My role in media
consumption is I usually just read the news, and sometimes I may repost or make
a comment on Facebook, but it is mostly based on my degree in Biology or my
other degrees. I signed up for twitter with
the class now too so I will post more from degree content there. Over the last 10 years a large part of mass
media shared, including events, images, and stories played a role in our
everyday lives. With the internet being
accessible on Wi-Fi and cellphone it has made it a lot easier for anyone from the
elderly all the way down to the youth to access the internet, anywhere someone goes
with their cellphone they have the internet, and everywhere they go they can be
influenced by mass media. Years ago,
mass media through the internet was not as prevalent and social media was more
looked at as a joke, or something weird to be participating on, but today it is
the norm. With the integration of mass
media with social media events occurring in real-time can be monitored by
private citizens or news sources, and can be accessed anywhere in the world,
unlike 25 years ago when television was the primary source of mass media along
with newspapers. I know everyone knows
what newspapers are, but many do not realize the significance the newspaper
played in the past towards mass media, but now newspapers unless online
editions, have little influence on mass populations.
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Figure 1: Media evolution
Today I have a tablet, 3 laptops, and 2 cellphones
which all I can access the internet with a few pushes of buttons or a swipe of
the screen. As I mentioned, I don’t
comment much on mass media, especially politics as it seems people can be more
violent or argumentative over the internet or through social media. In the past, I was posting a lot of mass media,
but it caused issues in my life, so I backed off and tried to become a ghost. I feel it is dangerous to always voice your
true opinions online as you never know who is watching you or interacting with
your posts.
When
it comes to activists or protesters in most cases the news portrays them as
rebels or rioters who destroy things. In
many cases governments lash out and these people who are standing up and arrest,
harm, smash the protest or kill them, and in many cases the issue is not solved
but rather the government tries to smear the protesters as anarchists or
terrorists. I simple search on google
illustrates this. I searched protesters
and news and here is what came up on top:
As I suspected the top results for protests entailed violence by the
people, or rioting, and even government torturing of protestors. I feel like the bad sides of the protests are
always covered, not why they are there or asking more people in the protests
what was so grave to make them rise up and come to the streets to stand up
against the wrongs that are being done against them, but nevertheless it is
usually just a government smear campaign on the protestors and sometimes the
news joins in on this smear without even knowing what is going on. A recent example of the news distorting mass
media was at Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
There Catholic boys were accused of mocking a native American in clipped
videos, however, later videos showed that most likely that was not what
happened and that the videos were trimmed to incite the masses. A version of the story can be found at: USA News: Catholic boys falsely accused of discrimination by mass media. On a last note, I am Justin McHugh and I am looking forward to the semester with all of you.
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