Media, Culture & Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Media, Culture & Identity - Essay ExamplePeoples sense of social class, ethnicity, nationality and social identity is being constructed by the visual, audile and symbolic material provided by the media (Kellner 1995, p.1). Peoples identities are shaped by the images and information provided in the media. Hence, sights opinion about plenty belonging to other countries, communities and religion is highly influenced by the images and information they see about those wad on television and in movies. When people are repeatedly undefendable to a particular idea through visual or auditory medium, they start believing in it as a truth. Hence, influencing peoples opinion and ideas by repeatedly exposing them to visual and auditory material of that idea has become a favourite weapon of the media. In the age of the media horticulture, where peoples identities are shaped by media images, when a certain community or religion is repeatedly portrayed as a threat to the field pansy of the wor ld, it not only harms the image of that community but also generates a feeling of hatred, prejudice and anger towards that community. The community that is suffering from the harmful effects of the media culture is the community of Muslim people. People belonging to Islamic religion are facing hatred and misunderstanding in the Western countries because of the constant negative furtherance in the Western media. It is this bias treatment of the Islamic community by the Western media that led Edward Said to develop the theory of Orientalism.Orientalism is a theory by Edward Said which proposes that the Eastern countries are highly misrepresented and misunderstood in the Western countries as the Western people are constantly getting exposed to the manipulated images and fabricated news of the Oriental people through the Western media (Said n.d.) Edward Said, in his theory of orientalism, argues that the Western thinking about