Ensayo de la guerra de los mundos, Ejercicios de Teorías de Comunicación

¡Descarga Ensayo de la guerra de los mundos y más Ejercicios en PDF de Teorías de Comunicación solo en Docsity! WAR OF THE WORLDS ESSAY. Alejandro Baker Cabello, RRII-COM. Communicati on theory. War of the worlds essay. | Alejandro Baker Cabello. The rise of the mass media on the Western hemisphere was one of the most significance steps in our early history, changing our form of communicate and interact with others. It allowed us to be informed constantly, and to become better informed in our surrounding world, for better or for worse. However, it also made ourselves to become a product and a way for businesses to make profit of us with just some words said on the radio, television or written articles on the newspaper, but probably the worst of the raising of these communicative mass models was the influence they had on our behaviors. Do not get me wrong, life is better now that people are constantly informed and have more idea of their surroundings, but every big step in human history comes with a high price made, such as becoming alienated or completely different as we once were. One example of the earliest example of the influence that mass media made on us was seen during the War of the worlds radio program, done during Halloween´s eve of 1938. This program, written by Orson Welles, showed us how part of society could be scared to the point of even leaving their houses, by just telling a story. It for sure made certain people think about how expose we are to the different mediatic elements in our lives, their consequences, and repercussions, which still affect us today. But first, how could this have happened? What can we do to change it, and how did it affect today´s society? Firstly, the historical and sociological context is important. The 1938 was a year of uncertainty and doubt for most of the USA society. With the democratic election of Hitler, the different broadcasts about Europe, the rise of propaganda, and the end of a global crisis which started with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. It was also a time when many people did not have higher education, and the world was still recovering from the results of the I World War. Also, in September of that year the Munich Agreement took place, rising warlike tension around the world, especially on the Western Hemisphere. Different elements, closely related to the fears of the people who not more than 20 years ago lived a complete apocalyptic situation, were used during the program. Biological weapons were said to be owned by the Martians, black and dense fog, and screams done live retransmitting from the studio, alike some WWI broadcasts. This made the radio emission become closely related to the people´s worst fears and nightmares. It brought back a world they hoped they had leaved behind. It has been shown that the main appeal to news and different programs to people relies in how much those news or programs relate to the public, since people choose to be expose to media in a selective way (Bartlett effect), being this program a clear example of this. Viewing the reaction of people from a cultural theorist perspective, we would be able to say that one of the motors of change in mass societies is fear to the unknown. The fear insufflated in the words of the different presenters of the War of the worlds along with their mastery of the emotive function, influenced to show the true colors of the P á g i n a 1 | 6 War of the worlds essay. | Alejandro Baker Cabello. propaganda strategies in Germany´s Nazi era, made a progressive increase of influence into people´s behavior. The different and various reaction of people can be closely related to propaganda theories. J. Michael Sproule (Section 1 Foundations: Introduction to Mass Communication Theory and Its Roots.) said that the most effective propaganda had to convince people without seeming to do so, being the ´´War of the worlds´´ a clear example. In a matter of a really short time some people were convince in the existence of U.F.O.s, extraterrestrials attacks and the end of the world. This reaction of the people had never been seen anywhere in the world, and at any time in history. Did this story show the actual nature of the contemporary man? An entity too innocent to contrast information, and too stupid to even believe them? This looks like the case that human nature took for the next decades in which war took place. A rise of anti-Semitism across Europe took place, in which it was said that Jewish people were inferior to other ethnicities and races around the world. The proclamation of the superiority of the Aryan race, that started in Germany and then spread along all Europe, showed the power of the mass media into convincing people to do what looked impossible and antimoral behaviors. We can all apply the concepts and historical facts given here to understand a bit better our situation. Nowadays, with a rising of people who proclaim the existence of fake news more than ever before, like the actual president of the United States, a brief looks into our recent history would help us understand how we have become beings that do not think rigorously and with a critic enough capacity to actually believe some of those fake stories. An example of this was the case of the cannibal restaurant news given in 2017, which was later proved to be untruthful and false (h ttps://noticiasya.com/2017/11/29/video-la-verdad-sobre-el-restaurante-canibal-de-japon ). Other example happened in 1949 with the repeated case of aliens landing in Quito. It ended up with riots and policemen and the army moving in order to attack the aliens, just because Radio Quito said there was a landing after several days of hypothetical sightings of U.F.O.s in the Chilean sky, as said in the Radiolab program which analyzed the effects of the show transmitted in 1938. (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/war-worlds ) As the journalist Rosa Mª Calaf said in an interview to the Instagram account of the BBVA bank, ´´aprendemos juntos, ´´Journalism is a necessity in order to create a society with critic values who will differ the toxic information of the non-toxic information, because if we do not do it, then a society of consumers will take place´´. Have we become that? A society of consumers which is just looking for stories to entertain ourselves, believe them and then react with craziness about it? It for sure seems that the modern human has lost himself into the stories told in the media, but have we lost ourselves in the ocean of information that we have been living since the rise of mass media in the 20´s and 30´s? According to the contemporary philosopher Byung-Chul Han, and his book In the swarm, we are losing our own identity and losing ourselves in what looks to be a huge flot of information. This huge P á g i n a 4 | 6 War of the worlds essay. | Alejandro Baker Cabello. amount of information, makes us to lose ourselves and becoming naïve enough to believe in the flatness of the Earth, ghosts, and even extraterrestrial beings, dehumanizing ourselves, and becoming ourselves those aliens who attacked the humans. Bibliography: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-51190759 - Information about the II War World. Notes from introduction to the International Relations from 1st of RICOM. https://aeon.co/essays/a-radio-play-about-radio-that-became-the-first-fake-news- story - Articles of Communication theory. Section 1 Foundations: Introduction to Mass Communication Theory and Its Roots. https://aeon.co/essays/a-radio-play-about-radio-that-became-the-first-fake-news- story - War of the worlds script. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jon-hagadorn/the-storytellers/e/61582620? autoplay=true – War of the worlds podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJE6ZJ95ze0 – Rosa Mª Calaf interview at BBVA contigo. https://noticiasya.com/2017/11/29/video-la-verdad-sobre-el-restaurante-canibal-de- japon/ - Opening of the cannibal restaurant in Tokio. https://www.academia.edu/27913656/Byung_chul_han_en_el_enjambre - Byung-Chul Han In the Swarm. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/war-worlds - Radiolab program. P á g i n a 5 | 6