How media is shaping our opinions?

 Why do teenagers go to shopping mall rather than going to library on the weekends? Why do people like to sit on a comfort sofa and watch entertaining program on the television? Is this really the human nature?

If you are born in this generation, you would probably be normalized to advertisement by seeing them around you everywhere since your birth.

 In the 19^thcentury, Advertisements started as the announcement of a new product from the manufacturing companies to the people. Thirty years ago advertisement industries realized that there is a sector of the population that they are not reaching because they don’t have money of their own,who are known as children so they started to direct the kid’s program in the television to try to induce nagging. There are many studies in academic Applied Phycology about different kind of nagging and how to induce it. Children start to nag their parents to make them buy that product for them which is induced by the advertisements.

 Is advertisement bad? There are numerous studies about the reading habit  of the working class. In the late 19^thcentury, people were well educated without going to the formal schools. Most of them were well educated than aristocrats, People who didn’t know how to read would hire a boy who can read to them while they were working. At that time people were interested in reading lot of books, Shakespeare’s drama and politics. As years went on, technologies improved, ability to learn has improved. The Internet is filled with resources in the form of Wikipedia, videos, podcasts, books, articles, pictures and documents which are easily accessible and available free of cost. Using the Internet anyone should be able to learn anything but is that what is happening nowadays? Why isn’t any of us interested in politics nowadays? Isn’t there any problem in politics nowadays? There has been a massive effort for over the past hundred years to try to convince that this all that we are and it is called advertising.

The natural urge for humans is to want to be independent, creative, fixing things and doing something important. Huge part of effort and economy is spent trying to drive these things out of people’s heads to make you think that all you need is more commodities so that you would go shopping instead of reading books. In television industry this is what is called content and fill-in  program. Content is the ads and the fill is the programs which makes the people to continuously watch the channel.

You can maintain power over people as long as you give them something. Rob a man of everything & that man will no longer be in your control. – Cloud Atlas

 The creative thoughts and funding zone is spent on the ads, not into the programs. In newspaper industries, they focus on ads instead of content in it. Nowadays newspapers become ad-papers where most of the content is ads. Ads are presented in the psychological way where the people start to focus on ads instead of the real content in it. Market economy supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. If ads are created in that way, it would be good but the problem is that they are trying to force uninformed consumers to make irrational choices.

The media is where people get to know the real world. Mass media firms are also big corporation thus their end game is profit, so it’s in their interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit. Media costs lot more than consumers pay so who fills the gap? -Advertisers. And what are the advertisers paying for? - audiences. And so it isn’t so much that the media are selling you a product - their output. They are also selling advertisers a product – YOU.Media became a tool for government, corporate and big institutions to control and manipulate people. They tell and show us what those in power need them to tell us so we can fall in line.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure they never know they’re in prison.

As the mainstream media becomes social media nowadays, Advertising companies like Google and Facebook are doing the same thing. In 2016 US election, Google showed the search results favoring a particular politician. Facebook has come under fire of late in the wake of a Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw the political consulting firm use data from tens  millions of Facebook users to help political candidates (Donald Trump) in their election efforts. Now digital Advertising companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google are started to involve in upcoming election in India in favor of the richest political parties. This must be changed.