My view of mass media is that they are there to inform and entertain us. I watched TV and used the internet as a normal America not thinking of what I was being exposed to. For two days I kept a record of the mass media I used and how its effect me and society. Football, boxing, reality shows, music, text messages and oh yeah a lot of commercials, were some of the things I was exposed to. During these two days I tried to stay away from the news because the news is just depressing and they only tell you all the bad things going on in the world. Makes me perceive the world as a terrible place and that it’s full with killers. The major news corporations are run by the government and they say what will be reported to the people. A typical news broadcast goes like this. Good evening and welcome to tonight’s news in the news today murder murder murder and in other news death, and now sports and weather. Even on the newspapers typically the most scandalous things make the front page. People in our society are more interested in all the negative things in life. Thinking as a sociologist I realized that the media has us under their control, by using subliminal messages in TV, internet ads. The subliminals I came across in commercials and ads was that the companies that were selling the product want us to say to ourselves, I need this product to survive and this product is better than those other products out there. For example there are many companies that sell the same water they each say that there water is the best tasting, we’re not really buying the water we’re just buying the brand. That goes for all products companies are selling to us. I would rather buy a pair of Jordan’s than buy a pair of payless shoes just because of the brand. Some of the norms I saw when I watched football and boxing was that people are fascinated with violence. Football is a very violent sport my dad still doesn’t understand why they play it. People cheer at football games when someone receives a hard hit from an opposing player. The way people were gathering around for the Mayweather Ortiz fight was kind of barbaric. People wanted to see someone get beat up not thinking what if one of them get hit so hard they die right in the ring, that would defiantly make the front page news. On worldstarhiphop.com people post their homemade videos of street fights in the back ground you can hear people saying get em, hit him in his head, and cheering when someone get knocked out once again not thinking what if this person dies because of this fight. Another norm I noticed in the media is the use of females and minorities in ads. They use females to push their products on men. For example the axe commercials they use females lightly dressed chasing after a male because he used the body spray. Saying to the males if you use this product you will get females to chase after you too. Minorities are rarely used in ads if so it’s balanced out. Most ads on TV are white males and white females. Which make me think that when the companies design their product they didn’t have they didn’t design it for minorities to use. Another norm that I noticed was that we don’t communicate face to face or voice to voice anymore. I can have a full conversation with my friend that lives two blocks down and continue on with my day. The only thing with texting is that it’s not instant the person could take forever to reply back to you, which always happens to me, and the conversation doesn’t flow like it should. The value that I picked up on is that the football players and other professional athletic sports get paid more than a person that graduated with their doctorates. This says that education in America is not that important no matter how much they say it is. If you have an athletic talent you don’t need four years of college, kids want to grow up to be ball players and not doctors and lawyers anymore. That’s why in previous years NBA players were coming out of high school into the NBA making millions at the age of eighteen or nineteen. Now they changed it you have to have at least two years of college before entering the draft. The effect of mass media on our society is felt every day, from the values of professional sports and not education, to the norms of companies’ views on women and minorities when it comes to their product, and the subliminal messages in their ads.
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