When I think of the TV studies and
its complex relation with culture and society, it is impressive how TV has a
huge impact on individuals. I want to discuss and hear about your
suggestions to which I see as the biggest problem for the media industry and
its relation with society: Manipulation that usually comes from the
authorities.
Like almost everything that is in
the middle of different notions, TV has pros and cons. I, of course, admit
that, it makes us to be aware of the happenings in all over the world enabling
easy access to all kind of information. But it’s also dangerous depending on
how it is used to convey information because it is so easy to manipulate mass
cultures.
I started to see the manipulation as
the biggest problem of TV industry and started being suspicious about the
things that happened in the past only when I personally exposed to it; it was
the first week of Gezi Parkı protests; I was there with my mom sitting and
showing my support for something that I believe in. It was the next day when I
was shocked with the news because media was reflecting the whole thing from a
different viewpoint. They were not showing the ones who sat there without using
any violence. All the news was saying that participants were provokers and
terrorists who aim to create conflict. News were not only reflecting the
happenings as the product of violence but also they were discriminating; Aiming
to manipulate conservatives, news were showing drunk people in the Park saying
that supporters are disrespectful junkies.
I’m not saying that there wasn’t any
violence at all, but it was for sure not a movement that is "based" on violence.
But all the media did reflect it in a totally different way and my grandma (and
I believe so many other people) who doesn’t have any Internet access but TV was
saying that people who support that movement are actually harming the streets
and using violence against the policemen.
Nowadays, we have the chance to double check the news from Internet but in rural areas where Internet is still a luxury, it is impossible to learn about the things as they really are.
This realisation is annoying for me because those were what made me who I am today; The political standpoint, traditions, religious views and all my preferences in life were partially based on the way I see the world and TV was the strongest and most popular tool for me to rely on when I was growing up. So my question is "How can we be sure for the things
that we saw on TV until today?" and "What if the government of past times also used
TV for manipulations to protect its own existence?"
I quite believe governments of past times (in every nation where they could) harnessed the power of TV to manipulate masses for their own benefit.
ReplyDeleteAs for the reliaibility of any mass means of information, I believe nothing can be trusted completely, including (and perhaps most of all) history itself. For all the information one can acquire was crafted by none other than a human being with opinions.
As for Gezi, I remember myself and a few friends setting up an information centre in Koç University, where we would distribute as much information as we could through means of social media. We (and many more in different places) also wrote and sent articles to foreign news agencies, containing our firsthand experiences and those of others, with hopes of spreading factual information about the events of that summer.
When I visited Canada a year later, I found that it had worked, and that the general masses of people abroad had more information - accurate too - about the Gezi Park protests, and a certain point of view about the Turkish government that authorities would not allow one to speak of publicly in Turkey.
The power of TV's information distribution really became to me when I found that people from other countries had a much more comprehensive, and almost objective, cumulation of information about Turkey than the general masses in Turkey itself. The Turkish general public, dependent on TV news, seemed like blind sheep in a herd, that didn't even fathom to raise their heads and try to see the bigger picture, because the news media made sure of it. Learned a good deal about penguins though...
So I figure, for as long as such a powerful weapon existed, any authority would've been too underqualified - and downright foolish - not to realize and harness its power.
I experienced the exact same feeling during Gezi Protests. I was horrified by how everything was portayed on the media. Evidentally it got me thinking about the stories of south east and east regions of the country we heard from the news before. It opened up a whole new perspective to me and made me free myself from my biases. Now that I was able to erase the stories I've heard from the media I was open to learn and understand and actually find out what's going on. Tv takes that away from us. Whether we want it or not we are exposed to it directly and indirectly. There is no way of completely cleansing yourself from the media version of events and putting up a completely unbiased account of things together, unless you realise everything is done for a reason in TV.
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