essay on mass media
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Mass Media
Mass media is one of the major agents of socialization. In this essay I will analyze the social influence of mass media; the methods of media manipulation of information; and the consequences of corporate ownership of media.
There is a huge social influence in mass media. Society influences what we are shown by mass media. For example, there are certain "norms" in society, mass media usually only puts out things that are accepted by these "norms". Also since money is the most important thing to mass media they will only put out things that they know society would want to buy.
Since mass media is one of the best ways to reach an enormous amount of people, mass media is often manipulated to benefit people in high ranking positions, or to make people in society conform. Two ways mass media can be manipulated is through censorship and propaganda.
By censoring certain things it stops people from learning or knowing about certain events. For example, after 9/11 there have been numerous publication that have been censored for their "anti-American" content However, the main reason these publications are censored are censored is because many of them are criticizing the U.S. government. They also inform us about things our government fears that if we read we wont trust what they say or support them.
Propaganda is another way in which mass media is manipulated. Through propaganda we are only shown one side of the story. Propaganda is often used by the government to persuade people into changing their views on certain things. For example when 9/11 happened all we heard from mass media was how horrible the Iraqis were and how we needed to go to war in order to stop terrorism. However, we barely heard about how we sold the weapons to Iraq that they "used against us" or how we used to support Iraq