The initial role of media was propagating culture within the masses. Gradually, it also undertook the "job" of publicizing news.
For many years mass media has very important role and today mass media is a significant force. We live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, health care, education, personal relationships, traveling and anything else that we have to do.
Today we live in the era of information technologies, and, as I have already said, mass media reflects and affects practically every possible aspect of our life. There do not exist a universal answer to the question if the influence of mass media is mainly positive or negative. Every person has his own opinion concerning this issue.
Firstly, mass media serves the educational purposes. One cannot imagine a modern average student not using the Internet resources to accomplish some types of tasks. Moreover, there are lots of educational programs on TV for people of different ages and there are gripping articles in some magazines to profound one’s knowledge. But, for example, some students take the access to the Internet for granted; consequently, they think any necessary information can be found fast and easily, so that they do not have to learn it.
Secondly, mass media is used widely in politics. Using mass media is, perhaps, the only possible way to announce the decisions of the government rapidly and for all the citizens at once, to introduce the candidates to elective offices to all the nation, or for the opposition to affect the present state of things.
Thirdly, mass media provides a great number of entertainments. There are a lot of TV-programs, a great variety of magazines for women, for children, for men, many Radio-programs. And of course, Internet. There people can find all that they want: films, cartoons, music and much more.
So, we have put our trust on the media as an authority to give us news, entertainment and education, which means that mass media still play a great role in our life.
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