Popular American Culture In today’s society culture is unique. Parts of the past are used to form present cultures. Culture is behaviors and beliefs from a particular social, ethnic, or age group (Dictionary.com, 2012). Culture is also the grouping of traditions, attitudes, and standards that divides one group of people from another. Culture can be represented through art, schools, material objects, and communication.
Popular American Culture In today’s world culture has played a major role in how individuals percieve issues and how their personal decisions are made. Furthermore, popular cultures play a more important role because individuals tend to let popular cultures affect their decision making. Today popular American cultures are big not only in American, but in other countries too! In order to understand how popular American culture affects personal decision making one should know the differences between culture and popular culture, major popular American culture trends and how those trends influence decision making. Culture can be defined in many different ways; however, culture is mainly defined as patterns of behaviors, interactions, cognitive constructions and learning through a process of socialization (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition, 2010).
From one generation to the next Culture is portrayed, through verbal communication, material objects, ritual, institutions (including schools), and art. This will discuss and identify patterns in popular American culture, describe sorts of items which are more common, describe values which are being communicated and will determine the level of which the values of popular American culture have directly impacted decision making. Popular American culture is constantly changing and it is particular to place and time. Pop culture is patterns of humanity and the representative structures that give such activities significance and meaning. Popular American culture is defined as popular written literature and broadcasting, popular music, popular dance and theater, certain decorative arts, sports and recreation, and other cultural aspects of social life distinguished by their broad-based presence across ethnic, social, and regional groupings.
In this essay I will be discussing some of these threats, risks, crises and uncertainties that are currently in the public domain, some of which seem to stem from globalization. I will be then looking to see if these uncertainties have been exaggerated and if any of these issues can be interpreted as giving people greater opportunities and choices. In the conclusion of the essay I will make a decision based on the evidence offered throughout DD100 on whether or not the essay question generally reflects society today. One of the major threats that many of us are deeply concerned about in today’s society is that of unemployment. Book 4 of DD100 centres around globalization and Book 3 looks at the flexibility of the labour market.
Popular American Culture Yuliana Diaz SOC/105 Dr. Cheryl Y. Avant Popular American Culture Currently, people cannot turn to the right without being influenced by technology, it can be said that the popular American culture in 2011 is mainly leaded by technological devices and their products. Oxford University Press defines culture as “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group” (“culture,” 2011) there are many factors that affect the different cultures around the world such as trends, which are elements of popular culture. Popular Culture and Trends “Popular culture encompasses the most immediate and contemporary elements in our lives.” (Petracca & Sorapure, 2007, para 8) although it does not give a specific definition, it states that popular culture is contained by the everyday elements people use, for example the Internet, which has become a powerful tool for anything thinkable in peoples’ lives. Another powerful “element” is the telephone, it became more than a useful communication tool, (the main reason it was invented for), it is used as a productivity, organizational, and recreational tool in the American popular culture. Popular culture also can be a term that refers to what other cultures look up to, from a personal experience, people who grew up in another country always say how the American culture has the most influential trends around the world.
Influence of Visual Media Paper Entertainment media has shaped American Culture and its values in many ways. One of the ways is that media has educated many on how to be more healthy and to have a better lifestyle. It has also made people more creative, making them realize what culture is all about. We as a society are shaped by the ever changing entertainment industry. People can be influenced with visual media because they can find it relatable.
It is generally accepted that the mass media have become some of the most powerful institutional forces in society. Although everyone uses the media in different ways, the media are responsible for directing attention and shaping cultural attitudes and values. (Media Awareness Network) The media is influential, using stereotypes in many areas, such as the entertainment and news industries, to get audiences to quickly understand information. Stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people, usually relating to their class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation. (Media Awareness Network) Stereotypes can be problematic, reducing a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations.
Popular American culture affects personal decision-making and is another subject for discussion in this paper. Culture has many definitions. One definition of culture is the act of developing the intellectual and moral faculties, especially by education (Encyclopedia Company, 2011, p. 1). Popular culture also has many definitions. One of these definitions is the dialect culture that prevails in a modern society.
Things have changed. Not only do we concern ourselves with trends, we become them. Advancements in technology and communication have reached an all time high. These advancements have changed the world, and the way in which we live. Media and communication have the utmost control over our lives, allowing marketing ploys, advertisements, and campaigns to become our greatest influencers as a society.
INTRODUCTION Studying mass media effects on the audience is, perhaps, one area that has frequently attracted the attention of mass communication scholars because of the media’s potentiality to exert certain patterns of behaviour on individual member of the audience. This is buttressed by Donald (1996), as cited in Daramola (2002), saying, “The concept of impact of mass media messages has been and probably, still is, regarded as central and fundamental to social psychology.” Consequently, several mass communication scholars have carried out different but related studies aimed at ascertaining the actual influence of media messages, received through such channels as motion pictures, on the behavioural patterns of the audience and how such patterns of behaviour promote or degenerate acceptable standard of actions, especially among the younger generation in a given society. Motion pictures were, from the early days, presumed to have major impact on children, especially those in their formative years. However, the need to establish the actual kind of effect movies have on children has, therefore, become a great concern to researchers, who, through their works, have tried to investigate the kind of impact