Media Essay

(College English Assignment)

Did you go online today? Maybe watch some programming on your television? Most likely you saw some form of the media. Media is the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines that reach or influence people widely. We are surrounded by media. Everything from your music to your favorite shows is a form of media. The news is media.  How does the media affect us and our lives? What kind of impact does it have on society? Who operates it? And who regulates the media?

                MySpace, Myyearbook, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Google, and blogs are used with some forms of media. You may recognize a few of these big name sites, and almost everyone knows what a blog is. The social networking sites, such as MySpace, allow people to communicate with each other more easily over distances, and to keep track of their moods, status, and more. YouTube allows people to share videos with people around the world. Netflix is a movie service, allowing people to rent movies to be sent to their home, or stream online. Google is the largest, most popular search engine and provides plenty of advertising to its users. Blogs allow people to share what is on their minds as well as what is going on around them. Bloggers are sometimes better reporters of news than the actual news stations. Mostly because of their ability to update their post quickly and being able to be at the event to best describe what occurred. How do all of these tie into our lives? How do they affect us?

                These types of media are interactive for the most part. They allow us to interact with and use them. The social networks use advertising as a way to fund their sites. As do the other sites like YouTube, Netflix, and Google. Some of them will offer special incentives for paying for a certain type of membership, which is another source of revenue. One main goal of the media is to make money. That tends to be their main drive for operating.  The media uses many different outputs to produce revenue for their ventures. The media produces many other affects as well, such as changing the view points of people, educating the populace in some way, or putting out some pertinent information to the masses.

                The media is very effective at getting information out. Whether it is beneficial or not, the media will be able to put the information out to the masses. The media influences the way we think about things. Things such as what we buy, how we should look, how we should act, and much more. The media has started to make a mold for how society should be, and how everyone should look. As well as, how everyone should think about certain things. This is not exactly beneficial to society as a whole, and it affects our society and status among people. The media portrays females in a specific way and implies that if you do not look that way, you’re wrong. They are doing the same with the males now. If guys don’t think of females in the way the media portrays they should, it is considered “wrong.”

                Thanks to these portrayals some people have started looking down upon themselves and others. As a society we shouldn’t want this to happen, let alone make it happen. While the media is allowed to speak as they want, for the most part, we need to regulate them ourselves. It is our society that the media portrays in such ways, our own people. We need to regulate what is said and shown to the masses through the media. The media has a large influence over people and our society. For that reason we should closely monitor and regulate the media to the best of our capabilities. We are the audience for the media. If we don’t want what they give, and we show it, the media will change to keep us focused on what they are putting out.

                To an extent, we are in control of what the media puts out. We must regulate the ideas being put out to the masses by the media. If we don’t regulate it, the media will eventually control our thoughts about many things.  Some of the masses offer their own inputs through various forms of media, using resources such as radio broadcast, blogs, sites like YouTube, and social networking sites. This is one form of the media, and you run across this form of the media most often on the internet.  Another, more influential, form of the media is mass media. Mass media is any of the means of communication, as television or newspapers that reach very large numbers of people. This form of media you encounter every day. You encounter it through advertising for a new product, the news, and various forms of entertainment.

                This is how the media has such an influence in our society today. It is everywhere, and we are exposed to it every day. Whether while browsing online, looking through sites, advertising, newspapers, radio, or television. The media plays a role in how we think in today’s society. It is that influence that makes the media so powerful.