Modern public life Essay Example for Free

Modern cosmos c beer assayModern universal sustenance could non exist or head for the hills properly with forbidden the Media In this test I leave behind be discussing the above statement and arguing that without Media, modern public life could non exist. I will first explain some key terms to help in the telephone line including explaining the meaning of the term popular Life. According to the Collins Dictionary The unexclusive is people in dry land(a) or the people of a particular place. Public is subprogramd to talk about the feelings and behaviours of people in general. If someone is a public figure or is in public life, they ar well known.Public is used to talk about things being said or done so that everyone can prove them or see them. What is meant by the term Public Life is a space where a physical structure of people can come together to discuss sleep togethers relating to their group. These groups can be very sm tout ensemble interchange adequate a book club or large standardized the United Nations and they can discuss anything from the in style(p) Bryce Courtney novel to world peace. Geoffrey Craig in his book The Media Politics and Public Life explains the concept of public life as .. A body of people within a society and a landed estate within which debate about that society occursThe public is also a subject, and people come together as a public in modern times when they engage in reads of the events, the stories and the debates that circulate in the society. (2002. P49) Public life occurs where private issues argon brought to the attention of the general public by dint of the use of the media. Without out the media it would be private life, non public life. Media, as defined by the Collins dictionary is the plural of mass medium which is a room of communicating or teaching something. When we talk about the media we do non tho use traditional fashions of media like newspapers, picture and radio but we also use other forms of media like movies, the internet, transnationals companies and colloquy technologies. both of these forms of media atomic number 18 sites where the meanings of public life ar played out, debated and evaluated. Our every solar day lives could not function properly without the media. Media is a drug that we cannot live in a democratic society without. We listen to the radio on the way to work to intoxicate the traffic reports and to know where the multi-novas be hidden.When election time comes, we hawk invite John Howard round for dinner to discuss his policies so we rely on the media to gift us them through television radio and newspapers. When a cyclone is coming our way, how do we know to lock up the hearthstone or leave town? The media inform us. Even the very early smoke signals were a form of media, a form of communication. It is important to stress here that there is no way that public life could function without the use of the media as the understand ings of our society, the norms and values of the world in which we live are the products of living in a mediated world.We as a public only ever see the representations of a prison- disruption story through the television or in the paper. We rely on the media to tell us breaking stories that are happening around the world because of our geographical locations. John Hartley (1992 P1) has noted while the public domain and the public dont exist as spaces and assemblies, the public realm and the public are still to be found, large as life in the media. Television, popular newspapers, magazines and photography, the popular media of the modern period, are the public domain, the place where and the means by which the public is crated and has its being. In talking about public life we moldiness clarify the notion of having a public sphere. By public sphere we mean any activities that occur in the public centre of attention or that is brought to the attention of the public through the media . Habermas moots that the original public spheres originated with the early Bourgeois movement in the tea familys, libraries and reading societies in England. It was here where people gathered to discuss issues concerning their lives and the society in which they lived. What do this a public sphere was that the people were all gathered in one place discussing issues that were germane(predicate) to them.Although this was regarded as one of the original democracies that were a voice for the people, Habermas also understood that the early tea house publics were not totally representative of the communities for which they were fighting for. In the early days women were not included in the tea house discussions, also, only a certain class of people were allowed to enter the tea houses and those that could not read would not need to go to reading houses or libraries. Of course those that could not travel to these public events had no said either.This limited the voice of the people to only those that were upper-class, well educated men that could travel. This was not representative of the wider communities. The next stage in the evolution of public life was when the printing presses made belles-lettres available to the mass public. This literature was free from state control and was the newest site for public life to be played out on. Of course if you were illiterate the medium was useless but for those that could read and had access to the literature a new public was formed. The reading public was not tied by geographical re inflexibleions.The education of film was again a new medium that with it brought a new public. By now we wear to understand that there are a huge amount of publics that all have their own issues to debate. A person can be part of a number of publics at one time. She may be a single mother, working at the supermarket, she is part of the conservative party, is a part of a sci-fi reading club, she buys Thai cooking books, buys red wine and goers to wineries, is part of a mothers group at day care, has a network of other single friends on the internet and is part of a union at work.All of these publics want very specific things and all lobby for different things, the private issues become public when they are played out through the different types of media. Without the media the issues would not be brought into the public spot swooning and would likely not be resolved. It is essential to point out that modern public life is played out through our media consumption and not through our everyday experiences. We collectively watched the September 11 attacks through our televisions, listened to the disaster bloom on our radios and read about and saw the pictures of the devastation in newspapers.Without these sites we would not have experienced it at all. This highlights the fact that we rely on the media to get information that would not readily be available to us. asshole Dahlgren argues that the public sphere is not jus t a marketplace for ideas or an information exchange store but also a major societal mechanism for the production and circulation of floriculture. This idea of the media framing culture is very important because it gives the media great power to give meaning to our identities. Culture, which consist of ideas, customs, norms, values and attitudes are dual-lane by the people of a particular country.Campaigns that promote a type of culture are much produced by government and portrayed through various media outlets. Popular campaigns that frame our culture are the interior(prenominal) violence ad Australia says NO to domestic violence and the drink driving campaign, that enforce that fact that those things are going against our culture and that that type of behaviours is not accepted. These campaigns are dependant on the media getting the message out there. The main media technologies that are responsible for the communication of public news are television, radio and print and thes e all function as journalism.These are seen as the most current sources of information as they are governed by laws that protect privacy, defamation and the use of misleading information. Journalisms main role is to seek the truth and tell the masses. Although these forms of media are self regulated (to be free of outside influence) their guidelines that journalists have to abide by are strict to keep the freedom to self regulate. Television is the most powerful mass medium and is an absolute must in every household. In my house alone there are four televisions and there are only 2 people living there.A productivity commission report found that Australias top over 20 hours per week or 36% of their leisure time watching television(Productivity Commission 200, P62). The susceptibility to actually see an event or person and hear them speak makes television the most trustworthy of the media outlets. Politicians often measure the success of a campaign on the presentation of their imag e/ policy/media events. Although television has taken over from the print media as the most popular type of news media, many argue that the print media are the most influential mass medium for political debate.Agenda setting for the day is mostly done by the quality morning newspapers. Newspapers are often more detailed in their dissemination of public life because they are not restricted by the time factor that is TV. communicate is the secret weapon in the fight for a public life. The radio doesnt have the ability to show the audience an event or doesnt even give them a chance to read about an issue but it is the most pervasive forms of media as it can be listened to whilst driving or doing the housework. Politicians often use talkback radio as a direct link to the public.It is often the closet the general public will get to speaking with high profile players. Because the media is the chief agency to communicate public life and the world that we know is based on the representatio ns of the media, there is much scrutiny placed on the authenticity of the stories that are shown to us. In Australia there are laws that ensure that one source does not have monopoly over the mental object of our media, Australias former prime minister Paul Keating put it best when he said that the cross self-possession laws meant you could be a prince of print or a queen of screen but not both.This means that one person will not be in control of all of the media of our country and so a true representation of societys issues would be presented by the media. Again without the media, Australia would not be able to be a democratic society and have a public life. Through many different sites issues and events are played out and become open to the scrutiny of the general public. These different issues and events create discussion surrounded by the people that read or hear about them and this is what is meant by a public life.People that are hundreds of miles away from each other can b e discussing the same issues without even having to talk to one another. These systems of communication enable us to live in a democratic society, a society where we can chose who leads us in government and we can discuss issues relating to our society. This would not happen if wasnt for the role of the media. Without the media to portray issues and events we would never hear about a sale on in the city or about governmental policy that is set to affect us all. Public life as we know it would not be able to function properly without the media.ReferencesCraig, Geoffrey. Chapter 1, 2 and 3. The Media, Politics and Public Life. Victoria Allen and Unwin, 2004. Cunningham, Stuart and Graeme Turner. The Media and Communications in Australia. St Leonards, Sydney Allen and Unwin, 2002. Dahlgren, Peter. Television and the Public Sphere Citizenship, Democracy and the Media. London Sage, 1995 Grossberg, Lawrence, Ellen Wartella and D. Charles Whitney. The Media and the Public. Media Making Ma ss Media in a Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CASage, 1998. 357-374 Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society.Trans, T. Burger. Cambridge Polity, 1992. Scannell, Paddy. Public service broadcasting and modern public life Media, Culture and Society. 11(1989)135-166. Thompson, John. The Media and the Development of the Modern Societies The Media and Modernity. Cambridge Polity Press, 1995. 44-69 Wark, McKenzie. Celebrities, culture and cyberspace the light on the hill in a post-modern world. Sydney Pluto Press, 1999. 128-136 http//malagigi. cddc. vt. edu/pipermail/icernet/2004-January/002743. html http//www. zip. com. au/athornto/thesis2. htm http//www. gseis. ucla. edu/faculty/kellner/kellner. html.