Week 2: Media Impact

Chapter 2 talks about understanding the research and effects that media have on society. From theories to research, many development of these theories can help us to understand how media affects us personally. Out of all the theories, the two that I found to be the most useful theories is the agenda-setting theory and the uses and gratification theory.
The agenda setting theory is a theory that predicts the amount of attention given to an issue in the media affects the level of importance assigned to it by the public. A perfect example of this theory is when Farrah Fawcett died a few hours before Michael Jackson died. The media's attention move from Fawcett to Jackson instantly. Who is to say that one life is more important than another, but the way the media covers it show that Jackson death was a more important story to cover than Fawcett was. This is why people sometimes use the term, "yesterdays news" because something else always comes up and its the decision of the media to make it a big story or not.
Another theory is the uses and gratification theory. This theory is concise because we have the option of choosing which music, movies, news, and entertainment media we want to consume. This theory shows how people use media in various ways such as: surveillance, meaning keeping ourselves inform of current events, like for me is reading the news. Diversion, in which we use entertainment lets us escape the pressure of the reality. One example is when we go to movies, it allows us to briefly escape our daily life and live in a movie's setting. Conversational currency, in which keeping up with finding topics to talk about with our friends is always conversation starter. This also leads to social integration which is the shared knowledge we acquired through media that lets us have common ground between associates when connecting to people.