October Blog

The Importance of Media and the Co-constitution

“Media surrounds us, but they are also constantly changing; in this sense, we can put tools in our toolkit that help us read mediated messages, but, because media are constantly changing, we must always be on the lookout for new tools.” (p.164)

Looking at co-constitution, it starts off with the media creating images, beliefs, values for people who are watching the broadcasts, and how it generates a social construction of how we see things in life. Media shapes our aspect and creates an idea. We can see this come from the Disney lecture discussed in class. This is important to understand that films hold deeper meanings within them, which can cause cultural norms, without saying cultural norm. the power isn’t just with media, parents hold a powerful role in this when it comes to educate their children on understanding the fundamental rights and wrongs, provided clarity to how a culture possess more then what media portrays in a culture, and to not see a one-way view of how a culture is represented. Like we have seen in the Disney films. The next part is how do we know that parents can be lead members for their children and provide this concept of understanding that culture are not fundamentally related to a one-sided view.

What is co construction it’s the processes that is used for an individual to use and create media and in return the media is doing the same to the individual. An example to help describe this is looking at a social media platform, which allows for consumers to interact with the product, and during this moments, media is collecting data on the individuals use to help correlate relative ads that are desirable to the consumer. This is where co-constitution takes place, the consumer can choose to like or dislike something, but no matter what the individual chooses the individual can't change how the ad is formed, our describing something, the media does that, and they will perform multiple persuasion tactics to help you be influenced by the ad.

From activist post, it talks about how there are 8 different forms of manipulation that is coming from the media, and by being aware of this it will help any individual acquire new tools for their tool kit and not allow media to overpower personal views.  The article starts off with how magazines will express different images of cover stories for Americas while sending completely different forms to the rest of the world. It describes how the news media will all be describing the same script which makes sense most media are controlled by a small group of powerful companies, and within those companies the board members share seats with the other large powerful companies, which in my mind should be counted as a monopoly but I personally don’t have the power of credibility to provided enough change in that issue.  Another important part that comes from the article is the idea of Reality TV is scripted, to help add more entertainment for the viewers. And the last important part to be aware of is how media will edit the images you see, to help enhance the good or bad, of an image depending on how the media wants you to see it, for communication and culture this is very import to know, it makes you wonder how do other countries see us through the media, just like how we see them through our media.