Blog #3- Influence of Mass Media

Taylor Foerster

Blog #3

Blog #3- Influence of Mass Media

My final blog post is inspired by Banet-Weiser’s article We the People. The statement I chose was “Commercial media play a pivotal role in creating cultural definitions about what it means to be a citizen-indeed, our sense of ourselves as national citizens emerges from our engagement with the popular media.” Mass media has always been an extremely powerful tool, and its influence grows stronger with each generation. Myself and the rest of the ‘Z Generation’ grew up with mass media being a pretty large part of our lives. Everyone watched the same TV shows and movies, and looking back, it’s impact was very pretty profound in a lot of ways. What I noticed most as a kid, was how strongly kids reflected television personalities, jokes and opinions. To an extent, everyone can’t help but mimic the world they see, even without mass media. However kids are clearly more vulnerable. As a kid, everyone was impacted by mass media in a way that felt very transparent and saturated (myself included). Sometimes, it felt like it was to an extent where children’s personalities were just carbon copies of ones seen on TV, as if they’re personal identity never had a true chance to be refined by themselves.

One example of this comes from a friend I had in 4th grade. Deep down, she was a good person. However she came off very bratty, and almost every aspect of her character seemed like an impression of the character Miley, from Hannah Montana. In a lot of ways, this influence can have both good and bad potential. And no matter what it raises the truth of how much responsibility mass media distributors of children’s content have.

A lot of the kid’s content I see today appear much more conscious of this. A popular show amongst kids (and adults) today is Steven Universe. I’ve actually watched most of this show all the way through, and it presents itself as a lot more dedicated to the influence of its audience then most of the TV I was raised on. In a lot of ways, most kids can feel represented watching Steven Universe. In my first blog post I ranted about how a lot of the characters I grew up with were (subtly) racially segregated. Not only is the opposite true with SU, but the writers even have a protagonist that even challenges the standards of masculinity. Though people should continue discussing the power of mass media, I’m definitely excited for the future of kids shows.