Essay on Effects of Mass Media

Submitted By jerryfeatherman
Words: 758
Pages: 4

Effects of Mass Media
Jerry Featherman
HUM/186
January 28, 2013
Professor Gainer

Effects of Mass Media
Development
Up until the early 1900’s, the main sources of media were books and newspapers. It wasn’t until the early part of the 20th Century that media as we know it today began to change the world and society as we know it. In the 1920’s the radio became the biggest boom of the modern culture. People were able to listen to media such as news, sporting and other important events from all over the world. One of the biggest things was that family and friends were able to keep track of was World War I and World War II. By the mid 1940’s, a new type of media sensation was put into place and that is the television. Not only were we able to listen to what was going on in the world, but we could now see it. Even to this day, radio and television play a big role in our everyday lives for the broadcasting of news, sporting events, music and other forms of media.
Television, telephone and radio remained the main forms of communication up until the 1970’s when the personal computer became the biggest change in the world of media communications in history.
Influence
For hundreds of years the world of social media was known only through books and parchment. As evolution has it, people always try to make things better and easier. Communications throughout the world from one continent to another was only heard of through letters and notes by messenger. When the telegraph made the breakthrough to transmit across the seas to Europe, social media communications became the start of a new trend all over the world.
To be able to communicate with one’s friends and/or family anywhere in the world was a dream come true. But as always, improvements were always being sought. The telephone was the next step in this type of communication. Writing letters seemed to become a thing of the past, why write when you can talk to whomever you wanted to communicate with.
After the telephone, came radio and television. What a breakthrough in American culture. Not only can we now talk to whoever we want to but we can now listen to and see the news, sporting, and all different types of events all over the world.
With the invention of the cellular telephone and the computer and internet, social media has exploded into a frenzy throughout the world to see who can develop the simplest form of social media and communication system. Even to this day I feel that if there were ever a nuclear meltdown or a global catastrophe, today’s society wouldn’t know what to do.
Media Convergence The process by which previously distinct technologies come to share tasks and resources. (Lule 2012).
I believe that media convergence has affected today’s society in both good and bad ways. By being able to do everything from one single device, whether it be