Media for Social Change: Producers, Viewers, Content

Media for Social Change: Producers, Viewers, Content

Introduction

Statement of Research Issue

This research investigates media for social change may be used to create an environment where people can engage in the public realm, mediate disagreements, and encourage civil debate. For an informative analysis, I have included my personal view on media power and discussed communication as the main factor in creating hybrid public space, and encouraged the public to use media as an interactive tool in the field of social society.

The research proposes for reconsideration of media role in creating imaginative and narrative communication avenues in achieving a highly informed society. Our deductive approach touches on audiences’ thoughts, the way they reinterpret the message, and sediment new knowledge into their daily lives.

It is evidenced that media for social change has enabled the creation of new avenues for grassroots activism and community building. I aim at learning the degree to which media for social change is used and the role of leadership in this industry. I will conduct a series of interviews with media professionals to find out their attitudes and beliefs in regard to a leadership role in social change. However, the best test, and yet difficult to comprehend, is: do media change how we function, how we communicate, and more likely become independent? And does it encourage social ties? It is evidenced that media for social change has enabled new avenues for grassroots activism and community building.

To do answer this question, we will follow the hypothesis approach of research using quantitative research tools. First, we will present Paul Ricoeur and Habermas’s theory behind the topic from previous literature. Then we will state our hypotheses on the different relationships. Next, we are going to use interviews to collect some data and analyze it, and finally, discuss whether the results support our hypotheses and state conclusions and recommendations.

Background

Media plays an important role in creating and influencing the opinion of the public. It does this by linking the ideas of the producers with their audience whereby the producers pass down their themes to their audience hence changing the way they perceive certain issues. According to Alia (2004), there exists a direct relationship between the change in the society and what the media producers are giving the society.

In this relationship, the role of media producers is to generate information from a chain of relations and influences and the role of the audience is to infer and evaluate the information from the producers and generate other information external to the media perspectives. The impacts and implications of the media account not just the way interesting events are identified, as Ricoeur in the From text to Action, states, but also to a wide range of cultural influences that function via the media (Ricoeur,1990).

Recent research efforts suggest that the media have powerful social and cultural effects on society. This is a result of their capability to reach a broad range of audiences with a powerful and transforming message. Alia in work tells us that the media is the message when trying to how the circulation of a message is more significant than what is in the message itself (Alia 2004). The use of media elements such as films, radio, and printed media transmits the producer’s message to his or her targeted listeners.

And as such the media have been very influential in shaping society’s everyday life and opinions. Particularly, the T.V has wide control over what the society watches and as such is capable of manipulating their opinions. Moreover, the internet provides room for more varied political ideas, social and cultural perspectives and as such it has increased the degree of audience participation.

It can be said that people will always be influenced by media in a number of ways but however, this hinges on what the target audience wants to get from reading an article or watching a film. The idea could be established that media elements such as new stories as seen in television plays a significant role in society as it offers its target audiences with understandings that make them aware of issues that producers feel their target audience ought to know (Habermas 1985).

For instance, a T.V program will at all times influence its target audiences in a number of ways since it is perceived as a trustworthy source of information that notifies them of what they do not know and as such shows the truths in their midst. For this reason, it can then be argued that programs like the T.V news programs assists their target audience in creating a picture and an opinion of specific ideas and issues which t