Chapter Six: Media in the Everyday Life

I found this chapter particularly interesting for a few different reasons. Being involved in both a sociology class as well as a public relations class this semester, I’m finding it interesting on how much of the course load seems to overlap.

What I found particularly intriguing is how media seems to be directed towards the “everyday masses” and yet, when we sit down to actually view “everyday,” things aren’t necessarily as we’d see them in reality. Take television for example. As viewers, we often see television as a medium of distraction. In today’s society, nearly every person (at least in the US) owns a television set. But what we watch on that television differs.

How often do we watch a television show, more aptly, a reality show? Reality shows are one of the most common and well watched forms of entertainment on tv. But though we tend to assume that the television is presenting real life, if we stop to think about it, there’s nothing real and everyday about bombshell babes trying to make friends with the geek squad or a single dad that works on a far shipping in 12 lovely ladies from all around the country in hopes of finding true love.

Media stations are trying endlessly to find forms of entertainment that brings real life into the living room. But how ironic, that what we label in the media industry as real life hardly every happens in, well, real life.

Something else that stuck with me from the chapter is just how pervasive certain images are within our society. Certain photographs, portraits, sometimes even brand names become so quickly synced with our everyday happenings. If asked, I bet there is not a certain person in this room that cannot conjure up some image of the 9-11 attacks. Many people can also imagine the famous Obama “hope” poster that prevailed during his campaign. These images have been ingrained into our memories just as much if not more than the actual information itself.



And how quickly we get these images and information as well – the chapter opened with the specific reference to checking your mail on your iPhone! When did we become a culture so driven by brand names? If you asked a student demographic, most would probably get their news not from a local broadcasting network but from The Daily Show or Colbert Report. The media has so branded our interpretation and input of information, ideas and new in the world that we associate things now not necessarily with the information we are getting, but the conduit for how we are receiving the information. We don’t listen to music anymore…we listen to iTunes.