Media Studies Induction Task

Why study the media?

The Media is such a key component of society today and has been for a long time. It has affected how the modern world is today and will keep shaping the future for the generations after us. Television, the internet, films, radio, newspapers are all types of media, it's everywhere why would I not want to study such a contemporary subject that surrounds us day in day out and understand it to a greater depth. www.dictionary.com defines media as ‘the means of communication that reach or influence people’ to me this suggests that media has been around since the Tang Dynasty in China where they used wooden blocks coated in ink to create books, such as the diamond sutra made in 868 A.D. This shows us how long media has been around for and how it is part of our history, it has helped develop technologies around the world through sharing knowledge and will continue to do so.

More than 4 billion people are now using the internet and over 5 billion people now have mobile phones, this is great, people can now delve into the internet and share rich knowledge with people around the world however this also comes with people sharing fake news.  According to a research by MIT ‘A false story reaches 1500 people six times quicker than a true story does’ this puts so many people at risk of believing fake news and sharing this with people around the world. I hope by studying the Media I will be able to question the validity of information with more confidence and not be manipulated by these fake stories.

Malcom X was a human rights activist, he once said that ‘the media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses’ this shows you the power the media has on people how do you trust this power with people who can’t be trusted, with people who are trying to grab your attention as its how they make money. You can’t. And that’s why the media is so weird as its this great entity that allows people to find out something just by using the internet and gives voices to people who wouldn’t usually speak out yet its also this scary and overwhelming power that manipulates people every day. I am so interested by this and this is why I think media is a great subject to study.

Media can lead to individualism, people spend too much time alone instead of socialising, which can cause to mental problems people worrying too much about how good other people’s lives look and how there’s doesn’t seem to be like this. According to a recent study of 2000 Americans on average check their phone 80 times a day and 10% check their phone 300 times a day, just to see what their mates are doing instead of focusing on improving their own life. This is how addictive and powerful the media really is and this is a real-life problem that is occurring every day why would you not want to study this to understand a subject that is growing more and more.