October Blog Post

Courtney Cunningham

What is media’s role in communicating cultures?

            The chapter 9 reading from the textbook about Mediated Cultures is something that stood out to me.  A quote that made me stop reading and think about for a little bit was, “we use and create media even as media use and create us” (212).  Before this reading I was not fully aware about how the media we take in forms the person we become.  Media surrounds us in out everyday lives whether we realize it or not.  Media is a much broader category than what I originally thought.  When I think media, I think about the news on television and how they try to come off as unbiased, but it never really can be that way because they are only giving us the information that they want us to hear and they give it to us in a way that could easily persuade us to agree with what they are saying.  An easy way to think about how media affects us is “you are what you eat”.  The media that we take in is changing us to become who we are.  Even on the new channels that seem completely truthful our thoughts get persuaded by how we interpret the information being presented. 

            After the reading when I think about all the kinds of media that affect us, I think about social media, billboards, headlines on newspapers, etc.  Media is anything that can give us information.  Media that many people are familiar with today such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram can be some of the most biased and false form of media.  We need to be aware that the information we are reading on these sites is not always true and is almost always based on people’s opinions.  The problem with these forms of media is that we tend to follow/friend people that we like and have similar views as us.  Therefore, we are getting information that we agree with and we are missing out on the whole other point of view that none of out friends posted about.  It is dangerous for us to only get one side of information because then it is only letting us make greater opinions based on one-sided information. 

            Another form of media that is brainwashing children in a way is movies and television.  The children’s cable television channel, Nickelodeon, says its role is to “empower kids” and motivate children to be “agents of change.”  This seems like a positive goal for Nickelodeon, but it is also shaping children into how they think they should be, instead of letting the kid grow up without being shaped by media. 

            Since there is no way to completely stop media from shaping us, we need to be aware of how it changes us.  By doing this we can realize when it is happening and can create opinions of our own instead of constantly being force fed other people’s biased views about certain issues.