The Power of the Media

Name

Institution

Professor

Course

Date

The power of the media

Media has redefined most of the things that people do in recent times. It has taken over the control on how people connect with their families, how people socialize with their friends, how celebrities get the attention of their fanatics and also how the businesses are functioning. The key part of the media that is seen to control the larger population in the world is social media. Hundreds of millions of people across the world use social media across the world. The most commonly used social media are Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube. Due to the increase in the popularity, they have come to reshape the business world. Many businesses have seen the opportunity in these social media as a place to advertise and to interact with their customers. The role of the media has been to educate people on social, economic and political matters.

The global media groups play an important role in shaping the social world by taking over the control of issue-framing and also by being the information gatekeepers (Castells, 2007). The communication platforms have played an important role in helping people in making decisions on matters surrounding them. Politics, economy and social life are examples of areas where media has been able to bring remarkable changes. Journalist has taken the responsibility of educating the people on different matters that affect them directly. This is a change from the way things were done in the past where a journalist work was just to report the happenings. Nowadays, journalists take part in many research and investigations processes that the later educate people. This has brought positive change in the world and the media has become a more useful tool.

In 2002, Christopher Coyne and Peter Leeson provided details showing the role of the media in the economic development of a country. The two argued that the main role of the media is to coordinate and enhance mechanisms that are used in the development of policies. In their report, they looked closer into some economic development matters such as those of Hungary and Poland. In this two countries, the media took part in transforming the situation of conflict into coordination. The media is also been able to capture information, and also access information that has made most of the politicians and the people of a given nation to coordinate on good conjecture. This has lead to positive growth in the economy. In this case, media has helped the country in improving the efficiency of the economy. It achieves this by providing all the actors with better information that helps them in making useful decisions and will lead to improvement of the stability of the economy.

Media has helped a number of countries that have a more political risk to regain stability. This has been achieved n most of the Sub-Saharan African countries. Free media has been used as a tool to educate the citizens of those countries on matters of democracy and other political matters. Media has also contributed a lot in changing the lifestyle of most of the people from these countries, to a more civilized one. Some of the issues that the media has been able to help residents of these nations with include the importance of educating their children, how to live a healthy life, business, and political matters. The results of these efforts made by the media can be seen in these communities have changed within a short period of time. A well-informed community is able to elect leaders who will help them, and the one who will be help accountable for whatever he does to his people. There has been an improvement in their health sectors as well as their education systems. This has lead to the reduction of the level of poverty in most of these countries.

Media has taken part in improving governance in many parts of the world. It has been the role of the media to monitor the actions of those who are in power and to inform the public of any malpractices done in these offices. Some of the areas that the media has been able to alert the public of any action that shows the abuse of office and corruption. All the countries with a strong, free and independent media have lower levels of corruption. Corruption is one of the key factors that drag the economy of a country behind. A study that was conducted showed that all the countries that have reduced violence against journalists have reduced levels of corruption. According to Freille, Emranul, Sabastian, and Richard (2007), they found that improving the economic viability and competitiveness of the media sector will lead to a one standard deviation increase in press freedom. This is associated with a reduction in levels of corruption in a nation.

The media provides people with access to information. This helps the people in holding their leaders responsible for all the things they do while in office. Some of the critical information that media provides people with is the annual audit report from different departments of the government. Citizens of a given nation are able to see how their taxes are being spent and also whether the projects that they are being carried out are helping to improve their livelihood. In most of the countries that respect the role of the media, journalists are given access to all the relevant documents showing the government expenditure. We can say that media has played an important role in promoting transparency between the government at its citizens.

From the above review, it is clear that media play the major part in increasing economic efficiency and stability by improving governance, reducing corruption and also providing a platform for advertisements. Media has also contributed to creating a positive social and environmental change. The media has actively engaged people in matters that will help them in changing their life by helping them to make important decisions (Blair, 2007). People have also used social media as a platform where they can communicate their concerns to the relevant authorities. Citizens have also been able to question their leaders on the decisions that they make by the help of the live debated that are coordinated by the media houses. Media is a tool for social, political and economic change in the world.

References

Blair, T. (2007, June 12). Speech on public life, London. Retrieved from http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2007/06/12/BlairReustersSpeech.pdf

Freille, Sebastian, M. Emranul H, and Richard K. (2007) "A contribution to the empiric of press freedom and corruption." European Journal of Political Economy 23.4 : 838-862.

Castells, M. (2007) ‘Communication, Power and Counter-Power in the Network Society’, International Journal of Communication 1(1): 238–66.

Harding, J. (2002) ‘Murdoch Interview: Media King Warms to His Subjects’, Financial Times 11 June; at: www.ft.com

Castells, M. (2009). Communication power. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press