I have been reading a book called Where Underpants Come From and feel somewhat offended by the content. The writer wrote something like people don’t queue when buying subway tickets in Shanghai. I certainly don’t believe what the book depicted because I have the first-hand experience to prove the book wrong (I’m from China). However, when I think about it, I wonder what other people would think if they read the book. If they have never been to Shanghai, will they believe the book? Well, probably yes, because at that moment, that book perhaps is the medium they reply on to make sense of the city Shanghai.
The same applies not only to books, but to all media, particularly news media—through where we look at what’s going on around the world. As McLuhan mentioned, like villagers, we use television as a window to observe what’s going on outside on the streets. In modern society, the television shows us not only things happening on the streets nearby, but also things happening on the other side of the world. Modern technology makes distance disappear greatly. However, like Miller (1971) argued senses like pain, heat and smell are cut off from the audiences. How news stories are framed can strongly influence how people interpret the whole thing. Like what happened in KOSOVO war in 1999, NATO framed the war as a “zero casualty video-game”(Bens, ED, Hauttekeete,L & Lagast, H 2002). Military actions of NATO were presented as only targeting on certain locations like power plants, communication centres, and factories. Citizen casualty was greatly erased in the news. Government and PR people made it look like a “clean war” (Bens, ED, Hauttekeete,L & Lagast, H 2002).
The news media also influence us in some more subtle ways. Like the how media label enemies as “terrorists”. In some cases, such demonizing of enemies helps not only to justify actions from “our side”, but also reduce the audiences’ sympathy to “their side”. Examples could be KOSOVO war, Iraq war, and what’s going on in Tibet recently.
There are other influential media sectors as well. One example would be advertisements. In recent years, many ads appear in media as mutated forms. In print media, ads about PDA, mobile and other gadgets sometimes do not look like ads, but look very much like feature stories, which trick readers into reading the contents. Music videos, TV series, films and video games also indicate audiences what are the must-haves nowadays. I remember watching a Hong Kong TV show in which an old guy said he was using a mobile phone his son had discarded because of its lack of certain functions. But even with that used mobile phone, he could watch TV programs and live-cam with his son. I felt a bit miserable because I have been using a GSM mobile for years. But on second thought, I wouldn’t have felt miserable without watching that show. It was the show that told me everyone else is using a high-tech mobile. But if I look at people around me, that’s certainly not the truth.
