The Role of Mass Media in the Society

432 Words2 Pages
Oksana Chura Group 504a Essay The Role of Mass Media in Society Today we live in the era of information technologies, and mass media reflects and affects practically every possible aspect of our life. There do not exist a universal answer to the question if the influence of mass media is mainly positive or negative. Every person has his own opinion concerning this issue (if has any). Firstly, mass media serves the educational purposes. One cannot imagine a modern average student not using the Internet resources to accomplish some types of tasks. Moreover, there are lots of educational programs on TV for people of different ages and there are gripping articles in some magazines to profound one’s knowledge. However, having lots of information at disposal does not enhance the academic standards for various reasons. For example, some students take the access to the Internet for granted; consequently, they think any necessary information can be found fast and easily, so that they do not have to learn it. One more reason is that most information found on the Internet is of low quality, unfortunately. Secondly, mass media is used widely in politics. Using mass media is, perhaps, the only possible way to announce the decisions of the government rapidly and for all the citizens at once, to introduce the candidates to elective offices to all the nation, or for the opposition to affect the present state of things. Meanwhile, some people have the impression that certain politicians have gained power over the mass media, making it politicized and biased, and violating the freedom of speech. If it goes on like this, we might live in the society described by G. Orwell in “1984”, because if one controls the present, he can control the past; and controlling the past, it is possible to control the future. And the last thing I would like to mention is that mass media provides
Open Document