It’s important to remember, though, that not all media are created equal. Acting as a watchdog for government, business, and other institutions.Serving as a public forum for the discussion of important issues.Entertaining and providing an outlet for the imagination.But purveyors of mass media may be beholden to particular agendas because of political slant, advertising funds, or ideological bias, thus constraining their ability to act as a watchdog. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel The Jungle exposed the miserable conditions in the turn-of-the-century meatpacking industry and in the early 1970s, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered evidence of the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Similarly, media can be used to monitor government, business, and other institutions. The Internet is a fundamentally democratic medium that allows everyone who can get online the ability to express their opinions through, for example, blogging or podcasting-though whether anyone will hear is another question. newspapers even when the nation was a British colony, and they have served as a means of public discourse ever since. These letters were an important part of U.S.
In newspapers or other periodicals, letters to the editor allow readers to respond to journalists or to voice their opinions on the issues of the day.
HEAR 1.3 FREE
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has posted free lecture notes, exams, and audio and video recordings of classes on its OpenCourseWare website, allowing anyone with an Internet connection access to world-class professors.Īnother useful aspect of media is its ability to act as a public forum for the discussion of important issues. The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia has articles on topics from presidential nicknames to child prodigies to tongue twisters in various languages. Books and magazines provide a more in-depth look at a wide range of subjects. Today, newspapers and news-oriented television and radio programs make available stories from across the globe, allowing readers or viewers in London to access voices and videos from Baghdad, Tokyo, or Buenos Aires. Information can come in many forms, and it may sometimes be difficult to separate from entertainment. Media can also provide information and education. Through bringing us stories of all kinds, media has the power to take us away from ourselves. In the first decade of the 21st century, American television viewers could peek in on a conflicted Texas high school football team in Friday Night Lights the violence-plagued drug trade in Baltimore in The Wire a 1960s-Manhattan ad agency in Mad Men or the last surviving band of humans in a distant, miserable future in Battlestar Galactica. In the 19th century, Victorian readers disillusioned by the grimness of the Industrial Revolution found themselves drawn into fantastic worlds of fairies and other fictitious beings. Media can act as a springboard for our imaginations, a source of fantasy, and an outlet for escapism. Media fulfills several basic roles in our society. We can begin to orient ourselves in the information cloud through parsing what roles the media fills in society, examining its history in society, and looking at the way technological innovations have helped bring us to where we are today. Americans are exposed to media in taxicabs and buses, in classrooms and doctors’ offices, on highways, and in airplanes. households consumed a total of approximately 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008-the digital equivalent of a 7-foot high stack of books covering the entire United States-a 350 percent increase since 1980 (Ramsey, 2009). A University of California, San Diego study claimed that U.S. households receive a daily newspaper, and the average person holds 1.9 magazine subscriptions (State of the Media, 2004) (Bilton, 2007). That’s not to mention movies available on demand from cable providers or television and video available online for streaming or downloading. In 2010, Americans could turn on their television and find 24-hour news channels as well as music videos, nature documentaries, and reality shows about everything from hoarders to fashion models. Explain how different technological transitions have shaped media industries.