HOW AM I AFFECTED BY THE MEDIA?
In today’s world where we are constantly bombarded with information from different source including from the media, it is impossible to say our behaviour and metal thoughts are not affected by media consumption.
For me, I’m equally affected by the mass amount of media items I’m subjected to consume every day. I would like to elaborate more using two topics, Prosocial Media and Advertisements.
Prosocial Media
Firstly, Prosocial Media is used foster altruistic behaviour such as helping and generosity, as well as friendly attitudes and behaviours, aggression reduction, positive thoughts.
So far with my exposure to media. I realised that media on one hand can help me to foster prosocial behaviour, on the other side it can also cause/influence me to be more anti-social. For example, myself being exposed to media of aggression and antisocial related articles will lead me to think and act the same way as them. On the other hand, being on the side of the media that produces contents that are prosocial and less aggressive/positive will affect me to act and think like them, at least in certain ways.
Base on some real-life examples I found this to be very true. For example, people in regions that are less exposed to aggressive media, show less sign of aggressiveness vice versa.
Advertisements
As an individual which receive inputs of media information every single moment, I would say that media had affected me in the way I spend my money on because of media advertisements. Comparing to back to the days where all I had was a Nokia 3310 and Windows 98 PC without any form of connection to the net, the only place to receive adverts was Television, Radio, Magazines and Newspapers.
Through all this I realised that perceptual and attitudinal effects media had influence on me. For example, the word ‘ Gaming’ Slapped on some computer hardware I find makes me want to buy them, because the consumer market’s view is that everything with that word on it performs better. This word has long-term impact of an ad on the consumer’s impression of the brand and product. This day any consumer-based hardware without the word is thought to give less performance.
Conclusion
Through this module I have learn a lot on what Psychology is in general and how does mass media affect me Psychologically. This is important to me as from what I have learnt, I realised that some of the media contents I am exposed to daily might be affecting me in harmful way.
