Kong people are greatly influenced by Japan imported media materials. For
example, Kimra Takuya is very popular in Hong Kong because the import of his
songs and films. Now, many Hong Kong people follow his dressing style
and hair style. Also, there are many boutiques selling Japanese accessories,
stationeries and other Japanese products. Even the trend of sliming is come
from Japan. From that, you can see that how Japan is dominating Hong
Kong cultures through media. This is what we called cultural imperialism.
Moreover, media breaks down the traditional value in audiences’ mind.
People construct their own set of value through various channels, mainly through
mass media, as many messages are imported from the West, so many traditional
ideas have been overlooked by Hong Kong people. For example, Hong Kong
people accept pre-martial sex which is traditionally not acceptable as Hong Kong
people are influenced by the western idea, Also, the feminist idea is strengthened
by the media as it portrayed women in a higher status, for a long time, women
are stereotyped to be protected.
Apart from the change in personal social values, norms and life style, the
whole social culture is also changed. Living in the same, people will normally
receive information from the same media. According to the studies done by
Comstock et al in 1978, they showed that people’s beliefs are affected by what
they see on television. Then there is an extensive exposure to common images
and information through the media, so mass society is created. In such society,
the ideas, life-styles and values of people become more and more similar. As a
result, the social diversification become impossible, community may not work well
under this homogenous environment.
What I mentioned above are mainly the negative effects on media to people,
but there are some positive effects. Actually, without the existence of ideological
domination and cultural imperialism, media does work its function well.
As Golding says “ the media are central in the provision of ideas and images
which people use to interpret and understand a great deal of their everyday
experience”. Indeed, media work well in this aspect. It can provide a large pool of
information in different aspects such as political, financial, entertainment, science
and more others. With the advanced technology development, the transfer of
information become more rapid. For example, on11th September, 2001, all
people in the world can know what happened in the United States immediately
when the first aeroplane crashed into the World Trade Centre on internet,
television programs and etc. From this, we can see that how useful and efficient
media is.
Although it is no doubt that some media will use a wrong style and have an
adversely affect the social trend, if media reports the truth in an appropriate way
with proper style, then it can be said to be an good educator to promote the
positive ideologies, such as the style of Ming Pao is a good model. They never
make up the news, use any boastful words or horrible photos to attract readers.
What they reports are based on the truth and politically neutral, the education,
financial information provided are useful. That’s why so many professors and
secondary teachers recommend their students to read this newspaper as
reference.
Not only being a good educator and information provider, it is also a good
monitor. It will give some comments on government policies, do some researches
on current issues such as survey on giving mark to Mr.Tung performance. All
these comments and evaluation act as a mirror to the government so that they
can introspect their political performance. For example, the previous financial
secretary, Mr. Anthony Leung did not feel what is wrong on buying the car before
increasing the tax, he did not realize that this action will affect his affiance until
the media reported it out. With media to monitor their performance, the politicians
would be more careful on handling problems.
Since media in Hong Kong are less cowed by the government authorities
and more free to report everything and express both positive and negative
opinions. Today, more than 90 percent of the callers of the two-hour call-in shows
were expressed their personal views on current affairs and politics. For instance,
on 1stjuly 2003, most medias in Hong Kong was talking about the demonstration,
they invited some famous politicians to be the guests of their programs. Those
opinions given through the media are useful to monitor the government policy.
Sometimes, media may even criticize the characters of politicians. In this
case, media can act as a mirror to reflect the results of government policies, so
that the government can know what people actually need and bring out some
corresponding policies which will improve the living standard.
From the above analyses, it seems that people are very passive. They
have to receive everything given from media, but this is just partly correct. In fact,
people in most of time are the final decision makers. Some people even said that
the media allegedly act as neutral autonomous servants of the public.
Firstly, why does the media report these news? Based on the market
principle – demand and supply, if there are groups of people wanted to know
information in special aspects, to gain profit, some companies may issue
magazine related to their interested information. In this case, people control the
content indirectly. For example, Apple Daily is the top sellers in the magazine
market. That means that there is a large demand on this kind of style. In order to
make more profit, other newspaper will then follow its style, such as oriental daily.
As a result, ideological domination and cultural imperialism exist.
Not only does the traditional reporting style change according to the
taste of customers, some new medias are also set up to meet the demand.
For example: people today want more choices on television channels
and also they want to review some programs when they are free. Then cable TV.
Now.com channel, hallmark channel are set up to satisfy them. Cable TV has
more than 10 channels to choose, including discovery channel, news channel
and etc.; people can review many past films and television programs on now.com
and hallmark channel.
Besides controlling the content and creating some new media, people also
have the power to stop publishing a magazine. In the case of the closure of East
weekly, we can see how powerful people are. Although publishing the nude
photos can boost the market share, it’s already run counter to law because the
publication of the nude photos is doubted to be selling sexy, and invading privacy.
Not only is the suffer affected, the whole fad in society and the standard of
Hong Kong are also affected. According to the social learning model, people
would learn and imitate media messages and images. When people read the
content or just see the over, they may think of the attack on sex and some people
may follow. Concerning this attack will bring a wrong concept to our next
generation, it caused a great response from public. In order to express their
objection on this incident, the Hong Kong Performing Artistes Guild held a
demonstration. Under the public pressure, East weekly closed down.
Even in the later time, another magazine- third weekly- published the
similar photo again as cover also receive many complaints from public, though it
is not closed, it also received warning from the Television and Entertainment
Licensing Authority. After this incident, more people paid attention on the media
moral and the Authority also tightened their legislation on that. From then on,
people have the right to monitor the media as well.
On the above illustration, it is obvious that both media and people have
influence on each other. Apparently, media do more to people than people do
with media, but the truth is just opposite. Therefore, I personally agree with
the statement” instead of trying to find out what media do to people, we should
think in terms of what people do with the media”. However, we still cannot ignore
the interaction between them because the most effective way to monitor media is
to find out the inter-relationship.
Regarding to the two-step model, when the media message reaches people,
they would interpret the media message. Their interpretation is mainly affected by
the social interaction and prior experience in the society. On one hand, media
should be self-discipline, they should not publish anything about violence and sex,
which will violate the law and affect the fad. Moreover, they shouldn’t make up
the news or make any overstatement on news, which will violate the media
regulations and people will never know the truth. This is completely damage the
function of media.
For people, they are suggested to follow the uses and gratification model,
which mentioned that how the news affect us is depending on how people
interpret the messages once they received. Using your own experience and
received information to analyze whether the information published is right or
wrong. For example: if media shows a hero in the film smoke, they would not
follow as they have received messages from different sources that suggested not
to smoke. The presence of wrong ideas enables people to re-consider their
values. People should not fully believe in what media said, they have to filter all
information themselves, otherwise, they will become the servants of media.
To conclude, media is an element that fastens the development of the
society. Without media, the information cannot spread out so efficiently. However,
when we are using the media as the main information source, we should
analyze and filter the accuracy. Otherwise, our social value, norms and life style
would be adversely affected.
Reference list:
Bilton, Tony and associates 2002 (4th edition) Introductory Sociology, chapter 12 ‘Mass Media’, pp. 328-348
Haralambos, Michael 2000 (5th edition) Sociology: Theme and Perspectives, chapter 13 ‘Communication and the Media’, pp. 935-950
Leo Bogart 2001 (1st edition) Commercial Culture, Ch. I ’Fundamentals’, pp33-60
Jon Vanden Heuvel and Everette E.Dennis, Hong Kong, pp54-70
Television and Entertainment Authority
Yahoo News Group
www.yahoo.com.hk/news
