descriptive essay discussing the implication of media and information

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The Impact of Social Media: Causes and Effects

Categories: Effects of Social Media Social Media

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

Words: 1226 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Introduction, cause 1: increased connectivity and communication, cause 2: promotion of self-expression and individuality, cause 3: access to information and awareness, effect 1: impacts on mental health, effect 2: influence on societal norms and values, effect 3: privacy and security concerns.

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International Media and Information Literacy e-Platform

Unit 1: Understanding Media and Information Literacy – An Orientation
Unit 2: MIL, Civic Participation and Right to Information
Unit 3: Interacting with media and other content providers such as libraries, archives and internet communications companies
Unit 4: MIL, digital skills, cultural participation/creativity and entrepreneurship
Unit 5: MIL, Teaching and Lifelong Learning

Unit 1: Understanding Media and Information Literacy - An orientation

Defining the similarities and differences between 'information' and 'media'
Exploring the importance of the content providers
Describing key learning outcomes of media and information literacy

Learning Objectives

At the end of this module educators should be able to:

Identify key learning outcomes/elements and convergence of media and information literacy and digital skills
Understand media and information literacy, and its importance and relevance in the lives of learners and educators today
Identify and explore the normative roles of content providers such as libraries, archives, museums, media, digital communications companies
Explore these roles as manifested (or absent) in a variety of texts

Level of Competencies Targeted in this Unit:

Basic / Intermediate

Multiple Roles of Media

Media, digital communication companies, and other content providers play a central role in information and communication processes. They are one way of communicating information, although their role is much broader than that. To the extent that such media are an important part of every society’s communication system, their institutional make-up is often meshed with a variety of non-media content providers, such as libraries, museums, archives, Internet communication companies, other information organizations and citizens who produce their own content.

For the purpose of this MIL curriculum, news media are normatively defined (irrespective of the nature and technologies used) as sources of credible and current information created through an editorial process determined by journalistic values whereby editorial accountability can be attributed to a specific organization or a legal person. This is not to ignore the realities where norms are not lived up to – such as through “media capture” cases and other normative failures, which is why critical thinking, through MIL, should be applied to the media as to all the content providers.

Media and other content providers can be assessed as to whether they live up to their normative roles. They are expected to:

Act as channels of information and knowledge through which citizens communicate with each other and make informed decisions
Facilitate informed debates between diverse social actors
Provide us with much of what we learn about the world beyond our immediate experience and serve as means by which a society learns about itself and builds a sense of community
Function as a watchdog of government in all its forms, and promote transparency in public life and public scrutiny of those in power through exposing corruption, maladministration and corporate wrong-doing
Be essential facilitators of democratic processes and one of the guarantors of free and fair elections
Be a vehicle for cultural expression and cultural cohesion within and between nations
Function transparently as an advocate and social actor in their own right while respecting pluralistic values

Convergence

UNESCO and experts in different fields, have coined the umbrella concept of media and information literacy bringing together related fields that have the same overall learning objective to empower learners and citizens to develop critical skills in the consumption, use, creation and sharing of content.

Information could be grouped into primary sources, for example research reports, and theses; secondary sources, for example books, journals, magazines, newspapers; and tertiary sources taken from primary and secondary sources, such as databases, repositories, and bibliographies. On one side, MIL addresses textual outputs (either electronic or paper-based publications) that normally undergo peer-review and long editing processes. This is intellectual property from which citations, references and bibliography can be taken. MIL is also about mass media which considers the subtleties of image, colour, and sound in messages availed by different providers, such as television, social networks, and filmmaking companies. Although institutions do not always live up to normative expectations, the media broadly should exist to inform, educate and entertain.

See Table (1.1) which illustrates the relation and convergence of content, issues, methods, tools, components of information, media, and technology.

Pedagogical Approaches and Activities

In summary: as discussed earlier in this Curriculum (Part 1) various pedagogical approaches are possible. Please review the list in Part 1 and decide which approach to apply to the suggested Activities below and others that you may formulate.

Consider the characteristics of MIL described in Figure 1 in the Media and Information Literacy Curriculum and Competency Framework for Educators (Part 1). Discuss each characteristic. Write down what each of these means to you. Do you think this description is complete? What do you think should be included?

Media literacy
Library literacy
Computer literacy
Freedom of expression literacy
Internet literacy
Digital literacy
News literacy
Cinema literacy
Games literacy
Social media literacy
AI literacy
Data literacy
Safety literacy
Security literacy
Privacy literacy

Using the Internet or a library, research various definitions of each of these terminologies. What do you observe about the relationship between and among these individual terminologies or notions of MIL? Write one paragraph describing what would be your rationale for combining media literacy and information literacy as MIL.

Sourcing Information

The proper use of information made available by media and various information providers depends on people’s abilities to understand their information needs, and to locate, retrieve and evaluate the quality of the information they can access. Today, there is an extremely wide and diverse selection of information material, content, and resources available, particularly on the Internet, varying greatly in accuracy, reliability, and value. In addition, this information exists in a variety of forms (e.g. as text, image or statistic, electronically or in print), that can be made available through online repositories and portals, virtual and real libraries and documentary collections, databases, archives, museums, etc. The most important factor, however, is that the quality of this information can range from ‘very good’ to ‘very bad’.

Before evaluating information sources, it is important to think about what the information is for. This will help you to identify credible information sources. The key questions might be:

What source or what kind of source would be the most credible for providing information in this particular case? Which sources are likely to be fair, objective, lacking hidden motives, showing quality control?

We can think of information as being held by media and other information providers, such as libraries, museums, archives and the Internet.

Information providers roles

facilitate teaching and learning processes
provide access to all types of information (often free of charge, plural, reliable and without restrictions)
serve as a gateway to information
promote universal values and civil rights, such as freedom of expression and information
serve as society’s collective memory
gather information
preserve cultural heritage

At the same time, these providers sometimes play other over-riding roles as means to make money, as a political tool, as a cultural hegemony, etc

List of activities and exercices

Explore content differences among various types of content providers, for example: which provide more information than advertising or entertainment; which give oxygen to misinformation or hate speech. Also identify the content types - for example, monographic vs serial formats and understand how they differ. Learners could explain what is the difference between each type of publication as appropriate; and name two examples for each type of publication.
Library catalogues are a source of quality information. Ask learners to familiarize themselves with the key entries: author, title and subject, and define a topic and search for two sources of every type of information and media that they can find.
Survey the media to find resources or media texts that are examples of the functions listed above. Identify texts that illustrate these roles on a local, national and global level.
Compare the characteristics of library catalogues so you can use them to find the information you are researching in order to optimize time and dedication. a) Mention the library catalogues you are familiar with and search for four more, preferably from colleges. b) Do a search on a topic of your interest in the catalogues that you consider to be the best among those consulted. c) List five references of books or other materials that you found in the catalogues that you consider to be the best. Reflect on and provide arguments as to why you think they are the best.
Survey college/university or public libraries to find books or other resources which provide information about sustainable development, democracy, other parts of the world, different cultures, social and economic life, or other issues of interest to you. Explore questions such as: Who decides on the level of resources that should be allocated to libraries? Who decides which books should be included in the library and which should be excluded? Who decides which books are more important than others? How does budget and copyright impact on role? Are libraries serving their purposes? (A similar activity could be organized for museums or archives).
The media can encourage the development and building of a nation but can also foster exclusivist nationalism. Discuss how and why media exercise these functions. Think about the content of the media in your country. How many different points of view can you find on development, nation building and national interests and from which perspective?
Search the web to find stories relating to the deliberate destruction of libraries, museums or archives or certain books due to war, conflicts, etc. How can you verify that this story is true? Given that this is the first unit, educators may not have been exposed to the requisite skills to answer this question, so should signal this as an upcoming competence and move on to the other questions. How could the destruction of media, libraries, archives, and of digital communications and other resources, affect people, their history or culture? What are some other implications, based on your observation, of such actions?
What is public domain information? Research how public domain information is treated by two government institutions in your country. Debate the adequacy of information provided by these institutions. Are there national policies for how information should be made public? Do access to information laws exist in your country? Are these being used? What are citizens’ entitlements to transparency?
Based on the answers provided from the activity suggested above, indicate the outcomes for media and information literacy (what the media and information literate person should be able to do).
Make a list of media that are present in the daily lives of learners and educators today. What are the key roles and functions that each of these media perform? What do you think it means to be ‘literate’ when it comes to using these content providers? What knowledge, skills and attitudes are necessary?
Keep a journal for one day in which you record your daily use and interaction with content providers, such as libraries, archives, museums, media and digital communications companies. What patterns emerge in your personal use? How many hours do you spend engaged with platforms such as the Internet, television or radio, gaming devices, etc.? What roles are these content providers playing in your life?
Take a walking tour of your school or neighbourhood. List the examples of content providers that are present in these environments. Which of the roles listed above do these examples illustrate?

Imagine that you wake up one day and there are no more media, libraries, or

institutions offering lnternet and mobile telephone services. ln addition, all newspapers, magazines, radio stations and TV channels have disappeared. Analyse in small groups what would happen to citizens:

How would they be informed now?
How would they communicate news about facts and events?
What would happen with the decisions you usually make?
What would you – personally – most miss in such a situation?
What would society lose with this kind of problem?
Write a ‘letter to the editor’ with your conclusions on the value of the content providers in a democratic society, provided they live up to their normative roles.

Importance of MIL for Citizens

MIL is concerned with giving people an understanding of the importance of content providers such as libraries, archives, museums, media and Internet communications companies in order to:

differentiate between information and other content, and assess content providers
make informed decisions
learn about information verification through reseach
build a sense of community based on shared facts and rights respecting narratives
maintain public discourse conducive to democracy and sustainable development
critically participate in the life cycle of information and other content
engage in lifelong learning

Further, MIL should spur citizens to become active producers of information and innovators of media and information products. MIL should incite them to use new and traditional media for self-realization, creativity and greater participation in their country’s democracy and the global information network.

Assessment & Recommendations

Written examinations
Essays, reflection and reaction papers to lectures, case studies, audioviual presentations/viewings
Participation in grup learning activities
Production of information-education-communication materials (e.g. posters, brochures, infographics, social media cards, vlogs)
Research paper
Investigative story/report

Writing A Descriptive Essay

TIP Sheet WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY

The aim of description is to make sensory details vividly present to the reader. Although it may be only in school that you are asked to write a specifically descriptive essay, description is an important element in many kinds of writing. Description embedded in an argument paper, for example, may be intended to make a position more persuasive. However, in this TIP Sheet we will discuss the descriptive essay as it is commonly assigned by instructors as an exercise in organizing sensory information and choosing vivid details.

Showing vs. telling Sensory details are details of smell, taste, texture, and sound as well as sight. If you choose "showing" words, those that supply vivid sensory details appropriate to your subject and purpose, you will succeed in showing rather than telling . "Telling" words are usually vague or ambiguous; they can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The following first example mostly makes statements about what is lacking in the room, whereas the second example describes the sights, textures, smells, and sounds of the empty room:

Telling: The empty room smelled stale and was devoid of furniture or floor covering; the single window lacked curtains or blinds of any kind.

Showing: The apartment smelled of old cooking odors, cabbage, and mildew; our sneakers squeaked sharply against the scuffed wood floors, which reflected a haze of dusty sunlight from the one cobwebbed, gritty window.

"Showing" uses very specific details: cabbage and mildew, scuffed and dusty floors, unwashed windows. Though the writer of the second example does not actually use the word "empty," she nevertheless suggests emptiness and disuse. The suggestion of emptiness in the second example is more vivid than the statement of emptiness in the first. If you don't think the first example is vague, look at another possible interpretation of that empty room:

Showing: The sharp odor of fresh paint cut through the smell of newsprint. Four stacked cartons of inkjet printer paper sat squarely in the middle of a concrete floor, illuminated by a shaft of morning light from a sparkling chrome-framed window on the opposite wall.

Do not mistake explanation for description. Explanation is a kind of telling that interjects background material that does not contain sensory details or contribute to the overall effect–a character's motives or history, for example:

Explanation: The tenants had moved out a week earlier because the house was being sold to a developer. No one had bothered to dust or clean because they assumed the apartment was going to be knocked down and replaced with single-family homes like those built just a block away.

When description devolves into explanation (telling rather than showing), it becomes boring.

Observing details Once you are ready to abandon the attempt to explain or to tell about , evaluate your subject in terms of visual, auditory, and other sensory details. Think in concrete terms. The more you are interested in and connected to the subject, the easier it will be to interest your reader, so if you describe a person, choose a person whose characteristics stand out to you. If you describe a place or a thing, choose one that is meaningful to you.

You are painting a picture that must be as clear and real as possible, so observe carefully and, preferably, in person. Note what sets this subject apart from others like it. If the subject is a person, include physical characteristics and mannerisms. Describe abstractions such as personality traits only insofar as you can observe them. For example, do not tell the reader your biology instructor is a neat, meticulous person; show your reader the instructor's "dust-free computer monitor and stacks of papers with corners precisely aligned, each stack sitting exactly three thumb-widths from the edge of the desk." How a subject interacts with others is fair game for description if you can observe the interaction. On the other hand, a subject's life history and world perspective may not be, unless you can infer them, for example, from the photos on his walls or the books on his bookshelf.

Similarly, if the subject of your description is an object or a place, you may include not only its physical appearance but also its geographic, historical, or emotional relevance-as long as you show or suggest it using sensory details, and avoid explaining.

Deciding on a purpose Even description for description's sake should have a purpose. Is there an important overall impression you wish to convey? A central theme or general point? This is your thesis; organize your essay around it. For example, you might describe your car as your home away from home, full of snack foods, changes of clothing, old issues of the Chico News & Review , textbooks, and your favorite music. Or, you might describe your car as an immaculate, beautiful, pampered woman on whom you lavish attention and money. Just don't describe your car in cold, clinical detail, front to back (or bottom to top, or inside to outside) without having in mind the purpose, the overall impression you want to create. To achieve this impression, you should not necessarily include all details; use only those that suit your purpose.

Avoid telling a story unless it is of central importance to the description or an understanding of it. Keep background information to an absolute minimum or avoid it altogether.

Organizing Extended description that lacks organization has a confusing, surreal quality and easily loses readers' interest, so choose an organizational plan. Use whatever progression seems logical–left to right, inside to outside, top to bottom-and stick to it. For example, it does not make sense to describe a person's facial features and hair, then his sonorous voice and impressive vocabulary, and then return to details about his eyebrows and glasses.

A quote from your subject or a brief anecdote about him or her may provide an interesting introduction (or conclusion); dialogue can be a great way to add interest to a descriptive essay. In your introduction, you might be permitted to make general, abstract statements (tell about) your subject or supply background information, as long as you demonstrate these points concretely later in the body of your essay.

Use vivid nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and appropriate metaphors, similes, comparisons, and contrasts. Avoid clichés.

Like the introduction, the conclusion is another place you can get away with reflecting about your subject: Why did you write this description? What is its significance to you? To your reader? If you have achieved your purpose, your conclusion should only confirm in the reader's mind what you have already shown him by your use of selected sensory details.

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3.5: Descriptive Essays

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Kathryn Crowther et al.
Georgia Perimeter College via GALILEO Open Learning Materials

Writing a Description Essay

Choosing a subject is the first step in writing a description essay. Once you have chosen the person, place, or object you want to describe, your challenge is to write an effective thesis statement to guide your essay. The remainder of your essay describes your subject in a way that best expresses your thesis. Remember, you should have a strong sense of how you will organize your essay. Choose a strategy and stick to it. Every part of your essay should use vivid sensory details. The more you can appeal to your readers’ senses, the more they will be engaged in your essay. You can read two sample essays at the end of this section.

Sample Thesis Statement

Although Minnesota may seem drab and cold to outsiders, natives of the state find it a wonderful place to live.

We can see in this thesis statement that the writer will attempt to show the aspects of Minnesota that make it a great place to live. After detailing a thesis statement, you should come up with a list of sensory words that provide vivid detail and support the thesis. You may start by thinking about the five senses. How does your particular place look, smell, feel, taste, and sound like? How can you best describe these senses so the reader feels what you feel? By organizing the elements of descriptive language into easier to handle sections, like the five senses, you are able to more specifically engage in what elements of the description are most useful.

Order of Presentation

The writer in this case could choose to present the positive aspects of Minnesota in terms of the seasons and weather changes. The details could be presented linearly, starting with spring and going through the winter, highlighting the aspects of each season that most closely support the thesis, that Minnesota is a great place to live.

Prior to starting the essay, give some thought to the audience of your piece. Who is going to read the essay, and what effect would you like it to have upon the readers? An awareness of audience is important in choosing the level of formality you take with your writing. Knowing your audience will also help you distinguish which details to include throughout your essay. Assume that your audience knows very little or nothing about your subject matter, and include details that may seem obvious to you.

Example Audience: In this particular essay, the writer wants to show an outsider to the state why Minnesota natives are so happy to live there. The essay should help break down stereotypes for those outsiders about Minnesota’s cold weather and apparent drabness. Because the essay is designed for those who do not live in Minnesota, and maybe have never been there, it is important to include details about the state that may seem obvious to a native.

With the preparatory work complete, it is time now to begin writing your essay. Use your thesis statement to begin to construct an introductory paragraph. The introduction should set up the basis for your essay, and the thesis statement should state its purpose.

Example Introduction

Many who have not traveled to the state of Minnesota only hear of its cold weather and boring reputation. They are sure missing out on the great opportunities that Minnesota affords. Each season offers different senses that native Minnesotans and tourists know and love. Although Minnesota may seem drab and cold to outsiders, natives of the state find it a wonderful place to live.

With the introduction complete, it is time to start constructing the body paragraphs of your essay. Each body paragraph should have a central theme in itself, and that theme should be represented in a topic sentence. Consequently, each sentence of the paragraph should relate to and support the topic sentence. The body paragraphs are where the majority of the details should be given. When writing the first draft of your descriptive essay, include as many details as is reasonably possible. You can always eliminate the ones that do not serve the essay as well when you are revising your draft. In the case of the Minnesota nature essay, we have decided to set up the body paragraphs in terms of season, starting with spring.

Example Body Paragraph

Spring in Minnesota brings new life to the state after the long winter season. The rain washes the landscape clean, leaving its fresh aroma for all to enjoy. The flowers soak up the golden sun’s rays and begin to show their vibrant colors. The first birds can be seen and heard throughout the woods and fields, telling their stories in beautiful songs. The lakes begin to show their glossy finish as the ice melts away slowly under the heat of the season.

With the body paragraphs complete, it is time to bring the essay to a close with the conclusion. The conclusion should draw a conclusion based on what has been presented throughout the body of the essay. It needs to return to the thesis, but not in an overt way. The conclusion should give the reader a final sense of what the essay was meant to portray. Remember that there should not be any new material introduced in the conclusion, and the way it is worded should give the reader a sense of finality.

Example Conclusion

The variety of activities and distinct seasons found in Minnesota reveal diverse beauty of this state. As one considers the benefits of each season, it becomes clearer why so many native Minnesotans are content with their home state. Minnesota is truly a wonderful place to live.

With the essay complete, it is time to reread and revise your essay (also see revision sections of this textbook). Read your first draft and pinpoint all of the descriptor words you used. If possible, go back and add more after the ones you already used in the essay. If you can, read your essay aloud to a friend and have him/her tell you what images are vivid and what images need more development. Rework any images that are cloudy with more descriptions. Also, check to see if your descriptions have made use of all of the five senses: sound, smell, texture, sight, and taste. Repeat these steps as many times as necessary until you are happy with your product.

Sample Descriptive Essays

America's Pastime

As the sun hits my face and I breathe in the fresh air, I temporarily forget that I am at a sporting event. But, when I open my eyes and look around, I am reminded of all things American. From the national anthem to the international players on the field, all the sights and sounds of a baseball game come together like a slice of Americana pie.

First, the entrance turnstiles click and clank, and then a hallway of noise bombards me. All the fans’ voices coalesce in a chorus of sound, rising to a humming clamor. The occasional, “Programs, get your programs, here!” jumps out through the hum to get my attention. I navigate my way through the crowded walkways of the stadium, moving to the right of some people, and to the left of others, I eventually find the section number where my seat is located. As I approach my seat I hear the announcer’s voice echo around the ball park, “Attention fans. In honor of our country, please remove your caps for the singing of the national anthem.” His deep voice echoes around each angle of the park, and every word is heard again and again. The crowd sings and hums “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and I feel a surprising amount of national pride through the voices. I take my seat as the umpire shouts, “Play ball!” and the game begins.

In the fifth inning of the game, I decide to find a concessions stand. Few tastes are as American as hot dogs and soda pop, and they cannot be missed at a ball game. The smell of hot dogs carries through the park, down every aisle, and inside every concourse. They are always as unhealthy as possible, dripping in grease, while the buns are soft and always too small for the dog. The best way to wash down the Ball Park Frank is with a large soda pop, so I order both. Doing my best to balance the cold pop in one hand and the wrapped-up dog in the other, I find the nearest condiments stand to load up my hot dog. A dollop of bright green relish and chopped onions, along with two squirts of the ketchup and mustard complete the dog. As I continue the balancing act between the loaded hot dog and pop back to my seat, a cheering fan bumps into my pop hand. The pop splashes out of the cup and all over my shirt, leaving me drenched. I make direct eye contact with the man who bumped into me. He looks me in the eye, looks at my shirt, and tells me how sorry he is. I just shake my head and keep walking. “It’s all just part of the experience,” I tell myself.

Before I am able to get back to my seat, I hear the crack of a bat, followed by an uproar from the crowd. Everyone is standing, clapping, and cheering. I missed a home run. I find my aisle and ask everyone to excuse me as I slip past them to my seat. “Excuse me. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry,” is all I can say as I inch past each fan. Halfway to my seat I can hear discarded peanut shells crunch beneath my feet, and each step is marked with a pronounced crunch.

When I finally get to my seat I realize it is the start of the seventh inning stretch. I quickly eat my hot dog and wash it down with what is left of my soda pop. The organ starts playing and everyone begins to sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” While singing the song, putting my arms around friends and family with me, I watch all the players taking the field. It is wonderful to see the overwhelming number of players on one team from around the world: Japan, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Canada, and Venezuela. I cannot help but feel a bit of national pride at this realization. Seeing the international representation on the field reminds me of the ways that Americans, though from many different backgrounds and places, still come together under common ideals. For these reasons and for the whole experience in general, going to a Major League Baseball game is the perfect way to glimpse a slice of Americana.

Student Essay

In the following student essay, notice how the writer uses sensory details to describe not only the visual appearance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tomb, but also the experience of visiting such a historically significant and emotionally moving monument. Pay particular attention to the organization of the description; how does the author move us around the monument and describe its characteristics? Is it effective?

Professor Smith

English 1101

11 June 2014

The King’s Tomb

The water is always so beautiful, a hypnotic shade of baby blue, with a few autumn colored leaves floating in the ripples made by the wind. This isn’t a natural body of water. No wildlife swim in the shallow waves, but this water is as full of life as any ocean. In the middle of what is fittingly called the Reflecting Pool lies the closest thing African Americans have ever had to royalty. Here lie the remains of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King.

Nestled between the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and the original Ebenezer Baptist Church is a beautiful white marble monument, warmly bathed in the lights circling the tomb of our late civil rights leaders. Following Dr. King’s assassination in April 1968, he was first interred at South View Cemetery, a final resting place largely reserved for African Americans during that period. It took nearly a decade before he was exhumed and placed in the beautiful ivory stone structure that he now shares with his beloved wife Coretta. The tomb, erected in 1977, sits within the south end of the Reflecting Pool. Seemingly suspended on the bright blue water, the tomb displays scriptures that only capture a small portion of the legacy left by these great leaders. Engraved on Dr. King’s portion reads, “Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty I’m free at last!” from his pivotal “I Have a Dream” speech given during the March on Washington in 1963. I can’t help but attempt to recite the mantra in my head with the same bravado and conviction as Dr. King had when he gave the speech over fifty years ago. While the saying is a beautiful incantation, fit for a King, the cost at which that freedom was attained is still heartbreaking.

In a scene reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, who passed away in January 2006 after a prolonged illness, lies next to her slain husband. For a short period following her death Mrs. King was interred in a smaller yet equally beautiful tomb directly across from her late husband. Spectacular floral arrangements surrounded her tomb as scores of mourners came from afar to pay their respects to the First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement. In November 2006, she was laid to rest in a beautiful new tomb aside her husband. The words “And now abide Faith, Hope, Love, These Three, but the greatest of these is Love,” emblazon her final resting place. No truer instance could describe her legacy.

Auburn Avenue, shrouded in darkness, is void of people aside from the few vagrants that aimlessly roam the streets. Heat from the Eternal Flame warms my back as I stare off into space. The brilliant glow of the LED lights strategically placed around the tomb and the amber flicker of the Eternal Flame are the only lights that seem to suit this moment. Kneeling as if I’m preparing to pray, I take a moment to reflect. Through my clenched eyes I can hear the soft splashes of the water, the gas fueled roar of the Eternal Flame. The ambient noise of car horns, traffic and construction fade to nearly a whisper. I envision the March on Washington. I can feel the sting of water hoses pelting my black skin. I can hear the sharp sonics of police dogs barking. The feeling is overwhelming. My eyelashes clump together from the tears winning their battle against my eyelids. Nearby is a place of worship, a place where anyone can still feel the spirit of past congregations, a place where the walls hold almost as much history as any Smithsonian exhibit.

Just a few feet away sits the original Ebenezer Baptist Church, a beautiful, rustic old building left largely intact from the days of Atlanta’s past. Walking inside is like stepping into a time warp, instantly sending you to the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. With the exception of a few strategically placed speakers, the church is left in its pure form. Dr. King’s voice echoes through wooden pews playing his famous “Drum Major” speech, given during his final sermon at Ebenezer on February 4, 1968. With closed eyes, I have difficulty telling what era I am in. Given with almost Machiavellian prediction and passion, ten minutes engulfed with his powerful words makes me feel as though I’ve been baptized, born again.

Surrounded with reminders of our history’s darkest time, this place brings me peace. There’s an aura in this place. A powerful spirit that infiltrates my conscience with thoughts of struggle, loss and freedom. The reality of this place forces my mind to reevaluate my own mortality. Even with the knowledge of how Dr. King was vilified, degraded, and executed, his death serves as a shining beacon of light. A lone ray of sun through the seemingly endless cloud of racism and intolerance. Coretta’s grace, beauty and resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy and injustice is incomparable. Her social work and philanthropy should be an influence to women of all walks of life.

The legacy that Dr. and Mrs. King leave behind is an unfulfilled one. Equality in America has improved since Dr. King’s assassination but his dream is still unrealized. There is turmoil within the King family regarding funding and management of the King Memorial, leaving the future of this serene place uncertain. Engraved on the Stone of Hope, a newly completed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., reads, “Out of the Mountain of Despair, a Stone of Hope.” Although we still have a mountain to climb, The King’s Tomb is surely my Stone of Hope.

External Links

Checklist of Things to Consider ( https://tinyurl.com/y7zegezs ) when writing a description.

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1.1 Communication, Information, and the Media

Learning objectives.

After reading this section, you should be able to answer the following questions:

What are communication, information, and mass and new media?
How do economics, government and politics, and technology shape the media and their contents?
What are the main criticisms directed at the media industry?
What are the types of mass media?

Communication is a central activity of everyone engaged in politics—people asserting, arguing, deliberating, and contacting public officials; candidates seeking to win votes; lobbyists pressuring policymakers; presidents appealing to the public, cajoling Congress, addressing the leaders and people of other countries. All this communication sparks more communication, actions, and reactions.

What people communicate is information about subjects and events, people and processes. [1] It can be true or false, fiction or nonfiction, believable or not. We define it broadly to encompass entertainment, news, opinion, and commentary.

The bulk of information that Americans obtain about politics and government comes through the mass and new media. Mass media are well-established communication formats, such as newspapers and magazines, network television and radio stations, designed to reach large audiences. Mass media also encompass entertainment fare, such as studio films, best-selling books, and hit music.

New media are forms of electronic communication made possible by computer and digital technologies. They include the Internet, the World Wide Web, digital video cameras, cellular telephones, and cable and satellite television and radio. They enable quick, interactive, targeted, and potentially democratic communication, such as social media, blogs, podcasts, websites, wikis, instant messaging, and e-mail.

The media, old and new, are central to American politics and government in three ways that we highlight throughout this book. First, they depict the people, institutions, processes, issues, and policies involved in politics and government. Second, the way in which participants in government and politics interact with the media influences the way in which the media depict them. Third, the media’s depictions can have effects.

Economics, Government and Politics, and Technology

Three interrelated factors are central to the development of the US media industry and its political contents. They are economics, government and politics, and technology.

We start with economics. Journalist A. J. Liebling wrote, “The function of the press…is to inform, but its role is to make money” (Liebling, 1964). Even when profit is not the motive, the media need financing to survive. The commercial media rely on advertising, sales, and subscriptions, and so the content of their diverse products is aimed at attracting audiences desirable to advertisers. Unlike other countries, the United States has no media primarily financed by government.

Government is involved with the media as a regulator, censor, and enabler. Regulation often involves decisions on technology: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has given away approximately $70 billion worth of digital spectrum, the wireless airwaves that carry television and radio broadcasts, to major media companies. Government censors by restricting content it deems obscene or by punishing media for producing such content. Government enables when, for example, it waives the antitrust laws for media companies or subsidizes and thus lowers the postage costs for mailing newspapers and magazines.

Technological innovation can change media economics, relations with politicians and government, and the media’s political contents. Thus the development of television made it easier for candidates to communicate directly with voters and temporarily reduced the importance of political parties in elections.

Economics, government, and technology interact. The degree to which a technology influences politics depends on the way in which the technology is used. This in turn is shaped by the economic realities of the marketplace and by government policies concerning who can use a medium and for what purpose. Although the technology of television, even before cable, could have allowed for multiple and diverse channels, the economic search for a big audience to attract advertising revenue, paired with government regulation that favored private for-profit ownership, created the “three-network system” that endured until the 1980s. This system provided airtime for presidents to present their programs to a huge national audience. When cable television offered more alternatives for viewers, it became harder for presidents to be heard above the clamor of competing programs—a difficulty furthered by the emergence of new media.

The Media Industry

A few multinational conglomerates dominate the mass media; indeed, they are global media empires. Between them, they own the main television networks and production companies, most of the popular cable channels, the major movie studios, magazines, book publishers, and the top recording companies, and they have significant ownership interests in Internet media. Other large corporations own the vast majority of newspapers, major magazines, television and radio stations, and cable systems. Many people live in places that have one newspaper, one cable-system owner, few radio formats, and one bookstore selling mainly best sellers (Baker, 2007). Furthering consolidation, in January 2011 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the merger of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable and home Internet provider, with NBC Universal, one of the major producers of television shows and movies and the owner of several local stations as well as such lucrative cable channels as MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Bravo, and SyFy.

Some scholars criticize the media industry for pursuing profits and focusing on the bottom line. They accuse it of failing to cover government and public affairs in depth and of not presenting a wide range of views on policy issues (Bagdikian, 2004).

The reliance of most of the mass media on advertising as their main source of revenue and profit can discourage them from giving prominence to challenging social and political issues and critical views. Advertisers usually want cheery contexts for their messages.

Nonetheless, the mass media contain abundant information about politics, government, and public policies. Here is the essential information about the main types of mass media and their political contents.

The core of the mass media of the departed twentieth century was the newspaper. Even now, newspapers originate the overwhelming majority of domestic and foreign news.

During recent years, sales have plummeted as many people have given up or, as with the young, never acquired the newspaper habit. Further cutting into sales are newspapers’ free online versions. Revenue from advertising (automotive, employment, and real estate) has also drastically declined, with classified ads moving to Craigslist and specialist job-search sites. As a result, newspapers have slashed staff, closed foreign and domestic bureaus (including in Washington, DC), reduced reporting, and shrunk in size.

Nonetheless, there are still around 1,400 daily newspapers in the United States with estimated combined daily circulations of roughly forty million; many more millions read the news online. Chains of newspapers owned by corporations account for over 80 percent of circulation.

A few newspapers, notably the Wall Street Journal (2.1 million), USA Today (1.8 million), and the New York Times (877,000), are available nationwide.

The Wall Street Journal , although it has erected a pay wall around its Internet content, claims an electronic readership of 450,000. Its success suggests that in the future some newspapers may go completely online—thus reducing much of their production and distribution costs.

Most newspapers, including thousands of weeklies, are aimed at local communities. But after losing advertising revenue, their coverage is less comprehensive. They are being challenged by digital versions of local newspapers, such as AOL’s Patch.com (Kopytoff, 2011). It has seven hundred sites, each in an affluent community, in nineteen states and the District of Columbia. AOL has hired journalists and equipped each of them with a laptop computer, digital camera, cell phone, and police scanner to publish up to five items of community news daily. Some of their stories have achieved prominence, as, for example, a 2009 report about the hazing of high school freshmen in Millburn, New Jersey. But the most popular posts are about the police, schools, and local sports; and “often the sites are like digital Yellow Pages” (Auletta, 2011).

There are roughly five thousand magazines published on every conceivable subject. Five publishers account for around one-third of the total revenue generated. Political and social issues are commonly covered in news weeklies such as Time and also appear in popular magazines such as People and Vanity Fair .

To survive, journals of political opinion usually depend on subsidies from wealthy individuals who support their views. The Weekly Standard , the voice of Republican neoconservatives and one of the most influential publications in Washington, with a circulation of approximately 75,000, loses around $5 million annually. It was initially owned and funded by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which makes big profits elsewhere through its diverse holdings, such as Fox News and the Wall Street Journal . In 2009, it sold the Weekly Standard to the conservative Clarity Media Group.

People watch an average of thirty-four hours of television weekly. Over one thousand commercial, for-profit television stations in the United States broadcast over the airwaves; they also are carried, as required by federal law, by local cable providers. Most of them are affiliated with or, in fewer cases, owned by one of the networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox), which provide the bulk of their programming. These networks produce news, public affairs, and sports programs.

They commission and finance from production companies, many of which they own, the bulk of the entertainment programming shown on their stations and affiliates. The most desired viewers are between eighteen and forty-nine because advertisements are directed at them. So the shows often follow standard formats with recurring characters: situation comedies, dramas about police officers and investigators, and doctors and lawyers, as well as romance, dance, singing, and other competitions. Sometimes they are spin-offs from programs that have done well in the audience ratings or copies of successful shows from the United Kingdom. “Reality” programming, heavily edited and sometimes scripted, of real people put into staged situations or caught unaware, has become common because it draws an audience and usually costs less to make than written shows. The highest-rated telecasts are usually football games, exceeded only by the Academy Awards.

Unusual and risky programs are put on the air by networks and channels that may be doing poorly in the ratings and are willing to try something out of the ordinary to attract viewers. Executives at the relatively new Fox network commissioned The Simpsons . Matt Groening, its creator, has identified the show’s political message this way: “Figures of authority might not always have your best interests at heart.…Entertain and subvert, that’s my motto” (Bhattacharya, 2000). The show, satirizing American family life, government, politics, and the media, has become one of television’s longest running and most popular series worldwide.

Cable is mainly a niche medium. Of the ninety or so ad-supported cable channels, ten (including USA, TNT, Fox News, A&E, and ESPN) have almost a third of all the viewers. Other channels occasionally attract audiences through programs that are notable ( Mad Men on American Movie Classics) or notorious ( Jersey Shore on MTV). Cable channels thrive (or at least survive) financially because they receive subscriber fees from cable companies such as Comcast and Time-Warner.

The networks still have the biggest audiences—the smallest of them (NBC) had more than twice as many viewers as the largest basic cable channel, USA. The networks’ evening news programs have an audience of 23 million per night compared with the 2.6 million of cable news.

Politics and government appear not only on television in news and public-affairs programs but also in courtroom dramas and cop shows. In the long-running and top-rated television show (with an audience of 21.93 million viewers on January 11, 2011), NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), a team of attractive special agents conduct criminal investigations. The show features technology, sex, villains, and suspense. The investigators and their institutions are usually portrayed positively.

Public Broadcasting

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was created by the federal government in 1967 as a private, nonprofit corporation to oversee the development of public television and radio (Hoynes, 1994; Lashley, 1992). CPB receives an annual allocation from Congress. Most of the funds are funneled to the more than three hundred public television stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and to over six hundred public radio stations, most affiliated with National Public Radio (NPR), to cover operating costs and the production and purchase of programs.

CPB’s board members are appointed by the president, making public television and radio vulnerable or at least sensitive to the expectations of the incumbent administration. Congress sometimes charges the CPB to review programs for objectivity, balance, or fairness and to fund additional programs to correct alleged imbalances in views expressed (Twentieth-Century Fund Task Force, 1993). Conservatives charge public broadcasting with a liberal bias. In 2011 the Republican majority in the House of Representatives sought to withdraw its federal government funding.

About half of public broadcasting stations’ budgets come from viewers and listeners, usually responding to unremitting on-air appeals. Other funding comes from state and local governments, from state colleges and universities housing many of the stations, and from foundations.

Corporations and local businesses underwrite programs in return for on-air acknowledgments akin to advertisements for their image and products. Their decisions on whether or not to underwrite a show tend to favor politically innocuous over provocative programs. Public television and radio thus face similar pressure from advertisers as their for-profit counterparts.

Public broadcasting delves into politics, particularly with its evening news programs and documentaries in its Frontline series. National Public Radio, with an audience of around twenty-seven million listeners weekly, broadcasts lengthy news programs during the morning and evening with reports from domestic and foreign bureaus. NPR has several call-in current-events programs, such as The Diane Rehm Show . Guests from a spectrum of cultural life are interviewed by Terry Gross on her program Fresh Air . On the Media analyzes the news business in all its aspects; and Ira Glass’s This American Life features distinctive individuals delving into important issues and quirky subjects. Most of these programs are available via podcast from iTunes. Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org, has an abundance of programs from independent producers and local NPR stations.

Commercial Radio

Around ten thousand commercial FM and AM radio stations in the United States broadcast over the airwaves. During the 1990s, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dropped many restrictions on ownership and essentially abandoned the requirement that stations must serve the “public interest.” This led to the demise of much public affairs programming and to a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions. Clear Channel Communications, then the nation’s largest owner, bought the second largest company, increasing its ownership to roughly 1,150 stations. The company was sold in 2008 to two private equity firms.

Most radio programming is aimed at an audience based on musical preference, racial or ethnic background and language, and interests (e.g., sports). Much of the news programming is supplied by a single company, Westwood One, a subsidiary of media conglomerate Viacom. Even on all-news stations, the reports are usually limited to headlines and brief details. Talk radio, dominated by conservative hosts, reaches large audiences. We discuss it in more detail in Section 1.3 “Opinion and Commentary” .

Four major companies produce, package, publicize, advertise, promote, and merchandise roughly 5,000 singles and 2,500 compact discs (CDs) each year. A key to success is getting a music video on MTV or similar stations. Around twelve million CDs used to be sold nationwide every week. This number has significantly decreased. The companies and performers now make music that is cheaply available online through services such as Apple’s iTunes store. Many people, especially students, download music from the Internet or burn CDs for themselves and others.

Music often contains political content. Contrast Green Day’s scathing 2005 hit song “American Idiot” and its lyric “One nation controlled by the media” with Lee Greenwood’s patriotic “God Bless the USA.” Some rap lyrics celebrate capitalism and consumerism, promote violence against women, and endorse—or even advocate—attacks on the police and other authority figures.

The movie business is dominated by six major studios, which finance and distribute around 130 feature films each year. Mass-market logic usually pushes them to seek stories that “are sufficiently original that the audience will not feel it has already seen the movie, yet similar enough to past hits not to be too far out” (Litwak, 1986). Superheroes, science fiction and fantasy, sophomoric comedies, and animation dominate. Sequels are frequent. Special effects are common. In Robert Altman’s satire The Player , the protagonist says that the “certain elements” he needs to market a film successfully are violence, suspense, laughter, hope, heart, nudity, sex, and a happy ending.

It can cost well over $100 million to produce, advertise, and distribute a film to theaters. These costs are more or less recouped by US and overseas box office sales, DVD sales (declining) and rentals, revenue from selling broadcast rights to television, subscription cable, video on demand, and funds received from promoting products in the films (product placement). Increasingly important are Netflix and its competitors, which for a monthly charge make movies available by mail or streaming.

Many independent films are made, but few of them are distributed to theaters and even fewer seen by audiences. This situation is being changed by companies, such as Snag Films, that specialize in digital distribution and video on demand (including over the iPad) (Cieply, 2011).

It is said in Hollywood that “politics is box office poison.” The financial failure of films concerned with US involvement in Iraq, such as In the Valley of Elah , appears to confirm this axiom. Nonetheless, the major studios and independents do sometimes make politically relevant movies. We refer to many of them in this book and provide a list at the end of each chapter. The five nominees for the 2005 Oscar for best picture all contained political content— Brokeback Mountain (homosexuality), Capote (a fiction writer’s complex relationship to two murderers he befriends and writes about), Crash (racial tension in Los Angeles), Good Night and Good Luck (CBS’s response to the Red Scare of the early 1950s), and Munich (Israeli–Palestinian relations).

Some 100,000 books are published annually. About “seventy percent of them will not earn back the money that their authors have been advanced” (Auletta, 2010). There are literally hundreds of publishers, but six produce 60 percent of all books sold in the United States. Publishers’ income comes mainly from sales. A few famous authors command multimillion-dollar advances: President Bill Clinton received more than $10 million and President Bush around $7 million to write their memoirs.

E-books are beginning to boom. The advantage for readers is obtaining the book cheaper and quicker than by mail or from a bookstore. For publishers, there are no more costs for printing, shipping, warehousing, and returns. But digital books could destroy bookstores if, for example, publishers sold them directly to the iPad. Indeed, publishers themselves could be eliminated if authors sold their rights to (say) Amazon.

Books featuring political revelations often receive widespread coverage in the rest of the media. They are excerpted in magazines and newspapers. Their authors appear on television and radio programs. An example is President George W. Bush’s former press secretary Scott McClellan, who, while praising the president in his memoir as authentic and sincere, also accused him of lacking in candor and competence (McClellan, 2008).

Key Takeaways

The subjects of this section are communication, information, and the media. We have explained how economics, government and politics, and technology shape the media and their contents. Market domination by a few conglomerates limits competition and, arguably, the wide availability and range of media contents. The main types of mass media are newspapers, magazines, television, public broadcasting, commercial radio, music, films, and books. Their contents relevant to politics and government are entertainment, news, and opinion. They are largely aimed at a vast, undifferentiated audience.

Where do you get most of your information? How do you think the type of media you consume affects the kind of information you get?
How does the need to attract a large audience for advertisements influence media content?

Auletta, K., “Publish or Perish,” The New Yorker , April 26, 2010, 24–31, is the source for much of this discussion; the quotation is on p. 30.

Auletta, K., “You’ve Got News,” The New Yorker , January 24, 2011, 33.

Bagdikian, B. H., The New Media Monopoly (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).

Baker, C. E., argues for the importance of media diversity in Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Bhattacharya, S., “Homer’s Odyssey,” Observer Magazine , August 6, 2000, 19.

Cieply, M., “A Digital Niche for Indie Film,” New York Times , January 17, 2011, B5.

Hoynes, W., Public Television for Sale (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994)

Kopytoff, V. G., “AOL Bets on Hyperlocal News, Finding Progress Where Many Have Failed,” New York Times , January 17, 2011, B3.

Lashley, M., Public Television (New York: Greenwood, 1992).

Liebling, A. J., The Press (New York: Ballantine, 1964), 7.

Litwak, M., Reel Power (New York: Morrow, 1986), 74.

McClellan, S., What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (New York: Public Affairs, 2008).

Twentieth-Century Fund Task Force on Public Television, Quality Time (New York: Twentieth-Century Fund Press, 1993), 36.

This section draws on Bruce Bimber, Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially 9–12. ↵

American Government and Politics in the Information Age Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Navigating the World of Information: Media Literacy

Category: Information Science and Technology , Sociology
Topic: Digital Literacy , Effects of Social Media , Modern Society

Pages: 2 (1063 words)

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