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Student name: NGOC PHUC, HOANG Class: SOA221 Feb 6th, 2013

CRITICAL REVIEW
Media is the high technology used in modern world. Media brings the society to many benefits for the future; besides, it also has other negative effects to the public. Through five articles below, we will see how media influences to human life, society and world.

In the chapter 5 (Best 2013), the author gives us many concepts and definitions about media and how media influences on the public and society. There are two kinds of media: entertainment media and news media. Entertainment media is the media which has function to transmitting the information about entertainment, such as: music, films, TV game shows, etc. it serves for the people entertainment and relaxing. News media is the media which has function to propaganda the news to the public: how the world change, the criminal actions happening every day. This media can also transmit the information to aware the public for the harmful situation to the society, especially, terrorism. Moreover, this chapter mentions about the ways claimmakers compose their claim and spread out this claim to public by media. Some claims are composed very particularly to make it be valuable for news work and then they will be informed or posted into the public. And maybe the claim will affects on and be considered by a lot of audiences.

However, not always people listen to the claimmakers, they will react when the claim are made. And the claimmakers must be waiting for these reactions by audiences to have the adjustments in their claims. Sometimes, it is a long time for waiting these reactions from the audiences. Furthermore, the news workers must be experienced to have ability for selecting the best claims in order to post and spread out these claims to the public.

In chapter 6 (Best 2013), the content is only that the ways how public (people) react to the claims posted by claimmakers and how the claimmakers can approach to audiences reactions and update their claims. The reactions from the public are very important element to prove how valuable the claims are. The more reactions happens, the more claims are valuable. In the modern world, because of earning profits, claimmakers always use technique to make invaluable claims turn into worthier.

In the articles Safe at home (Mark Warr) This article tells us about the effects of media: TV channels, newspapers, etc to the public. People nowadays like staying at home more because the media blows the information in negative ways. TV channels always broadcasts too many criminal news and violent films and that affects to the people thinking (It is too dangerous outside). Newspapers want to sell more, so they always post a lot of articles about the crimes happening everyday for reader, such as: abusing, murdering, kidnapping, etc. These news make social circumstances became tense and thats why people like staying at home to watch TV more than going out. This article strongly confirms the strength of media controlling the world in 2 ways: positive and negative.

In the title Dangerous music in white and black (Amy Binder) Rap music contains the content about something natural, common with African. Lyric is very simple and describes all the feeling of African: what they think, feel, taste, hate and love, etc. However, because the lyric is so simple and has many slangs and sometimes profanity words, it affects on the characters of the audiences worse. Heavy metal rock music lyric has strong (violent) words and the melody has very powerful beats so that affects on the characters and the mental of audiences badly. That means two kinds of music is not good for the young teenagers because when they listen these kinds of music, there are many changes in mentality, cognitive and actions. The results is when the audiences listen to these kind of music, they are affected badly about mentality and cognitive and directly act something worse for society, do crimes. The society will be gone badly day by day. Moreover, with the development of information technology, especially, the internet (media), that will spread out these kinds of music faster and faster. That means the media always has the good and the bad effect. It helps transmitting the information faster but it can transit all kinds of unselected information.

In the article Consuming Terrorism (David L. Altheide - Arizona State University) Media also has another function that it is a method to propaganda about the terrorism for awaking US people. Since terrorist attacking on 09.11, US media has been boosted frequently in order to make an understanding of citizens about the harms and dangers of terrorists. Finally, US media helps people have a wider and different visions about the world and know clearly how it run, change and developments.

In the summary, we see that media has the powerful strength to control the worlds and influence on society and human life. Media is the one of social construction to define the social problems in the worlds because it can make the bad things spread out (Articles Dangerous music in black and white Amy Binder) or a caution to the public (Articles Consuming terrorism - David L. Altheide) or an explanation about the changes in the social situations (Articles Safe at home Mark Warr).

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