essay about the power of media and information

English Compositions

Short Essay on Power of Media [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

In today’s lesson, you will learn how you can write short essays on ‘Power of Media.’ There will be three different sets of short essays on the same topic covering different word limits.

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Short Essay on Power of Media in 100 Words

The term ‘’media’’ is derived from the word ‘’medium’’, which refers to the way through which information is transferred from one person to another. Media as the collection of several types of equipment enable the spreading of news and messages far and wide.

Several modes of communication like television, telephone, radio, internet, newspaper, advertisements, allow us to impart knowledge about important issues in our life. Media is extremely powerful in its speed of spreading accurate information. At any specific time, we observe how media personals work at several places and give us the news most required. Any scandal, rumour, facts, everything is noted by the media and explained to us in due course.

Short Essay on Power of Media in 200 Words

Media is the way of mass communication and entertainment. It is the process through which the masses of people are communicated and united under one single piece of information. Media or the several forms of information medium fall under the group of information technology.

All of them act together to deliver error-free news and information so that democracy is not disturbed by fake information. Media includes newspapers, magazines, telephone, television, internet, advertisement, emails, messages, cinemas, and others. Media acts through both audio and visual effects to create the maximum effect.

The biggest power of media lies in its potential to persuade people to take necessary action. When we hear a newsreader dictating the news, then the listeners are swayed by the intonation of the reader. The person speaks in order to claim the truthfulness of the piece of information. In the exact same manner, a newspaper is organized to direct the opinions of the readers in a certain course.

Advertisements are the most powerful ways of media. We are highly influenced by it and inspired to take ready actions that are necessary. At present, the internet is the media that share all news with the greatest speed.

Short Essay on Power of Media in 400 Words

The influence of media in our lives is of immense importance. It not only imparts us news and pieces of information but is the biggest source of entertainment. Cinema and music as parts of media give us pure joy and happiness, which also enables us to entertain ourselves. Yet the majority of the media is concentrated on gathering correct information and delivering it to the country.

Media includes newspapers, radio, T.V., telephone, internet, advertisements, placards and posters, and others. All these are our constant companions that allow us to form our opinions on different issues regarding life, society, and country.

Media is powerful in its mode of persuasion. The biggest capacity of any media equipment is that it can easily manipulate the opinion of people and allow them to form a specific sort of perspective. The best weapon in this regard is the newspaper. The way a newspaper is arranged and the headlines are prepared, makes this persuasion quite easy. The visual and literal aspects of a newspaper are the sole power of media. The same goes for the advertisements as well.

The visual and written content of advertisements equally influences us to buy a product or service. For the newsreaders, their intonation is the power. The way they narrate a news story enables listeners to realize the significance of the news. The diction of a newsreader is important in this regard that helps to grab the attention of the people. Media is the potential way to unite the country under one principle and equal opinion. The issue lies with the efficiency of the journalist.

He risks every danger so as to collect authentic news for the benefit of mankind. The efficiency of the strength of media lies at every stratum of collecting the information and converting it into the news. Be it the print media or the audio method, all require this adept nature to strongly create a safe environment for news channels.

Media is both effective and effective. In this regard, the nature of the internet can be considered. Even in the most difficult circumstances internet becomes the den of evil and fake news. It creates unnecessary commotion among innocent folks and is equally responsible for disrupting the peace and stability of the nation.

The capacity to create public opinion is used for dangerous purposes and the power of media is wasted for the benefit of evil people. It is thus the knowledge of the people to not accept all news blindly. Media is effective in spreading the news within the shortest period. However, careful utilization of this power is expected.

Hopefully, after going through this session, you have a holistic idea about writing short essays on the topic ‘Power of Media.’ I have written these essays in very simple words for a better understanding of all kinds of students. Kindly comment down your doubts, if you still have any.

Keep browsing our website to read more such short essays on various important topics. And don’t forget to join us on Telegram to get all the latest updates. Thank you.

essay about the power of media and information

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Media Literacy - The Power (and Responsibility) of Information

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Essay: the power of media and information and the responsibility of the users.

Media is considered as one of the most powerful tools in providing information to people or in society. Media is part of our daily lives. It informs, influences, and entertains us. Not only they inform us, they have also the capability in shaping our lives.

Advertisements shown on television or even in the internet can affect the viewers. Some contains violence, nudity or anything that is inappropriate to the viewers who are children or under age. They might think the information on that certain advertisement is correct without proper guidance from the parents. In the internet, there is no censorship when it comes to information resulting to some users to take this as an advantage to spread false information all over the web. That is the reason that there are some users who were victimized by scammers, bullies and etc. Medias has biases also. They have the power to manipulate thus making viewers to believe on the information they insinuate. But all of those negativities written above can be abide. Parents must be vigilant on what their children are watching. They must ensure that it is age appropriate. Users in the internet must check the authenticity of the information. They must check the origin of it to avoid fallacy. Never post something too personal like bank numbers, address or any that might put you in jeopardy. Always consider one’s privacy. In detecting biases in media, look for the sources if it involves political perspectives. Check if the headline and actual article matches. Sometimes it contains double standards. Look who’s point of view is the article is written and find alternate point of views . Biased information tries to change your mind so as an individual we must not believe immediately.

Our main source of to get information is the media. Without media, we will never be updated on the day-today events that is happening in our surrounding. Media is used to raise awareness but sometimes they use it for biases. In using the media, we must follow some rules and etiquettes. Information is powerful but we must not abuse it. We must turn ourselves as responsible users. Media has two sides, the positive and the negative. It can help us but it has the capability to destroy us. But it all depends on us. If we let them continue to do those negative things, we are only letting them play our lives. But if we become vigilant, we can truly avoid or stop those things. Responsibility is a big word. But it is one the things that are inevitable. Every individual plays a role in the society and a responsibility to take. There is one saying that serves as a reminder, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

“Post, like, share, comment, research, chat, and others” is something what to do now in media. Media and information is very important to our everyday lives. It gives us the opportunity to be updated and to be aware in our surroundings. It gives us the opportunity to connect with our friends and love ones. It gives us the opportunity to be citizen journalism. It gives us the opportunity to share our opinions to the other. And also, it gives us the opportunity to challenge ourselves on how to be a responsible media and information user.

In general, "media" refers to the tools of mass communication. Media today consists of television, Internet, cinema, newspapers, radio, magazines, direct mail, fax, and the telephone. Viewers can see some form of pictorial representation of messages through certain types of broadcasting and advertising. Images are visual representations, pictures, graphics, and include video, movies. Images are very useful in media to help get across messages effectively. Today, our life will remain incomplete without media. Media influence has become so powerful today that they can easily influence people positively and/or negatively. We also live in a society that depends on the media as a source of entertainment and information. Media like television enhances our knowledge by providing access to information all over the world. We can also receive different news or daily events through the television. It can be such a powerful educational tool for the younger generation helping to put them on the right path. Newspapers have a positive influence on society. Newspapers not only give information or the latest news. They also help in the positive linkage between government and the people. On the other hand, mass media can at times have a negative influence. Images in the media can have a powerful influence on our behavior. Movies, another form of mass media, today may show violence in one form or another. Images of violence somehow influence individuals and especially the younger generation to think that violence is accepted by society when it is not. Movies can also be used to show sexual images. Such images have a powerful influence on the mind and soul of young people. People who watch these images may be influenced to react in a socially unacceptable or even criminal manner. “With power comes with great responsibility.” Cyberbullying is an issue that unfortunately society has seemed to turn its cheek on. On Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media outlet, it requires little effort to harass someone. While many of these sites were created for harmless networking and fun, they have instead turned into some of the greatest tools to harm others with. We should all be responsible social media users. Derisive comments ought to never discover their way into spots that were made to be valuable wellsprings of data and fun leisure activities. Everybody should think before we click.

The role of the media in the contemporary society is difficult to overestimate. They have become a considerable part of our life. They report about various aspects of life, form and affect public opinion.

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Information Literate Individual

The Significance and Impact of the Media in Contemporary Society

First Online: 10 March 2018

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Faith Gordon 3

Part of the book series: Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies ((PSLS))

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This chapter explores the significance of the media and the impact it has on the meaning-making processes in contemporary society. It draws on key national and international academic literature and previous studies on the role and functions of the media. This includes the key theoretical debates on deviancy amplification, folk devils and moral panics. It assesses the media’s impact on criminal justice policies and on public opinion of, and support for authoritarian ideologies and policies. In particular, it will focus on exploring how the media can influence popular culture and the impact of media portrayals of crime on societal perceptions, responses and reactions directed towards social groups, in particular children and young people ‘in conflict with the law’.

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It has long been acknowledged that the media are difficult to capture and define (Craig 2004 : 3). As outlined in Chap. 1 , the terms ‘media’ or ‘mass media’ refer to the traditional definition of the media, as consisting of newspapers (the print media), radio (broadcast media) and news bulletins and programs (televised media). While choosing to focus on the contemporary media, this book acknowledges from the outset that there is an extensive body of work existing on the historical origins of the media; mass communication and its impact, and the role of technological development (see Downing 1980 ; Frost 2000 ; Curran 2002 ).

There has been much criticism of pluralist theories on the media, including the arguments that pluralism is an ideological justification for the media and that the basis of the theory is not grounded in evidence. Rather the pluralist model assumes that the content of the media is diverse, without presenting evidence to reinforce or prove this theory (see Blumler and Gurevitch 1995 ).

Rupert Murdoch’s ownership of a range of media outlets in the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) is a prime example of the concentration of power and the influence of owners on media content (see Golding and Murdock 1991 ; Horrie 2003 ; Cole 2005 ). Further to this, academics such as Barker ( 1999 : 46) argue that conglomeration has aided a general concentration of media ownership, with research such as Bagdikian’s ( 2004 ) stating that the US media were controlled by 50 corporations in the 1980s, and by 2003 this had been reduced to five controlling the majority of the 178,000 media outlets. Significantly as Tait ( 2012 : 518) observes, the ‘scale and intensity’ of the phone hacking scandal in 2011, saw the resignation of the chief executive of one of the UK’s most influential newspaper groups, the resignation of one of the UK’s most senior police officers, the arrest of Andy Coulson, who had acted as the then Prime Minister, David Cameron’s head of communications, the resignation of two senior executives from key companies in the Murdoch empire, as well as the collapse of the takeover deal in relation to BSkyB and the closure of the News of the World (see also Keeble and Mair 2012 ; McKnight 2012 ; Watson and Hickman 2012 ).

As Barrat ( 1994 : 61) notes, the majority of media organisations are influenced by ‘a variety of commercial influences’, including the need to be profitable and also obtaining revenue through ‘advertising’. Some media outlets are part of the public sector, such as the BBC and they have the requirement ‘to provide a public service’, by ‘informing, educating, and entertaining audiences’ (Barrat 1994 : 61).

Tait’s ( 2012 : 520) analysis of the phone hacking scandal asserts that it has ‘revealed some fundamental issues in British political communications, the political system and the practice and regulation of journalism’. His analysis also documents ‘a secret history’ between Murdoch and British politics (Tait 2012 : 520–523).

Semiology provides a suitable vehicle for studying the meanings behind media content (see O’Connor 1989 ; Hall 1997 ; Berger 1998 ; Barker 2000 ; Schirato and Yell 2000 ). In contemporary literature it is now referred to as semiotics and was first developed by the Swiss linguist, Saussure, who proposed that meaning was ‘produced through … language systems’ (Schirato and Yell 2000 : 19). He focused on the ‘linguistic sign’, which he divided into the ‘signifier’, ‘the signified’ and the ‘sign’ (Schirato and Yell 2000 : 19).

As the findings of a number of content analysis studies highlight, the media exaggerate the levels of crime, in particular violent crime in the UK (see Ditton and Duffy 1983 ; Schlesinger and Murdock 1991 ; Williams and Dickinson 1993 ; Callanan 2005 ; Greer 2005 ; Reiner 2007 ).

Dorfman and Schiraldi’s ( 2001 ) research found that 76 percent of the public said they formed their opinions about crime from the media, whereas 22 percent reported that their knowledge of crime was formed through their personal experiences.

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Gordon, F. (2018). The Significance and Impact of the Media in Contemporary Society. In: Children, Young People and the Press in a Transitioning Society. Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60682-2_2

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Media and Information Literacy, a critical approach to literacy in the digital world

What does it mean to be literate in the 21 st century? On the celebration of the International Literacy Day (8 September), people’s attention is drawn to the kind of literacy skills we need to navigate the increasingly digitally mediated societies.

Stakeholders around the world are gradually embracing an expanded definition for literacy, going beyond the ability to write, read and understand words. Media and Information Literacy (MIL) emphasizes a critical approach to literacy. MIL recognizes that people are learning in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom through information, media and technological platforms. It enables people to question critically what they have read, heard and learned.

As a composite concept proposed by UNESCO in 2007, MIL covers all competencies related to information literacy and media literacy that also include digital or technological literacy. Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO has reiterated significance of MIL in this media and information landscape: “Media and information literacy has never been so vital, to build trust in information and knowledge at a time when notions of ‘truth’ have been challenged.”

MIL focuses on different and intersecting competencies to transform people’s interaction with information and learning environments online and offline. MIL includes competencies to search, critically evaluate, use and contribute information and media content wisely; knowledge of how to manage one’s rights online; understanding how to combat online hate speech and cyberbullying; understanding of the ethical issues surrounding the access and use of information; and engagement with media and ICTs to promote equality, free expression and tolerance, intercultural/interreligious dialogue, peace, etc. MIL is a nexus of human rights of which literacy is a primary right.

Learning through social media

In today’s 21 st century societies, it is necessary that all peoples acquire MIL competencies (knowledge, skills and attitude). Media and Information Literacy is for all, it is an integral part of education for all. Yet we cannot neglect to recognize that children and youth are at the heart of this need. Data shows that 70% of young people around the world are online. This means that the Internet, and social media in particular, should be seen as an opportunity for learning and can be used as a tool for the new forms of literacy.

The Policy Brief by UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, “Social Media for Learning by Means of ICT” underlines this potential of social media to “engage students on immediate and contextual concerns, such as current events, social activities and prospective employment.

UNESCO MIL CLICKS - To think critically and click wisely

For this reason, UNESCO initiated a social media innovation on Media and Information Literacy, MIL CLICKS (Media and Information Literacy: Critical-thinking, Creativity, Literacy, Intercultural, Citizenship, Knowledge and Sustainability).

MIL CLICKS is a way for people to acquire MIL competencies in their normal, day-to-day use of the Internet and social media. To think critically and click wisely. This is an unstructured approach, non-formal way of learning, using organic methods in an online environment of play, connecting and socializing.

MIL as a tool for sustainable development

In the global, sustainable context, MIL competencies are indispensable to the critical understanding and engagement in development of democratic participation, sustainable societies, building trust in media, good governance and peacebuilding. A recent UNESCO publication described the high relevance of MIL for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Citizen's engagement in open development in connection with the SDGs are mediated by media and information providers including those on the Internet, as well as by their level of media and information literacy. It is on this basis that UNESCO, as part of its comprehensive MIL programme, has set up a MOOC on MIL,” says Alton Grizzle, UNESCO Programme Specialist.

UNESCO’s comprehensive MIL programme

UNESCO has been continuously developing MIL programme that has many aspects. MIL policies and strategies are needed and should be dovetailed with existing education, media, ICT, information, youth and culture policies.

The first step on this road from policy to action is to increase the number of MIL teachers and educators in formal and non-formal educational setting. This is why UNESCO has prepared a model Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers , which has been designed in an international context, through an all-inclusive, non-prescriptive approach and with adaptation in mind.

The mass media and information intermediaries can all assist in ensuring the permanence of MIL issues in the public. They can also highly contribute to all citizens in receiving information and media competencies. Guideline for Broadcasters on Promoting User-generated Content and Media and Information Literacy , prepared by UNESCO and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association offers some insight in this direction.

UNESCO will be highlighting the need to build bridges between learning in the classroom and learning outside of the classroom through MIL at the Global MIL Week 2017 . Global MIL Week will be celebrated globally from 25 October to 5 November 2017 under the theme: “Media and Information Literacy in Critical Times: Re-imagining Ways of Learning and Information Environments”. The Global MIL Feature Conference will be held in Jamaica under the same theme from 24 to 27 October 2017, at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston, hosted by The University of the West Indies (UWI).

Alton Grizzle , Programme Specialist – Media Development and Society Section

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MEET THE INVESTIGATORS

Using the ‘power of information’ to change the world.

Yi-Shan Chen, ICIJ’s member from Taiwan, witnessed the power of information through martial law and the Tiananmen Square protests. Now, as a journalist, she aims to harness that power for the people.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists collaborates with hundreds of members across the world. Each of these journalists is among the best in his or her country and many have won national and global awards. Our monthly series, Meet the Investigators , highlights the work of these tireless journalists.

Yi-Shan Chen is the deputy managing editor at CommonWealth Magazine in Taiwan, where she started her career in 1996 before joining the China Times. Chen, whose background is in economics, has partnered with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on several investigations over the years, including Offshore Leaks and The Panama Papers .

What made you want to become a journalist?

I grew up in Taiwan, and before 1989, Taiwan still had martial law, so [the government] still controlled the media. So when I was a child, I read the news, but the news was screened by the government, so we got just one side.

I wanted to become a journalist since the time of the Tiananmen Square crisis. I was in Taiwan, so I witnessed [the protests]. I think this was a very important thing for me; I could see the power of information.

When I was in university, after martial law, it was my first time to see the other side of the story. I think that was a very important thing for me.

I think that if people can get more information, we can understand the truth and make judgments for ourselves. I think that’s the best protection for the public. Otherwise, you’ll always have bias.

So I was thinking if I can do this kind of job, I would like to share information to the public. I think information can change a lot of things.

Recommended reading

PRESS FREEDOM

Watch: following the money in the philippines is risky business, forbidden stories shows, feb 24, 2021.

Malaysiakini verdict will have ‘chilling effect’ on Malaysian press freedom, advocates say

Feb 19, 2021.

Driven by concern: ‘There are no shortcuts to what we’re doing’

Jan 18, 2021, what is an investigation that you’ve worked on that you’re really proud of.

One project is about real estate prices , because my background is in economics, so at the time, I believed that markets could solve a lot of problems.

When real estate prices became very high, a lot of builders said the government should release more land to build up more houses so that house prices could go down. But another side told me that actually the prices would not go down if the government released land in the city — this kind of land was still being built up with luxury houses for the rich people, not for the ordinary people. So I tried to find out the truth.

We traced 50 [parcels of land] when the government sold the land to see what kind of property they built up. After we checked, 85% of the land became luxury houses. So we actually changed the policy — because of the statistics, the government said, “Maybe we will not sell the land, we will rent the land.” I think that’s very meaningful.

What are the benefits that you see to working on global collaborations?

It’s an eye-opening experience for me. It’s very impressive. I started working with ICIJ staff on the Offshore Leaks project in 2013. At the time, we started from three countries — Hong Kong, China and Taiwan — so we had our first training in Hong Kong and met our colleagues from different countries. I will never forget that training, because of how sensitive the news was and how powerful the cooperation was.

I think the most meaningful thing for me is that we published the stories together, although it was different countries’ stories. But through these kinds of cooperation, we can protect each other. We can protect people in Hong Kong; we can protect people in China; we can protect journalists in Russia as well. I think that’s the power of cooperation among journalists.

Sometimes our stories cannot change anything in the short term, but you still need to do them. I think it’s a spiritual thing for me.

How do you relieve your stress?

Walking. If I feel a lot of stress, I will walk for an hour a day, which is a long walk in Taiwan!

What’s a piece of journalism that you’re really enjoying right now?

I’m reading a book about the Malaysia scandal — 1MDB, the national megafund. I think the book is quite interesting for me. My long-term dream is that I want to write a book like that one.

And what’s a story or investigation that you wish you had worked on?

The internet and social media. The way that the government and the rich people try to manipulate information through social media, and how the money influences what people read or see — I think that’s very important news that we should be investigating.

Contact ICIJ

Do you have a story about corruption, fraud, or abuse of power?

What is something that you’re really looking forward to about 2021 in journalism, and something you’re looking forward to outside of journalism.

For journalism, I would like to write a story about taxation. I think the world is going to change after the Panama Papers, and we might see a change in the taxation system in the coming years. I think that’s a quite important thing, so I hope we can write a good story about this.

I hope we can travel freely very soon. For journalists to stay in one same place for a very long time would kill us! I can travel freely in Taiwan, but I am still looking for the chance to go abroad and see our friends in China and Hong Kong and Japan.

And finally, what is a helpful piece of advice that someone has given you about journalism?

For a journalist, sometimes you can feel helpless — you cannot help everything — so you feel useless. But someone told me that you don’t need to be naïve, but you still need to feel you can do something. Sometimes our stories cannot change anything in the short term, but you still need to do them. I think it’s a spiritual thing for me.

If you’re a fan of our Meet the Investigators series, please consider making a donation to support ICIJ . Not only will your donation help support our work with journalists like Yi-Shan, but as an ICIJ Insider , you’ll also receive sneak previews, access to exclusive chats with reporters and behind-the-scenes content like this delivered straight to your inbox. Donate today , and support independent investigative journalism.

12.1 The Media as a Political Institution: Why Does It Matter?

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Explain the importance of a free press both in the United States and abroad.
Describe how the media acts as a watchdog and give examples.
Understand and define how political information is mediated.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. —The 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution

The press is the only profession explicitly protected in the United States Constitution. Many attribute this protection to James Madison and his writings in the Federalist Papers , but the idea of a free press stretches back to well before Madison wrote out his ideas on what constitutes a perfect democracy. The origins of the free press in the United States can be traced back to Cato’s letters , a collection of essays written in the 1720s by two British writers, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon . Using the pseudonym Cato, they published their articles in the British press, criticizing the British monarchy for its corruption and tyrannical practices. Decades later, American colonists felt the effects of these letters during their own struggles against the Crown, 1 and in 1776, Virginia became the first state to formally adopt a constitutional provision to protect press freedom. 2 Why is the idea of protecting the press so embedded in the United States’ concept of government, and why is this concept so important? Do other nations protect the media to the same extent, or even more? The next section will examine these questions.

The Fourth Estate and Freedom of the Press

The importance of a free press can be boiled down to a sentence from esteemed University of Illinois at Chicago lecturer Doris Graber ’s seminal work Mass Media and American Politics : “The mass media . . . serve as powerful guardians of political norms because the American people believe that a free press should keep them informed about the wrongdoings of government.” 3 Another common way of defining the media’s role is to say that it acts as the fourth estate , or the unofficial fourth branch of government that checks the others. The term fourth estate is credited to Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle , who wrote, “Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.” 4 In other words, people look to the media—the fourth estate—to keep the government in check. The role of the media must be protected if it is to carry out that task.

Throughout US history, the media has fulfilled this role as intended. In the late 1960s, Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg provided classified documents to the New York Times and the Washington Post proving that the government was concealing protracted military involvement in the Vietnam War. The New York Times withstood government pressure and a Supreme Court case to go on to publish a series of articles now known as the Pentagon Papers , which revealed the extent to which the American public had been lied to about the country’s progress in that war. The Watergate scandal is perhaps the most famous example of press freedom and the role of the press as watchdog (another term for the fourth estate ). In this instance, a government informant known as Deep Throat fed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein confidential information about then president Richard Nixon’s corrupt campaign practices. An ensuing series of investigative pieces by the two journalists revealed multiple abuses of power in Nixon’s reelection campaign, and their reporting ultimately led to the indictment of multiple presidential aides and the eventual resignation of the president himself.

In this video clip, investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, editor Barry Sussman, and former executive editor Ben Bradlee recall how, when they worked for the Washington Post in 1972, they broke the story of the Watergate scandal, a story that started with an investigation of a break-in at a Washington, DC, hotel and led to a constitutional crisis, the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and almost 50 criminal convictions.

In the case of the Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the president’s argument—that prior restraint 5 was necessary in order to protect national security—was not enough “to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment ,” 6 and this is the most important First Amendment case because it addresses the sweeping right of the press and press protections in the 20th century. Watergate showed how a protected press is free to serve one of its main purposes, which is to reveal government misconduct. New Yorker staff writer Richard Harris wrote at the time that, “The press was potentially Mr. Nixon’s enemy—far more than the courts or Congress, because only the press could dig out and tell the story (whatever help reporters might get from the courts or Congress) in a way that would arouse the people to demand an accounting.” 7

Watchdogs do not have to be journalistic behemoths like the New York Times or the Washington Post. In the United Kingdom, a small, independent newspaper called the Rochdale Alternative Paper revealed decades-long abuse allegations against Liberal Party MP 8 Cyril Smith . The exposé in the paper, which had a circulation of 8,000 at its highest, 9 eventually led to both a police and an independent government investigation into a child abuse ring that involved several high-level government officials, including MP Peter Morrison, the private secretary to then prime minister Margaret Thatcher . 10 Another way to understand the watchdog function of the press is through the term muckraker , referring to reform-minded investigative journalists during the Progressive Era in the United States (late 1800s to early 1900s) who exposed the wrongdoings of industry leaders. One famous example of a muckraker was Upton Sinclair , who wrote the novel The Jungle based on the corrupt and inhumane practices in American meatpacking companies at the turn of the 20th century. The publication of The Jungle led to governmental action on food safety. In his 1919 work The Brass Check , Sinclair exposed the journalism industry’s penchant for yellow journalism , or journalism that relies on catchy titles and human interest stories to drive sales over well-researched articles or pieces on civic affairs. Sinclair was not afraid to take on media titans such as William Randolph Hearst , who owned the nation’s largest chain of newspapers at the time.

Watchdogs and muckrakers act as a check on government action and corruption. They play an important part in exercising the role of a free press as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy. As Yale University professor and member of the Council on Foreign Relations Timothy Snyder writes, “If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.” 11 The media allows the public to understand what is happening in government in order to hold elected officials accountable. Or, perhaps more simply put, “A free press is important because it is the freedom upon which all of our other freedoms are contingent.” 12

How free is the press? The answer is not black and white, as evidenced by the 2021 World Press Freedom Index . Published every year by Reporters Without Borders , the Freedom Index measures freedom in 180 countries “based on an evaluation of pluralism, independence of the media, quality of legislative framework and safety of journalists in each country and region.” 13 The map in Figure 12.3 below shows that the press is freer in some countries (in pink and purple on the map) than in others (in blue and green).

According to the index and as reflected in the map, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have the freest presses in the world. Notably, Norway tries to discourage media concentration in order to ensure a variety of outlets, something that will be discussed in later parts of this chapter. The 2021 index ranked the United States 44th, after South Africa (32nd), Botswana (38th), and South Korea (42nd).

George Mason University professor Sam Lebovic explains that two main factors, the rise of concentration in ownership and increased state secrecy, are responsible for the inadequacy of press freedom in the United States, which is an ongoing and serious problem. 14 The modern US media faces unprecedented struggles against declining viewership and revenues, which work to limit the number of outlets and decrease the number of working journalists. At the same time, legislation such as the Patriot Act , passed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, has made it more difficult for the press to verify state information because of increasing pressure on sources not to cooperate and prosecution of journalists who do ascertain information. In addition, the Trump administration further hampered press freedoms through the prosecution of news sources, public statements that discredited journalists, and encouragement of foreign leaders to take steps to restrict their own media. 15 The future of press freedom in America, while still unstable due to media concentration and surveillance laws such as the Patriot Act, may show some signs of improvement; in a speech on Press Freedom Day in 2021, President Joe Biden decried the imprisonment of 274 reporters worldwide, criticized the lack of local media outlets, and said that the United States “recognize[s] the integral role a free press plays in building prosperous, resilient, and free societies.” 16 Despite these laudatory comments about a free press, however, it is clear the United States faces challenges in protecting journalists’ ability to fulfill their roles.

A study of the United States and Latin America provides an example of how this idea of the importance of a free press is shared across cultures. In the study, journalists representing both cultures shared a common definition of a free press as one that functions without government pressure and to promote social and economic development. 17 This study considered whether or not a free press is related to increased economic development, a question that to date has not been conclusively answered. While the notion that political freedoms (such as freedom of the press) should naturally encourage economic growth and increased standards of living is a common one, current research has not found conclusive evidence either supporting or refuting the claim. 18

There is more of a consensus on the benefits of a free press when it comes to preventing corruption. Studies of press freedom around the world, conducted by scholars in England, Argentina, and Australia, confirm this theory. 19 In this way, the watchdog role that the press plays is based on democratic ideals and has real-world effects for the public.

The Mediated Nature of Political Information

The political information most people receive is mediated information . What does this mean? Unless they work directly in government, most citizen’s understanding of politics comes completely from the media, whether via television news, podcasts, or social media feeds. The media may be a gatekeeper, but it is also a storyteller. As such, it is important to realize that what people see in the media is actually a manufactured view of the political world. Journalists and others who create the news follow routines and are influenced by institutional values that manifest themselves in media content. As Columbia University professor Herbert Gans writes in his study of the American media, “The news does not limit itself to reality judgments; it also contains values, or preference statements. This in turn makes it possible to suggest that there is, underlying the news, a picture of nation and society as it ought to be.” 20 Gans acknowledges that professional journalists try to be objective, yet the news does in fact make judgments and value statements. For example, crime news alerts viewers to the idea that there are undesirable actors within society and that criminals should be punished. Judgments and value statements such as these are different from political bias; while some news outlets are overtly liberal or conservative, Gans’s study shows that the media produces stories with cultural values that people may not detect because they are so used to seeing stories presented this way. For example, according to Gans, ethnocentrism and altruistic democracy are two of the key enduring values in the news. Ethnocentrism in the news refers to the idea that the American media values the United States above all other nations. This manifests most obviously in war coverage, where the press rarely questions American involvement—and to do so would be unpatriotic. In a similar vein, Gans explains that the American news media emphasize an altruistic democracy , the ideal held up by the media that politics should be based on public service and for the public interest. 21 In these ways, the news makes statements about what is right and what is wrong and presents political news through these lenses.

Journalists also share other professional values as to what makes a “good” news story, such as proximity, negativity, scope (how big is the story?), timeliness, and unexpectedness (novelty). 22 Because journalists share these professional values, there is a certain homogeneous quality to the news, otherwise known as pack journalism . This means that people receive the same type of news story repeatedly, though this has been changing since the advent of online news, a topic that will be discussed later in the chapter. Journalists’ common ideas about what should be in the news and why color their coverage and presentation of the news—and, as a result, the public’s perception of politics.

It is important here to note that the concept of news values differs across countries—what is newsworthy in the United States may not be in other nations—and the role of the media differs as well. A study on the news in Japan found that strong cultural forces and local needs drive how news is produced and delivered. 23 Other scholars have found that Western news organizations highlight human interest stories, while Arabic news focuses more on social responsibility and Islamic values. 24 University of Leicester Professor Vincent Campbell echoes the sentiment that news organizations in different countries are fueled by different values and that this influences what stories their audiences see. In authoritarian countries, journalists focus less on performing the watchdog role and more on promoting state activities. 25 This is the case in countries such as North Korea and China, where the state government runs the media.

Related to the idea that the media in large part decides what is a good news story is the concept of the media’s gatekeeping role and its agenda-setting powers. In other words, according to agenda-setting theory , the media decides both what to ignore or filter out and what to show the public. As University of Texas professor Maxwell McCombs and University of North Carolina professor Donald Shaw write, “In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position.” 26 Whether it is a producer who selects the topics for the evening news or an algorithm that creates a social media news feed, people know what is “news” by what is fed to them, they know what is important based on how often it gets airtime, and they understand that there are lead stories and stories that don’t matter very much. The public doesn’t make these decisions; professionals within the news industry make them for the public. (Later parts of this chapter will discuss how this power dynamic has changed thanks to social media and how, in many ways, it is no longer media professionals who select what the public sees.)

If the media decides which stories to present, it also has a hand in deciding how stories are presented. According to framing theory , the way the media frames political information can affect people’s understanding of it. University of Illinois professor David Tewksbury and University of Wisconsin professor Dietram A. Scheufele explain:

“Artists know that the frame placed around a painting can affect how viewers interpret and react to the painting itself. . . . Journalists—often subconsciously—engage in essentially the same process when they decide how to describe the political world. They choose images and words that have the power to influence how audiences interpret and evaluate issues and policies.” 27

For example, a study on gubernatorial races found that female candidates were more likely to be framed in terms of personal characteristics than their male counterparts, who were more likely to be framed in terms of their positions on policy issues. 28 In a separate study, researchers found that one common way the Dutch national media framed news on the European Union (EU) was in terms of assigning responsibility for social problems to the government. This study suggests that the Dutch media’s presentation of political news reflects the public expectation that the government will provide social welfare programs. 29 By highlighting certain aspects of a story and ignoring others, frames can affect people’s judgments and opinions on policy issues, and just as with agenda setting, elected officials fight to make sure they are framed in the correct light.

The public, and individual viewers, should know that while the media is a critical tool that aids people’s political decision-making, it is guided by professional values that dictate the content. Individuals’ views on politics can sometimes be out of their control, but they can work to assemble a better picture of the world by turning to a variety of media outlets and becoming aware of what goes into story selection. While internal pressures (such as professional norms) or external forces (such as authoritarian governments) can influence how the media portrays information, ownership can also affect what the public sees. The next section will examine the different types of media—and, perhaps more importantly, who owns them and how this affects their role in the political world.

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Essay on Opportunities And Challenges In Media And Information

Students are often asked to write an essay on Opportunities And Challenges In Media And Information in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Opportunities And Challenges In Media And Information

Introduction.

Media and information are key parts of our lives. They help us stay updated and connected with the world. With the rise of digital media, there are many opportunities and challenges that we face.

Opportunities in Media and Information

Media and information offer several opportunities. They make it easy for us to access news, entertainment, and education. We can learn new things, share ideas, and even create our own content. This opens doors for jobs, creativity, and global communication.

Challenges in Media and Information

Despite the benefits, there are also challenges. Fake news can spread quickly, misleading people. Privacy can be invaded, with personal information being shared without consent. The amount of information can also be overwhelming, making it hard to find reliable sources.

In conclusion, media and information have both good and bad sides. It’s important to use them wisely, to enjoy the opportunities and overcome the challenges. By doing so, we can make the most of these powerful tools.

250 Words Essay on Opportunities And Challenges In Media And Information

One of the biggest opportunities is the ease of access to information. With the internet, you can learn about anything from anywhere. Media platforms like newspapers, television, and social media keep us updated about the world. They also provide a platform for us to express our views and ideas.

On the other hand, there are challenges too. The most common one is the spread of false information or fake news. Sometimes, people share things without checking if they are true. This can lead to misunderstandings and even panic.

Another challenge is privacy. With so much information online, it’s easy for others to access our personal details. This can lead to problems like identity theft and cyberbullying.

In conclusion, media and information have both good and bad sides. They offer us chances to learn and communicate. But they also pose risks like fake news and privacy issues. It’s important for us to be careful and responsible when using them.

500 Words Essay on Opportunities And Challenges In Media And Information

Media and information play a big role in our lives. They help us understand the world around us. But, like anything else, they come with both opportunities and challenges.

Another opportunity is the ability to connect with people. Social media allows us to talk to people from all over the world. We can make new friends, learn about different cultures, and share our own experiences. This helps us to understand and appreciate the diversity of our world.

While there are many opportunities, there are also challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the spread of false information. Sometimes, people share news or information that is not true. This can cause confusion and even harm. It is important to check if information is true before we believe it or share it with others.

The Role of Media Literacy

Media literacy is the ability to understand and use media and information in a smart way. It can help us overcome the challenges and make the most of the opportunities.

For example, media literacy can help us tell if information is true or not. We can learn to check the source of information and look for other sources that confirm it. This can help us avoid false information.

In conclusion, media and information offer many opportunities, like easy access to knowledge and the ability to connect with people. But they also present challenges, like the spread of false information and privacy concerns. By learning about media literacy, we can navigate these challenges and make the most of the opportunities. In this way, we can use media and information to learn, grow, and connect with the world around us in a safe and smart way.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Happy studying!

The Power of Media: How It Shapes Public Opinion and Society

by English Plus | Apr 7, 2023 | General Spotlights , Social Spotlights

The role of the media in shaping public opinion

· Agenda Setting
· Selective Reporting
· Framing
· Opinion Leaders
· Social Media

The Impact of Media on Society

The role of the media in shaping public opinion.

From the time we wake up to the time we go to bed, we are constantly bombarded with news from the media, whether it be through television, newspapers, or social media. As a result, the media plays a crucial role in shaping our opinions on various topics, from politics to entertainment and beyond.

In this article, we will explore the ways in which the media influences public opinion and the impact it has on society as a whole.

· Agenda Setting

One of the most significant ways the media shapes public opinion is through agenda-setting. This is the process by which the media decides which topics and issues to cover and how they are presented to the public. Essentially, the media has the power to frame the conversation around certain topics, which can ultimately influence how people think about them.

For example, during election seasons, the media may focus heavily on certain candidates or issues, leading the public to form opinions based on what they see and hear. In this way, the media has the power to sway public opinion in favor of one candidate or political party over another.

· Selective Reporting

Another way the media can shape public opinion is through selective reporting. This is the process by which the media chooses which stories to report on and which to ignore. By selectively reporting on certain stories and ignoring others, the media can influence how the public perceives a particular issue.

For example, if the media only reports on negative news about a particular group or organization, the public may develop a negative perception of that group or organization, even if there is positive news that is not being reported. In this way, the media has the power to shape public opinion by selectively reporting on certain stories.

· Framing

Framing is the way in which the media presents information to the public. By framing information in a certain way, the media can influence how people interpret it. For example, if the media presents a story about a politician in a negative light, the public may view that politician negatively, even if there are positive aspects to their character or policy positions.

On the other hand, if the media presents a story in a positive light, the public may view the subject of the story in a more positive light. In this way, the media has the power to frame the conversation around certain topics, which can ultimately influence how people think about them.

· Opinion Leaders

Opinion leaders are individuals or groups that have a significant impact on public opinion. The media can play a role in shaping public opinion by highlighting the opinions of opinion leaders. For example, if a celebrity or influential public figure expresses an opinion on a particular topic, the media may give that opinion more weight and influence how the public thinks about the issue.

· Social Media

Social media has become an increasingly powerful tool for shaping public opinion. Through platforms like Twitter and Facebook, individuals can share their opinions and perspectives with a global audience. Social media also allows for the rapid dissemination of information, making it easier for individuals and groups to influence public opinion on a particular issue.

However, social media also has its downsides. With the rise of fake news and misinformation, it can be difficult to discern what is true and what is not. This can lead to the spread of false information and conspiracy theories , which can ultimately shape public opinion in dangerous ways.

The media’s influence on public opinion can have a significant impact on society. For example, media coverage of police shootings and racial inequality has led to a growing awareness of these issues and a call for change. Similarly, media coverage of environmental issues has led to increased awareness and action to address climate change .

However, the media can also have a negative impact on society . For example, sensationalized reporting can lead to a distorted perception of reality , leading to fear, anxiety, and even panic among the public. This can be particularly problematic in times of crisis, such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or pandemics, where the media’s coverage can exacerbate the situation and cause harm to individuals and communities.

Moreover, the media’s influence on public opinion can also have political implications. In democracies, the media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion and influencing political outcomes. Media coverage of political campaigns, for example, can affect voters’ perceptions of candidates and their positions, ultimately influencing the election results.

However, the media’s influence on politics can also be problematic, particularly when it comes to issues of bias and partisanship. In recent years, the media has been criticized for promoting certain political agendas or ideologies and for perpetuating a polarized political environment.

The media plays a crucial role in shaping public opinion on a wide range of issues, from politics to social and environmental issues. Through agenda setting, selective reporting, framing, opinion leaders, and social media, the media has the power to influence how people think and feel about certain topics.

However, the media’s influence on public opinion is not without its drawbacks. Sensationalized reporting, fake news, and biased reporting can distort reality and perpetuate negative stereotypes and misconceptions. Moreover, the media’s influence on politics can be problematic, particularly when it comes to issues of bias and partisanship.

As media consumers, it is important to be aware of the media’s influence on our opinions and to critically evaluate the information we receive. By doing so, we can ensure that our opinions are based on accurate information and that we are not being unduly influenced by media bias or sensationalism.

Media : Forms of communication that reach large audiences, such as television, newspapers, and the internet.
Public Opinion : Views held by a group of people about a particular issue, product, or person.
Society : A group of individuals living in a particular geographic area who share a common culture and institutions.
Agenda Setting : The process by which the media decides which topics and issues to cover and how they are presented to the public.
Selective Reporting : The process by which the media chooses which stories to report on and which to ignore.
Framing : The way in which the media presents information to the public.
Opinion Leaders : Individuals or groups that have a significant impact on public opinion.
Social Media : Online platforms that allow users to create, share, and exchange information and ideas with others.
Misinformation : False or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally or deliberately.
Fake News : Deliberately misleading or fabricated news stories.
Sensationalized Reporting : Reporting that exaggerates or sensationalizes the facts in order to attract attention or increase viewership.
Bias : Prejudice or favoritism towards a particular group or ideology.
Partisanship : Strong support for a particular political party or ideology.
Polarization : The process by which individuals and groups become more ideologically divided and less willing to compromise.
Democracy : A system of government in which power is held by the people, usually through elected representatives.
Natural Disasters : Events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods that are caused by natural forces.
Terrorism : The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.
Pandemics : An outbreak of a disease that spreads across a large geographic area and affects a large number of people.
Environmental Issues : Problems related to the natural world, such as climate change , pollution, and habitat destruction.

Election Results : The outcome of an election, usually determined by the number of votes cast for each candidate or political party.

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A smartphone using a contract tracing app. Markus Winkler/Pixabay

Media and Information Literacy in an Age of Uncertainty

About the author, e. courtenay rattray.

E. Courtenay Rattray is Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations.

3 December 2020 Opportunities and Benefits of Digital Transformation

I n 2012, the World Economic Forum observed that “by analysing patterns from mobile phone usage, a team of researchers in San Francisco is able to predict the magnitude of a disease outbreak half way around the world”. 1 Most countries failed to realize the significance of this point, however, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic left them scrambling to develop track-and-trace applications.

There is now a much wider understanding of the key role of advanced technologies such as informatics and artificial intelligence (AI) in delivering solutions for the management of pandemics. These include tracking possibly infected persons; contact tracing; the targeted delivery of health care; and the ability to link across databases to elicit important patterns, such as health status and recent travel history.

Clearly, these measures can be effective. A study conducted by Oxford University in April 2020 found that if just 56 per cent of a country's population used a tracking app, it could largely contain the COVID-19 epidemic.

The problem, however, is that this approach raises concerns over privacy, which is why it has had a mixed reception in Western democracies. One particularly important issue is whether personal information is stored externally rather than on a person’s phone. So, it is important to take account of both the technical feasibility and the social acceptability of certain approaches.

Economic choices are equally important. The pandemic caused an astonishingly rapid migration to online teaching and education, working, meeting and conferencing, administration, shopping and socializing. News, information, entertainment, medical advice and almost all other services became more prevalent online. The change is probably now irreversible, as many businesses, government agencies, universities, retailers and individuals have experienced the efficiency gains and cost reductions of a far more distributed way of operating.

Technological convergence, which started some years before the pandemic, created the framework for this current transformation. The disruption began in the communications sector, which had once been shaped exclusively by elites in the broadcasting and print industries. It is now characterized by a diffusion of power, which has given rise to citizen journalists, Facebookers, Tweeters, bloggers and vloggers. News, information and entertainment are therefore no longer the sole provinces of traditional content creators and distributors. The average person is now both consumer and creator of content and is able to share her or his perspective and world view from any connected village in any part of the globe.

The Challenges of Digital Transformation

As the population shifts to a greater reliance on online sources, it becomes more susceptible to harmful content. Part of this has been made more manifest by propaganda that incites racism, conspiracy theories, violence and radicalization. However, some of this is much more subtle and includes the way that AI algorithms segregate humanity into “bubbles” where dissenting views are no longer heard. Over time, this can undermine the basis for shared values and tolerance in a society, tearing at the fabric of democracy itself.

The difficulty that citizens have in distinguishing between fake news (which will soon be compounded by “deep fakes”) and reliable sources of information creates what the United Nations Secretary-General describes as a “trust deficit disorder”.

The World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) has called attention to the role of AI in the selection of information and news that people read, the music they listen to and the decisions they make, as well as their political interaction and engagement. Just prior to the pandemic, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation observed that we are “delegating more decisions to intelligent systems, from how to get to work to what to eat for dinner”. 2 Underlying this point is a concern that the AI systems used by technology companies are “black boxes” that open an information chasm between the technology companies and everybody else, including policymakers and regulators. 3

Information is being created, distributed and amassed on an unprecedented scale, but most people have no knowledge of when, or the nature or extent to which information about them is being stored, access and shared. This gap is one of the most pressing concerns in our transition to a world in which people are developing deeper and closer relationships of trust with “smart” devices that are controlled by AI. David Leslie of the Alan Turing Institute points out: “As with any new and rapidly evolving technology, a steep learning curve means that mistakes and miscalculations will be made and that both unanticipated and harmful impacts will inevitably occur. AI is no exception.” 4

The difficulty that citizens have in distinguishing between fake news (which will soon be compounded by “deep fakes”) and reliable sources of information creates what the United Nations Secretary-General describes as a “trust deficit disorder”. 5 For example, as a result of the increasing reliance on AI-generated trending topics, the World Health Organization had to battle an “infodemic” alongside COVID-19 because many people at risk of contracting the virus were unaware of how much information about the pandemic was incorrect, deliberately misleading or malicious. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a four-fold increase in the volume of cyberfraud; scammers took advantage of the crisis and offered fake advice on COVID-19 to induce recipients to click on their links, which allowed them to download malware and capture personal and financial information.

H.E. Mr. E. Courtenay Rattray, Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations, 25 September 2020. ©NY Head Shots

Other increasingly pressing concerns include the concentration of the ownership of platforms, the millions of people left behind who are unconnected or lack the digital skills to be competitive, and the fact that most media regulatory frameworks now lag far behind in the new world of accelerating technological change. For example, most regulation still operates exclusively at the national level, even though local firms are now competing with vastly bigger and largely unregulated foreign providers.

Given that the volume of material now uploaded every minute far outpaces the ability of most regulators to monitor more than a fraction of the harmful content, a key part of the solution is to place more reliance on citizens. Regulators need to take on a new role in ensuring that citizens can acquire the knowledge and skills needed to fully utilize digital resources while guarding against malicious, harmful and inappropriate content.

The Mandate for Media and Information Literacy

The purpose of media and information literacy (MIL) is to empower the users of technology through continuous learning and knowledge acquisition about the functions of media; the mechanisms for content creation and distribution; media effects; the rights of persons to information and expression; the responsibilities of those who use, mediate and control media; and the ethical design and use of new and emerging technologies.

It is particularly important that people understand the role of the AI systems with which they will interact, and that there are ethical considerations and expectations surrounding the use of such systems. They must be alert to the possibility of media manipulation and signs of the penetration of social media by terrorist or criminal networks. Consumers of digital content must also be able to identify and respond to risks such as cyberbullying, revenge porn, internet addiction and other problematic internet use.

To advance MIL, regulators and policymakers should work with content creators, civil society, and platform and network operators to encourage the development of faster and more reliable fact-checking, higher standards and trustworthiness in journalism, and the special promotion of MIL programmes that focus on disaffected youth to help prevent radicalization and recruitment by criminal and terrorist organisations.

In order to protect democracy, the transition to a digital society and economy must be accompanied by a media and information literacy revolution. This cause would be greatly advanced were the United Nations General Assembly to provide its imprimatur by declaring 24 to 31 October as Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week. This would be in keeping with a similar designation made in 2019 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization General Conference, which unanimously adopted a resolution on the matter.

1 World Economic Forum, “Big data, big impact: New possibilities for international development” (Geneva, 2012), p. 3. Available at http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_TC_MFS_BigDataBigImpact_Briefing_2012.pdf . 2 T he Age of Digital Interdependence, Report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation (New York, 2019), p.17. Available at https://www.un.org/en/pdfs/DigitalCooperation-report-for%20web.pdf .

3 Urs Gasser and Virgilio A.F. Almeida, “A layered model for AI governance”, IEEE Internet Computing , vol. 21, No. 6 (November, December 2017), p. p. 58–62. Available at https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/34390353 . 4 David Leslie, Understanding artificial intelligence ethics and safety: A guide for the responsible design and implementation of AI systems in the public sector ” (London, The Alan Turing Institute, 2019), p. 3. Available at https://www.turing.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-06/understanding_artificial_intelligence_ethics_and_safety.pdf . 5 T he Age of Digital Interdependence, Report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation , p. 18.

The UN Chronicle  is not an official record. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as distinguished contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. Similarly, the boundaries and names shown, and the designations used, in maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.

Eight-year-old Ano from Dili in Timor-Leste, spends close to nine hours daily selling popcorn and other snacks in town. The money from these sales helps supplement the income for his family of seven. @UNICEF Timor-Leste/2024/DMonemnasi

A Closer Look at Child Labour in Timor-Leste—Challenges and Progress Towards Ending the Practice

Thankfully, the Government of Timor-Leste, United Nations agencies and civil society organizations all acknowledge the scope of child labour and its deep-rooted causes. This means that there is a great opportunity for different institutions in Timor-Leste to work together towards change.

Apple picking in Khachmaz, Azerbaijan, 19 September 2023. WHO / Sue Price

Keeping Food Safe, Even in Unexpected Situations

Food safety is everyone’s business and all of the players along the production chain can do their part.

A Chronicle Conversation with Pradeep Kurukulasuriya (Part 1)

In April 2024, Pradeep Kurukulasuriya was appointed Executive Secretary of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF). The UN Chronicle took the opportunity to ask Mr. Kurukulasuriya about the Fund and its unique role in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This is Part 1 of our two-part interview.

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Critical disinformation studies: History, power, and politics

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This essay advocates a critical approach to disinformation research that is grounded in history, culture, and politics, and centers questions of power and inequality. In the United States, identity, particularly race, plays a key role in the messages and strategies of disinformation producers and who disinformation and misinformation resonates with. Expanding what “counts” as disinformation demonstrates that disinformation is a primary media strategy that has been used in the U.S. to reproduce and reinforce white supremacy and hierarchies of power at the expense of populations that lack social, cultural, political, or economic power.

Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA

Department of Communication, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA

A critical approach to disinformation

Disinformation has been a major scholarly and public area of concern since 2016, spurred by a resurgence of white, right-wing nationalism exemplified by Brexit and Trump’s presidential victory (Kreiss, 2021). The term “disinformation” refers to false or misleading information intentionally spread for profit, to create harm, or to advance political or ideological goals (Freelon & Wells, 2020). While this encompasses many information types, in public discourse disinformation is tied inextricably to social media and technology platforms, and often curiously depoliticized, framed as “polluting” or “infecting” an otherwise healthy information ecosystem. This framing disconnects disinformation from the broader politics of knowledge production and systems of power that undergird it; in other words, who benefits and why?

A great deal of research suggests that disinformation narratives build on and reify pre-existing ideologies, frequently involving race and inequality (Freelon et al., 2020; Nkonde et al., 2021; Ong, 2021). Identity-based hierarchies, particularly race, play a key role in the creation, spread, and uptake of disinformation narratives (Kreiss et al., 2020; Marwick et al., 2021). This essay explores how this body of scholarship is central to understanding key issues and debates in disinformation research, including polarization, media ecosystems, and relevant actors.

Drawing from principles established by the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, we argue that analyses of disinformation are more effective when they include:

Grounding disinformation studies in history, society, culture, and politics;
Centering analyses of how social differentiation, such as race, gender, and class, shape dynamics of disinformation;
Foregrounding questions of how institutional power and economic, social, cultural, and technological structures shape disinformation; and
Stating and maintaining explicit commitments to justice and equality.

By taking a historical and contextual view of disinformation, we argue that both the content and framing of disinformation reproduce whiteness in the United States. White supremacy is built upon assumptions that elevate and empower white perspectives as normal and standard. This assumption, referred to as whiteness, is not an individual racial identity, but a fundamental part of broader, historically rooted systems of power that privilege white perspectives (Ahmed 2007; Harris, 1993). When we ignore the content of disinformation and treat it as a mysterious and ineffable toxin, we cannot understand why it resonates, where it comes from, or how it spreads (e.g., del Vicario et al., 2016; Vosoughi et al., 2018). Characterizing disinformation as a toxin also assumes a shared, healthy information ecosystem, which ignores historical and ongoing ideological and political inequalities that center white viewpoints. Reframing “disinformation” from a problem of information pollution to a form of knowledge that is propagated and circulated requires addressing questions of power from “nonnormative” and “marginal” positions, such as queer or feminist of color communities (Cohen, 1997).

Our commentary primarily uses examples in the United States and is written by U.S.-based scholars. However, a truly critical approach to disinformation studies must take into account that deliberately false information is culturally and politically specific; analytic concepts developed in the U.S. may limit our understanding and proposed solutions, as the forms of inequality leveraged and furthered by disinformation are deeply contextual (Marwick et al., 2021).

(Re)Defining disinformation studies

The victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election took elites by surprise. The popular theory that Trump won because he appealed to the economic anxieties of a “white working class” (Coontz, 2016; Frank, 2016) has been contested (Carnes & Lupu, 2021). Evidence suggests that Trump’s electoral college victory was instead due to his messaging to white voters that traditional white American economic, political, and social status was under threat (Mutz, 2018; Schaffner et al., 2018; Sides et al., 2018). Another set of explanations focuses on the role of mis- and disinformation on social platforms (Read, 2016; Solon, 2016). Many of these narratives imply that: 1) in the past everyone shared the same sense of what was true and false; 2) this shared understanding of knowledge was reinforced, if not established, by legacy media like newspapers and TV news; 3) “fake news,” disinformation, and inauthentic behavior on social platforms are responsible for a global shift to far-right populism. However, these assumptions do not paint a full picture of why and how disinformation propagates. Further, focusing intently on the present ignores and obscures the historical foundations of these shifts.

First, positing a current crisis of fragmented “truth” due to technologically enabled polarization presumes that, prior to the advent of social platforms, the public agreed upon “facts” and “knowledge.” However, this ignores the role that legacy media has played in maintaining inequality. Historically, the white press portrayed Black people as dangerous criminals and justified and supported violence against Black communities (Staples, 2021). As Mejia et al. point out (2018), dominant U.S. politics have always relied on the existence of multiple realities. For instance, U.S. drug policy is predicated on a false “truth” of Black dealers spreading drugs to white communities, while the myth of Black “superpredators” in the 1990s justified an enormous expansion of the U.S. carceral system under Clinton (Duru, 2004). Spaces like the Black press presented alternative perspectives to white-dominant media, covering stories ignored by the white press and countering such racist depictions (Alamo-Pastrana & Hoynes, 2020, Staples, 2021). These examples of multiple racial realities exemplify how different forms of “truth” and knowledge have always co-existed with uneven impacts and values.

Second, the “deep stories” and “deep frames”—the repetition of particular narratives and stereotypes—behind much of disinformation amplifies and bolsters pre-existing racist, misogynist, xenophobic, or transphobic tropes (Phillips & Milner, 2021; Polletta & Callahan, 2017). Like more traditional forms of news and politics, such narratives resonate with people precisely because they play on appeals to whiteness and other forms of structural power (Jardina, 2019; Kreiss et al., 2020; Peck, 2019). For example, Qanon conspiracy theories combine 1980s conservative “satanic panic” with centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes of “blood libel” (Hughes, 2017; Lavin, 2020) . Fears of “migrant caravans” and dangerous undocumented immigrants play on white racial fears with deep historical roots to justify systemic racism (Flores-Yeffal et al., 2019). Such disinformation campaigns do not exist in a vacuum but are successful precisely because they are congruous with extant inequalities.

Third, corporations, state actors, and politicians have always spread false and misleading narratives to achieve their ideological goals. This is not just a problem with social media platforms. For example, during the second Iraq War, the Bush administration claimed that Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction, planted false stories about heroic U.S. soldiers in the mass media, and heavily limited critical coverage of war casualties and anti-war efforts (Kumar, 2006; Snow & Taylor, 2006). Given the Trump administration’s well-documented role in creating, spreading, and amplifying disinformation, it is important that scholarly and popular emphases on social platforms do not overlook these well-established precedents. Additionally, while legacy media institutions play an important role in criticizing government administrations, they can also spread state-sanctioned narratives. During World War II, for instance, the press served as the “guard dog” of the state, lending credence to the government’s claim that Japanese American citizens presented a security threat, and justifying mass incarceration and forced removal (Bishop, 2000). The media, U.S. military, and elected officials used euphemisms such as internment, relocation, and evacuation to distort and misrepresent this punitive injustice—which persist in contemporary textbooks and news sources to this day (Densho, 2021; Japanese American Citizens League, 2013).

Examining the larger media ecosystem, including the role of broadcast media, can help us better understand sites of study within disinformation research, such as how fringe communities explicitly manipulate media to expose larger audiences to extremist viewpoints—a tactic known as “trading up the chain” (Marwick & Lewis, 2017 Friedberg & Donovan, 2020). Hyper-partisan media, in particular, often spreads disinformation narratives: Fox’s Sean Hannity repeated the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton’s campaign murdered Democratic staffer Seth Rich, and upstart conservative cable networks OANN, Newsmax, and Blaze heavily amplified the “Stop the Steal” movement (KhudaBukhsh et al., 2021). Focusing primarily on Facebook and Twitter ignores the role of other media forms and networks and the reality of how information circulates both on and offline (Feng & Tseng-Putterman, 2019; Pasquetto, 2020).

Just as pinning Trump’s victory on “economic anxieties” makes it possible to ignore intersections of race and class and blame poor, working-class communities, disregarding the content of disinformation makes it possible to ignore why it succeeds. Instead, integrating cultural and historical approaches into the study of mis- and disinformation appeals to inequality as well as the political economy of social platforms that facilitates their spread. We begin by tracing how the powerful have historically used “knowledge” to establish, justify, and support racial inequality and colonialism. We then discuss the disproportionate and uneven harms of contemporary disinformation and conclude with recommendations and possibilities for future research.

Racial and imperial histories of information

Knowledge and information production is an active process that is political, serving and benefitting specific interests. “Knowledge” and even “history” are produced by social and political actors and used to legitimize and validate social inequality (Almeida, 2015; Du Bois, 1935; Trouillot 1995). For instance, European imperial powers used images, speech, and text to reinforce who was “colonizer” and “colonized” and establish racial hierarchies, dehumanizing Indigenous peoples and delegitimizing Indigenous histories, knowledges, and societies (Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999). The West justified such practices by producing racist pseudoscience that naturalized colonial practices, set itself in a superior position of power, and justified the expansion of its empire (Said, 1978; Saranillio, 2018).

Viewing disinformation through this lens of power and knowledge production illuminates how knowledge is used to justify racial divisions and structural inequality—both historically and in the present. Contemporary disinformation narratives propagate “old” racial and colonial tropes on new media using memes and hashtags (Flores-Yeffal, et al 2019; Tuters and Hagen, 2019). Repeatedly, disinformation is used to legitimate and rationalize violence. Incidents such as the January 6, 2021 white supremacist insurrection on the U.S. Capitol and mass shootings of people of color highlight the insidious, devastating real-world consequences of racist information (Fausset et al., 2021; Kreiss & McGregor 2021). Anti-Muslim conspiracy theories on Facebook India against Rohingya communities have included calls to violence, like those leading to the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar (Equality Labs, 2019).

Viewing disinformation through a historical lens also demonstrates how, beyond explicitly malicious intent, disinformation narratives are frequently used by politicians to produce tacit public acceptance of policies instantiating inequality. For example, disinformation such as anti-Black, misogynistic and anti-poor stereotypes like the “welfare queen” and anti-immigrant narratives about “invaders’” taking away jobs and resources have accompanied huge reductions in public benefits (Covert, 2019). Common myths surrounding individual responsibility and economic uplift buttress welfare reform policies like the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which left many people without adequate access to social safety nets (Cassiman, 2008). Racialized media tropes and portrayals play out in institutional spaces and systems, such as courtrooms, where dominant narratives of Black criminality are reproduced (Noble, 2014). For instance, media coverage of police shootings is heavily influenced by the perspectives of law enforcement (Adamson, 2016). Examining how contemporary disinformation is bound up with such longer histories highlights that information spreads and operates in ways that disproportionately harm already marginalized communities.

Differential impacts of disinformation

Disinformation is fundamentally related to power. Many scholars have chronicled that uneven access to information has real, material impacts (Gibson and Martin, 2019; Perez & Dionisopoulos, 1995). The spread of mis- and disinformation within and about marginalized communities has similarly concrete impacts, which disproportionately fall on these communities and reify whiteness (Collins-Dexter, 2020; Nkonde et al., 2021; Ong, 2021).

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that these processes have life-or-death stakes. Brandi Collins-Dexter (2020) points out that the disproportionate risk of death of Black people from COVID-19 is compounded by medical misinformation and conspiracies spreading in Black online spaces. She emphasizes that long-standing histories of trauma experienced by Black communities at the hands of media and government institutions create significant gaps in access to information and resources, exacerbated during moments of crisis.

Racist disinformation spread during the pandemic also pivots on existing stereotypes. The Trump administration’s racist characterization of COVID-19 as “Kung Flu” and “Chinese Virus,” distorted information about “bat soup” in Wuhan, and characterization of Asian restaurants in the U.S. as ‘dirty’, all draw from long histories of xenophobic public health discourses coinciding with the racialized exclusion of Asians as “unwelcome,” “undesirable,” and “unfit” (Shah, 2001; Noel, 2020). Similarly, Islamophobic COVID-related disinformation, such as false claims of Muslims as “bioterrorists” spread by the hashtag #Coronajihad, leverages existing religious and caste hierarchies as well as the unequal distribution of power and access on digital platforms (Equality Labs, 2020).

The Trump administration’s initial refusal to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, referring to it as a “hoax,” is eerily similar to the Reagan administration’s refusal to acknowledge AIDS, where government mismanagement and the racialization of responsibility worsened conditions for already vulnerable communities (Bhaman & Sabal, 2020). The AIDS epidemic exemplifies how disinformation spread by politicians and mainstream media is linked to discriminatory policies and resource distribution.

In 1986, the CDC announced the “four H’s” of HIV-risk: “hemophiliacs, heroin users, homosexuals, and Haitians”—these “four H’s” were not only misleading, but extremely harmful characterizations, leading to the detention of HIV-positive Haitian refugees in Guantanamo Bay. This criminalization of Haitian refugees as “dangerous” converged with the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS to sustain racially motivated migration policy rooted in both xenophobia and anti-Blackness. Historically, epidemiological narratives around HIV/AIDS center white, gay men, with people of color almost absent from the record and women excluded from diagnostic criteria until 1993 (Cheng, 2020). This obscured the crisis of welfare and resource distribution at the heart of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, where continued racial and socioeconomic inequalities blocked access to housing and healthcare. Activists and organizers created community projects, information networks, and public media spectacles to provide care and resources to their communities and combat the silencing and stigmatization furthered by government and mainstream media (Juhasz, 1995; Brier, 2009; McKinney, 2020).

The erosion of public trust in institutions is deeply significant. While disinformation may contribute to a decline in public trust, different communities may have low levels of public trust due to historical and contemporary experiences with government and media institutions may have very good reasons to distrust government and media due to historical contexts. During the Cold War, for example, the U.S. spread propaganda spinning domestic race relations in a positive light to legitimize the war on communism and justify military intervention in Asia (Ziegler, 2015; Dudziak, 2011). Radical Black movements attempted to combat this propaganda by explicitly challenging U.S. racial violence at home and abroad, which was considered so threatening that the state created the FBI COINTELPRO program to police activist groups (Frazier, 2014; Lieberman, 2014; Ziegler, 2015). These histories connect with uneven forms of political suppression that continue today, such as disinformation campaigns that strategically target Black voters to maintain hegemonic power (Worland, 2020).

Recommendations and looking forward

The different examples in this essay illustrate the histories and contexts in which power, politics, and information converge and how structural power is reproduced and reinforced across institutions. They offer entry points to studying disinformation that focus on the knowledge, experiences, and practices of groups who historically and currently bear the brunt of being targeted and oppressed by mis- and disinformation and propaganda campaigns. In doing so, these approaches may help us better evaluate potential interventions and solutions.

First, countering mis- and disinformation goes beyond solutions like “fact checking” or “media literacy” which place responsibility on individuals to become informed media consumers. In one devastating example, QAnon groups already assess and evaluate information validity and quality to defend, promote, and spread conspiracy theories (Marwick & Partin, 2020). Similarly, online search, which is frequently used to assess information accuracy, is by no means neutral (Tripodi, 2018). In fact, it can lead to deadly results, as seen with Dylann Roof, the perpetrator of a mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, whose Google search for “black on white crime” resulted in white supremacist propaganda (Noble, 2017). Rather than focusing on individual actions around information literacy and consumption, it may be more productive to examine the power structures that facilitate disinformation’s spread, such as large technology companies, state actors, and media and information systems (McMillan Cottom, 2020).

Second, technology did not create the problem of disinformation and technical solutions alone are not the answer, especially as they can exacerbate existing harms (Tufekci, 2019; Washington & Kuo, 2020). For example, technical attempts to “counter violent extremism” or “end radicalization” expand racialized criminalization (Kundnani, 2014; Nguyen, 2019). As Moustafa Bayoumi (2015) points out, information infrastructures built after 9/11 to “counter terrorism” target Muslims, leveraging racialized narratives of terrorism to justify increasing national security apparatuses and war abroad. Importantly, the digital space in which online mis- and disinformation circulates connects to on-the-ground lived experiences. Examining how systems of power operate can help us better understand the interplay between technological solutions and broader cultural and social forces.

Finally, the continued proliferation of white supremacy and global ethno-nationalism must be seen as a global problem, not the product of a few “bad actors” and malicious information spread on social media. As we discussed above, these problems are rooted in long histories that require us to trace multiple tendrils of power. The histories of welfare reform and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, for example, offer analysis of how misinformation is connected to inequalities in healthcare and social benefits. Grassroots groups and community-based organizations may serve as models for campaigns that are working not only to disrupt mis- and disinformation through political education, but also to mobilize concrete demands that address broader social conditions of inequality. For instance, Equality Labs, which works within South Asian diasporic communities, has conducted independent research on Islamophobic information spread on Facebook and created multilingual health guides as part of their broader work to dismantle caste and religious hierarchies (2019).

Future interdisciplinary research in critical disinformation studies might bring areas such as history and political economy to the contemporary study of information and platforms (Abhishek, 2021). To strengthen analysis through multi-modal forms of inquiry, we see the possibilities in connecting quantitative research to critical ethnic studies, feminist studies, and science and technology studies, where the politics of knowledge production have been a long-standing site of inquiry (see Chakravartty et al., 2018; Chakravartty & Jackson, 2020; Kilgo & Mourão, 2021). We also look to transnational approaches to disinformation that take into consideration cross-cutting geopolitical formations and imperial histories. Such forms of research inquiry have broader political stakes and commitments to social justice and undoing and redressing white supremacy.

Through centering questions of power and grounding inquiry in historical contexts and social difference, a critical approach to disinformation can inform transformational possibilities and address uneven dynamics of power in our digital landscape.

This essay is complementary to Critical Disinformation Studies: A Syllabus developed by the authors, Shanice Jones Cameron and Moira Weigel, with support from the Center for Information, Technology, & Public Life (CITAP), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Disinformation
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Cite this Essay

Kuo, R., & Marwick, A. (2021). Critical disinformation studies: History, power, and politics. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-76

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The Impact of Media on Society Cause and Effect Essay

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Introduction

Role of media in the society, impact of media on society, works cited.

Media is one of the world’s power and force that can not be undermined. Media has a remarkable control in almost every aspect of our lives; in politics, social and cultural or economic welfares. Perhaps the best analysis of the impact that media has played in the society is through first acknowledging its role in information flow and circulation.

It is would be unjust to overlook the importance of information to the society. Information is the significant to the society in the sense that, all that happens in the society must be channeled and communicated among the society’s habitats. Without media, the habitats or else the population will be left clueless on what is happening or what is ought to happen.

From another perspective, the society benefits from the media in a number of ways and as well it derives a lot of misfortunes from the society. However, regardless of the impact that is made by media on the society, the media remains to be one of the strongest forces that influence the pillars of the society. This essay paper highlights the impacts that media has continued to assert on the society either in a positive or in a negative manner.

The most common role that media has played in the society has been; to inform people, to educate people and sometimes to offer leisure or entertainment. The role of media in the society is stretched back in the ancient traditions when, there were approaches on which media role in the society was perceived. Some of these approaches included a positive approach, critical approach, production approach, technological approach, information approach and finally a post colonial approach.

A positivist approach assumed that media’s role in the society was to achieve predetermined objectives of the society, usually from a beneficial perspective. The critical approach assumes that media is pertinent can be used in struggle for power and other issues in the society that were preceded by a spark of a new or old ideology.

The production approach is that media plays a greater role in society by providing a new experience of reality to the masses by providing an avenue of new perceptions and visions. The information approach assumes that the key role of media in the society is to provide information channels for the benefit of the society (Fourie178).

With the above roles being achieved in one of the most remarkable means over centuries, media has some solid impacts that have been imprinted on the society. Some of these impacts and effects are to remain for ever as long as media existence will remain while others require control and monitoring due to their negative effects on the society. The best approach to look at this is by first describing the positive impacts that media has had on the society (Fourie 25).

The development of media and advancement of mass media is such positive impact that media has accomplished in recent times. It has been proven that mass communication has influenced social foundation and governments to means that only can be termed pro-social (Preiss 485). An example of such can be use of mass media in campaigns to eradicate HIV and AIDS in the society.

Mass communication through media avenues such as the internet, television and radio has seen great co-operation of government, government agencies, non-government organizations, private corporations and the public in what is seen as key society players in mutual efforts towards constructing better society. In this context, media has contributed to awareness, education of the society and better governance of the society.

Were it not for media, the worlds most historical moments would probably be forgotten today especially in the manner they reshape our contemporary society in matters regarding politics, economics and culture (Fourie 58).

However, media has had its shortcomings that have negative influence on the society. These negatives if not counterchecked or controlled will continue to ruin the values and morals of a society that once treasured morality and value of information.

These negative impacts include: media has contributed to immense exposure of violence and antisocial acts from media program that are aimed at entertaining the public. Media roles in the society have been reversed by merely assuming a role of society visibility thus controlling the society rather than being controlled by society.

Media has continued to use biased tactics to attract society attention and thus having a negative impact on the society’s culture due to stereotyping of other cultures. Media has continued to target vulnerable groups in the society such as children and youths be exposing them to pornographic materials that has sexual immorality consequence on the society’s young generations.

It is through such shortcomings that the cognitive behavior’s which shape the moral fiber of the society gets threatened by media (Berger 106). However, regardless of the impacts of the media on the society, the future of the media will evolve with time and its role in the society will unlikely fade.

Berger, Arthur. Media and society: a critical perspective . Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. 2007.

Fourie, Pieter. Media studies: media history, media and society . Cape Town: Juta and company ltd. 2008.

Preiss, Raymond. Mass media effects research: advances through meta-analysis . New York: Routledge. 2007.

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