Media has always been interesting to me. There is so many different media platforms that all have one purpose, to spread news. Some examples of these different platforms include news about celebrities (TMZ, People, BET, ect), Politics (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ect), Music entertainment (Billboard, Rolling Stones, ect) and so on. Media platforms inform its audience about what's going on and what the audience should know about. In Chapter 11, Mediated Culture, this particular quote stuck out to me. “Media are neither all good nor all bad. How we use the media makes the difference- do we pay attention to our critical minds, or do we allow the authors to create meaning for us?”. I interpreted it as that people love media that appeals to them.
What fascinates me about media is how different news outlets can tell the same story, but appeal to their audience. Political news outlets do this all the time. An example would be Fox News and MSNBC covering the same story. Fox News is going to give the politically right wing viewpoint while MSNBC will give the politically left wing viewpoint. Although they are covering the same story, both outlets changes the view point. What has always made me think was who’s telling the correct story? Both outlets are telling the story, but their changing the story to appeal to their audience. My question to this has always been “why do we choose to listen to biased news rather than listen to the honest truth?”. I guess the answer is that people will do what they can to hear what they want to hear rather than the truth. What makes me nervous about this is people who solely rely on news and information from biased outlets and believing that its the truth they are receiving.
Another media question I’ve always had is about the celebrity gossip. Companies like TMZ are based completely off of celebrity gossip. Essentially speaking, they talk about other humans who are known by other humans and talk about their personal lives outside of their careers. Yet, people are drawn to this form of media. I will admit, I am one of these people who turn into celebrity drama/gossip. Even though it has nothing to do with my personal life, I am drawn to the drama between celebrities. This form of media is more entertainment rather than actual news we should be paying attention to. However, these kind of entertainment media sites draw a large audience who constantly want more. These media platforms are also known to alter the information about celebrities in order to make the drama “juicer”. Recently, BET claimed that the new Migos song “Motorboat” made Nicki Minaj angry because Cardi B was also featured on the song. In reality, Nicki Minaj knew Cardi B was also on the song and had to publically address that the rumors were false. Celebrity entertainment is a form of media focused on entertainment rather than news that would be considered important to be shared with the public.
The media has a lot of power over the general audience of consumers. People are drawn to the media but seem to only pay attention to the stuff they want to hear. People listen to news outlets that give their political biases and about the lives of celebrities. Instead of hearing the truth about the current news, people would rather listen to what they want to hear. We chose to let the media make the decisions for us on how we feel about certain topics and issues rather than get the truth and made decisions from that. We are also focused on the lives of celebrities that we forget about some of the more important topics we should be focused on. The media has a lot of control over the audience and what they want to think about topics.
http://www.xxlmag.com/news/2017/10/nicki-minaj-clears-up-migos-moto-sport-collab/
No comments:
Post a Comment