Sofia Costales

COM531M

Mr. Elvin Valerio

18 September 2017

Media: Redefining today’s realities

In this new era of a fast-paced world with advancing technologies, and as a proud

millennial myself, it is evident that all mediums of communication have drastically impacted our

daily lives. We all hunger for new knowledge and strive to know what has currently been

happening in our cities, schools, communities, and environment. Everything has meaning,

purpose, and value – from as specific as a single word in a dictionary to as generic as one of the

cooking television shows aired on Sunday mornings. Little did we know that all of these things

manage to exist because society, at some point, “created” them. If so, how can we really

understand the objectives of media as “social constructs”?

As discussed in our first Media Criticism class, social constructivism is defined as a

theory of knowledge that examines the development of the world. In simpler terms, a social

construct is something created by society: from the words “social”, which pertains to a collective

attribute of humankind, and “construct”, which is to build or establish. This clarifies that groups,

cultures, and trends that we have today exist because of men. The world does not develop and

progress by itself, does it? Talk about Twitter #hashtags and 24-hour Instagram stories.

It can be best explained widely through media – the world’s main means of

communication. Whether it may be from the internet, television, newspapers, magazines,

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newsletters, podcasts, or radio, our media continue to “feed us”, therefore provide us material

that help construct our reality. We can name it as our number one source of current events, for

that matter. The media also function as our “updates” as billions of us already have internet

access. We can easily browse through hundreds of articles or watch a hundred episodes of our

favorite shows with just a single click. In this day and age, all of us are so eager to find out

what’s happening now because of these newly available platforms (social media networks, phone

applications, and other related variety of media) that connect us with the whole world.

As a magazine designer for an online and print retail company in Australia, I am tasked to

do very particular design work and lay-out advertisement pages for clients all over the country.

Ads are a type of social construct and are created to promote all kinds of goods and services. In

the early days, people would just go out to the market and display their products to the public,

and then do buy and sell from there on. As time passed, however, we have created a way to make

such agreements a lot faster – hence, the introduction of printed (and online) advertisements.

These ads are generally paid by companies and small businesses in order to reach a bigger, better

audience. The role of media can be evident here, as the goals of these advertisers are “to notify”

and “to sell” their brands. All of these are interpreted as ideas that can be challenged (watching

out for brand competitors), changed (seeing renovations or improvements of a brand’s product),

negotiated (contacting the brand for discounts or inquiries), or even rejected (ignoring the brand

or product as a whole).

Other than to inform and persuade, the media can also “alter” reality. In my perspective

as an avid viewer of television shows, I can already tell so much if an actor’s demonstrations

come straight from the script, or if one is being true to himself. What’s very interesting is that the

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media can be very tricky at times – an interviewer can gather so much information from another

person in three hours, only to find out that the final output during the screening for that very

same interview is only cut to 30 seconds. Also, in the media, everything has a script or maybe

has certain rules to follow. Directors and producers can both positively and negatively “build” an

aspiring actor’s reputation just by giving him a nickname or a tagline which may or may not be

defining his true personality. A friend of mine once shared that after being evicted inside the

Pinoy Big Brother house, she confirmed that they were indeed specifically instructed on what to

do before filming each episode. To create a “controlled” setting in a TV show can automatically

attract more viewers, and with that there will be more ad placements, more viewing time, and

eventually get more money out of the show.

Establishing a social construct through powerful, influential sources such as the media

can be compared to having a variety of procedures in a tailoring service – anyone with access

can shorten, lengthen, link, cut, and weave one end to another, no matter how big or small its

direction leads it. It allows us to understand the meanings of what we perceive. We have the

choice to thread carefully on our constantly changing notions and beliefs with what is seen and

what is heard, or we can choose to remove the loose seams as to not be shaken on our own

values and principles by mere constructs of reality. Whatever we decide on, or whichever method

we push through to apply, there will always be corresponding context, meaning and analysis to

everything that regards to the ways we are engaging with our society today.

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