If you turned on the T.V. and took a look at anything ranging from political news to movies you'll find that all of these represent real life things in a certain way. Each channel or broadcast could depict the same thing differently. The bottom lie is, the media is representing each thing in the way they want people to see it. In a sense the world is controlled by the media. The medias messages and portrayal of the world are hard to avoid but how it's consumed depends on the viewer. The development of the 21st centuries technology has only increased the medias influence on peoples lives.
Today, with media being more widespread and diverse than its ever been, there's no doubt it has a large influence in everyone's day to day life. The media has the power to represent people, places, or ideas however they want to the people. Some would say the media control the world. But, the entirety of the media is controlled by 6 conglomerates: The Walt Disney Company, Comcast, CBS, News Corporation, Time Warner Cable, and VIACOM. Even if these companies have been somewhat unheard of the many companies they own are very well known. These companies have full power over most of the media we're exposed to. There are many tactics they implement to keep themselves in power, one of which being cross promotion between the companies they own. For example, If there was a commercial for the latest Star Wars movie on the National Geographic channel, this is cross promotion because Disney own both of these properties, they're promoting themselves just on their different outlets.
Considering all of the technological advancements it can be very difficult to avoid being exposed to the medias distorted representation of reality. Although they try to present things to us in their way that doesn't mean we'll always be influenced by it. The best way to explain it is with Stuart Hall's theory of reception. This theory breaks down the audiences possible reactions to media into three categories, dominant, negotiated, and oppositional reactions. The first describes when someone reacts to the media the exact way the producer intended. The next reaction, negotiated, is when someone understands the way the media is intended to be interpreted but they don't personally agree with that interpretation. And the final, oppositional, is when the viewer flat out opposes the ideas and perception intended from the media.
The main reason that the conglomerates have the massive power they do is because of how large and widespread media is today, media is our pop culture. The medias size and influence is due to the current technology. The recent developments that've been made in our technology are very advanced and as tech continues to exponentially grow it'll only become more and more engrained in society. Today, everyone has a smart phone in their pocket or televisions to allow the media into their life. It's because of technology that media has gone from newspapers you had to buy, to devices that can pull up anything in an instant, this makes it so easy for the big companies to have a tight grip on our lives.
The study of media has helped to define these things going on in the world right in front of us and provide so many people with a deep understanding of how important and complex the practice of media is. The medias influence and who controls it has many factors that come in to play like technology, audience, and the companies running it.