Media influence and its effects on society

Media Influence on Society

In a matter of a few centuries, the availability of information to the average person in society has grown exponentially. Until the advent of the telegraph in the middle of the 19th century, even the most significant world events typically took weeks or more to become known outside their immediate region. Printing presses were tremendously expensive, rare, and prohibited by law in some parts of the world. Even paper was too expensive to produce for anyone outside of the wealthier classes to have access to it. Before that, the average person knew only what happened in a very small local area and many people living in relatively undeveloped border regions may not have even been sure what country they lived in, necessarily. The majority of people living in large cities and towns would only become literate over the better part of the next century, but news and general information still traveled slowly, expensively, and inefficiently. Most people got their news from word of mouth and newspapers; they communicated over distance primarily through written postal mail that took several weeks to make it from continent to continent by sea.

Media technology advanced rapidly after the First World War, providing affordable radios; it advanced another leap during the Second World War, producing affordable televisions, and much more sophisticated microwave transmission in general. As sophistication also evolved in media strategy and production, the developing modern media began to have much greater influence in the so-called "First World" nations. The potential social power and influence of modern media over individuals was first demonstrated by Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister for Hitler's Third Reich, during the prewar period and throughout the long war. By the second half of the 20th century, media became a principal component of social psychology, accounting for the cyclical spread of social "fads" and general shared attitudes, values, and perceptions in many respects.

Media Influence in Commercial Advertising

Commercial advertising is older than the modern media, but the introduction and widespread availability of motion picture and television as vehicles for commercial advertisement was revolutionary (Howard, 2005). Throughout the 1950 and 1960s, modern media allowed consumer product manufacturers much greater influence over consumer behavior than they had ever enjoyed previously. The addition of paid commercial endorsements from highly-recognizable celebrities of the day returned many times their expense in revenue and public relations and advertising became some of the most critical determinants of organizational success in many consumer product and service industries (Howard, 2005).

By the 1970s and 1980s, national celebrities earned some of the highest incomes in society, precisely by virtue of their notoriety and widespread public recognition. Advertisers learned very quickly how profitable it was to convince the pubic to associate certain products with particular public figures. Modern commercial marketing often became a dual of highly-paid celebrity spokespeople promoting products such as coffee makers, luggage, rental vehicles, clothes, cigarettes, and cosmetics, just to name a few major early adopters of modern media advertising (Chang, Newell, & Salmon, 2009; Entwistle, Joanne, & Rocamora, 2006). Today, public recognition through media imagery is so influential, that even the association of products with murders can generate positive notoriety, such as in the case of O.J. Simpson in 1995 in connection with Bruno Magli shoes, Husky dogs, and white Ford Broncos (Tyre, 1997).

Media Influence in Identity Formation of the Individual

Society has always played a major role in the social development of the individual, but by so greatly expanding the reach and speed of information, modern media bombard members of the community with continual messages about foundational aspects of psychological identity and orientation (Levine & Murnen, 2009). Modern media enhances the strength of community values, beliefs, and expectations and reinforces them much more powerfully than information transmission by word of mouth. Carefully constructed public images of celebrities provide children and adolescents the model for their personal aspirations and multimedia commercial saturation contributes to the psychological identity of individuals more generally (Levine & Murnen, 2009). Commercial imagery greatly influences self-perception and aspirations about physical attractiveness and desirability to the opposite gender (Jobling, 1990; Levine & Murnen, 2009). As actresses and spokes models get thinner, eating disorders and obsession with losing weight propagate among young women (Steinem, 1990). In other contexts, food advertising contributes toward habits that result in higher rates of obesity (Zimmerman & Bell, 2010).

Media Influence in the Shaping of Perceived Wants and Needs

Since the last half of the 20th century, the so-called "average" individual living in the First World has enjoyed greater safety, comfort, convenience, and genuine wealth, in terms of the relative ease of life and availability of resources and opportunities for advancement in life (Howard, 2005). Even today, people living in relative poverty in the United States have a higher standard of living than the vast majority of all people living and all people who have ever lived. An ordinary middle-class existence in America today, even in an economic recession, represents greater comfort, plentitude, and convenience than ever enjoyed by the most famous emperors and kings in recorded human history.

Nevertheless, the average person does not feel particularly privileged, and people at every level of economic status covet those whose status slightly higher than theirs. To a great extent, the modern media drive the insatiable need for more by presenting images designed to promote the generation of revenue from filling the perceived needs of individuals (Carr, Choi, DeAndrea, et al., 2008). Whereas the majority of the revenue generated from retail business (in particular) prior to the modern media age came from filling needs that existed, that is not often the case today. Instead, media actually helps create the perception of need first, to provide a market for consumer product manufacturers to fill afterwards (Howard, 2005). To a great degree, even the recent artificial ballooning of the home real estate market and its eventual collapse were functions of the consumerism and orientation toward an acquisition-oriented perception of needs fueled by media imagery.

Media Influence in Political Awareness and Attitudes

Major media sources produce the delivery of the news of the day and are instrumental in advancing the interests of government and other entities with the financial resources to purchase advertising and public relations management. Political agendas of private-sector business interests routinely influence public perceptions, public policy, and government legislation through the lobbying process (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2006). In the 1960s, the widespread availability of televised images of the Vietnam War likely ended two consecutive American presidencies. During the same time, modern media depictions of national unrest and the need for civil rights reforms helped produce those results much earlier than they could have occurred otherwise.