you can see may not always be true. Just like you find anything online, anyone can make up whatever they want you to see. There's things like photoshop where people can alter images and make you believe something is real and you can get into the habit of believing things without real sources.

The internet is my favourite outlet of media because with newspapers, tv, radio, etc, you can only hear what they are telling you at that particular time but with the internet, you can search so many differents sources of the same stories so really, you can get as many different views as you want and generate your own ubiased truth. I think that with many of the other outlets of news like from tv or newspapers, people tend to habitually watch or read one certain station, paper, etc. With the internet, you have more control over this.

2. The impact of these categories of mass media on American society is actually extremely more powerful than we probably like to think it is. My favourite example, one I brought up in class once, is that once presidential debates became televised, the more good looking candidate often won presidency, even if he was a bad speaker. =P

A more recent heavy impact of something has been, of course, the economy. It's not just everywhere you look in person, it's always got several top stories on the news and as an impact, I really think it scares people, or at least saddens them, depresses them, makes them less happy in some way because to me, it's never good news, there's hardly ever any hope in these stories, it's like why not, though, can't politicians ever influence a story of some kind of good news, or, would that be wrong cause they are lying as there really is no good news...hmm. Just one of many reasons I stay away from tv news stations, it doesn't make me any happier and I've survived this long without having to know any of it, so, I won't let it reach me in these ways.

3. What came to mind for me on this one is that as the media has grown, the American society has grown in the sense that we are more accepting of something the more we hear it. If accepting doesn't describe all situations, we become more, lets say, used to hearing bad, strange, horrible things and yes, while we aren't happy that they happen, I think most of us have the attitude of thinking that these things just happen all the time and there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think we'd have this attitude if the media hadn't of grown so much but...which way are we better off? Knowing, of course.

It's probably weird to hear me say that we need to know more things after I've told you all I try to stay away from hearing it, but, that doesn't mean I completely ignore it all. =P When you think of something less depressing that is broadcasted a lot like stories on gay marrige and gay rights, the more that people discover these things and hear about them, the better of an opinion they can form and I'm a believer that people will be more accepting of something when they see the rest of world change as well.