Effects of Mass Media Essay

Effects of Mass Media
Ashley Henderson
HUM/186
November 11, 2014
Dawn Cloutier

Effects of Mass Media
The job of the mass media is to set the big story, what is called the agenda; and tell the people the information they want to know about. This is not necessarily trying to tell people what to think but, what to think about; while doing it in an un-bias way. (Campbell, R) How information is delivered to the world has exploded and developed an information interstate changing how the world receives it. But, not all of the information is reliable and un-bias.
While today there are a number of ways to get the information out to the public, they are seen as traditional media and emerging media. (Campbell,R) Traditional Media is viewed as the most trustworthy and most reliable form of media like mainstream magazines, TV News Stations, News Papers and Radio. Emerging Media is seen as a less reliable way to receive information like Blogs, Citizen Journalists, Pod Casts, and Web Pages. While the media is suppose to provide un-bias information both show a steady stream of bias. (Deliso, M) More and more people are noticing the bias information the national news sources are providing and are seeing the differences between the agendas on different networks and news papers.
Media convergence in regards to technology is to involve merging content through different channels. The mass media uses a variety of ways to get their words out to the people around the world by using Newspapers, Radios, Television, and Internet. There is a number of ways that make it a good thing when having all of these outlets to receive the information but, it also has a downside to it. Yes, we have everything we want to know at our finger tips with a flip of a page or channel or a press of a button. But, those who choose to steer away from anything technological are being left behind with limited information on the same story. It is also leaving those people behind in a career field because everything is transforming to computers. When someone would look on a bulletin board to get their work schedule they have to log online to a website to get it now, same goes for check stubs also. It may be a more proficient and profitable way of getting things done for the companies it is leaving the ones that aren’t tech savvy behind. It did not turn this way over night though, it took centuries to get to where we are now with technology. During the early 1900’s the mainstream media was newspapers. The public would get up in the morning and grab a paper on their street corner to find out what was happing in the world outside their town. Over the next 40 years the radio helped the media reach information to the masses. During the 1940’s families would gather around the radio to get updates on the war as well as the ball game. During that time another development was taking place to help the world keep up to date on what was going on and by the 1950’s the Television became a main resource for the mass media. This was great for the public because it combined the radio and newspaper and the people embellished in it. By 1962 the satellite gave an all new access to the people by helping it go worldwide. (Randel, Q)
Following shortly after in 1969 the internet started paving an all new revolutionary way to give and receive information. By 1995 Newsweek headlined an article call “The Internet? Bah? Hype Alert: Why Cyberspace isn’t and will never will be nirvana.” The author Clifford Stoll called the internet oversold and that human interaction would become obsolete causing teacher and stores to disappear. 1997 the internet hit the one million webpage mark, in 1998 Google launched their web browser, and 1999 the first ever social networking site launch call “Friends Reunited”. By the year 2000 more than 70 Million people were connected to the internet. Wikipedia

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