User:LGreg/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge (LG seminar 2020/21)/Seminar 18/Power/Power in/through Media studies

Definition of Media and media studies

Media refers to the tools of mass communication. Messages are made public by a specific pictorial representation through broadcasting and advertising by television, internet, newspapers, radio, and cinema. To help spread the message quickly, images like pictures, graphics, and videos are useful and practical. In modern societies, media are omnipresent; it’s a source of entertainment and information. The discipline of media studies is looking at how media control, shape, and review the globalized and connected world we lived in.

Power of social media

Social media has a powerful impact on our society, thanks to its influence. It has revolutionized the way that people interact, make connections, and exchange. It allows people to connect, talk, share ideas and information instantly and from all around the world.. It’s also a powerful platform for promotion and marketing. Social media is essential to any business because businesses can reach out to so many people, promote their product, and become known with this tool. 3,6 billion people worldwide are on one or several social media platforms, which is expected to increase as the years goes by. Also, people tend to spend more than 2 hours per day on social media. During all this time, they can have the time to see a lot of adds from companies, and run through a lot of content. The most known social media are Facebook and WhatsApp. We share information about our everyday life on social media; it allows people and companies to see it. With this information, social media can target the area we like, then depending on this, suggest to us products that we could potentially buy. But is it really safe to use social media? We all need to be careful of what we want to show or not because once revealed, these pieces of information are not ours anymore. It can be seen and used by anyone.

Power of television

Television is a source of information and communication; its role is to inform, educate, and entertain. According to an article from the New-York times, “You are what you watch”, meaning that the things that we’re watching are shaping our way of thinking,our political point of view, and even our cognitive capacity. Apparently, it is not coming from what we watch but the fact that watching television is replacing other activities. Spending time in front of the television is not spending time reading or doing sports. One of the major problems is that many information can be biased, causing us to misunderstand some things. The different things that we see and learn on television can trigger our emotions; hence, the television and the news can influence our emotions.

Power of Newspaper

The newspaper is one of the first sources of diffusion and transmission of information that ever existed. Even if newspapers have been an efficient way to share news, it is a kind of old way to access information since many people are accessing it on their phones, television, or social media. Now readers of newspapers don’t read them to find breaking news but to read more about something. Their role now is more to be ahead and give more information than we can find online. As in television and on social media, newspapers have the power to make information and news accessible to all. Thus, it is the editorial staff who choose what to write and how to say it; therefore it may direct us on what to think and how to think, so we need to be careful about the information we want to believe.