We live in a media-saturated world. It’s not just that we’re constantly surrounded by news, movies, and advertisements; it’s also that the media itself has changed dramatically in the last few years. Digital technology is transforming how we consume information and share our opinions with others; this new way of doing things is bringing both benefits and drawbacks to consumers everywhere. We’ll explore some of those changes here, along with some solutions for making sure your media consumption gets better rather than worse!
The media is a part of our everyday lives.
You might not realize it, but you’re constantly bombarded with news and information. The media plays an important role in our everyday lives as a source of information, entertainment, advertising and political influence.
Media has been around for hundreds of years. It is a part of our social lives, political lives, and economic lives. It has shaped the way we think about society and it continues to do so every day as more and more people are consuming media content on their phones or computers rather than watching TV in their living room. As media companies compete with each other to deliver news faster than competitors can publish it, they sometimes make mistakes that lead them to spread false information or publish stories without doing enough research beforehand.
Some of the biggest problems with the mainstream media are hardly new at all. The mainstream media has been around for hundreds of years, so it’s not exactly a new problem. For one thing, mainstream media has always been a problem for democracy. In fact, it was the first major form of media that played any part in politics at all—and even then it was limited to newspapers or pamphlets (which were neither mainstream nor particularly popular). But since then, we’ve seen how big this problem can get: think about how Facebook influenced US elections in 2016 and all the other ways social media is used as a tool for misinformation today!
At least social media isn’t an old form of technology either… right? Wrong! Broadcasting began in 1920 when KDKA made its first radio broadcast over Pittsburgh’s airwaves with news coverage from KDKA correspondent Harold Arlin. Since then we’ve seen everything from television programming (think: “American Idol”) to cable news networks like CNN and Fox News—all trying their best to produce content that appeals to viewers without losing sight of what makes them money (i.e., advertisers).
The mainstream media has always been a force for good, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. We need to continue working on the problems of fake news and clickbait, and we also need to make sure that our free press is free from corporate control. If we take these issues seriously, then maybe someday we’ll have an honest-to-goodness solution—and maybe even one that’s more trustworthy than ever before!
