The contemporary society in the United States is exposed to numerous commercials and advertisements daily. Whether the source of advertising is television, magazine, or newspaper, it has certain influences on consumers. These every-day influences in turn contribute to cumulative effects of the media. Some of the cumulative effects undermine both individuals and society as a whole.
One of the cumulative effects of the media is the development of eating disorders among adolescent girls. The media, in particular the advertising industry, regularly presents ideal body images to advertise different kinds of products. Adolescents, especially teenage girls, are drawn to that ideal image and strive for that ideal image by either starving themselves or inducing vomiting. As a result, many of them develop eating disorders.
Unequal gender representation is another cumulative effect of the media. While portraying the male image as being dominant and ruling and the female image as not more than objects of lust and sexual desire, advertising creates a world where there is no equality between men and women. In her movie Killing Us Softly (2002), Jean Kilbourne carefully examines and analyzes the role of advertising in gender representation and its influence on the public.
Another cumulative effect is the emerging of new values and concept success imposed by the advertising industry. To promote and sell products, advertising creates an ideal world where people are always healthy, wealthy, beautiful, and sexual. Consumers frequently believe that they can construct this ideal world around them if they surround themselves with the products being advertised. As a result, people very often buy products which they really do not need.
No doubt, the media, with advertising as a form of it, has a strong social influence on the public. It has a huge potential to inform and educate people, as well as to control them. With constantly increasing exposure to the media, messages being communicated to people should be thoroughly monitored.
The media for sure is a bug that is not going away. The more technology advances, the more we get sucked into its wing. Mass media can be both beneficial in terms of education as well as informative. The informative reason by the way is relative! There is so much bias depending on what network one chooses to tune into. A great example is the recent election....one could certainly weed out the opinion of each news channel as far as them giving the public an indirect heads up on what party they stood up for. Some were Obama bashers and other McCain bashers.
ReplyDeleteIt will certainly be hard to monitor them as long as the freedom of press prevails, so its a matter of principle and choice.
Another perspective is consumer spending and hype of certain products. Examples are the i-phone, playstation, x-box, psp, just to name a few of the technology toys that are hot and expensive, yet people line up and camp outside stores when they are launched, just to "fit in"....i for one do not own an ipod....mostly because i am broke, but thats just another story.....
Black Friday is another one.......oh i could go on for days on media hype!
Anyway, Bakha...you have a point but as far as censorship in the media......a long time coming.......
Oh by the way Bakha...cool video.....you actually spiced up the blog!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. I would like to elaborate more on censorship in the media. It seems that there are many people against censorship on television, but having censorship in the media may not be such a bad idea as technology develops and becomes a part of daily life. Apparently, there is not enough censorship on television. Some shows, for example, make young children more violent and aggressive, others undermine them in some other way. So, maybe, such shows should be censored. However, if we were to have censorship in the media, specifically television, we need to determine who could decide on whether or not a particular show has to be censored. We need to come up with an appropriate solution; otherwise, the future generations may change in undesirable ways.
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