Media Is Shaping and Changing the Culture of People - Essay Example

Media and Culture Affiliation: Introduction Culture is all about behaviour and attitude shared by a group of people and which drives them to their actions. The contemporary society is evolving at a very fast rate when it comes to media. This is as a result of the continuing technological evolution that has created expansive room for electronic media to grow and spread its digital tentacles all over the globe but more so in the western nations. The way of life of people (culture) is being shaped, changed and enforced by this media evolution. Media is changing the way people live, eat, talk, dress, communicate and even how they interact daily with others be they friends or families. The evidence of this is everywhere when compared to how the earlier societies without the electronic media used to live (Hodkinson, 2011, pg. 20). In as much as media is shaping and changing the culture of people in this present industrially developed society, culture is also to a large extent shaping media. Culture in this case is defined in a much larger sense than just the way of life of people. Culture is integrated with religion, arts, sciences and journalism among other broader areas. This therefore means that people are in control of their culture and different people have their own different cultures. Both the media and culture have evolved in the contemporary society to an extent of influencing each other and the ultimate result is the changing of the current and future society’s culture and general ways of life compared to that of the past societies. Evolution of media Media has not always been influential on people’s culture. The past media which was highly marked by print media was basically just informative providing people with information and that was just about it. The contemporary media which are marked by internet, cell phones, televisions and other digital forms of media communication have heavily influenced the culture of the users (Hall & Gieben, 1992, pg. 76). This mass media influence is explained by the hypodermic needle theory which indicates that the media injects people with information and images which changes their perception and initiates a social response as a very large group and the response is uniform. The messages change the perception and to large extent the life of people as they know it. All the media has to do is inject the messages through a media platform such as television or the social media where majority of the people spend most of their time and the response is similar and desirable bringing in ratings and increasing money flow as the information spreads. The politicians have mastered the art of changing the attitudes and even voting behaviour of people through using the media as explained by the theory. They purchase airtime in the television stations and share information about their pledges to voters, spread hate speech and rumours about their opponents and even other information that is bound to make the voters change their perception and vote for him or start supporting him. A similar case scenario of the media changing the culture of people was experienced in the Clinton-Lewinsky see scandal in the oval office. When the media got a wind of the story, they shared the information with the world in such a way that they convinced people of the reality of the situation even without having verified proof. What this did to the public is minimize their faith in the president and the whole Democrat party in general leading to them voting for a Republican president just so that they would not re-elect Clinton back into office. The sex scandal changed the way of thinking of the people about those in office and all this was as a result of the media, their reporting strategies, their follow up and digging deeper into the information and giving all the attention to only their version of the story making people believe in it (Curran & Morley, 2006, pg. 78). Media changes the attitude of people when it comes to issues such as religion for example Islamic religion. Following the London underground train bombings, the media’s influence made the people in that country afraid of the Islamic religion. They made them change their perceptions and even interaction with any Muslim as they were all portrayed as terrorists an image that is not only in Britain but in most western nations especially in the US. This has changed how people interact with the Muslims in general be they women, men or even innocent children. The media continually replayed back the images of the bombings and the scenes, replaying the number of the affected and their grieving families, showing photos of the terrorists and even footages of other terrorists in other nations among many other which served to completely change the way people regarded the Muslims. The information in the contemporary media spreads much faster and is basically available everywhere and can be accessed by anyone. The images and information with the smart phones is viewed online and through the cell phones and is easily transferred from one person to the other through channels such as the social media making it available all over in just a matter of seconds. The reception theory further explains this spread and how the information is received by the users and internalized making them change. With the Wi-Fi being basically everywhere including even in buses and taxi cabs, people get the information fast and spread it equally as fast and even modifying it through animation to make it more interesting and attract more people. Evolution of culture Cultural values are not similar in every individual and it is this difference that leads to different definitions being provided for culture and what it constitutes. Depending on the cultural values one grew up into and the environmental influence other cultures have had on an individual, culture keeps on shifting and evolving. The culture of the Americans and that of the Britons for example is different from each other and the same applies to other nations as well. What one culture deems as immoral may be considered totally normal and okay in another culture and hence the differences in the media as well for example the issue of homosexuality in western nations and the same issue in African nations are quite different and hence leading to differences in their media as well. Culture influence on the media is therefore different in each and every nation depending on their cultural beliefs. This is the opposite when it comes to influence of media on culture which is almost uniform globally. People take to the media such as social media or internet through blogs and express their cultural attitudes and values in them. These mediums may influence a number of people who may choose to agree or disagree with the expressed information. In the disagreements for example, they may give their own opinion and express their cultural values as well. People chose which of the values to pick up and which not to. The two step theory explains this concept of culture influencing media very well. The information people often post in their social media or blog pages are purely meant to express their personal opinion or reaction to something shared in the television. This opinion is integrated with their culture and influenced heavily by it and hence it starts a cultural argument (Hodkinson, 2011, pg. 87). The people passing on the message to the public through the media however have great influence on whether culture will have an impact on the media. Very trusted individuals in the public domain such as judges, media personality (gatekeepers), and other professionals have the public believing, trusting and following whatever they say. These people all express their opinion according to their culture and hence by believing and following what they say in the media is essentially changing the values and beliefs of one’s culture. Some of these cultural influences may not always be positive but one that spreads immorality, hatred and even propaganda but people still follow them. What the following of the opinion from the different professions in the media has done is change how people carry out things, how they talk and even interact with others and sometimes to an extent of defying their own cultures. A good example is that of homosexuality issues in the west and in Africa. When England openly accepted gay marriages, the people in Africa who are staunch believers in the Englishmen (especially the countries that were colonized by the British) started changing their cultural beliefs and values about homosexuality. People took to the media to indicate that homosexuality may not be such a bad issue as it was previously perceived and the homosexuals should be given a chance to express their sexuality as well. This is in contradiction to their previous stand that homosexuality is clearly a taboo and should not be tolerated. This is a good example of how culture through the use of media can completely transform people for the better or the worse depending on one’s opinion. On a negative note, pornography which is rampant on the media has completely eroded the cultural values and stands of people. People whose morals were decent, are religious and are conservatives have had all this changed by the culture of others through the media. The Asian culture for example has for a long time prided itself with being conservatives even in the way they talk, dress and interact with each other. All this is however being changed and they are adopting the western culture of dressing (very revealingly), talking and cursing and even removing the cultural barriers of interaction and communication. All these cultural transformations have been carried out with the assistance of the media. The western have enticed the Asian girls and women that less is sexier and they have adopted this. The result is the complete transformation of their culture to mirror that in Europe and US (Flew, 2007, pg. 76). Conclusion Studying of media is indeed studying of culture as people’s cultures are influenced by the media evolution from the print age to the now digital age. The studying of culture on the other hand is studying the media as different cultures are expressed in the media and shared as well as adopted through the same media channels. Cultures have had their own share of evolution from modernism to the current post modernism era and it is all because of the influence of the media (Barker, 2008, pg. 18). What people need to realize is that both culture and media influence each other in both positive and negative ways and this has been verified by the media theories and the numerous examples discussed above. People should be aware of how the media is transforming their cultures and how they are transforming the culture of others through the media by expressing their opinion. Reference Barker, C. (2008). Cultural Studies – Theory and Practice (3rd Ed). London: Sage. Curran, J. & Morley, D. (2006). Media and Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. Flew, T. (2007). Understanding Global Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan Hall, S & Gieben, B. (1992). Formations of Modernity. London: Open University/Polity Press. Hodkinson, P. (2011). Media, Culture & Society. London: Sage. Read More