Media culture
[1][2][3] The term highlights the extensive impact and intellectual influence of the media, primarily television, but also the press, radio, and cinema, on public opinion, tastes, and values.
"The news media draws from the work of scientists and scholars, presenting it to the general public with an emphasis on elements that are inherently appealing or astonishing.
For example, giant pandas, a species native to remote Chinese woodlands, have gained significant recognition in popular culture, while parasitic worms, despite their greater practical importance, have not.
[6] Similarly, Susan Sontag suggested that values originating from entertainment industries increasingly dominate modern culture, normalizing shallow or sensationalist topics.
[6] Critics argue that popular culture promotes a "dumbing down" of society, exemplified by: This change has been described as replacing high-quality art and genuine folk traditions with mass-produced items designed to cater to the broadest and simplest tastes.
These conglomerates reduced substantive news content, replacing it with entertainment and sensationalism that amplify "fears, prejudice, scapegoating processes, paranoia, and aggression.
This trend reflects a broader cultural shift, where audience preferences shaped by digital platforms encourage filmmakers to adopt formulaic approaches, focusing on viral appeal rather than experimental storytelling.
[15][16] Conversely, the Catholic Church has been retrospectively seen as early examples of public relations, marketing their beliefs to worshippers in ways similar to modern media strategies.
[19] Scholars regard symbolic consumption as a social construct, with shared perceptions about a product's meaning conveyed through advertising, magazines, and television.
Volume and speed have consumed and obliterated nuance, ethics, and accuracy....the interpretation agreeable to its advocates: that it is a matter of something like a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art.
