How does the media affect culture and society in Morocco?

 By Said EL MARDA

Nowadays everyone watches TV and reads news on the Internet, the information can easily spread widely after a few clicks, it does not matter if it is true or it is just gossip, this is what influences the behavior of individuals within society and makes them change their opinions, this impact can be positive as well as negative. The positive effect lies in providing society with information and opinions about political, social, or economic positions, and supporting individuals to exercise freedom of expression and decision-making, on the other hand, the negative impact of the media on society can lead to negative things such as poverty, crime, and violence...

The mean goal of media is to raise the level of awareness among people and improve the level of their culture and living, as it also creates some kind of awareness about social and economic issues.

 

If we say that the media influences society, as it is also influenced by it, here we can also say that the media affects the culture of society, we cannot talk about society without talking about culture; the culture is an integral part of society, so the media, journalism or mass communication in general influences both society and culture.

 

The right situation in any society is that culture has an important value, but in Morocco, despite its cultural richness, the cultural context in the media is very weak.

The weak presence of the cultural product in Moroccan television programs and the Moroccan media content is due to the lack of interest in the cultural content by the Moroccans, especially the youth generation, which is the most prevalent in Morocco.
Also among the reasons, why cultural content in the media in Morocco is rare is the weak economic return of cultural content in the media market, and the lack of financial support for cultural programs from advertisers as from the part of the state itself. As it is no longer considered in Morocco a Ministry of media Communication and Culture as it was before, but then merges all of the Ministry of Sports, Youth, Culture, and Communication into one ministry, for me, this is an underestimation of the value of media and culture this can make media and culture two separate topics In the future who knows?

In the past, the written press in Morocco was rich in cultural contents, which we do not find now with the approaching extinction of the written press and its transformation into digital journalism. It has become difficult to find advertisers or supporters of cultural content due to the luck of the audience of cultural content.

The media and the press in Morocco moved from paper to electronic, and with this, they moved from elitist to populist, The Moroccan media content that achieves the highest views and the highest economic income is the populist, unfortunately, the content of Moroccan electronic newspapers are now full of scandals, violence, and immoral content. Media institutions need an audience to maintain their economic existence, that is why they resort to this type of content, and here the problem continues.