My love/hate relationship with media is confusing me so
much.
I study media. I love media. I want to work in media.
However, I think my knowledge of media and the way it works, how constructed it
is and how easily it can influence people allows me to love it without taking
it too seriously. When I see people like my Nan who thinks news is news, I see
how dangerous it can actually be.
If the newspapers, news readers, television presenters, YouTube
videos and radio tell my nana that chocolate is bad, she is going to think it
is bad. Full stop. She isn’t going to think that maybe David Cameron had a big argument
with Mr Cadbury and forced everyone to hate on chocolate to put him out of
business, is she?
I went to a talk at uni last week with Anji Hunter, Tony
Blair’s PR when he came to power. She was talking about the media and the relationships
between businesses, CEO’s and celebrities. Thinking back, the talk was so important.
In the run up to the election, Anji highlighted how influential the media is in
supporting and destroying parties. It has happened before and it will happen
again. It is happening now right in front of me on the TV as I write this.
Over Christmas I gave up social media whilst I was at home.
I deleted it all apart from Facebook. The main influence for this was Snapchat.
I was sat at home having a lovely night with Megan when I was watching people’s
stories and I literally thought, ‘I don’t care’. Why should I care? I know that
all of the images and videos that people put on their stories to show how happy
they are isn’t a true representation of their ‘Social’ lives. Yeah, it is all
well and good picking and choosing those pictures where you are smiling, the
pretty selfies, the videos of you singing, drinking, eating Terry’s chocolate
orange. But that isn’t true. Because you haven’t put the pictures of when you
just woke up and look like a dog, or when you sat on the sofa all day watching
crapTV and had an argument with your mum.
Social media is just the mass media’s little cousin. But now
we can all put our own material out there. We are media trained all by ourselves.
We know that a nice filter on your picture of a roast dinner
will get it more likes.
We know that tweet about your shoes wasn’t just because you
love the shoes. It was because you want everyone to know how great YOU are
because of those shoes. Make everyone want to be YOU.
I’m not saying this as if I’m innocent. I do it all the time
and I will continue to do it. One, because I enjoy social media and I find it
hilarious. And two because this is the future. There is no way to go back now.
Even this blog is across social media and is written in order to get people to
listen to me and my views and understand my thoughts.
Contradiction much.
Recently, I got over 100 likes on a picture of me dressed as
a house. I spent a long time building the house. I thought it was a genius idea
and I was proud of it. I wanted people to see it and if I’m honest, I wanted to
show off a bit. It was fab, why wouldn’t I?
However, the minute I log out of Facebook, what impact does
that 100 likes do to me? ABSOLUETLY NOTHING. It changes nothing. That is why I
wouldn’t dream of floating around telling everyone how great I am for having so
many flipping likes! My life is not now suddenly so positive, light and fluffy
where I sing with birds when I wake up because 100 people like a picture of me.
Ironically, the day I uploaded that picture was the worst day I’ve had at uni
so far. Fun fact. In the real world, it
means nothing.
However, as much as I disagree with it, I will always defend
the media.
I was at home a while back when I had a discussion with some
of my family who said the internet makes people more negative, gives people
somewhere to hide and creates bullying.
‘If you’re getting
bullied online, go offline.’
I could not disagree with this more. Yes, there are a lot of
negative people online. I get a lot more critical when I am typing something
because I’m not going to get an instant response. And go offline? Just because
you turn away from the screen doesn’t mean that people aren’t still doing
things, nudes, threats, public embarrassment. It is all there, and like
bullying, will take a long time to go away if you just ignore it.
If you was being punched in the arm repeatedly, putting on 2
coats might mean you don’t get bruised. But it doesn’t stop that person trying
to hurt you. They will still be trying and that is what is wrong.
That is when amazing projects and support groups on the
internet can, have and will continue to help people get through all kinds of
shit that they go through. We very often forget about the amazing work that the
media and now social media can do, e.g. #nomakeupselfie and ice bucket
challenge to name a few.
I just believe that people need to not take the media for
the ‘fact’ that it pretends to be and find their own information.
The media is just a giant game of Chinese whispers. Trust no B*tch.
