Yu Ning’s blog

Hello!! As you can tell by the topic, today I will be sharing with you about ‘media effects’!

What is wrong with the media effects model?

Let’s start of with asking ourselves what is the definition of ‘media effects’? Media effects is the behavior ,actions or opinions of humans that the media have influence them to have. Media thus is a powerful tool that shapes and influence the minds of people in both the positive and negative ways.

Media effects model involve dystopian view, utopian view and the communication process model. The communication process model is a incomplete model which is seem as very mechanistic. Human communications or how the media communicates with people are more complex as it seems and therefore there is the dystopian and utopian view. I feel that the media effects model functions to show the rough idea of how communication works to let humans understand. When someone tries to convey a message, the receiver will need to decode the message. However, communication happens all around the world where different languages exist and through different mode. The message can be conveyed via written or spoken. Even if humans share the same language, there are times where they will interpret the message that the sender is trying to convey differently.

There was once when I was watching my boyfriend play league of legend, this was our dialogue:
BF: Waaaa BB his com dam strong!!!
Me: What is com? Community ah? Hahaha
BF: *facepalm* is ermm…team
Despite him speaking in English, I did not understand what he was trying to convey as I do not play game thus was unsure about the language gamer use. Therefore interpreted his meaning differently.

Like what I mention, the media is a very powerful tool which can influence people’s mind in both the positive and negative ways. When I was young I used to love watching crime-watch where it will show various crimes that offenders have committed. The purpose of crime-watch is to teach us not to commit the same crime and to learn from their mistakes. This is the positive side about the media. However, there will be no doubt that some people might decode the message wrongly of what crime-watch is trying to convey. Instead of being influence in the positive way, they might try to commit the same crime thinking is fun and cool. Hence, in this case we cannot push the blame to the media but the individual that committed the mistake.

In my opinion, I believe that media is just an external factor . Why is that so? If one is able to think positive and differentiate what is right and what is wrong, no matter how much negativity the media shows, the person’s mind is strong enough to get influence. Giving a personal experience, I was once a very obese girl. I felt very insecure about my body because my friends were all making fun of me and the main cause was the media which always shows pretty girls with perfect body shapes that all girls dream to have. At that time, my mind was filled with negativity and insecurities about myself. I did not have the confidence to dress nicely and I would not leave the house unless I have school. Thinking back, I was a silly girl to let the media take over my mind and my emotions. I am still learning to feel more confident and secure about myself but at least I am happy now. The media can bring about negative effects which can be to the people around you and also to yourself.

In conclusion, media plays an important part in influencing our minds, however as individual it is important to think of the positive and be influence by the positive.

Let’s move on to some interesting questions about the role of media today in the shaping of mass opinion.

(1)How does the media obtain the trust of the people to rely on what they say, as compared to the people doing their own research?
Not all people will solely rely on the media to obtain the information that they need. However, there are some who believe everything that the media shows. But why?

Over several years the media has presented a good reputation where it produces objective source of news. This has influence people to rely on the media to obtain their source of news or information, as people would think that the media is unbiased and reliable. For example, The Straits Time, Channel 8 News and Channel News Asia which are known to be unbiased, objective and trustworthy. These news media have obtained the trust of many people to rely them to get the latest and breaking news from Singapore and around the world. However, news media can also be used as a form of propaganda to influence the opinion of people. For example, North Korea uses the media to communicate and brainwash their society. Information and news between North Korea and the outside world are strictly controlled by the North Korean government. In addition, whatever news that are being broadcast to the North Koreans are usually being filtered where majority broadcast about their country itself. North Korea do not have the freedom of speech and the press. Hence the North Koreans only have one source for information and thus have no choice but to rely and trust it as they do not have other news media to compare the reliability of the news. In other words, it is not wrong to trust information provided by the media, however it is good to not let media take over our mind and opinion.

(2)Many are easily influence by what the media says, but has the media been doing right to influence them positively?

Media has the power to influence and shapes people’s opinion for the better or for the worse, it depends on what it broadcast or show to the mass. There is no doubt that there will be a mixture of both positive and negative effect on how media affects humans. However, I feel that despite there are negative influence shown on media, it depends on the human whether he or she wants to be influence or affected by it. If one mind is strong enough to stand firm in what they believe is right, they would be not easily influence by negative stuff shown on media. Of course, there will still be people who will be easily influence. I believe positive media will attracts positive actions. Positive media thus should be way more than the negativity to influence more positive influence as compared to the negative. No one would want the world to be influence negativity which might attracts the ‘evil’ making the world an unhappy place to live in.

Thank you for taking your time to read!

Yu Ning 🙂