The Role of Media

The Role of Media
Media plays a vital role in our lives since it has a great influence in people’s ways of life. It connects people with different scenarios in the globe and informs us on various things like history, entertainment, news and much more. Media consists of newspapers, televisions, magazines, radio, etc. In the recent past, these have been used to shape the political landscape of various countries. For instance, it can be used to influence the citizens in an upcoming presidential election. We rely on the media as the major source of information. It implies that the media also influences what we buy since it is often used to carry out advertising which is flashed before our eyes several times. Media also plays a role in shaping our morals and beliefs (Bullard 171-172). For instance, young children tend to emulate things they watch on televisions hence it also influences our social ways of life.
In the recent years, media productions have been very creative due to stiff competition in the industry. The creativity has been achieved in various ways. The media has been able to discover new ideas and concept to make their contents more appealing to their consumers. The industry has managed to generate and reorganize how imaginative and best practices can be applied to various situations. For instance, most businesses currently use the media to creatively advertise their services.
The viewer/listener/reader of media productions have been able to engage in creative activities as a result of the participatory culture that has replaced consumer culture.

Participatory culture is a culture where private individuals are not only consumers but also contributors. Recent technological advances such as the Internet and personal computers have enabled the consumers to create and also publish such media, especially through the internet (Rotman and Preece 3-5). The culture has influenced the private individuals to creatively react to a plethora of signals a well as cultural commodities in several ways that astonish their makers. A good example is the bloggers who post their content on the internet.
Work Cited
Bullard, S. B. “Book Review: Alphabet to Internet: Media In Our Lives”. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 90.1 (2013): 171-172. Web.
Rotman, Dana and Jenny Preece. “Participatory Culture in the Age of Social Media”. Slacktivism to Activism 1 (2011): 3-5. Print.