Communication and mass media
In today’s contemporary society mass media has an incredible influential effect on readers. To be able to demonstrate this I have chosen two different newspapers which I will be analyzing and thus providing answers to how mass media works. The two chosen newspapers lead as following; Jang and Dagens Nyheter. Jang is an international newspaper within England as well as Pakistan. It expresses Islamic point of views making it very dissimilar from European newspapers as it presents very subjective articles. It’s written in English and Urdu permitting readers both in England and Pakistan to be able to read it. The specific chosen newspaper was written on the 8th of September. The second newspaper chosen was a Swedish newspaper by the name of Dagens Nyheter. Its point of view is objective as it has very articles that try to mould your opinion and also has a lot of empathy. The specific chosen newspaper was written on 12th of September. With these two newspapers I will be providing answers to how mass media works.
The first question leads as follows “How big a news item is depends, to a certain amount, on the three “distances”. Explain how they work by comparing two newspapers from different countries”. The Jang and the Dagens Nyheter have both very different articles. News that may be found on the headlines on the Jang can be sometimes found in a short paragraph in a different newspaper. This leads one to ask oneself why that is so? The main reason for this is because of the so called “three distances”. These three different points is mainly what the editor’s look within each article before allowing them to be inserted into their newspaper. Culture is one of these points, it allows articles to be printed that have some sort of cultural reference to the country in which the newspaper is aimed for. Time is the second point; the time of when the incident/event also influences on what is printed and what is not. Unless the news is big enough to be mentioned, such as the world trade center collapsing. The third and last point is geographical; the editors only print articles that are related to the area in which the newspapers are released unless the news is globally huge such as USA declaring war on Iraq. To emphasize how these three “distances” have an influence, I will be comparing the two newspapers articles. Dagens Nyheter for example had a whole page regarding Madeleine’s disappearance in Portugal, whilst Jang barely had a paragraph in their domestic section. This shows how the three “distances” work in action. The reason why Jang has not printed a large article about it is mainly because of geographical purposes. The occurrence of the event is so far away that readers are not interested in the article, which thus explains the short paragraph. Jang has printed also printed an article about Palestinian portrayed as martyrs and Sweden’s prime minster meeting Muslim democrats over drawing row. The article about Palestinians is mainly cultural as they probably wouldn’t have been portrayed as martyrs in Dagens Nyheter. This shows the cultural difference between the two. The second article about the drawing row was printed because of cultural reasons, as the drawing concerned Islam. Another example from Jang is an article about Ramadan. The article is printed because of cultural (Jang is an Islamic newspaper), time (Ramadan’s starts in five days) and geographical reasons (the newspaper is from an Islamic region). Whilst on the other hand Dagens Nyheter has nothing about Ramadan. This shows how one newspaper from a country may have an article because of the three distances, whilst another may not have it at all. The comparing of how the articles from the two newspapers are influenced differently by the three distances can go and on. The general idea behind it is that the geographical, time and cultural reasons an article may be printed into a newspapers varies from newspaper to newspaper. It especially varies when the two newspapers are from two different countries as the geographical, cultural and time reasons an article is printed are completely different, because the two countries may not have the same priorities when it comes to printing certain articles.
