Media Influence On Identity

The media is an inescapable constant in the daily lives of people today in most parts of the world; in Europe for instance people are spending, on average, seven hours a day on various forms of media outlets NEED REFERENCE. The media, being an all-encompassing aspect of today’s society, inevitably has the power to influence the way we perceive things thus contributing to the development of our personal identity and self-definition. The media informs, educates and entertains at a faster rate than ever before. Considering this, it is important to realise the consequences that the media has on society - it can be complex and it can manipulate ones’ personal identity and self-definition in both a positive and a negative way. Personal identity can

be defined as “an individual's comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity”1 – Wikipedia – whilst self-definition is “the evaluation by oneself of one's worth as an individual in distinction from one's interpersonal or social roles” – Merriam Webster dictionary – Essentially personal identity develops in parallel with life experience and builds character, whereas self-definition is how people describe themselves and consider themselves to be seen by others. I will investigate ways in which the media can be both positive and negative in relation to our opinions and personal development.

The impacts of the media mean that people are influenced on how they react to certain events, and the actions they may wish to take as a consequence of what they have learned and how they wish to be perceived.

A contributing factor of how the media is able to positively influence our opinions is the access it provides to information, at an almost instant rate that extends to an international scale. Most recently, following the ISIS terror attacks carried out in Paris; people were informed of the events within hours all around the world GIVE A STATISTIC, maybe find a French one as I can’t find one. The response of the general public on discovering the news was overwhelmingly positive in support of the people of France, in spite of the negativity of the occurrence. The media was the leading example to demonstrate how people all over the world were affected predominantly in a positive manner both in terms of self-definition and personal identity as a result of the terrorist attack. As often is the case in today’s society social media is the fastest and primary outlet that the public use to communicate, react and respond to events around the world. The social network Twitter REFERENCE – maybe you need to put the twitter website? announced on 7th December 2015 that the most talked about subject on their social network was the attacks in Paris with nine million uses of the #JeSuisParis hashtag. The use of social media websites in particular portrays most clearly the feelings of

the people in reaction to the attacks. For instance via twitter, the people of Paris were able to communicate with one another safely and encourage each other to spread positive messages, most notably through the use of the hashtag “#porteouverte” (which was used to inform people of a residence where they could find safe shelter). The incredibly positive outcome of this was that the people of Paris created the hashtag themselves, thus proving that the media clearly influenced them to communicate using the media tools provided (social media applications). Furthermore Facebook (also a social media network) created a ‘mark safe’ application in response to the previous terrorist attacks committed earlier this year in Paris - allowing people to instantly inform family and friends that they were safe – as well as offering a tool that enabled all users (an astonishing 1.19 billion) to edit their profile image to the colour scheme of the Tricolour. These simple yet effective ways of portraying one unified message of support and empathy for the people of France demonstrated a strong sense of solidarity on a both a national and international level – and by making the message easily identifiable the likes of these media outlets enabled people everywhere to take action and they chose to publicly and vociferously. These actions, reactions and displays of positivity are all consequences of how the personal identity of the people was altered and the self-definition of the people was greatly influenced by the media alone on this topic, as it became a priority above all else at the time.