Media: this is an essay about the role and influnces of the media of today and how it is controlled, the history of the media and the media today

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The Roles and Influence of the Media

This is an essay to discuss the roles and influence of the media in modern Britain. In this essay I will be looking at some sociological theories that are put forward on how the media effects our daily live. Media can be described in various way Marshall McLuhan a media theorist view of media is that the "the medium is the message" (http://mediatalk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?50@6.eNbcccyvb1x.1@.3ba74f3f) this could be constructed to mean that the power of the message conveyed; depends more on what form it has taken to relay the intended message, to what the actual message is.

In Modern Day Britain media has expanded from the traditional forms of broadsheets and tabloids to television and the World Wide Web of the Internet. These different forms of media can be said to play different roles on how society interacts and is influenced by them. Again McLuhan describes media as Hot and Cold depending on how passive and active the audience is to constructing the message i.e.

films and radio shows as HOT media as the person views has to construct meaning and in comparison to this COLD media such as television and reading newspapers where we do not have to interpretate the meaning and we are told the message. (Marshal McLuhan: Medium is the Message, Gingko Press Inc; 2001) This theory is similar to Denis McQuail's (1972) Uses and Gratification Model, which stresses different people use the media in different ways in order to obtain different sorts of pleasure or fulfil different sought of need (Haralambos; 2000:964 ). As with McLuhan, McQuail looks at how we as individuals receive and interpret different media messages. It is believed that this need to gratify its audience with the pursuit of an idealistic social fulfilment provides the...