Modern public life Essay

Modern reality biography could non exist or function aright with verboten the Media In this essay I willing be discussing the above statement and leaning that without Media, modern ordinary life could not exist. I will eldest explain some key terms to help in the ph adept line including explaining the meaning of the term prevalent liveness. According to the Collins Dictionary The semipublic is con grad in general or the community of a detail place. Public is engaged to talk intimately the feelings and behaviours of people in general. If soulfulness is a everyday figure or is in habitual life, they be well known.Public is used to talk well-nigh things being verbalise or done so that foreveryone sack hear them or squ ar up them. What is meant by the term Public Life is a space where a body of people trick mystify together to discuss issues relating to their group. These groups can be very small like a book club or large like the United Nations and they can di scuss anything from the current Bryce Courtney novel to world peace. Geoffrey Craig in his book The Media Politics and Public Life explains the concept of frequent life as .. A body of people within a guild and a domain within which turn astir(predicate) that society occursThe public is to a fault a subject, and people come together as a public in modern times when they engage in sees of the events, the stories and the debates that circulate in the society. (2002. P49) Public life occurs where occult issues argon brought to the attention of the general public through the use of the media. Without out the media it would be cloak-and-dagger life, not public life. Media, as defined by the Collins dictionary is the plural of medium which is a means of communicating or t from each oneing something. When we talk about the media we do not right use traditional forms of media like naked as a jaybirdspapers, television and wireless provided we also use other forms of media like movies, the internet, transnationals companies and communication technologies. each of these forms of media be sites where the meanings of public life atomic number 18 contend out, debated and evaluated. Our everyday lives could not function properly without the media. Media is a drug that we cannot live in a elective society without. We listen to the radio on the way to work to hear the trade reports and to know where the multi-novas ar hidden.When election time comes, we cant earn John Howard round for dinner to discuss his policies so we rely on the media to show us them through television radio and newspapers. When a cyclone is feeler our way, how do we know to lock up the dramatic art or abandon town? The media inform us. Even the very early smoke signals were a form of media, a form of communication. It is important to stress here that on that point is no way that public life could function without the use of the media as the take inings of our society, the norm s and values of the world in which we live ar the products of living in a mediated world.We as a public only ever see the representations of a breaking story through the television or in the paper. We rely on the media to tell us breaking stories that are happening around the world because of our geographical locations. John Hartley (1992 P1) has noted maculation the public domain and the public dont exist as spaces and assemblies, the public realm and the public are still to be found, large as life in the media. goggle box, popular newspapers, magazines and photography, the popular media of the modern period, are the public domain, the place where and the means by which the public is crated and has its being. In talking about public life we must clarify the notion of having a public sphere. By public sphere we mean any activities that occur in the public eye or that is brought to the attention of the public through the media. Habermas argues that the pilot program public sphere s originated with the early Bourgeois movement in the tea houses, libraries and canvassing societies in England. It was here where people gathered to discuss issues concerning their lives and the society in which they lived. What do this a public sphere was that the people were all gathered in one place discussing issues that were relevant to them.Although this was regarded as one of the buffer democracies that were a voice for the people, Habermas also understood that the early tea house publics were not totally representative of the communities for which they were fighting for. In the early geezerhood women were not included in the tea house discussions, also, only a certain class of people were allowed to enter the tea houses and those that could not instruct would not need to go to reading houses or libraries. Of course those that could not travel to these public events had no said either.This limited the voice of the people to only those that were upper-class, well educate d men that could travel. This was not representative of the wider communities. The succeeding(prenominal) stage in the evolution of public life was when the publishing presses made writings avail qualified to the mass public. This literature was free from state hold back and was the newest site for public life to be contend out on. Of course if you were illiterate the medium was useless but for those that could read and had access to the literature a new public was formed. The reading public was not tied(p) by geographical restrictions.The development of film was again a new medium that with it brought a new public. By now we contribute to understand that there are a huge amount of publics that all pay back their own issues to debate. A person can be part of a number of publics at one time. She may be a genius mother, working at the supermarket, she is part of the conservative party, is a part of a sci-fi reading club, she buys Thai cooking books, buys red wine and goers t o wineries, is part of a mothers group at day care, has a network of other single friends on the internet and is part of a union at work.All of these publics want very specific things and all lobby for diverse things, the private issues become public when they are played out through the different fibres of media. Without the media the issues would not be brought into the public spotlight and would likely not be resolved. It is essential to point out that modern public life is played out through our media consumption and not through our everyday experiences. We conjointly watched the September 11 attacks through our televisions, listened to the disaster unfold on our radios and read about and saw the pictures of the devastation in newspapers.Without these sites we would not drive home see it at all. This highlights the fact that we rely on the media to get information that would not readily be available to us. Peter Dahlgren argues that the public sphere is not just a marketplace for ideas or an information exchange term but also a major societal mechanism for the return and circulation of culture. This idea of the media framing culture is very important because it gives the media majuscule power to give meaning to our identities. Culture, which consist of ideas, customs, norms, values and attitudes are divided by the people of a particular country.Campaigns that promote a type of culture are a good deal produced by g overnment and portrayed through various media outlets. Popular campaigns that frame our culture are the domestic effect ad Australia says NO to domestic violence and the drink driving campaign, that follow out that fact that those things are going against our culture and that that type of behaviours is not accepted. These campaigns are dependant on the media getting the message out there. The main media technologies that are responsible for the communication of public news are television, radio and print and these all function as journal ism.These are seen as the nigh received sources of information as they are governed by laws that protect privacy, defamation and the use of misleading information. Journalisms main role is to seek the truth and tell the masses. Although these forms of media are self regulated (to be free of outside influence) their guidelines that journalists have to leap out by are strict to keep the freedom to self regulate. Television is the most powerful mass medium and is an absolute must in every household. In my house alone there are quartet televisions and there are only 2 people living there.A productivity commission report found that Australias spend over 20 hours per week or 36% of their leisure time ceremony television(Productivity Commission 200, P62). The ability to actually see an event or person and hear them speak makes television the most trustworthy of the media outlets. Politicians often measure the success of a campaign on the presentation of their exposure/policy/media ev ents. Although television has taken over from the print media as the most popular type of news media, many argue that the print media are the most influential mass medium for political debate.Agenda riding horse for the day is mostly done by the quality morning newspapers. Newspapers are often more detailed in their dissemination of public life because they are not restricted by the time factor that is TV. inter elapse is the secret weapon in the fight for a public life. The radio doesnt have the ability to show the audience an event or doesnt even give them a chance to read about an issue but it is the most pervasive forms of media as it can be listened to whilst driving or doing the housework. Politicians often use talkback radio as a direct link to the public.It is often the closet the general public will get to speaking with high profile players. Because the media is the chief agency to communicate public life and the world that we know is based on the representations of the m edia, there is much scrutiny placed on the authentimetropolis of the stories that are shown to us. In Australia there are laws that ensure that one source does not have monopoly over the content of our media, Australias former prime minister capital of Minnesota Keating put it best when he said that the cross ownership laws meant you could be a prince of print or a queen of screen but not both.This means that one person will not be in control of all of the media of our country and so a authentic representation of societys issues would be presented by the media. Again without the media, Australia would not be able to be a democratic society and have a public life. Through many different sites issues and events are played out and become open to the scrutiny of the general public. These different issues and events score discussion between the people that read or hear about them and this is what is meant by a public life.People that are hundreds of miles away from each other can be di scussing the same issues without even having to talk to one another. These systems of communication enable us to live in a democratic society, a society where we can chose who leads us in government and we can discuss issues relating to our society. This would not happen if wasnt for the role of the media. Without the media to portray issues and events we would never hear about a sale on in the city or about governmental policy that is set to affect us all. Public life as we know it would not be able to function properly without the media.ReferencesCraig, Geoffrey. Chapter 1, 2 and 3. The Media, Politics and Public Life. Victoria Allen and Unwin, 2004. Cunningham, Stuart and Graeme Turner. The Media and communications in Australia. St Leonards, Sydney Allen and Unwin, 2002. Dahlgren, Peter. Television and the Public Sphere Citizenship, Democracy and the Media. London Sage, 1995 Grossberg, Lawrence, Ellen Wartella and D. Charles Whitney. The Media and the Public. Media reservation Mass Media in a Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CASage, 1998. 357-374 Habermas, Jurgen. The geomorphological Transformation of the Public Sphere An Inquiry into the Category of Bourgeois Society.Trans, T. Burger. Cambridge Polity, 1992. Scannell, Paddy. Public service broadcasting and modern public life Media, Culture and Society. 11(1989)135-166. Thompson, John. The Media and the developing of the Modern Societies The Media and Modernity. Cambridge Polity Press, 1995. 44-69 Wark, McKenzie. Celebrities, culture and cyberspace the light on the heap in a post-modern world. Sydney Pluto Press, 1999. 128-136 http//malagigi. cddc. vt. edu/pipermail/icernet/2004-January/002743. html http//www. zip. com. au/athornto/thesis2. htm http//www. gseis. ucla. edu/faculty/kellner/kellner. html.