Q2) Mass media plays a crucial role in forming and reflecting public imagination,

opinion, connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society. In
the last 50 years the media influence has grown exponentially with the advance of
technology, first there was the telegraph, then the radio, the newspaper, magazines,
television and now the internet.
Our society is centered on media, it is the most influential factor in constructing our
culture, but is it a positive culture? If we examine the effect that media has on children,
we can say that it breeds a harmful culture, one that throws values and morals out the
window. This is because the media is profit driven and has developed its own code of
ethics of "anything-goes". As a result, children are exposed to things that they should
not necessarily be exposed to yet and as a result it rushes their mental development
and in fact moulds their mentality. This is a scary fact because these children's minds
are susceptible to the trickery of those who run the media. With the media luring in the
children, they are able to sell their own value system to the kids through actors, cartoon
characters, and even musicians who are puppets in the media's propaganda. They in
turn tend to become role models to the kids and can influence the children and
manipulate their behavior
The media have a strong social and cultural impact upon society. This is predicated
upon their ability to reach a wide audience with a strong and influential message.
Marshall McLuhan uses the phrase the medium is the message as a means of
explaining how the distribution of a message can often be more important than content
of the message itself. It is through the persuasiveness of media such as television, radio
and print media that messages reach their target audiences. These have been
influential media as they have been largely responsible for structuring people's daily
lives and routines. Television broadcasting has a large amount of control over the
content society watches and the times in which it is viewed. This is a distinguishing
feature of traditional media which New media have challenged by altering the
participation habits of the public.
Media strongly affects youth culture. The media executives are quick to defend their role
in youth violence and bullying while selling millions of dollars in ads focused on youth.
TV producers, network executives, motion picture companies and others in the media
deny any impact of their programs on the attitudes and actions of youth. Meanwhile they
continue to spend millions on special effects and marketing geared to increase appeal
to youth markets. While corporations spend millions on market research and advertising
to create products and campaigns targeted at a youth demographic, they still deny their
ability to influence youth. If this were true to fact, would NIKE continue spending millions
every year on product development, marketing and advertising? Would McDonalds still
be using cartoon like characters to sell hamburgers? Would music labels be increasing

the level of violence and sexual content in the music geared towards the youth
audience? Would liquor companies be using youth oriented activities in their
advertising? Of course it works on influencing youth and its ideals advertising would not
be a multi-billion dollar a year business. If it had no influence, M-TV would not have
consultant on staff spending huge amounts of money to ensure them keeping up with
youth culture.
The internet creates a space for more diverse political opinions, social and cultural
viewpoints and a heightened level of consumer participation.
They include licensing in advance;censorship of offending material before
publication;seizure of offending material;injunctions against publication of a newspaper
or book or of specified content;requirement of surety bonds against libel or other
offense;compulsory disclosure of ownership and authority;post publication criminal
penalties for objectionable matter;post publication collection of damages in a civil
action;post publication correction of libel and other misstatements;discrimination in
granting access to news source and facilities;discrimination and denial in the use of
communications facilities for distribution;taxes;discriminatory subsidies;and interference
with buying, reading and listening.
Media should encourage art, science and literature but it is focusing on astrology,
rebirths, religious myths, beliefs and aliens. Now days almost every news channel
telecast astrological programmes where an astrologer or some baba is sitting and
predicting about deaths, marriages and relationships. The funny part is that sometimes
statements made by each astrologer are contradictory which confuses the audience.
Superstition and myths are also encouraged as recently in one of the news channel
there was programme based on a tantrik who claimed that he can kill a person within
three minutes. It was telecast but the action failed and to escape from humiliation the
tantrik said that it can only be performed at night.

Television is very influential when it comes to new trends and fashion. Peoples get in
touch with all the new trends related to dresses and same kind of things because of this.
Programs like Kaun Banay Ga Crorepati, Tariq Aziz Show and many others are doing a
good job by providing information in an entertaining way. The Public Service Messages
on Television are really influential.
Most importantly, by reading columns, peoples learn a lot about writing. They admit that
their creative writing is good because of reading books and news papers columns.
As Television is the most common and powerful media form that is why it has a number
of negative influences. Some peoples really get impressed by new trends of fashion and

they waste their money on those foolish things after watching them in any program or
advertisements.
Wasting time on surfing different channels of Television is the biggest negative point of
peoples. Some times, young girls get impressed by different beauty products just
because of their eye capturing advertisement campaigns and then they often get
allergy. Cross-promotions between food products and popular TV and movie characters
encourage peoples to eat more high calorie food.
Some times young boys keep long hair and say, it is fashion, a very negative influence
of media. Furthermore, the constant ambush of messages from the media especially
Television to lose weight and to appear waif-like in order to meet societys expectations
of the ideal woman are possibly behind youngsters little eating.
The time youngsters spend using internet displaces time they could be doing physical
activities. Whenever peoples get some time spare, they listen to Radio. Again, that time
could have been used for any other useful activity.
These were just few examples of media influence but I think, they were enough to show
that how convincing and influential media is. The growth of media as an industry has
accelerated over the past few years with new forms such as DVD and the internet
changing the way we, the audience, consume and receive media.So concluding this
topic, I would say that it is up to us that how we consume media. It has both pros and
cons but let us try to focus on positive points, not the negative ones.
What remains to be seen is how tomorrow's young adults will show the effects of
growing up in a time of computers, Britney Spears and supremacy of Indian media. We
may just end up paying a higher price than we bargained for.

Pakistanis and Pakistani media are required to respect the native

traditions and individuality, abide by the rules and regulations of the
federation, support the minors/minorities and provide education for all
irrespective of their financial and social background, we can bring the
change, prosperity in our society and secure our homeland. The
intellectuals in media and the political circles have the responsibility to
start the debate. It is through repeated exposure that the citizens will
start to identify themselves with democratic and liberal values.
To minimize and resist the effects of western and Indian channels, it is
suggested that local channels should be strengthened and programmes
should have better content. These channels should produce and broadcast
quality programmes that could help in the promotion of Pakistani values
and traditions and improve the image of Pakistan at international level.

erhaps the best way to study a society and its dynamics, especially of change is to study its social
institutions. As far as Pakistani society is concerned, it is passing through an era of unprecedented
changes and the role of media cannot be overlooked in this process. Historically, Pakistani society has
had a very conservative orientation. However, the institutions of such a society are briskly
evaporating.
Each country has a media system at different stages of development. Pakistan, a country of 140
million, has not had a correspondingly developed media system. The main reason behind this is the
monopoly of government over the electronic media and strict working framework for print media.
Going by the standards of normative theories of the press, Pakistani media can be placed somewhere
near what is known as the Authoritarian Model. Generally speaking, mass media systems everywhere
are changing due to sweeping commercialisation; rapid increase in the number of media channels and
sources; global organisations and flow of mass communication; hitherto unthinkable sophistication in
media technology; de-massification of media audiences etc.
The above factors are inextricably interconnected to the social system that is triggered innumerable
social changes. Social institutions, like political institutions, clergy, local communities are losing their
role of binding forces. This loss of authority has not come without loss in reverence for their leaders.
There is no denying the fact that mass media is constantly replacing the classical agencies of
socialization and public order, like family and schools. On the other hand, due to weakening of the
family and the school, the level of informal social control has drastically lowered and there has been
an increasing need for formal tools of social control.
Most of mass media messages have been such that they have been inculcating individualism in their
once socially well-integrated audiences. Mass media have constantly been transforming the social
system by increasing social mobility of individuals and groups. This social mobility is multi-faceted, viz
geographical, occupational, income-wise, as well as psychological.
The impact of media on Pakistans traditional social system can better be understood analysing it in
the matrix of social institutions, the primary components of social system.
Family is the basic unit of any society and, therefore, of its respective social system. In Pakistan the
institution of family has been quite strong. There has been a system of extended families all over
Pakistan. The media with their rootless culture have been diffusing a culture of nuclear families and
neo-local families. There are noteworthy social changes correspondingly due to this diffusion. The
instances of divorce that was, and still is considered a social anathema has risen sharply. Whereas, the
so-called joint family system is on the decline.
Moreover, families in Pakistan have always been the domains of primary socialisation. Now under
medias influence the role of the families has constantly and increasingly been replaced by the former.

This has negative implications because, empirically media has not been the true representative of
Pakistans traditional social system, in particular of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and
Balochistan, two of the more traditional provinces of Pakistan. Therefore, they are also socialising
people in aliens norms and values. Moreover, having individualistic orientations and also diffusing
individualistic values, the media is rendering the Pakistani society as atomised thus resulting in the
fragmentation of that once well-bound society.
It can safely be said that almost every media reinforced by foreign elements via the satellite and other
gadgets of the communication revolution, have been vociferous exponents for elimination of gender
discrimination in Pakistan. Media portrayals have empowered the female gender to a certain extent
and they are briskly adopting roles that have been hitherto the domain of men. This on one hand
strengthens the feminists cause but on the other, it has also obviously resulted in infinite and
dangerous conflicts within traditional Pakistani families. Like the emergence and aggravation of gender
gaps; the creation of significant knowledge gaps; plummeting compassion, as well as raising family
feuds; and materialism.
Religion, i.e Islam, has more than significant presence in Pakistani society. The overall tendency of
media contents, one can say, has been quite instrumental in enfeebling religious institutions and even
alienating people from religion. For instance, with multiplication of media sources and their round the
clock availability, offer temptation to people to shun religious obligations like evading routine prayers
and funerals etc. Resultantly social bonds are eroding.
Above all, the traditional role of religion in integrating Pakistani society has constantly been replaced
with the integrating role of media. Because in Pakistani federalism, the common religion, Islam, of
diverse ethnic groups, is assumed to be providing the strongest bond has had a very important role to
play; in reality religion has never performed that function.
It is argued that media induced passivity and well-informed futility. If analysed in this context, the
religious contents of media, even if presented in good faith ought to get neutralised due to the latent
nature of the media. Thus under media influence, Pakistani society is experiencing the erosion of
practical religion and the tendency is towards greater ritualism.

https://www.scribd.com/doc/18271317/Mass-Media-in-Pakistan-by-Raja-Kamran