Media Negatively Influences Thought

Media Negatively Influences Thought

Media has affected the human population since the late 1500s. Media can be defined as "The main means of mass communication (television, radio, and newspapers) regarded collectively". Media first came around from prints on sheets of paper advertising goods and services or attempting to influence people. One of the first examples of media influencing people was Martin Luthers 95 theses. These were 95 points opposing the churches practices which many people believed in and started to follow leading towards the reformation and what we know now as Protestant christian. But not all media can affect people for the better, many ways of media can negatively affect people in a variety of ways. The media can negatively affect people's feelings, actions and thoughts through its manipulative ways.

The media can influence people actions in many different ways. One of the main examples of the media having a negative affect on people is through body image. Companies make billions of dollars off body image by using a variety of different tactics. Some of these tactics are in weight loss. Weight loss companies advertise that you can "loose up to 50 pounds in 2 months" or other tactics in order to draw people in. And people buy into these adds and spend large amounts of money when the reality is loosing weigh can be done by yourself by eating properly and exercising. Another way in which the media negatively affects people is through scare tactics. In the article "risk" Dan Gardner explains that "Media too know the value of fear. The media are in the business of profit, and crowding in the information marketplace means the competition for eyes and ears is steadily intensifying." What Gardner means by this is fear makes money and companies know this so they will manipulate people into thinking they need something even though they probably do not. An example of this is computer anti-virus software. Anti-virus software Companies make it seem like every link you click on will destroy your computer, when the reality is if you just stay on normal websites and do not download tonnes of unknown things your unlikely to contract a virus. But people do not know this so they spend hundreds of dollars on anti-virus to protect them from virtually nothing. The media can negatively affect peoples actions. It is just up to us to realize the reality of the situation and not act so drastic.

Another way in which people are negatively affected through media are peoples feelings. The media uses many different tactics to negatively affect peoples feelings. One way media affects peoples emotions is on social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. Some people share all there emotions on twitter and sometimes can be criticized on there feelings which further bring them down. A recent study by the university of California analyzed these posts and how people react to them. What the researchers said concluded was "Their study, analyzed over a billion anonymized status updates from more than 100 million Facebook users located in major US cities. It took place over 1,180 days, between January 2009 and March 2012. The study found "positive posts beget positive posts," while negative posts resulted in more negative posts." This means that when people are feeling down or something negative happens to them they get the urge to share something negative which results in more negative posts that could be directed at them further depressing them. Another way in which the media negatively affects peoples emotions is through the language they use. Some newspapers or shows will use certain words to make it reasonable