How Does Media Shape Reality?

The media is a massive part of our lives and the reality around us. Without television, radio, newspapers, and the internet there are many things that we probably would have never known about. We get most of our source of information about the world around us from the media. Whether all the information is considered a hundred percent true or not is difficult to figure out due to the many differing views in our society. But overall, it is the media that transfers a great deal of knowledge to us. The media shapes our reality by providing us with a variety of information that we eventually believe because of the fact that it came from the media, such as the news on television or in newspapers. The manner in which the news is portrayed influences our opinions of the news and events around us. By displaying information in certain ways the media makes us believe what we see and hear to be true and perceive it as the reality. By doing so, the media shapes “reality” in the way that it wants to and we might not know if all the “facts” are real. But since it is our major source of information we just end up believing it because it delivers everything we are not fully aware of in the world around us. The media also shapes reality by stimulating the people’s desire for goods and causing them to consume more because the media knows what the people want and how they think. We live in a very materialistic world stimulated by the constant production of goods and ongoing advancements in technology. The media displays this reality and knows that when the people see these new items they will want to buy it. The media benefits from peoples approval and gain more audience and the consumer world benefits. The media in a sense controls the people and their actions through its propaganda. It and propaganda influences us to think in a certain way by forming opinions. The media can get us to do what it wants by knowing what we want and satisfying our desires. In turn people support certain views depicted by the media and that eventually leads the media and those in charge of it to receive what they want whether it be power, money, recognition or support. People usually follow what the media says. For example, during the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, the media displayed that the cause of this was the Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan. But there isn’t even sufficient proof for that, however, the people believe what the media says and regard it as rue because it supposedly reveals the reality in our world. But there are many facts that are true that the media presents to us, for example during natural disasters. The media is the people’s ultimate source of knowledge and information about the daily life and events around us. Without it we would be isolated from the world; it is the essence if the reality around us.