The Role of Media in Our Current Society

For two years, I lived in the Fiji islands. Being somewhat remote and third world, Fiji did not have the technology that was blossoming and taking hold in the rest of the world. We had very small incidence of it when we saw tourists and other travelers with iPads and iPhones (which I used to think was useless and unlikely to flourish). When my time in Fiji came to an end, it was like coming home to a completely new culture and society. Part of my culture shock undoubtedly came from the difference in culture from Fiji to America, but there were definitely some things that I noticed that I do not believe were part of our society before my time in Fiji.

The first thing that was somewhat shocking to me was the use of social media to lead public opinion and the amount of time that people generally spend on social media networks. I will admit that I was quickly pulled into the using of such media as facebook and gmail. I noticed though that many posts were politically charged and opinionated where as facebook was more of a friendship and networking site in the past. I feel like it is definitely a two-edged sword to have so much opinion and politics floating around in a website that attracts a lot of public attention. A positive aspect of it is the fact that it makes opinions and points of view more accessible to the general public thus promoting freedom of speech and opinion. However, a negative aspect is that many people seem to take things they read on social media as pure solid fact, and absolute truth, rather than as opinion or politically slanted material.

The second thing that was shocking to me was the extreme polarity in news media, especially in respect to politics. While nothing is new in that, I realized that a lot of people believed everything they heard on the news as fact. It seems like the general populace used to realize that news stations generally portrayed a more liberal bias and slant to news and others the conservative side. Newspapers obviously was using news stories for its political agenda to advocate gun control. I am not saying those shootings did not happen, and I am not saying that the issues should go one way or the other. I think that we have to carefully research political and social topics gathering sources from many different biases and use our personal experience to develop our opinion and political view. It seems to me foolish to rely solely on one source for opinion and fact with out evaluating the credibility of sources and the bias of the media.

I personally believe that the media has had a very negative impact on general society lately. It seems that the media focuses solely on things that are going wrong and completely neglects, or minimizes solutions and positive outcomes. While there is certainly not enough room in any newspaper or time on any television show to portray all news, I believe that the general populace is best served when news is served with little bias, and when stories are chosen to bolster hope and motivate the populace rather than to defame and slander public leaders and cause anxiety among the general people. I do not advocate the media hiding corruption or misleading the public to think everything is alright when it is not, but I believe that positive media could bolster the discouraged public and help people come to solutions and come to understanding. In the end, I think one of the primary goals of media should not be entertainment, but should be the promotion of understanding and portrayal of truth.

I hope that we will all seek for the truth when we form opinion on public issues and when making judgements of political leaders. I hope to that we can respect other people's opinions that are different than ours. I feel like a lot can be learned from those who think differently from us, even if we do not ever agree with them.