Surveillance

Surveillance of the environment is a more complex way of saying that a function of mass
communications is to tell you about what's happening around the world and deliver that information
to you. Surveillance refers to the transmission of information that is useful and helpful in
everyday life. There are two main types of surveillance---warning surveillance and instrumental
surveillance. Examples for warning surveillance are tsunami alert, war, flood and water crisis
while examples for instrumental surveillance are useful and helpful news such as current affairs
and promotions. Surveillance can help to raise our awareness on what’s happening locally and
around the world so that we can be well informed on current issues to make sound decisions.
However, we may receive unnecessary anxiety from what we have read or heard from the news
and suspect the truth of the news that we read.

Linkage

The function of mass media is to join together different elements of society that are
not directly connected and connect people with same interest from different places. It can create
business opportunities for public and able to gather resources or manpower more efficiently. On
the other side, terrorists may make use of the mass media to spread hate propaganda, recruit
new members and even live stream attacks. Besides, criminals might have chances to carry out
illegal activities such as theft and abuse.

Entertainment
The other important function of mass media is the entertainment. It is also views as the
most obvious function of media. Actually, entertainment is a kind of performance that provides
pleasure to people. Mass media fulfill this function by providing amusement and assist in
reducing tension to large degree. Newspaper and magazines, radio, television and online
medium offer stories, films, serials, and comics to entertain their audience. Sports, news, film
review, columns on art and fashion are other instances. It makes audience recreational and
leisure time more enjoyable. Entertainment brings a lot of benefits such as we can rely on media
to take us places we could not afford to go or imagine and we could escape from boredom and
relief from the predictability of our everyday lives. On the other hand, public are too rely on
media and they become watchers and listeners but not the doers. Since the content must
appeal to mass audience, therefore ,media content is designed to the ‘lowest common
denominator of taste’. Which means, the most basic, least sophisticated level of taste among a
group of people.
The other important function of mass media is the entertainment. It is also views as the most obvious
function of media. Actually, entertainment is a kind of performance that provides pleasure to people.
Mass media fulfill this function by providing amusement and assist in reducing tension to large degree.
Newspaper and magazines, radio, television and online medium offer stories, films, serials, and comics
to entertain their audience. Sports, news, film review, columns on art and fashion are other instances. It
makes audience recreational and leisure time more enjoyable.

But these days, media have comprised information and education in the entertaining programs. The
fusion of entertainment and information is called infotainment. Similarly, the inclusion of education in
entertaining programs is regarded as edutainment.