Globalized media offers population more choice in terms of their consumption patterns and lifestyles.
Opens up greater global awareness and access to a diversity of cultures.
More opportunities to form identities unconstrained by the limited horizons of local cultures.
Baudrillard (1988, 2001)
We now live in a media-saturated society in which media images dominate and distort the way we see the world.
E.g. sanitised presentation of war.
Calls this distorted view hyperreality.
Media presents simulacra - artificial make-believe images or reproductions/copies of real events which bear little or no relationship to the real world and which are viewed simultaneously across the world.
Media no longer reflects reality but actively creates it.
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Postmodernist view (cont.)
Garrod (2004)
Reality TV shows and social networking sites are blurring the boundaries between 'reality' and 'hyperreality', leaving audiences confused about what is real and what is media-created.
Strinati (1995)
Importance and power of the media in shaping consumer choices.
Popular culture and media images bombard us daily.
Baudrillard suggests that we identify more with media images than we do with our own daily experiences and increasingly live media-led virtual lives.
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Criticisms of Postmodernist views of the media
Assume that people approach the media without any prior experiences of their own and cannot reject or discuss media images.
Media images and representations may not open up the choice to develop new lifestyles but may in fact reinforce stereotypes.
Many people (particularly people in the poorest areas of the world) to not have access to new media and cannot afford to make free choices between media-promoted lifestyles and identities.
Merxists emphasise that the choice alleged by post modernists is a myth.
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