         
Elective Reflective Writing on Chapter 5: The Mass Media and the Public SphereThis is space to do an elective reflective writing on chapter 5. This is optional and can be a place to reiterate the ideas in the text or more about your thoughts and responses that progress from the textThis chapter directly addresses the consequences and benefits of mass media in everyday life, and how this has changed in the last two decades. Everyday Americans are over stimulated by images in the consumer market, corporations and other businesses, being aware of such, create the continuous need for competition between images, resulting in advertisements, billboards, and commercials getting louder, brighter, and over all more “in your face”. I believe this adds stress to our everyday life. Not only are we in “image overload”, we also have radio and television competing for our attention. I believe that over-stimulation leads to numbness. Eventually everyone has just had enough, and “zones out”, wether they realize it or not. The “mass” of people accepting the “mass media”, in a passive and uncritical way often times, can be destructive. Though the 1980’s and 90’s brought about more consumer awareness of personal media, like “zines”, home video, internet communication, small time television broadcasting, and the beginnings of digital technology, the consumer market tagets, still hold the majority of the “power” involved in commercial and even some non-commercial aspects. This chapter made me a little bit more conscious about where mass media has been and where it has to go.
|