I am a consumer of large quantities of the media, from reading newspapers and watching television, to surfing the web, downloading music and social networking. I have already noticed though, the difference in studying the different types of media at university to just being a consumer. Firstly, I have realised just how big a part of life the media is. These things which I have stated fill up most of my day, yet people think that Media Communications may be a mickey mouse subject? The media is so vast, covers such a large scale, and is our link to the outside world. If we didn’t have it, how would we ever know what was going on in Afghanistan or Iraq? How would we know which government party to vote for? How would we know how the government is actually running our country? Marshall McLuhan famously said ‘The medium is the message.’ When he said this he was talking about Global Television, and saying how the change in media technologies is what mattered. Ofcourse the message was important, but not as important as the technology itself. This is true in this case I think, as although the messages we are receiving in these instances are very important, without the method of actually communicating this to us, the message is as redundant as the technology.
Another interesting point I’d like to raise is how the messages we receive via the media shape our beliefs and opinions. I found this to be very interesting, and something you probably wouldn’t realise if you weren’t to study the media in higher education. Our opinions are generally only based by what we see on the television, what we read in the newspapers or what we hear on the radio. Everyone has an opinion on the expenses scandal. How was this opinion formed? Probably not through direct experience, but from what you are being told by the media. Evidence in its blandest form that the media influences our opinions. My main example of this would be how the Labour party came into power. In 1997, only a couple months before elections were due to take place, ‘The Sun’ changed its backing from the conservative party to labour. Labour then went on to a huge victory. This may just be a huge coincidence, but now ‘The Sun’ have now gone with the headline ‘Labours Lost It.’ I think this is a hugely interesting change of stance by this newspaper, and it will be interesting to see whether this effects the outcome of the next elections, and if we have a change of leadership in the government. If we do, it would be very interesting to study whether ‘The Sun’ and other newspapers alike have influenced our voting decisions.
