From early past times, the fear of death was presented in many forms, based on different spheres of human life: religion, art, ordinary life later on science. Mostly all these groups make prediction about world’s end by giving different reasoning basing on opinions, believes, cultural background. Nowadays, Apocalypses has become popular due to different reasons such as globalization, dynamic environmental changes, predictions of ancient civilizations, and saint writings from the Bible. With high development of this belief in society, obviously media started emphasize this event from different perspective, mostly from pessimistic one: the whole world is going to an end at 20.12.2012. Known through predictions of ancient origins and scientific events, many of these predictions have been heavily regarded within different areas of media. As more media influences become available, the greater the chance is that facts and statistics will be unclear in direction and meaning. In the confusion of right from wrong, media has influenced our susceptible society into believing that predictions of the future are indeed facts; this is wrong. It needs to be clear how media influences people and about how these groups’ actions reflect a common fear that has developed.
Mostly all different media types have been focusing on 2012. Media sources such as television, books, movies, and the Internet all have similar agenda: to give the audience the feeling that their information is a pure fact. A large amount of people are afraid to face death in 2012, that is why media can easily turn predictions into facts and make people believe in it. With fast growing of media in developing countries, different media types are able to cover specific audience group based on their beliefs. The media uses three different structural indicators to indicate susceptible groups: reach, the ability for media to influence society, accessibility, and plurality, the number of companies influencing a group of people. These factors determine how much a society is susceptible to being influenced by the messages that the media portrays.
Many media types use certain strategies to install fear in their audience. The strategies, known as contact indicators, include focus on past atrocities and history of ethnic animosity, manipulation of myths, stereotypes, and identities to “dehumanize”, overemphasis on certain grievances or inequities, and consistently negative reporting. These tactics have been used in the media to exploit people’s fear (Frohardt, M., & Ternin, J, 2003). The other way to frighten population is books. As many sources of information become available to the audience, the percentage of prediction (fake facts) increased among people. In these examples authors become powerful sources that shape societies perception. Many people are willing to accept something if the agenda of the media is credited, despite the fact that it may be making mere predictions about an unknown date. Another type of media that is notorious for using predictions as a radical basis for exploiting fear of the apocalypse are websites.
Moreover, the percentage of information on the Net is increasing rapidly. It is understandable, because with the high development of technologies and easy access to the Internet everyone can create an agenda about the topic. The internet let mislead people, because every person can create a belief basing on his/her imagination without any evidence and scientifically or any proof.
In the modern era, mass media has a great influence on society’s perception shaping. This power has many possibilities, including a strong belief in the end of human being in 2012. On the one hand modernization in society helps it to grow and develop; on the other hand it increases the tendency of human to fear death, because of the large amount of information around. Role of the media in society has twisted world perception and the role of each person. As the result humanity interprets the history in a wrong way and considers predictions and gambling as a pure fact. The media see the effects of people’s reaction on the event such as apocalypse and turned it into their profit to make more money. A mixture of all of these different theories can often be too overwhelming, causing a social panic amongst societies who are most affected by the media. On the one hand media has a great influence in shaping society’s opinion; on the other hand everyone can be more sceptical and think more critical. Everyone has rights to choose the side: to believe or not to believe.
Work Cited:
Does Maya calendar predict 2012 apocalypse? March 27th, 2007. www.ustoday.com Web May 9th,2011 http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-03-27-maya-2012_n.htm
Media push http://www.december212012.com Web. May 9th, 2011
'Mayan 2012 apocalypse theory' not true. Nov 10th 2009. http://www.telegraph.co.uk Web May 9th, 2011
2012: Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, Radiation, and Libya. http://countingdownto2012.com Web May 9th, 2011
2012: Media's Role of Influence. Year 2010. http://www.writing.com Web May 9th 2011
http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1655424-2012-Medias-Role-of-Influence
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