The role of journalism In the development growth and decline of cultural phenomena

By Zeinab Hassan  

 

For years, it has been described how the digital revolution is undermining the importance of the media. But only recently have these effects become practically tangible and invisible. The classical media have lost their monopoly in many ways, their role as gatekeeper. They are no longer the only ones sending information to a large-scale audience - now everyone can post news. The media is no longer alone in controlling what information goes to the general public - everyone can get information from a wide variety of sources.  Journalists are no longer even the only ones who solely determine what news is important and widespread - this is what the algorithms of companies like Google or Facebook are now doing.  And as if the loss of meaning, power, and influence weren't bad enough. There is still a loss of income and hence resources for the production of high quality journalism that could prove that they are unique or irreplaceable. Despite all this, professional journalists and mainstream media still largely determine what people talk about and how they do it. Therefore, the importance of print, radio and television in the modern world is simply impossible to overestimate. They have turned into a powerful instrument of influence, into the main channel for the dissemination of culture.

 

Culture is a very broad concept. It represents a huge amount of things and defies definition in a few words. It can be viewed in its broadest sense as anything that can be conveyed, shared and studied. Also, a culture can be associated with a variety of people, for example, one nation (Italian culture), a community (Walloon culture) or even an age group (youth culture). That is, culture becomes what unites the members of the group and ensures their cohesion.

 By allowing a group to be characterized, culture also allows it to be distinguished from other groups. Indeed, there is a great deal of cultural diversity that allows for rich exchange.  We can view culture as a more specific characteristic of creative and expressive materials; through the art and the work it produces.  But culture can also be viewed as unique to each person. I would say that everyone creates their own culture! Thus, culture is a way of life influenced by the rules of the different groups to which you belong and through which you build yourself.  Journalism plays an important role here, because one of its tasks is to shape public opinion.

 

Thus, events in the western states are characterized by marked polarization in deeply disrupted societies. Many people reject a drastic change in values, which is based on the devaluation of their traditions, such as marriage and family, national and cultural identity. The leftist media, which won the cultural struggle, always strive to change the already established: masterpieces of literature, painting and music, school and children's books, monuments, street names, etc. So journalists question whether even mathematical thinking and polished speech are discredited as tools of male or white power. Quite frankly, if not very willingly, most journalists follow the anticipated progress.

 

 The most massively spoken in the media about feminists, namely radical ones. Ethnic and sexual minorities question traditional standards, claim rights and privileges, seek to destroy all bastions of Western culture, in their immensity recognizing the common guilt of society with its “structural discrimination” and “structural racism”.

So in 2017 there was even a "global protest tracker" that tracks protests around the world.  People want to see and know more about the problems they are into. All this affects the culture of a person.

Human rights have long been an important topic in the world. This is what NBC News called the summer of "digital protest" in 2020.  And with more political activism on social issues, "there will be more global protests in 2021," the United States Institute for Peace article said.

 

 Visually, support for social movements can be presented in a variety of ways, such as these powerful portraits of victims of Black Lives Matter (BLM) atrocities, to amplify voices from the this community, as we saw in the BLM protests following George Floyd's crime in the United States on May 25, 2020. The media are looking for ways to "stay on their feet", taking on many cases, but at the same time not all texts are well thought out and historically researched and analyzed, which of course resonates with the readers.

 

 We also cannot fail to mention COVID-19 and many vaccines against it. In all countries, there is a real culturing of society to be grafted and spreads through, first of all, through magazines, newspapers, radio, the Internet - in other words, through Media.

 

 Media is faced with the task, no matter how trite it may sound, to speak, write, broadcast: reasonably and broadly, demonstrating two or three sides of one event, so that then it appears in publications, reports, reviews, and then, perhaps, a cultural picture of the world in the eyes of their readers and viewers that will take on their true colors.