Media worlds: concepts, contexts, and contemporary applications

MEDIA WORLD & CULTURE

The Media World in Today's Culture

The Media World and Today's Culture

The Media World and Today's Culture

The media is the most indispensable medium that most urbanized and developing countries have adapted to accessing first hand and vital information. It is also in the branch category of the most growing industries in today's global economy. However, the industry is faced with controversies from other sectors such as culture and politics. Implications of the social media and media personalties have always been at the limelight, especially with how the youth and children perceive what they see and hear from the media. It is therefore, necessitated to review how the current global culture allows for the continuity of the world of media.

Reading Discussions

According to Kaya and Cakmur, media has been a centre-stage in Turkey die to the linkage it has to politics. Turkish media is perceived as a medium to which similarity of political virtue corresponds to the elements broadcasted. Under this notion, its media has strictly been under the watch of what is documented from the media. Kaya and Cakmur assert that the Turkish government has considered the centrality of social issues. As the media industry grew in the region, so did the privatization of the industry. However, this never allowed for the mitigation of political parallelism. The Turkish private media undertook the opportunity to attack the country's political arena. However, the government took the incentive in the early 1990 to media control but culturally, the division that its media industry is central to political strife and competition (Kaya and Cakmur 2010).

The media has undergone tremendous transformation in Greece, Turkey, and Latin America. This transformation has been largely influenced by the emergence of free markets. Before the 1980s, these countries media world was state-owned and controlled. These economies at that time were centralized and the military had great influence on the media. However, free market economy has seen an emergence of privately owned TV stations and newspapers. This democratization of media has been perceived to spearhead changes in oppressive legal structures that were present during the era of monopolies by the state. However, the lack of these states to curb commercialization of the media led to tabloid reporting by journalism while the real issues, referred simply to as "hard" news, was disregarded by media houses. As a result, the media adopted discriminatory and discretionary tendencies that have led to unstable and unpredictable political and economical environments (Christensen, 2007). For example, in Turkey, a culture of "authoritarian political culture; a delayed development of democratic and civil society institutions; and a breakdown in the 'horizontal solidarity' of journalists…" (Christensen, 2007), has developed. This has created bias journalism.

Weddings in the U.S. are a large industry spending $50 to $70 billion every year. The media in the U.S. has not been blind to this fact. The numerous bridal magazines on the stands evidence this. Wedding galas are common especially in the film industry in Hollywood and features in many reality TV programs such the 'A Wedding Story' show that depicts the perfect wedding theory. This trend, however, has painted the wedding as an expensive affair and created the impression that an expensive wedding is the only way for any single woman to experience romance and eternal bliss in marriage. Therefore, it is apparent that the media are purveyors of attitudes, ideals and concepts in many aspects of human culture including marriage. Moreover, the media give informal instructions to society regarding conduct and etiquette especially concerning weddings. It is also a political and economic tool, and act as a bridge between information dissemination and merchandising for business advantage (Engstrom, 2008).