Issue Essay 6
"Media such as books and television tend to create social values rather than reflect them."
The given issue is valid to a very large extent; but a qualification must be made. It is true that today, the values of a society are largely, if not completely, dependent on the influence of the media. The clarification to be indicated is that this has not always been the case; the influence of media on societal values is, as the mathematical phrase goes, directly proportional to the growth of media as a dominant social force.
The so-called "values" of society have always existed in some form or another. Prior to the development of mass media technologies, value systems of societies were inherent or small scale. The organized media is a relatively new invention; it is societal values that have now adapted to encompass it in its entireity now. The media, as we know it today, can be considered to have begun with the European Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages - the time when the first book was printed with the first printing press. From that moment to today where the Internet and other fantastic data communication technologies have created a truly "global village", the relevance of media on social values has steadily been increasing.
Today, a society's values and goals are defined by the intellectual atmosphere that pervades in society at the time. This atmosphere is decided purely by the media. For instance, the recent SARS epidemic is now being considered a pandemic. Countries not directly affected are still . The media has caused a worldwide frenzy - all the various societies of this world are now thinking of only one thing - the best way to avoid it. On the other hand, we can consider other pandemics like the Black Plague that occured in London a few centuries ago, and a similar epidemic that ran through Spain at the same time, killing millions of people. When such epidemics occurred, the lack of fast communication meant that faraway countries such as Japan and Chile had no reason to worry about those epidemics - it had no relevance on their societies or their values. The difference between the two situations is clearly the role the media has had to play in the two eras.
It may be argued that such social values are inherent and come from the subsection of society in which we exist, or even perhaps from within - but not from the influence of the increasingly international media. This is largely untrue, because there is no possible method that a person today can follow by which she can avoid any influence by the rampant media. The media and its offshoots have proliferated to such an extent that its influence cannot be ignored by even the most "insignificant" - to cite an example, even the poorest mendicant in Africa would know something of America and the Statue of Liberty on the shores of New York City; such a possibility would not be extant prior to the media's globalism.
In a sense, today's media is creating new value systems by choosing a stance and "brainwashing" the world so that it reflects such a stance. Numerous examples can be cited to show this. Some may argue that events such as the 1960s "hippie" revolution indicate the revolt of society against forced norms, and that the "true", independently decided societal values showed its face. The obvious flaw in such a stance is that even such events can be related to ...other stuff written within time, but I forgot to copy it to the clipboard
In conclusion, it is reemphasized that the media today is almost the sole creator of "value systems" in the global society, and that it has not always been so. The media's pervasion in society is a direct correlate to its influence on societal values.