Media plays an important part in our lives on a daily basis, and we see and hear about it in the form of Mass Media, Participatory Media or News Media. Media has always brought people closer to each other, and it has also brought in a revolution among people when the most sensitive issues are covered by the news channels, newspapers or internet media. As reasoned by (Starobin 16) in the National Journal on Media, the article “In New Media Image is Still Everything” attention-grabbing and informative as it portrays the advantages and disadvantages of the CNN effect, shows the impact of the CNN effect on The President of United States, explains the ups and downs of the media coverage by CNN that was related to the street protests in Iran for re-electing the President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and how the social networking like the Facebook, Twitter, Blogosphere and other participatory media sites have a social impact on the current generation. My goal in this paper is to describe the benefits and drawbacks of the participatory media, discuss if the Iran street protests were more important than covering the tragic death of the pop icon by CNN, and provide views on images, to define if the media images are easier to exploit for emotional purpose and easier to strip of illumination context.
The article “In New Media Image is Still Everything” was mainly written to show how the media images can have a social impact on the viewers, and how the media is now using images, more than the illustrative context to express a coverage. It is because, a picture is worth thousand words, but the truth of not knowing the complete fact behind the image is not known by the viewers. People still read the tabloid form of news that covers the sensational topics in a quite illustrated manner, rather than looking at the image that does not reveal the real history of the image. It is astounding to know that the President of US who relies mostly on the Central Intelligence Agency understood about the military invasion of Somalia in 1992 after seeing the images of starving children shown by the satellite, aired on CNN. The prime motivation for the author to write this article is to emphasize the importance, advantages and disadvantages of the images in the media that drives the social media. The author stresses the importance of the revolution in personally generated images and other media to the permanent U.S. mission of spreading freedom in every corner of the world. The foremost disadvantage of the images in media is the widening availability of the image making technologies that lead to casual misinformation and misrepresentations by the unskillful news gatherers. The source of media must always be clear and emotional.
If the goal of media is to purvey accurate information about the world, list what you think are the greatest advantages and drawbacks of the new “participatory media” of twitter, facebook and the blogosphere.
Social Networking has grown tremendously in the recent years and the present generation is under the influence of the social media. The Participatory Media like the Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, the blogs and other networking sites have become important to a rising protest movement to spread throughout the country. The advantage of such social media is that, any information is circulated throughout the internet within seconds to make everyone aware of the event. Once the information on such media is available on the networking sites, it is highly impossible to stop the flow of images and other materials to source outside the country, which can be termed as the biggest drawback.
CNN covered Michael Jackson’s death was at the expense of the turmoil in tehran. Do you agree that iran was more worthy story? why or why not?
CNN focused on showing the turmoil and the street protests in Iran from a long time, till the tragic incident of Michael Jackson’s death happened. Every news media wants the viewers to see their news first. Even with Michael Jackson’s death CNN continued to pay close attention and share images of what was happening in Iran, however during Michael Jackson’s death, the protests in Iran were not in central focus. The Iran story was quite worthy as it was leading to the creation of Green revolution or the Persian Awakening, and the death of the Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian protestor who struggled against the disputed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was not even known to CNN, as it was involved in showing the death of Michael Jackson.
Do you agree that images are “easier to exploit for emotional purposes and easier to strip of illumination context” than text is?
As it is rightly said that a picture is worth thousand words, it is likely that the images are easier to exploit for emotional purposes and strip of illumination context. The images are quite prone to editing and morphing with the new image editing technologies that can ruin a person’s self-esteem and status. The new forms of media have many such examples where a fake identity can be created easily to make a prey of others.
Conclusion
We are always dependent on the Media for any information about the happenings in and around us, and with the promise of this new participatory media; it is an addiction that we don’t want to get rid of at the earliest. Learning good things from the media is always beneficial, but being a slave to the social media is always harmful. Many networking sites are launched in the market daily, and it is our responsibility to take care of ourselves and not be a victim of an unknown event. The author of the article In New Media Image is Everything has rightly said that Media is truly us as both makers and watchers of the product; our future seems to rest on our eyeballs.
Works Cited
Starobin, Paul, “In New Media, Image Is Still Everything”. National Journal, September 2009.
