Love, Laughter and Truth

In the 21^st century, the media has come to play huge part in how we view the world and events which take place all around it. From student riots in Dublin to union strikes in France, from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the Arab Spring, the world has indeed shrunk thanks to the ubiquity of the media and its various machinations. We now have have almost instantaneous information about almost every conceivable event from all around the globe at any time of the day or night. Twenty-four news is now the norm and we are fed information that we sometimes don’t want to know or even care about. The news we receive though, is not neutral. It is always, without fail, framed in a certain manner, either to push a particular viewpoint or agenda, or simply lacking in any viewpoint at all. The media tell us how to view certain events, personalities and everything in-between but conversely, they also at times encourage no opinions to be formed about what is taking place. The role of the media is not to inform, but to control. As Pierre Bourdieu notes, the role of the media is to produce their own view of society which they themselves then report on, thus reinforcing their initial view or to put it more simply, they describe a particular reality and then report on it; a positive feedback loop of sorts.The world is what they decide it to be. This is why the understanding of the concept of framing is of vital importance. If you understand framing, you understand not only how the media works, but how the world at large is sometimes, and rather simply, a construction of the media and its owners.

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