With the acceleration of economy and technology development, the media become more and more powerful. First there was the telegraph, then the radio, the newspaper, magazines, television and now the internet. Medium plays a significant role in every individual’s life. People need to acquire information in all directions. While Medium is a way to spread information to billions of people throughout the world. It brings a variety of knowledge and entertainment for human beings. Medium exists in our daily life. We come into contact with it in every moment.
What’s more, medium has powerful impacts which have been discussed a lot. On the one hand, media is a great platform for us to convey our emotions, opinions and information to others, to the whole world no matter where we are, if we want to do it, we can finish it immediately, anybody else can see it clearly. On the other hand, the media affect the whole society because it has great impacts on the public opinion because we believe what we read, see and hear in the media. We haven’t affirmed the media message true or false but we might choose to believe many of the media messages, even about events, people, places and ideas that we have never encountered before.
Following paragraphs will show you how the media influence our beliefs in three aspects and we will have a conclusion eventually.
First of all, medium plays an important role which is one of the basic things we make any decisions in our daily life. We live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, education, travel or anything else that we have to do. As ordinary people, we wake up to read news or newspaper, go to work, make a few phone calls, eat with our family when possible and make our decisions based on the information that we have get from friends, family and all kinds of media. In our daily lives we rely on the media to get the current news and facts about what is important and what we should be aware of. We have put our trust on the media to make decisions.
Secondly, there are numerous ads on media. According to introductions of advertisings, we can buy what we are told to be good, we can make our decisions based on what we saw on Internet, televisions, newspapers or magazines to know which product we can trust. Besides, we can also select the product based on other people that we know is buying and their decisions are also based on the media. However, the ad of the product on media is not always true. For example, a girl bought a dress on Taobao. Before payment, she had read all the information on the website, and she thought the size must be suitable for her. But to her surprise, the size and the quality of the goods are not the same. The girl was disappointed and did not trust online shopping any more.
Besides, falsified news could create a negative impact on people, affecting minds and altering views. Nowadays, Internet has taken over mainstream media. Things are rapidly changing all over the world especially the way of news delivery. People have a chance to voice their opinions on particular news and their personal thoughts through blogs and personal websites on the internet, which means that people have expressive freedom. However, with this “expressive freedom”, there is a serious problem which will cause false information or Conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories mean false polish had have been added to a real story, the writer aims to sell his opinion on a particular subject using manipulative words in a way that the readers unconsciously lean towards the writer’s take on the story. Crimson Politics a Republican blogging site states the bitter truth in the simplest way, “We are all victims of this infection. There really are no exceptions, even if we think of ourselves as realists and skeptics, there are conspiracies that even we believe in somewhat”. (“Conspiracy Theories an Infection”, Crimson Politics).
Within days, thousands of people have already viewed it, if the news is controversial, then people tend to act on it if it is something they immensely believe in. Hence, distorted news could create a negative impact on people. Even though the readers understand that the content may not be accurate, yet the possibility of believing in them would seem hard to resist. People believe that unless they are provided with evidence relating to the story – “that contextual features and background characteristics reflect the real world” (“The Effects of Fictional Media on Real World Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories”, allacademics.com, 2009)
For example, there is a news in 2011, an destructive earthquake happened in Japan. This earthquake caused a nuclear power plant explosion, which bring a panic for Chinese who live in coastal areas. Most people was afraid of eating polluted salt so try to buy a lot of salt as soon as possible. Meanwhile, salt was out of stock in some place. Why this kind of event would happen? Obviously, it is because of some rumors on Internet and people’s panic to some extent. Even though understanding the news may not be accurate, but it is just hard to resist. The readers believe that unless they are provided with evidence relating to the story – “that contextual features and background characteristics reflect the real world” (“The Effects of Fictional Media on\Real World Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories”, allacademics.com, 2009)
Above all, there are some conclusions. Firstly, what people need to be aware is that most of our decisions, beliefs and values are based on what people know for a fact, people’s assumptions and experience instead of only the idea of media. Secondly, people should buy things rationally and think over what they exactly need instead believe the ads shown on media completely because not all ads are true and most of them are exaggerated. Thirdly, people should not believe the rumors and unconfirmed theories easily even the information on media. Hence, people should selectively and rationally believe in the messages of media.
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