how does the mass media effect everyone in society

The mass media affects everyone in society. Everyone is affected by the media on a daily basis, and is influenced by it constantly. Through this the mass media is able to form stereotypes of individual groups of people and has the ability to persuade people to conform to those stereotypes. This also widely influences our views on different social groups.
The mass media, through news, TV, films, newspapers, games etc., are able to ‘inject’ whatever content, ideas, images etc. that they want to, into the audience, this is seen through the hypodermic syringe model. One major example of this would be, television programmes being able to convey stereotypes to the public in an extremely easy way. This is a clear example of how the mass media has a direct and immediate affect on out behaviour because; certain programmes are able to affect people’s moods and actions. For example, the BBC programme Little Britain show people in Britain to be stereotypically posh and alternatively others as being “chavvy” and benefit cheats. This could shape peoples views of the people of Britain, especially if they do not live there, or have never visited. Many television characters are stereotyped. This is through the social group that they are classified in, this could mean they are stereotyped by their age, gender, jobs, culture, race, looks and position in the family. Can’t remember their name suggested that the media represent older people to be an object of radicle or as a burden. In the same way this could also apply to the view the media puts on children who are often shown as cute and being smarter than their parents. These stereotypes make be true for some people living in England but it is not true to the majority of British citizens. The audience are unthinking, passive receivers of these images and messages. They are unable to resist the messages that are ‘injected’ into them. Some argue that, the audience are filled with the dominant ideology; sexist and racist images, scenes of violence etc. and they immediately go out and act out what they have seen. Therefore this can be used to argue why when people see a stereotype placed on people through media they are automatically going to assume that it is right.

Active audience approaches see the media as far less influential. They believe that people have considerable choice in the way they use and interpret the media. There are 3 main versions of this view the Two-Step Flow Model, the Uses and Gratification Model and the Cultural Effects Model. Katz and Lazerfield argued that media effects may not be direct. Messages are interpreted by key individuals who then influence others when relaying them. The model calls these people ‘opinion leaders’. These opinion leader then place their beliefs on other people, being able to spread the stereotypes they believe other people fall in to.
The Selective Filter Model come in three stages. Selective exposure: A message must first be chosen to be viewed, read or listened to. These choices depend on people’s interests, education, commitments etc. Selective Perception: The messages have to be accepted. The audience may choose to take notice of one message but reject another. For example, a heavy smoker may chose to ignore a TV programme which focuses on the link between smoking and lung cancer and Selective Retention: Messages have to stick. People have a tendency to remember only things they broadly agree with. Postman (1986) argues that we now live in a ‘three minute culture’. That is to say, the attention span of the average member of society is only 3 minutes long. Where stereotyping in concerned the selective filter model allows people to hear information, process it and finally believe it. For example, the news tells people in the information and they go on to process and believe it. This is evident trough the official statistics of crime. Realistically white working class men are the most likely to commit crime. However, because of the stereotypes media has placed of black men, the public often believe they are the most likely to commit crime………………………….HELP!