Role of Media

Right from the beginning, the role of media has been to enable the communication of information, news, messages to reach a wide audience, and more importantly, over the geographical dispersed audience. Over the years, the media became a powerful tool to disseminate information.

What is Media

Media refers to the main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the Internet) all considered collectively.

Media refers to industries such as newspapers, magazines, televisions, radio that have the infrastructure and manpower in place to transmit news, messages and information through the various channels on a big scale.

The advantage of these industries is their capacity to mass produce messages due to the number of people they employ, and also because of their capacity to mass distribute messages to the audience.

Today, a lot of information and news is presented to us via traditional media, social media and the internet. One of the reasons that communication is happening on a large-scale today is due to the availability of adequate technology such as the internet.

Role of Media in General

The primary role of media in our society is communication, which can take the form of transmission view or ritual view.

• Surveillance of the Environment
• The Correlation Function
• Cultural Transmission and Influencing Societal Norms
• Education and Entertainment

Media acts as a watchdog on the various activities of the government, lawmakers, and other powerful bodies to see if they are doing their job in a satisfactory manner. So, cases like corruption, economic frauds, labour exploitation, environment impact are other important issues that the media in India tries to cover.

An important role of media is to create awareness by reaching out to the masses, especially to those in the rural areas and to the more vulnerable groups.

Media helps enlighten the public about their rights, about the various government programs and policies and how they affect them either directly or indirectly.

The purpose of media is also to provide real news and to help get justice for people.

It is important for the press to be free and independent so that it can oversee and investigate the government from becoming corrupt or secretive.

Role of Media in India

The media has a long history of fighting for freedom in several countries, including India.

The press was one of the ways the original freedom fighters issued opinions and spread word about British tyranny. Media greatly influenced India’s freedom movement.

In those days, Media was successfully used by our early freedom fighters to make the general public aware of the problems with the various British policies and made the Indian people aware of their intentions.

However, the role of the media in India was different during British rule, as people back in those days were deprived of information and there was very little transparency in the functioning of the administration.

After India’s independence, the role of the media improved as they started covering several social issues. However, during the period of emergency (1975) the activities of media were strongly controlled, they had very little media independence, and strict orders were issued against the media houses.

However, the role of media in India in the post emergency period strengthened again, as it started getting more independence to carry out its activities.

The media was able to cover the political, social, economic and cultural areas of India with minium restrictions thus strengthening the democracy and the government of the people of India.

Read: Role of media in general

Media in India is quite active during election times; they interview leaders from various parties, bring analysts on air to share their political views, and all these discussions help people form an opinion about which parties to vote for.

Media in India also plays an important role in seeking justice, especially where the investigators may have done a biased job or maybe slow in their investigations. For example, The Ayushi Talvaar murder case, The Nirbhaya Rape case, Jessica Lal murder case, etc.

Media in India plays an important role to educate people on how government policies will impact them, directly or indirectly. In the past few years, demonetization, GST, Article 370 are some of the policies that the Indian government has implemented, and the media played an important role in making the people aware about the pros and cons of these actions.

Media acts as a watchdog on the various activities of the government, lawmakers, and other powerful bodies to see if they are doing their job in a satisfactory manner.

So, cases like corruption, economic frauds, labour exploitation, environment impact are other important issues that the media in India tries to cover.

Media in India also awakens people against many evils such as child marriage, killing of female unborn child, child labour, honour killing, which is still prevalent in the urban areas in India.

In recent years, media in India seem to be focusing more on sensationalism, and its pandering to the powerful, and not covering much of the real issues in India.

Technology & Internet: An important source of information

Because of the huge infrastructure setup required for media production, it is difficult for smaller players to get into media production.

Also, over time, the few large media companies have become the tool of the elite and the rich, further keeping the general public away from media production.

However, things have changed a lot in recent years due to the emergence of technology. The proliferation of mobile phones to communicate, the increasing dependence on the internet, and the digitization of all things, have change the way industries operate; several practices that were the norm in the traditional world are no longer applicable (or have a lesser impact) in the digital world.

In today’s world, emerging technologies such as the mobile phone, the internet, e-mail, social media are tools that people are using to easily produce content and distribute it over social media.

The Internet has now become another important source of information for people, and also a medium for media companies to reach put to the masses.

Today, people are also able to participate in media creation, thanks to the various digital platforms, and are not just confined to passively receiving the various kinds of messages. Top social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram attracts millions of visitors, and these are the sites where one can find big communities around specific interests.

The cost of media production has also reduced substantially allowing even the smaller players to enter the media market and provide a different perspective of things.

Despite the obvious advantages of technology/social media, the fact is that it presents both opportunities as well as challenges to media companies. Its main advantage is that news appears on the screen as soon as things happen in real life and you don’t have to wait for news time on TV.

All newspapers now maintain an online version where the latest news appears as soon as they happen. Mobile phones, social media, blogs, podcasts are used for spreading rapid breaking news, and it can also be used to spread short clips of entertainment like jokes, horoscopes, alerts, games, music, and advertising.

In recent years, social networking platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. have brought people closer together which has helped in rapid transmission of news and information.

While this is a great medium for media companies to connect with the masses, social media has also helped the proliferation of fake news as people are eager to share things with others. One good thing about technology, mobile phones and social media is that it also allows the general public to be a part of media creation, something which was extremely difficult decades back when the use of social media and mobile phones were not so widespread.

Is Media Today Biased?

Several decades back, journalism in several countries, including India was not considered merely as a profession, but something much bigger and respected. Committed journalists used to join the press with a mission to educate the masses and to make a difference in society. They would truly believe that the pen was mightier than the sword.

However, over time, media companies have become like other businesses with the objective of making profits.

Media is a profit center now

Media companies have always earned through subscriptions and advertising. But nowadays, a big chunk of the profit margin comes primarily from marketing and advertising, primarily through ad revenues.

Over the decades, there has been a lot of consolidation and conglomeration in the media industry.

With companies facing revenue pressures, with increased competition, and the close association of newspaper publishers with the rich and the powerful, media now seem to be biased and the quality of the news, in general, have been deteriorating over the years.

The term ‘Fourth Estate or fourth power’ is used to refer to the press and news media to act as a guardian of truth, justice and ethics in government.

For most giant media companies, the News Division is now treated as another profit center that are under pressure to generate profits, similar to the lucrative entertainment divisions.

As a result, media seem to be focusing more on sensationalism, its pandering to the powerful, and not covering much of the real issues.

The media covers news that seems superficial, appeals more to the capitalists, and do not provide much coverage to the local cultural scene. The media seem to favor the rich and the powerful elite and disseminate content that’s favorable to those elite, and not really making the locals aware of their real issues, challenges and their own class conditions.

You can even see more of western influence, be it in news, movies & music, books and magazines.

Even celebrities take a lot of footage in newspapers which make the youngsters try to imitate more of western culture and less of Indian culture. This is where most media companies seem to be losing focus; they are now running a business and have diverted from the main objective of passing unbiased information to the public.

Reporters who are generally expected to report events and get analyst’s to analyse certain situations are ow resorting to giving their own views and opinions, instead of narrating the actual events around the world.

So, in recent years, the media has been accused of being biased with certain publications favoring certain political parties. The general perception is that media is biased, and it is not just an Indian phenomenon but is seen in global media as well.

Conclusion

Several decades back, journalism was not considered merely a profession, but something much bigger. Committed journalists used to join the press with a mission to educate the masses and to make a difference in society.

They would truly believe that the pen was mightier than the sword.

However, over time, media companies have become like other businesses with the objective of making profits. The amount of news reported has increased manifold but they all lack depth. The general perception is that media is biased, and it is not just an Indian phenomenon but is seen in global media as well.

Academic Questions on Role of Media

What is the role of media in general

What is the role of media in India

What is the role of media in a democracy