Mass Media, "is a message consumed by a large number of individuals" (Powerpoint Week 1) While, politics, is known as "the authoritative allocation of society 's values. (Easton)" (Powerpoint week 1) or "the process of determining "who gets what, when, and how. (Lasswell)" (Powerpoint week 1) Years ago both, mass media and politics it appeared, to be more separate from each other. It seemed like the political side did not want to get involved with the media or was still trying to figure out what advantages it held to helping them in the long run. Now mass media and politics relationship has grown quiet close. The connection between the two is the fact that both, mass media and politics, work together to inform people about what is happening
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After reading both articles I would have to say that I tend to lean more with Shirky because he talks about how social media can be a powerful political tool in the long run, while Gladwell talks about how social media has barley any power over change. The reason being is because Shirky talks about how social media has changed over the years to now being used as a political force to help bring change and revolutions in many counties. As Shirky mentions, in regards to the January 17th, 2001 impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrade, “social media had helped force out a national leader. Estrada himself blamed "the text-messaging generation" for his downfall.” (Shirky) These text messages were used to prevent important evidence from being swept under the rug in regards to the President 's impeachment trial. Due to the large quantity of text messages that were used the evidence was not hidden and the President was impeached. This is one reason why I believe that social media has gained a lot of power in starting a revolution or causing change in a society. Unlike Gladwell who states that, “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties,” yet social media was used to orchestrate a revolution in Egypt by bringing all of the protestors …show more content…
The three functions of mass media as discussed by the political scientist, Harold Lasswell, are surveillance, interpretation, and socialization. Surveillance, as it is defined by Graber, has two functions to it, also known as public and private surveillance. “When it serves the needs the collective needs of the public, it constitutes “public surveillance,” and when it serves the needs of individual citizens, we call it “private surveillance.” (Graber 6) Surveillance is important in both the public and private sectors because they help us keep in touch with what is happening around us and make us feel secure because we feel like the media is out their watching our backs by reporting events to us. On the other hand it can also be harmful because it can cause people to get scared when they receive information wrong and cause people to misunderstand a crises or event happening as
After reading both articles I would have to say that I tend to lean more with Shirky because he talks about how social media can be a powerful political tool in the long run, while Gladwell talks about how social media has barley any power over change. The reason being is because Shirky talks about how social media has changed over the years to now being used as a political force to help bring change and revolutions in many counties. As Shirky mentions, in regards to the January 17th, 2001 impeachment trial of Philippine President Joseph Estrade, “social media had helped force out a national leader. Estrada himself blamed "the text-messaging generation" for his downfall.” (Shirky) These text messages were used to prevent important evidence from being swept under the rug in regards to the President 's impeachment trial. Due to the large quantity of text messages that were used the evidence was not hidden and the President was impeached. This is one reason why I believe that social media has gained a lot of power in starting a revolution or causing change in a society. Unlike Gladwell who states that, “the platforms of social media are built around weak ties,” yet social media was used to orchestrate a revolution in Egypt by bringing all of the protestors …show more content…
The three functions of mass media as discussed by the political scientist, Harold Lasswell, are surveillance, interpretation, and socialization. Surveillance, as it is defined by Graber, has two functions to it, also known as public and private surveillance. “When it serves the needs the collective needs of the public, it constitutes “public surveillance,” and when it serves the needs of individual citizens, we call it “private surveillance.” (Graber 6) Surveillance is important in both the public and private sectors because they help us keep in touch with what is happening around us and make us feel secure because we feel like the media is out their watching our backs by reporting events to us. On the other hand it can also be harmful because it can cause people to get scared when they receive information wrong and cause people to misunderstand a crises or event happening as