Impact and Influence of Media in Shaping Our Indian Society

Media is known as the fourth pillar of democracy due to its important role in shaping public opinion. Today, in this ultra-modern world, the role of media has been augmenting day by day. It has been serving as a vigilant watch dog of India.

There has been a worldwide growth of the Print Media even after the emergence of the electronic media. Moreover, there has been an increase in the circulation of newspapers around the world even after the emergence of electronic media and the internet.

The newspapers play a very important role in the working of any democracy. Our Constitution too grants us the Right to Freedom of Expression which is manifested, in free press in our country. In a democracy, newspapers are the best way of educating people politically and socially.

They play a decisive role not only in updating the public but also in formulating a well-balanced public opinion. The public read about the current events, interpret them and learn to intelligently participate in the political, social and economic affairs of the country.

Introducing Media:

Mass media is communication—whether written, broadcast, or spoken—that reaches a large audience. This includes television, radio, advertising, movies, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, and so forth.

Mass media is a significant force in modern culture everywhere. Sociologists refer to this as a mediated culture where media reflects and creates the culture. Communities and individuals are bombarded constantly with messages from a multitude of sources including TV, billboards, and magazines, to name a few.

These messages promote not only products, but moods, attitudes, and a sense of what is and is not important. Mass media makes possible the concept of celebrity: without the ability of movies, magazines, and news media to reach across thousands of miles, people could not become famous.

In fact, only political and business leaders, as well as the few notorious outlaws, were famous in the past. Only in recent times have actors, singers, and other social elites become celebrities or “stars.”

The current level of media saturation has not always existed. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, television, for example, consisted of primarily three networks, public broadcasting, and a few local independent stations. These channels aimed their programming primarily at two‐parent, middle‐class families.

Even so, some middle‐class households did not even own a television. Today, one can find a television in the poorest of homes, and multiple TVs in most middle‐class homes.

Not only has availability increased, but programming is increasingly diverse with shows aimed to please all ages, incomes, backgrounds, and attitudes. This widespread availability and exposure makes television the primary focus of most mass‐media discussions.

More recently, the Internet has increased its role exponentially as more businesses and households “sign on.”

Although TV and the Internet have dominated the mass media, movies and magazines—particularly those lining the aisles at grocery checkout stands—also play a powerful role in culture, as do other forms of media.

Influence of media on Modern Culture:

In media studies, mass communication, media psychology, communication theory, and sociology, media influence and media effects are topics relating to mass media and media culture's effects on individual or an audience's thoughts, attitudes, and behaviour.

Whether it is written, televised, or spoken, mass media reaches a large audience. Mass media's role and effect in shaping modern culture are central issues for study of culture.

The influence of mass media has an effect on many aspects of human life, which can include voting a certain way, individual views and beliefs, or skewing a person's knowledge of a specific topic due to being provided false information.

The overall influence of mass media has increased drastically over the years, and will continue to do so as the media itself improves. 

As mass media evolve, media criticism also often evolve – and grow in strength – during times of media change with new forms of journalism, new media formats, new media markets, new ways of addressing media markets and new media technologies.

Media influence is the actual force exerted by a media message, resulting in either a change or reinforcement in audience or individual beliefs. Media effects are measurable effects that result from media influence or a media message.

Whether a media message has an effect on any of its audience members is contingent on many factors, including audience demographics and psychological characteristics. These effects can be positive or negative, abrupt or gradual, short-term or long-lasting.

Not all effects result in change; some media messages reinforce an existing belief. Researchers examine an audience after media exposure for changes in cognition, belief systems, and attitudes, as well as emotional, physiological and behavioural effects.

Positive Impact of media on Society:

1.   24/7 news channels help people in staying aware of the happenings around the world. 

2.   News channels strengthen democracy by taking steps to ensure transparency in government. Now those who have power are afraid of news channels, which are taking responsibility to question them on behalf of people. 

3.   News channels make routine news look interesting. Until a few years ago not many people were interested in watching news. But these days’ news channels are as interesting as entertainment channels.

This helps people to gain interest in the happenings around the world and to improve their knowledge.

Negative Impact of media on Society:

1.   News channels exaggerate each and every news and project them as breaking news. They sensationalise everything just for TRP ratings. This is creating unnecessary panic among people. 

2.   News channels concentrate mainly on negative news such as tragic incidents, crime etc. This impacts people negatively. What we consume has direct impact on our happiness levels. 

3.   To earn more money, many news channels are opting for paid news and are manipulating people. This phenomenon is on the rise especially at the time of elections and this is resulting in lack of trust on news channels. 

4.   Some political parties have news channels of their own. This results in biased news to influence voters. 

Psychological Effects of media on humans:

There are great deals of awful things that occur on the planet, and it is correct that individuals should think about these things and the first source of receiving such news is through TV.

Both good and bad news is aired on the TV and at times watching such terrible things incorporate wrongdoing, starvation, war, viciousness, political turmoil, and trauma, all of these can affect your brain in ways that could have a serious negative impact on your emotions. 

In any case, there is likewise an expanding inclination for news telecasters to “emotionalize” their news and to do such by stressing any potential negative results of a story regardless of how low the dangers of those negative results may be.

This is essentially alarming at each accessible open door so as to emotionalize the effect of a news story.

Since we currently have 24-hour news inclusion, gone are the days when a reporter or writer’s job was just to depict unbiased occurrence of the surroundings and that of far off places—as a result of satellite TV, we have a practically prompt visual record of what’s going on, all through the world.

So the writer’s activity can get one of assessing the news story, and it is just a little advanced from assessing a story to sensationalizing it. 

News notices likewise need to contend with amusement programs for their group of spectators and their primetime TV space, and they appear to do this by accentuating significant material, for example, wrongdoing, war, or starvation to the damage of increasingly positive material. 

No one is perfect in this world and so is the media. Here we are not degrading the media, rather we would say there is still a lot of scope for improvement by which media can raise up to the aspirations of the people for which it is meant. We cannot think of a democracy without active and neutral media.

Media is like a watchdog in a democracy that keeps government active. From being just an informer it has become an integral part of our daily lives. With the passage of time it has become a more matured and a more responsible entity.

The present media revolution has helped people in making an informed decisions and this has led to beginning of a new era in a democracy.

 

Written by – Sakshi Chauhan