How and why?
With the discoveries of various media, it cannot be denied that mass media has made a huge impact in our daily lives. However, the public, media critics and scholars have raised questions about the effects various media might have on society and individuals. These effects were viewed initially as strong, direct and relatively uniform on the population as a whole. Recently, the research has expanded to move beyond looking at just the effects media and media content have on individuals and society to examinations of how living in a world with media changes the nature of our interactions and culture.
From my point of view, World Wide Web or simply Internet has made the greatest impact today. Tim Berners-Lee has invented the World Wide Web in 1989, about 20 years after the first connection was established. Therefore, the society has the opportunity to immerse themselves in Internet to perform task efficiently by simply a click on the mouse. Not only it helps to complete the task promptly, internet also serves as a database to store massive information from all over the world, for example, Google, the ultimate search engine, has becomes the priority in getting every bit of the first hand news from the world.
Besides serving as information searching platform, Internet also provides social media like Facebook and Twitter to enhance our social networking and keep the society in touch. By having social media in our lives, it allows us to share information disregard the authenticity. However, it gives negative impact when the authenticity turns out to be bogus. Sometimes, we cannot determine how genuine the news are, given that it is shared simultaneously. It is developed into a trend to share what people share you think is true. With that, the effects can be cognitive, attitudinal, behavioral and psychological. For example, the recent incident happened just few months ago where Malaysia Airline MH370 went missing while on the route flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing has stirred up quite a chaos. What happened in social media is that some people tend to circulate false news about the plane has been found. Consequently, more people actually believes such false circulated news and share to even more people.
Apart from negative impact, social media also has its positive impact. It increases people's productivity, enlarge social circle, and provides platform for exchanging ideas. As we all know, all work no play makes jack a dull boy. Same concept here that social media serves as an entertainment site for people to have mind relaxation. Our performance will be boosted after taking much needed rest. Besides, it cannot be denied that social media has broaden our social circle. The appearance of social media breaks friend-making barrier caused by geographic isolation. Social media makes it possible for us to connect with the whole world.
