Media interpretation and how it is portrayed

Over the past week we have been looking at the different forms of ‘Media’ and

researching how it is portrayed to the general public, and for this intervention

we intend to be looking at a few examples showing how this can change the

perspective of the way we hear and see things within the media.

The media is interpreted in a different light by every single person who consumes it,

we all have an opinion on what the news is saying whether they’re being bias towards

certain figures or just ignoring certain news stories altogether. Does this change our

views towards certain news stories and information that we are being told all because

someone told us it?

This is what we as a group decided to research into, and how media is portrayed to

the public masses. This was a topic that could be integrated and looked into by using

various activities on a set group we could gain a small sample size on how everyone

has different reactions and actions to news and instructions.

How media alters our portrays of news

As you can see with the first image to your left, the framing of the presenter and

distance of the camera can make a big difference in how information is conveyed to

the audience. The supposed shot on screen that the audience will see, portrays and

gives the impression of a well turned out protest with the loads of banners and flags in

the background shot.

However in the image to your right you can see it doesn’t have the desired support

that it appears to have as been portrayed in the first image all thanks to the shot and

framing. It appears to be from a longer distance and isn’t as supported as portrayed.

This gives false impressions and misleads the public viewer, this can be done with

visual content, although this seems to be in a news perspective. This in itself could

have been set up for an interview style recording with the display of people protesting

in the background to hype the publicity given to people voicing their opinion. Is this

how the media wants us to view this protest?

There is a definite link between the media and the population. The different media

types will try to put over the same information to the population, but in their own

unique way. Audio has to use tone and volume. Video has to use precise images or

video content along with audio as support. Print has to use careful punctuation and

descriptive or adjective words to put over the same information.

There is always a connection with media and the public in terms of styles and formats

depending on what the media is leading the viewer to believe, the different formats

are necessary as visual content is not always safe, for example when traveling, the

sound on the radio will be the most suitable whereas television suits the use of

images through the use of advertisers can prove to be productive in showing the

audience with the same information. Magazine’s have a certain style of

formal/informing style that provides the reader with information.

It is important that the media connects with the audience in order to have viewership,

the bigger the viewership though the more and more the media will be bias towards

certain topics i.e politics.

The media can easily make use of “buzzwords” to make a headline stand out more to

the reader. As you can see in the image, words have been changed to make it seem

more important to the masses and this is another effective method that the media can

use to alter our opinions on information.

These words can have a major impact on the information, and on the population. The

left image uses words such as “mass” and “programme” to gain notice and stress on

the importance of the conversation to the reader. The right image just seems to

mention it in passing and therefore makes it appear to be of a relatively a minor event.

This is a method used in most articles as they are often updated and changed by

writers to make a certain viewpoint suit what stance the media has on the pressing

issue i.e the war in the middle east vs ISIS for example.

The way the media communicates its information to the public can be a very

powerful tool in manipulating and affecting change, whether it is political or

social. Which can be tampered with by the media or government, by portraying

information in order to cast a positive or negative light on particular areas in

the media. A good example that shows how easily the media can be portrayed,

is the ebola incident which caused mass panic in America because of the

media, by portraying the disease as the next Black Plague, despite science

declaring that it is not airborne, and not as contagious. Whereas in England

the media downplayed the threat of ebola, saying only a few cases where

reported and gave statistics on how more likely you were to die for other things

i.e such as falling out of bed.

As Formichetti states, The dark side of social media is that, within seconds, anything can

be blown out of proportion and taken out of context. And it's very difficult not to get swept

up in it all.

No matter how hard the media try and influence the readership, they will ultimately

come to their own conclusions. As we’ve pointed out earlier, the media can try and

put a spin on a particular article, but at the end of the day the readership will decide

on their version of events.

Activity: For this activity we're going to use chinese whispers as an example to

demonstrate and show how media can be misinterpreted.

1. Drink isn’t healthy…..don’t say

2. Drink is healthy…..don’t say

We started the activity off by saying that Drink isn’t healthy for you, were we then

deliberately got someone to change it to Drink is healthy for you. This shows how

easily information can be changed and portrayed within the world through the use of

the media.

Folding Paper

Team members do this:

Hand out sheet of paper.

Close your eyes and listen to the instructions.

Instructions for class:

Fold page in half

Fold bottom left corner up to the right hand corner.

Turn the page 90 degrees towards the left.

Fold again.

Tear a half circle in the middle on the right hand side.

Open your eyes.

Open the page and see your outcome.

Although everyone had the same instructions the results proved to be a different outcome. The

reason for different results is because people had their page either vertically or horizontally,

some also believed the tear was to be big and not small so they removed more paper and by

having their eyes closed they couldn’t see what the outcome would be on their performance.

The understanding of instructions are clearer to others and how they interpret the way to do a

task.

As to conclude, we found this to be an interesting area to research, giving us

an insight into how the media can alter information to suit their own viewpoints

and how we as consumers of this information see them.

We found with using the activities, showed and demonstrated how information

can be changed by us at anytime. This made us aware of how powerful

changing information was and how everyone will follow instructions differently,

prompting and showing us how easily information can be changed and seen,

as we demonstrated with the chinese whispers. As for the communication

activity, this showed us that everyone had different outcomes which

demonstrates how people can misinterpret the media.