Media, whether printed, electronic, or web, is the main medium of communication

Media, whether printed, electronic, or web, is the main medium of communication

Abstract

Media, whether printed, electronic, or web, is the main medium of communication, which helps in educating individuals. There is an assortment of media stage that has animated the contemplations of the youthful age and different segments of the general public. Several researchers have extensively explored the empirical work on the effect of ads on social problems. Various studies have shown that media has adverse social impacts that worsen social issues. However, some researchers have also expressed concern about negative media implications, while others sought to support positive media considerations. Contradictory perceptions and research on effects of media have amplified the global debate about the media as a social problem.

Media and its Influence in the Articulation of Social Matters

In the modern world, media contributes to several social problems among people. Media has become a social concern because of its complex and nuanced cultural effects on the users. Media encourages the use of different opponents and adversaries to endorse aggression misogyny, sexism, bigotry, ageism, and other divisive social systems. Aonther great concern is the negative impact of media on children and young people. Media is linked to the increased cases of pornography and the exploitation of women through sex. Public ad-exploitation and the promotion of excessive consumption and materialism have an impact on consumer decision-making. Media is the impression of the general public, and it delineates what and how society functions. In an increasingly fragmented world, there is a growing concern about media and national culture and how globally-based media affect the society negatively in regard to violence,morality, politics, democracy, and globalization..

Impact of Media on Violence and Morality

The exploration of the media effect and social media problems arose in the United States with the increase of broadcasting and mass media in the 1920s and 1930s. The media contribute to disruptive issues due to the rise in violence and morality as seen in societal culture. The Frankfurt School coined the word ‘ cultural industry’ in the 1930s to demonstrate the process of creating a popular culture and the group’s commercial necessities (Kosnick, 2019). In the context of industrial development, critical theories analyze all mass-mediated cultural artifacts in which cultural enterprises create the same features as other mass production goods such as commercialization, modification, and massification. It shows that the media has contributed to the increased cultural change in society.

The media is also termed as a social issue as it creates a society that weakens the individuality, dignity, and healthy characteristics of high culture (Gao, Weng, Zhou, & Yu, 2017). The traditional conception of media and morality is that they are sources of conventional and capitalist values that promote a leading mentality and generated viewers as passive customs and consumer behaviors. Bivins (2018) mentions that the model of the cultural sector and standardized media systems have provided the expectant audience experiences and have contributed to standardized society performances. When communication work began in the 1930s and 1940s, and as frustration theories learned in World War II, numerous studies started to research social media and encourage debate on media and social issues. For example, in the first scientific research on the impact films, movies were dismissed for encouraging immorality, youth crime, and abuse. The Motion Picture Research Council funded the Payne project to undertake comprehensive empirical research on the effect of films on daily life and social behavior. This fator shows that the media contribute to the increase of social immorality in society.

Tamborini et al. (2018) indicate that repeated representations of violence in the media make viewers to embrace incitement among themselves. Media contributes to the increase in violence due to its approach of the content that is frequently aired. This case happens when media airs lousy news. The increasing exploitation of young people through media in countries such as the USA, China, and German is evident in many sensational cases of youth killings. Rap music, video games, computer games, TV, film, and other types of youth culture have also been promoted. This type of media content increases the violence mentality among people.

Besides violence, which is a social problem, left-liberal and conservative opponents of public convergence contend that mass media promote excessive consumerism and trade. Markey and Ferguson (2017) state that a sound hedonistic culture seen and promoted in mass media by capitalist corporations undermine the core values and create an immoral environment. The authors called for a return to tradition and faith to counter this social revolution, which considers the culture of the media as violating spiritual, work ethics, and traditional values. The social tradition associated with various societies is influenced by media advertisements, which affects their faith and religious belief. Critcher (2017) also argued that the culture of mass media has become a significant force in socialization such that traditional literacy is weakened, which undermines education. The author challenged the negative social effect of media and received strong opposition from educators and people in the community.

Johann, Konigslow, Kritzinger, and Thomas (2018) argue that pornography exploits, abuses, promotes violence against women, and destroys sexuality. There is also a common consensus about whether there are positive or negative media as the press build have access to and are a crucial part of modern society. Many critics assert that the straightforward perspectives of both pro and con appear simplistic and reductive, and detailed work on the various impacts of media such innovations or artifacts should be performed (Aelst & Walgrave, 2016). The critics also state that media has different effects and positive or negative elements cannot be consistently discerned or isolated under such conditions that are often mixed.

TV is likely to have both positive and negative effects on child development. However, the negative impacts of media on the children surpass the positive ones. Media always negatively influences the well-being of children by instilling harmful content, which conflicts their social setting. Another critical factor in deciding whether the tool has a positive or negative effect is the degree of development for an individual child. Not every TV program is inapproriate, although it is compelling that data shows the adverse effects of exposure to aggression, inappropriate sexuality, and offensive vocabulary. This factor indicates that parents have a significant role in ensuring that they have control of what their children watch.

Impact of Media on the Political Field

The emphasis on representational politics calls attention to the fact that culture is created within dominance and subordination relations and seeks to replicate or resist established power structures. It also provides resources for cultural studies in which the critics may denounce aspects of media forms and objects, which replicate class, sex, race, and various modes of power, valuing characters that subvert or reflect resistance and movements against current types of dominance.

Representation, violence politics, and the media converge in the heated debates on pornography. Pornography and abuse against women are some of the most controversial facets of popular culture for a group of feminism and moral conservatives (Hadan et al., 2017). Antiporn feminists contend that pornography exploits the market and encourages abuse against women, as well as distorted sexuality. In comparison, pro-sex feminists and porn supporters argue that pornography portrays a tabbed spectrum of desires, delusions, and wishes, and it should be used gratifiedly by users.

Therefore, while there is a general agreement that media creates and offers access to social issues and their representations are an essential component of the social system, the debate about the positive or negative impact of the media is dry (Johann et al., 2018). Many critics claim that binary pro or con views tend to be simplistic and reductionist, and nuanced examination of such innovations or artifacts’ particular media impact on different audiences is essential. This stance also affirms that the media, in general, have a paradox and in many cases, positive or negative attributes that sometimes interconnect are challenging to differentiate or separate correctly.

Significant questions in media and cultural studies have also been answered concerning representational policy using multicultural theories and feminist strategies to examine the role of gender in the media, class, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and sexual orientation. The social dimensions of media constructions are considered by cultural studies essential for the audience using text. Within the background of social struggles and protests during this time, there have been several speeches by race, gender, sex, and nationality, which affects the media viewers. Political research has objectively been performed to combat political representation. A highly diverse, culturally hybrid, and globalized diasporic society and the networked world requires a full understanding of cross-representations, politics, media forms, and lectures on these issues.

Hadanet al. (2017) raises a significant theory and methodological problems in defense of the historically-political and cultural understandings of female experiences and resistances, which challenge the hegemony and power asymmetries of critical and main-level cultural studies. Therefore, the focus on representative policy draws attention to the fact that culture is produced in dominance and subordination and seeks to imitate or resist existing systems of power. It also provides tools for cultural analysis in which critics may challenge elements of media and artifacts that represent gender, sex, race, and various modes of control, evaluating the facets of protest and agitation towards the types of existing domination, which are subverted or mirrored. In the heated discussions on pornography, racism, and crime, policies and the media intersect. To several feminists and social conservatives, pornography and exploitation of women are one of the most divisive elements of popular culture.

Impact of Media on Democracy

The media provide information, ideas, and debates on public interest issues to encourage a democratic public sector. According to Zhu (2017), the dual democratic role of the media is to control excessive power and educate people about the critical open problems to enable them to engage informedly in public life. A democratic society required a free press, and democracy advocates often claim that press freedom is one of the main distinguishing elements of the supremacy of democracy over competing for social structures. Such measures are commonly adopted to ensure that justice is efficiently guaranteed (Chen & Yang, 2019). The television broadcast has been initially conceived as a public service for Western concepts of democracy, and the broadcasts have been developed as part of the public domain, subject to legislation by the government that strengthens the broadcasting ability to meet its constitutional obligations. Over the last decades, a rise in power in the hands of corporate interests controlling large conglomerates of the media has been seen as weakening democracy. As a significant social problem involving a growing monopoly of the commercial media, several scholars have pointed out the implications of media reform and the growth of the democratic model and have criticized them. When business media pursue their priorities and goals, they do not play their part in public education, encouraging public participation in informed political debates and, therefore, civic debate and decision-making. Media outlets abandon everyday tasks that serve as a curtain on the high government power to address social-political issues of importance, using their influential contacts and expertise to promote their business interests and the political and policy interests that they support. In reality, the media itself is becoming a social issue, which is to be introduced with the implementation of a policy for public media if it undermines business power and the dominant economic interests, harms democracy, and does not solve critical social problems. There are no significant social issues in the media.

Most media critics think they have simply fostered the growth of corporate and government influence and declining democracy because the media neglect their position in serving the public and offering a forum for political debate and discussing essential matters of common concern. This means that social problems in the media are overlooked and political agendas are promoted. The change threatened Sevenans (2018) from an egalitarian society to a late-capitalist media rooted in democratic public institutions.

Around the time of the Enlightened and Democratic Revolutions in the 18th century, Koc-Michalska, Schiffrin, Lopez, Boulianne, and Bimber (2019) examined how to tackle problems of widespread concern. Within a hierarchical system in which the media and bourgeoisie dominated the public sphere in the participatory, democratic realm in the heroical age of liberal democracy opposed more privatized forms of spectator politics (Röhle, 2019). The classical liberal public domain was a forum in which criticism of the state and society today could be expressed. Magazines, presses independent of government ownership and influence, coffee shops for newspapers, political discussions of writers, literature shops and critiques, and public assemblies for political oratory and debate were held in the institutions and places of the 18th century.

The public domain is taken over by multinational corporations. Johann et al. (2018) identifies a transition in the present age of what it called the provider of the state capitalism and corporate democracy, from the democratic society emerging in Liberalism and the American and French Revolutions to the mass media public sphere. The definition of the public sphere can, however, serve as an environmental regulatory model in which individuals may speak about issues of common concern and promote reform and social change openly. However, this can serve as a critical point of view, demonstrating that the government and the media cannot solve significant social issues if they are not overlooked.

Impact of Globalization on the Triumph of Corporate Media

With the coming of the new millennium, the neo-liberal revolution, the globalization agenda, tax cuts for an affluent, military growth, a decline in social welfare, and the proliferation of social class classes are becoming increasingly evident. As the new century progresses, the specter of expanded corporate and military power is being faced by globalized societies that undermine the social conditions of the vast majority and occasional chaos of mass apathy and explosive violence (Critcher, 2017). The mass media continue to play a significant role in manipulating the appetite of consumers, creating thought and behavior in line with the global system of capitalism, and giving people a sense of politics and concerns.

The fact that the internet and digital web media were the principal shareholders in the transaction seemed to signal the triumph of the new online community over the traditional tradition of the media. The merger itself demonstrated an increase of synergies between the new and old media in the context of the digital economy and cyberculture between information and entertainment industries (Zhu, 2017). The convergence brings companies from TV, film, magazines, journals, books, databases, and the computing industry, as well as other industries, together, which imply a mixture of industry and digital culture, entertainment, and information in today’s world of media.

There is a range of resources available in the media, communications, and technical sectors. Enhanced internet, WiFi, and satellite personal networking tools allow the use of videos, movies, entertainment, information requested, Internet shopping, and the provision of undesirable services such as pornography and gambling (Kosnick, 2019). Therefore, the emergence of massive conglomerates of infotainment exposes a fusion of advertising and digital technology that incorporates entertainment and intelligence, eliminates the divisions between those fields, and produces new mighty social powers.

News media should play a proactive role in critically discussing both political and social problems from various viewpoints and in fostering active public discourse to maintain a healthy social order. Democracy and its duty to rule over disproportionate government or corporate control and media interference in matters of public concern and controversy are increasingly undermined. Some social issues have not been adequately addressed in recent decades, and mass media itself has become a significant social concern as corporate and climate interests advanced, hindering social change (Rohle, 2019). This issue should be tackled through the revitalization of the media reform movement, the acceptance of media policy, and the establishment of a just society in the fight for democratization and funding of alternative media.

Conclusion

Media plays a significant role in the articulation of social matters as it affects the society negatively in regard to violence and morality, politics, democracy, and globalization. Media affects the social setting; it contributes to increased violence. Political violence is triggered increased lousy news. Also, media affects the societal moral setting; hence, it negatively influences the growth and development of a society. However, media contributes to a high level of democracy as all the wrong actions are exposed. Although media is still a political power and social force, reflecting on the social roles and consequences of the news media and exploring its problems for democracy, as well as the social problem of the mass media, is becoming even more relevant.