Thinking Activity: Media, Power. and Truly Educated Person

Media, Power. and Truly Educated Person

👉The word Culture is itself undefinable term, no one can define culture but can gives its related meaning, it can touch its margin by poviding various description of cultural studies.

👉It is hard to define cultural because it has different definition at different places and everyone has their own culture which can not be denied and also defined so, it is also hard to bind cultural studies in one particular definition. Cultural studies is also very hard to understand. It always breaks the difference between high and low, it puts everything under same umbrella. It needs deep thinking and if you fail to dig deep, cultural studies also fails.

👉Second thing is, it always looks critically at power and that makes cultural studies “politically incorrect” and it will become hard to survive between majority of “politically correct” and “Right wingers”. It is impossible to talk about cultural studies without the study of power and media. Now a days media is one of the element which control our perceptions and power also uses media. So, by studying media and power we come to know how power works over media.

Power

👉Power plays a vital role in the study of culture. Without power the study of culture is incomplete, and power is connected to the extensive use of media.

There are six main sources of civic power:-

i) Physical forces

ii) Wealth

iii) State action

iv) Social norms

v) Ideas

vi) Numbers

Physical power controls harmful behavior to the society. In this fast growing world now everything is possible with money so if you have wealth, you have power. We are living in democracy and we elect some one to take decisions in favor of people but that decisions also control us. Social norms are the things which don’t have any official law but it creates their own laws as per their comfort or thinking. Ideas also have power, if you have interesting ideas the people will start be with you and it also talk about the 6th power the numbers of people which supports your idea and have one voice with you and you have power.

Power is everywhere around us. To read power, one has to start thinking about the things which happens around them. Think how it happens and which type of power is working behind it. After having habit of doing this one can understand the power and also can save themselves from the trap of power.

There are three laws of Power:-

i) Power is never static

Power is keeps on moving, it never be static. and it goes from one hand to another with the passage of time. For example the minister of politics keeps on changing, some have five year of time span to rule and afterwards there is no power in their hand. 

ii) Power is like water

Power is like water and it flows in different direction according to its velocity,

iii) Power compounds

Power is keeps on multiplying.

Media

Noam Chomsky gives five filters about mass media:-

i) Media ownership

The endgame of all mass media orgs is profit. It is in there interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit.

ii) Advertising

Media costs more than consumers will pay; Advertisers fill the gap. It isn't just that the media is selling you as product, they are also selling advertisers a product.

iii) Media Elite

-Government

-corporation

-big institution

All such elites know how to influence Media. They make themeselves crucial to the process of journalism. And if someone wish to challenge the power they will directly push towards the margin.

iv) Flack

A publicity agent, when the story is inconvenient for the powers, then we will see the flack machine in action. Flack normally does these three things given below:-

-discrediting sources

-trashing stories

-diverting the conversation

v) The common enemy

To manufacture consent ( permission or agreement to do something) we need an enemy, a target. That target may be communism, terrorism, immigrants, a boogeyman to fear helps, correect public opinion.

👉Noam Chomsky is talking about mass media and how mass media controls the perceptions of large numbers of populations. In our day to day life who decides how certain things works. Well, seemingly it is the government but behind that it is mass media or news papers, news channels which control our perception. We blindly believe what news channels telling us but, before showing any news to us news channels also filters the news. They decide what to show and what not to show, they decides how debates are going to end, in a way every certain things which news channels are showing is pre-decided and planned or we an say scripted. Media controls the elite group of population and it makes us think in a way which they want.

👉At last they are talking about that what actually is being truly educated person and as Noam Chomsky says, “Its not important what you cover in class, its important what you discover”. It is about to inquire and create constructively, independently without external controls. Truly educated person has the spirit of questioning, they don’t accept what comes to them they question in a certain way to identify the fact.

So, this is how power controls media and media controls us but the work of truly educated person is not to believe everything first question then believe what comes your understanding says.

Thank you....