1) Surveillance - No, not snooping, but the news and information role of the media

2) Interpretation

3) Linkage

4) Establishing Values

5) Entertainment

3) Linkage

The media can join together culturally different elements of society in a common goal or similar interest. Recently, linkage has been a response to cope with tragedy.

"People engaging with Irma from well beyond the danger zone use social media "like huddling together during bad times," said public relations expert Richard Laermer, author of "Trendspotting."

Social media makes people feel like they are doing something, as opposed to nothing," he said."

Click here to read "Social media gets the word out during Irma emergency".

The media can join together geographically separate groups.

The media can reinforce positive or negative values in society through wide exposure and constant repetition.

Positive Effects of Linkage

1) Enhances socialization (learning about others)

2) Enhances solidarity (strength in numbers)

3) Reinforces positive values

Remember this post 9/11 campaign, designed to create solidarity?

To be successful, the advertiser has to make a broad spectrum of young adults want to buy the product. Gap is a mass market retailer not a "niche" retailer. As a result, it links together many different members of its target audience in this commercial.

Click here to read the Advertising Age Review of Gap Vests Ad Campaign

Negative Effects

1) Enables anti-social elements to link up
 
In a free society, people can form groups for good or bad. In the past, the influence of a specific group was limited by the group's lack of access to mass media. As I mentioned in an earlier presentation, the Internet provides unlimited opportunities to influence mass audiences for minimum expense.

The organization below tracks web sites devoted to "hate".

2) Reinforces negative values
 
Our own beliefs are validated if others believe the same thing.

"Anyway, what's wrong with a little honesty, even when conveyed with brass knuckles? There's nothing wrong with a wakeup call -- however unlikely its recipients will heed it.

The wrong part, if any, is this: putting it on TV. Putting it on TV can be cruel. Which makes "American Idol" a pretty cruel show. If it weren't, the most appalling contestants would be weeded out beforehand, safely out of view -- not hand-picked to face the judges' on-camera scorn."

Click here to read "The popular cruelty of 'Idol'."

The article below, written almost a decade ago, predicts the direction of both talk and "reality" TV. Has this prediction come true?

"I think reality TV may be symptomatic of a broader trend toward cultural nastiness that crept up on us with the advent of Jerry, Maury, Ricki, Montel and the other professional talkers who specialize in bleeping and screaming, as "guests" are subjected to verbal assaults from former spouses or secret gay admirers. (In the notorious Jenny Jones case, an actual off-camera murder ensued.) The tears and curses and venomous exchanges make any outlandish soap opera plot pale by comparison.

But the question remains: what makes Americans watch? Is it a kind of bizarre revival of slapstick, a banana-peel joke raised to a surreal pitch? Is it an offshoot of the politics of accusation, exposé, sleaze and attack ads that dominated the Clinton years? Is Monica Lewinsky the mother of Fox? Is this what TV is all about for today's undergraduates?"

Click here to read "They Want Their Mean TV."