CHAPTER ONE
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The world is witnessing a revolution in communication technology leading to swift and accurate transfer of messages. The new modes of communication and evolution are so rapid that it is becoming difficult to keep pace with acquiring and maintaining the new media. Technological advancement is also helping the evolution of new ideas and has certainly made the world shrink together, not in the geographical but in the socio cultural sense. Enormous changes have taken place within the last decade in the political and economic scenario of the world.
The questions more insistently asked in social research of mass communication are how mass media affects and influences the society. The reasons for asking such questions are the amount of time spent attending to mass media and the amount of resource invested In mass media, especially on production and distribution.
As each new medium has been adopted for widespread use, there has been an increasing level of concern about the influences of mass communication process and the idea that members of the mass society could easily be controlled by powerful media has troubled the critics. It was assumed that the isolated and alienated individual was at the mercy of those who could control the media. The media were thought to have great power because of the absence of other competing social and psychological influences on people.
In the 21st century, information technology and mass media has allowed the government policies and the former rationale behind the change in certain government policies. This has been achieved through the means of newspapers, television, internet and radio. The means has a huge impact on the society in sharing public opinion of the masses. They can form or modify the public opinions in different ways depending on what is the objective.
Radio as an instrument mass media proved far more effective in mass communication as compared to print media. The property of radio which did not require transportation of message drew immense attention of common people and investors in the field of mass media. Radio served hugely the human instinct to know events taking place around him and at distant lands. No fairy tales but the radio brought news from across the oceans and from inland without distinction. A regular listener would get an impression as the whole world has shrunk, a feeling which print media would never had thought in around 400years before the invention of the radio. The news aired regularly from different stations were followed by viewers and a much spicy discussion among experts to generate more interest in events from social and political life.
As radio continued to have its impression on the cultural outlook of the societies by pouring in more opinions of experts in different fields and social life, it started special services to educate people on scores of issues foremost among those have been the healthcare matters. No other source would have been proved handier than radio programs to educate mothers in particular on providing health points for babies and school going children.
Today, radio takes many forms, including wireless networks and internet radio of all types, as well as radio broadcasting. Before, the advent of television, commercial radio broadcast included not only news and music but dramas, comedy, variety shows and many other forms of entertainment.
Radio was unique among methods of dramatic presentation that it used only sound.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Since the birth of communication, media has been used to convey information to those willing to absorb it. Beginning with publications and samples spoken words and soaring to new height in the 20thcentury with radio, television and internet. Media have been made accessible to people in every aspect of their daily lives. However, when abused the power of media can harm the general population. Bias media tend to make people strive to be someone else’s idea of perfect while sub-consciously ignoring their own goals.
Along with emotional conflicts, those influence by the media have encountered physical problems including bulimia, anorexia and the employment of harmful dietary plans, unless reality is discerned from what is presented in certain media. Some people will continue to suffer. The mental effects of the mass media’s portrayal of the perfect body can cause people to resort to unhealthy method of losing weight to attain the athletic look that so many desire. The bottom line is that they should make up their minds that will not be negatively grip on the society can be greatly decreased if people remember just one thing. What is on television and radio is only an advertisement.
