The media has successfully gained control of society through its use of gate keeping. The media morphs and distorts the truth in order to keep the public blissfully unaware of the facts. Not many realize that they are clay in the potter’s hands. The concept of hegemony describes perfectly the media driven society we live in today.
Hegemony can be described as the way that a dominant group influences another group in order to control it. The average person combats the media daily as each different news station, magazine and paper tries to report the truth. The dominance of media is evident in today’s society and it is easy to let it take charge. Those in charge of what is reported and what is unimportant control what the public sees as the truth. With so many different places to gain information, the “truth” can be reported in many different ways. A credible source is hard to come by because bias is almost unavoidable. The gate keepers of what is reported can let through what they think is the truth and keep back what they do not approve of.
In reality television, we have all come to discover there is little to no reality present. Show editors control and manipulate what really happens in order to change the audience’s perception. For example, an editor can take footage from two different points in time completely and put them together to create a scene that never really happened, but looks quite good together. In the link below, it is shown how easily a situation can be manipulated in order to change what the end perception will be by the viewer.
There is no avoiding the media and it is up to the intelligent member of society to interpret and discover the truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment