How The Media Make An Impact On Small Business Operations

Before we get into the juicy bit of our topic, let us uncover first what does the term “media” means. Media originated from the word “medium” which signifies carrier or mode. It’s designed to reach big focused groups or audience and address their concerns. With the onset of modern technology, media is now encompassed in forms like radio, movies, televisions and the World Wide Web. Media is extremely powerful that it can shape public opinion as well as strengthen or weaken a society.

Trivia: The word was first coined in respect to newspapers and books.

Media serves as the primary weapon of democracy. It acts as a watchdog to create awareness to the public and to protect the general interests against malpractice. These days, when politicians take full advantage of the position vested to them, crime syndicate and evil nexus of mafia make the life of average folks more miserable, the money of taxpayers are siphoned for personal gains of those who are in power while ordinary people can’t do anything but watch.

The Four Pillars of the Economy

This makes media as the fourth foundation of democracy together with legislature, executive and judiciary.

Media and the people working behind it have a moral responsibility to protect its constituents against oppression, injustice and misdeeds of the society.

In this day and age of Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization, the world now reached its drawing room, all thanks to media. From the time when TV was invented and introduced, visual media has always been a vital tool to form current news to the community, entertaining people and molding public opinion.

While the internet and web 2.0 technologies have paved the way to the birth of electronic media. This has given even commoners the power of expressing their views and thoughts via website posts, blogs, social media sites and so on. In fact, even small businesses use this to their advantage to reach a greater number of customers.

Social media has also given many artists a venue to sell their work and printing businesses offer their service in coordination with many local artists who want to sell their work on print (print artworks through funphotocreator.com wide format printer).

The Three Critical Functions of Media

Now we know what media is and its purpose, we can start discussing its role and how it affects politics, businesses and regular folks.

Basically, there are three major roles of media and these are:

• Gatekeeper – if this is the role portrayed by media, it indicates that the elites controlling the flow of news have the sole power in deciding what will be aired or be printed in newspapers. If the story builds up, then it becomes news.
• Scorekeeper – this simply amplifies the content of an already running story.
• Watchdog – here, the media act as an investigator or protector that may bring impact to people’s lives. For instance, investigation to corruptions and irregularities in the government and how it affects the economy as a whole and the person.