Essay Sample on Our Collective Interest

Introduction

Currently, an average individual tends to be exposed to a huge variety of advertisement every day. In every advertisement, we look at in the various areas, for example, on billboards, the labels that are posted outside the convenience stores, at the top of taxis, on the sides of the website pages and between the television programs. We tend to capture messages that try to impact or influence what we believe in or even the way we behave. Currently, there are billboards in almost every location that previously had an empty wall, which is a clear indicator of growth in the advertisement industry. This steady aim to assess how these media intend to influence our collective personal disclosure considering that they also intend to impact our personal purchases

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George Sanders essay "the brain-dead megaphone" tend to use the guy with mega headphones who turns up for a party where he tries to argue that current mass media has a huge omnipresence that tries to change our collective disclosure through making it more brash, less humble and less intelligent. In this scenario the person who turns up for the party tends acts as the means of advertisement, the people at the party were the collective disclosure for the advertisement that concerned the spring break. The megaphone was the mass media that provided the spring morning information thus erasing the level playing field.

Sanders needs you to imagine the party with guests from different background and with diverse experience talking amongst themselves as the collective disclosure. Each guest in the party tends to be a unique participant in the conversation whereby each gest gives his or her perspective. Also, each gest abide is noted stick to particular expectations such that every individual gets a chance to speak and no one interrupts the conversation. Different chatters culminate together in the party as the people reactor the argument, some of the people are seen to disagree with him while others are agreeing. The arrival of the person with the megaphone seems to change or break the contract where each of the conversation participants is a guest with "rights". Each participant also acts as an audience to the whim of the megaphone guy this is proved by sanders proving indicating that " because he is so loud, their conversation will start to react to his views"(2). Due to the megaphones guy dominance everyone guest in the room stops their respective conversations and starts to listen to his argument, the megaphone guy was so loud that everyone who tried to continue with their respective conversation would still hear his voice.

Before the megaphones interruption, the discussions were actively prompted amongst the guest themselves, such that they aired their concerned, disagreed or agreed amongst themselves and also refined their beliefs, each individual was seen as an equal party to the various conversations. The stories were shared and developed amongst the guest thus giving the right portrayal of the reality. But since the megaphone guy is in control now, "the guest will have to stop believing in their guests, and come to view their main purpose is to become reactors to the megaphone guy"(3). The megaphone tries to eliminate the level playing field where everyone is involved in their respective conversation through the creation of an asymmetric dynamic between the active newsperson and the passive viewer.

The mass media tends to have access to the best researchers, pundits and other experts out there. However, if these are the individuals would enhance and deepen the understanding of the topics and worlds challenges, why does the mass media descend into superficiality so often instead? Sanders tries to offer his response by stating that " surrounding our mass storytelling function to the various entities whose first interest is profit, we tend to make as a dangerous concession: 'tell us,' we say in effect, as much truth as you can, while still making money." The media attempts to capture as much of our attention as possible cases them to make the discussion easier and simpler for the people to understand the content. For the media to capture the people's attention, they use the technique of being dramatic and entertaining. This means that when a disparency exists between what is important and entertaining, we are told the story that is entertaining. Also, the news tends not to dwell on a topic for long so that the audience cannot get bored and change the channel. The media opts to jump from one topic to the other covering each briefly until they come up with a subject that attracts much viewership. They then try to milk this story as much as they can mine the details that are often inconsequential. This makes or attracts people to focus or gain the attention of the information presented in the media.

The media tries to fill up and keep the viewers reeled in the programming time. Sanders also tries to inform us about the local reporter who tends to dedicate an entire segment to the unimportant story: malls get busy before Christmas, but the reporter on the other side frames the segment to be informative and daring. Not only will the people talk about the topic covered by the media but they will also try to discuss them within the media's framing of the topic. Sanders indicates that " after being evaluated by our having seen it all dressed up on television, in its fancy faux informing clothing,"(9) this makes us see the reporting as legitimate and hinder us from stepping outside the frame. The media has to, therefore, frame their information topics in the right manner for the audience to be attracted to view it. Saunders further explains that the media has found out that revealing the challenge of living with ambiguity stops certain satisfaction from m the passive viewers. (12) This makes us be given the simplified narratives that are made of reality and separation of the good and the bad. To ensure that the news remains entertaining the media must make it dramatic with through covering what is appealing and discreditable

Even with the strategies to enhance the divertissement revenue, the news industry finds it hard to make profits. Often a wealthy benefactor will subsidise organisations with their preferred ideological leanings. In "we have been brainwashed" Joseph E. Stiglitz explains how the moneyed interests have effectively influenced the policy and public perception. Trough out joseph e. Stiglitz essay he provides examples of where disparities exist between perception and reality which includes the people underestimating inequality, overestimating social mobility, underestimating the efficacy of the government interventions, and overestimating the efficiency of the free market. Crucially Stiglitz also explains how the battle over specific policies is determined much more broadly through his framing of institutions. "The intellectual battle is often fought over particular policies, such as whether taxes should be raised on capital gains. But behind these disputes lies this bigger battle over perceptions and big ideas like the role of the state, market, and civil society." This asserts that the media that is aligned with the 1% tend to exaggerate the efficacy if the market is leading to underestimation. Therefore the news items that confirm these two beliefs are offered a great airtime deal even when they are not entirely true, while the news pieces that confirm the opposite tend to be avoided.

Agenda driven broadcasters are not new. What are scary are the tools that now lay at their disposal. Agenda driven information can be countered by opposing viewpoints and smart critical dissection of the arguments and information. As we learnt from Saunders, this is not possible in our media sphere, which does not have room for nuance. (9) For example, in a situation where the analysts start to engage in game show contests, competing on who will provoke greater rating and viewership. An uncritical media creates a culture that is not only unaware of it but also unaware of any bigger global problem. The decay of our discourse makes us vulnerable, even susceptible. Where Saunders shows us that we have become susceptible to the outside influence, Stiglitz shows us we have been taken advantage of. Stiglitz emphasises that there exist powerful groups with interests that run counter to that of everyone else. These groups achieve their objectives of setting preferential policies through changing perceptions. According to Sanders statement we become aware that our perception or thoughts are usually superficial and malleable, this is due to our limited mechanism of collective disclosure. Unless we become more critical of the media we consume we will continue to become more susceptible to outside influence and powerful groups have used every opportunity to inflict upon us their agenda, which have done so successfully in the past.

Works Cited

Joseph E. Stiglitz. We have been brainwashed: salon, 2012

Saunders, George. The Brain-dead Megaphone: Essays. Penguin, 2007.