How Do The Media Influence Our Beliefs

How Do the Media Influence Our Beliefs?

Introduction:

The purpose of this essay was to seek how the media influence our beliefs. New media most commonly refers to content available on-demand through the Internet, accessible on any digital device, usually containing interactive user feedback and creative participation. Common examples of new media include websites such as online newspapers, blogs, or wikis, video games, and social media. A defining characteristic of new media is dialogue. New Media transmit content through connection and conversation. It enables people around the world to share, comment on, and discuss a wide variety of topics. Unlike any of past technologies, New Media is grounded on an interactive community.[1]

Nowadays, the traditional media and new media have became a necessity for most people’s life. According to the statistics from CNNIC[2], the Chinese netizens has more than 688,000,000 in 2015, which the popularity rate covers 50.3% in China. The traditional media such as printed media also plays an essential role in people’s daily life. Due to prosperity of the media, how to distinguish the correct information from the media and how to confront with the false information is a challenge for us. But how do the media influence our belief?

The Case of How do the Media Influence Our Beliefs:

To begin with, the research engine have became the main way into the media for a lot of people. We  can  find some particular answers, solutions and data on the internet easily. With development of the media, we had been rely heavily on the media to search information without our own judgments. We rarely know how to distinguish the information from the internet and TV commercials. Some people may firstly ask their friends and family. But some are  just believe what they have seen from the media. And we are unaware of whether it is the false information. Take the research engine paid-listing adverts for example, the so-called search engine marketing (SEM) is according to the way of the use of the search engine users, take advantage of the opportunities which users retrieve information as far as possible transfer marketing information to the target customers.[3] Most small enterprises and frauds would use social media marketing in paid-listing which would attract their target customers. Because they know people are apt to click on the top-listed links. Nasdaq-listed Baidu has been under mounting public pressure since a couple said online that their 21-year-old son died of cancer after receiving immunotherapy at a hospital in Beijing. The parents said their son learned of the treatment and the hospital by researching the disease on Baidu, and that the hospital was listed second from the top on the first page of search results.[4] This tragedy may be as an alarm to change people’s beliefs. One of the reasons why Wei Zexi would believe the false information is that he believed the  hospital from the media. But his experiences was limited and the media is the quickest way he could ask for. But most people are still lost in the media because it actually do help for us to some extent.

Moreover, there’re many stable and rapid platforms such as radio, TV, newspaper, books which the most older people would like to receive information from. In China, some older people usually watch TV at home, and some older people like to roam around the park with a radio. The older people are eager for a healthy body and they will pay efforts to make themselves more “healthy”.  Thus, the older people would be the target customers of many medical companies. Because medical company understand that most older people will attracted by the exaggerated claims for what the medicine can achieve and buy medicines and the health care products which are useless.

However, thanks to the widely use of media, our life have become more and more  convenient and colorful. The media covers the area of education, business, medical treatment, politic and daily life. For example, college students could receive news and knowledge from the internet and mobile phone. There are many education websites and videos like MOOC, Word Reference forum which we could learn various subjects or different languages and find out a study method suited for us. What’s more, to be more specific of the social media, making friends platform and on-line shopping are no longer a single function for the public.

Conclusion:

To sum up, media is widely organized and supported by the public. We are living in an era of media. Thus, when we’re facing the information from the media, we should have critical thinking due to the media has its drawbacks and learn to have our own judgments and ideas.

Re:

[1]. Brandon Vogt, The Church and New Media, Our Sunday Visitor Inc, Page 17

[2]. http://www.cnnic.net.cn/hlwfzyj/hlwxzbg/201601/P020160122469130059846.pdf

[3]. Qu Shuang, Zhang Lili, The “New” Search Engine Marketing [J], Market Modernization, 2006, (8), P51 (Ch).

[4]. http://language.chinadaily.com.cn/2016-05/03/content_25031490.htm