Media vs. Society

I just received an email from Jeremiah with the prompt for tonight's post. So, tonight I will explain what I consider is the importance of media in society's perception, escalating from the different aspects of media that allow it to influence society, to the changes i has caused.

Since media is ubiquitous and multifaceted, there are many factors and levels to these factors that affect how media shapes society. Newspaper, magazines, computers, internet, and many other mediums are how media transmit messages to society. It is very hard to get away from these messages because they are literally everywhere. Media has the power of controlling information to reach people the way 'gatekeepers' want it to; for example, editors for newspaper can cut out information, or make reporters rewrite articles to make them seem a certain way. The same way that the information can be edited and even omitted by editors, it can be used to determine important political and social issues. When gatekeepers decide what goes out into society through their mediums, they release the ideas that can become issues. If the gatekeepers decide to continue providing coverage, or not cover an issue at all, they can set an agenda of political or social issues as they are happening. Since most people rely on media for news, they depend on the information they are fed to develop ideas about current events and issues. Going back to the editorial power of gatekeepers, they can shape the way an opinion is developed by framing it in a certain manner. This framing can rely in the way images, words, characterizations and more are presented to the public. Newspapers' editors can use diction to make a certain issue look positive or negative, for instance.

The way I understand all this, is through the concept of hegemony. Hegemony is how certain ideas are ingrained in a society and an individual, composing the conventions of that particular society or individual. Gatekeepers, agenda-setting and framing are the tools that media uses to create and maintain hegemony. For example, during the 9/11 terrorist attack, media coverage swarmed with images of middle eastern men that were responsible for the attacks. Naturally, the nation went into a patriotic and nationalistic frenzy against middle eastern men. Ever since, security in airports and border cities has increased greatly, but a social convention that changed is the way that middle eastern people are perceived by America. Middle eastern countries have been demonized as being all terrorists that only want to see the U.S. flag burn. This is an inaccurate generalization of a minority population aggravated by the extensive negative coverage given to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

This article from the New York Times relates the difficulties that middle easterners have suffered after the coverage of 9/11. 

This political cartoon demonstrates the generalization as well.