NCERT Book Class 7 Civics Media and Advertising

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Understanding Media

What is your favourite TV programme? What do you like listening to on the radio? Which newspaper or magazine do you usually read? Do you surf the internet and what have you found most useful about it? Did you know that there is one word that is often used to collectively refer to the radio, TV, newspapers, Internet and several other forms of communication. This word is ‘media’. In this chapter, you will read more about the media. You will find out what is required to make it work, as well as the ways in which the media affects our daily lives. Can you think of one thing that you have learnt from the media this week? 

Everything ranging from the stall at the local fair to the programme that you see on TV can be called media. Media is the plural form of the word ‘medium’ and it describes the various ways through which we communicate in society. Because media refers to all means of communication, everything ranging from a phone call to the evening news on TV can be called media. TV, radio and newspapers are a form of media that reaches millions of people, or the masses, across the country and the world and, thus, they are called mass media.

Media and technology

It would probably be difficult for you to imagine your life without the media. But cable television and the widespread use of the Internet is a recent phenomenon. These have been around for less than twenty years. The technology that mass media uses keeps changing.

Newspapers, television and radio can reach millions of people because they use certain technologies. We also tend to discuss newspapers and magazines as the print media; and TV and radio as the electronic media. Why do you think newspapers are called print media? As you read further, you will find that this naming is related to the different technologies that these media use. The following photographs will give you a sense of the ways in which technology that mass media uses has changed over the years and continues to change.

Changing technology, or machines, and making technology more modern, helps media to reach more people. It also improves the quality of sound and the images that you see. But technology does more than this. It also changes the ways in which we think about our lives. For example, today it is quite difficult for us to think of our lives without television. Television has enabled us to think of ourselves as members of a larger global world. Television images travel huge distances through satellites and cables. This allows us to view news and entertainment channels from other parts of the world. Most of the cartoons that you see on television are mostly from Japan or the United States. We can now be sitting in Chennai or Jammu and can see images of a storm that has hit the coast of Florida in the United States. Television has brought the world closer to us.

Media and money

The different technologies that mass media use are expensive. Just think about the TV studio in which the newsreader sits – it has lights, cameras, sound recorders, transmission satellites, etc., all of which cost a lot of money.

In a news studio, it is not only the newsreader who needs to be paid but also a number of other people who help put the broadcast together. This includes those who look after the cameras and lights. Also, as you read earlier the technologies that mass media use keep changing and so a lot of money is spent on getting the latest technology. Due to these costs, the mass media needs a great deal of money to do its work. As a result, most television channels and newspapers are part of big business houses.

Mass media is constantly thinking of ways to make money. One way in which the mass media earns money is by advertising different things like cars, chocolates, clothes, mobile phones, etc. You must have noticed the number of advertisements that you have to see while watching your favourite television show. While watching a cricket match on TV, the same advertisements are shown repeatedly between each over and so you are often watching the same image over and over again. As you will read in the following chapter, advertisements are repeated in the hope that you will go out and buy what is advertised.

EXERCISES

1. In what ways does the media play an important role in a democracy?

2. Can you give this diagram a title? What do you understand about the link between media and big business from this diagram?

3. You have read about the ways in which the media ‘sets the agenda’. What kind of effect does this have in a democracy? Provide two examples to support your point of view.

4. As a class project, decide to focus on a particular news topic and cut out stories from different newspapers on this. Also watch the coverage of this topic on TV news. Compare two newspapers and write down the similarity and differences in their reports. It might help to ask the following questions–

a. What information is this article providing?

b. What information is it leaving out?

c. From whose point of view is the article being written?

d. Whose point of view is being left out and why?

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 7 Civics Media and Advertising