Media Theorys
- 1. The media has a strong impact on the public without the audience realising that they are in fact being influenced. The media can send subliminal messages to their audiences, and can have a huge effect on what their audiences do or say, the media has a very powerful influence which can determine the social environment of the audience, the media can influence an audience in a verity of ways from the chocolate bar they buy to the influence of a political party that they may vote for. The media has the power to shape a person’s career and give them a celebrity name through positive and negative reports. It can have a positive and negative outlook, the positive being that, important information can be reached in minutes of an event or occurrence this makes the media one of the most reliable sources for the public, however it can change the thoughts and opinions of the general public in a matter of minutes, it can take something so ordinary and put it in the wrong light which may make people think or see the situation differently, when violence or graphic images are shown in the media it can affect the thoughts and brain patterns of young people making them think that certain things are okay to do when in fact it is not. The media can sometimes advertise bad things in a luxurious way and change the thoughts of the public to make them want to do or buy something they shouldn’t. Movies and television programmes that show violence, theft or other criminal offences and see the criminals getting away with may create entertainment for the audience however they also glorify bad things encouraging people to take a risk and act in forbidden ways. A documentary is a film using the lives and thoughts of real people, it has an effect on the way that the public think because it can be one sided, documentaries have the power to show only one side of a story creating a thought in the public’s head that what is being told to them is the whole truth and that they should believe it. Although documentaries aren’t as powerful to the mind as movies or other media sections are they can still change the thoughts of the public by what is said, sold or told, For example in 2004 when the documentary supersize me was released a debate kicked off about the public nutrition which had a lot of people brainwashed that all fast food was bad and within weeks of the documentary being released the brand McDonalds had removed the supersize option from their menus. A documentary has the power to tell the public about situations that they may not otherwise be aware of, for example in 1966 a documentary by Ken Loach was released called Cathy Come Home which was about a woman named Cathy who loses her home, husband and children due to the British welfare system. The documentary was seen by over a quarter of the British population and the bbc switchboard was crashed due to the high amount of phone calls being made, in result the homelessness charity Shelter was created. The uses and gratification approach is influential within the media, it was used to research the content of the media, the basic approach states that the audience knows about the content of the television programme, film, radio or other medias that they are looking/listening/reading and what media they need in their life to satisfy their needs. In the media to audience process the uses and gratification approach links together the choice of the audience and the gratification needs. The theory suggests that all people’s needs are influenced by the media; it is considered the most appropriate theories to use when discovering why the public allow themselves to be exposed by different media channels. The hypodermic needle theory suggests that the media injects thoughts and opinions into the public’s brains, it suggests that there is no difference between the audience and that because we are watching, listening or reading that same media that we are the same, it suggests that the media has
- 2. a direct, immediate and powerful effect on the audience, there is several factors that show this they are; the fast rise in popularity of television and radio; the persuasion of advertisement and propaganda; the Payne fund studies. The passive and active consumption theory states that the audience can only pay little attention to the media and will still be brainwashed into thinking that the media are right, it shows that the media has the power to make people believe it what they are saying without their being a strong media consumption. The documentary supersize me put the thoughts into the public’s head that all fast food was bad for them and showed them that by eating it they will become obese and have bad health. The documentary put guilt into the public’s mind about the fast food that they have been eating making them feel sick of the thought of eating fast food. It looks into how the public’s perception of more food for a little more money makes them want it however they are not thinking into the long run of how many calories they are putting into their system and how little vitamins and important foods are not entering their systems. The Documentary Aileen: life and death of a serial killer has the public believing that some executions are unnecessary and should not be occurring, for example in this film Aileen is executed for the crimes she has committed, the public have been led to believe that the trail was unfair and that the consequences that she served should not have been. They have been told the story from the point of view that shows Aileen as the victim, it was biased towards keeping the lethal injection legal. The three theories’ stated above show that the media has a high influence on the action of the public, the media has the power to fabricate situations and make the public think that what is being said or done is the right thing to do in life.