An Exploration of Media and its Effects on Social Rleationships: "Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audience" by David Croteau and William Hoynes

Media is becoming an important aspect of today’s society. Each and every day, people interact with media of many different forms. Media is commonly defined as being a channel of communication. “Our everyday lives are saturated by radio, television, newspapers, books, the Internet, movies, recorded music, magazines, and more. In the twenty-first century, we navigate through a vast mass media environment unprecedented in human history.” (Croteau and Hoynes, p. 3)This is also true when we say media companies do not impose their own control upon the information being supplied to media users. Since many people use media frequently, we can assume that it affects people. According to the text book Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audience, by David Croteau and William Hoynes the effects of media are determined and explored through the main topics of homogenization of media, social inequality and media, and the effects of media on social relationships.

As a culture we understand homogenization to be the blending of unlike properties together. The mass majority of media, in the United States, are owned in operated by wealthy individuals as well as corporations. To understand how these corporations gain so much power we look at the term horizontal integration. This is defined as, “the process by which one company buys different kinds of media, concentrating ownership across differing types of media rather than “up and down” through one industry.” (Croteau and Hoynes, p 40) We understand conglomeration as, few media companies and the few owners are dominating these companies. Since the media corporations are privately owned and controlled by privileged power elite, much of the information reported to the American public, is th...

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... bigger role in my life that before taking this class I never would have realized before. When did this chapter we also watched a video on the New Mexico Literacy Project. An organization in American working toward educating Americans on the media we see daily, how to interpret it and this makes us see how media can really affect the relationships.

Media is a factor in our lives that goes way beyond the television. Through reading Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audience, by David Croteau and William Hoynes I have come to better understand and see how the media really is a major factor in our day to day lives. Media comes in many forms, is complex and a world wide concept. Media plays a roles in our relationships, it a unique industry that is a very dog eat dog industry and we see how the media so has a negative impact on society with social inequality.