My Personal Experience of Media in Everyday Life

My Personal Experience of Media in Everyday Life

Media is a world that nowadays is commonly used as a general concept that includes all the means of mass communication that comprehend publishing, broadcasting and the internet. It can also be defined as mass diffusion mean through which a message can be transmitted, according to the characteristics of the medium, to a plurality of recipients without the necessary interaction between two poles. It is undeniable that the whole world population is spending much of his time in contact with the mass media and can do anything without it anymore. Such means, for their own communicative structure, influence the culture and perception of reality, proposing models and lifestyles that leverage social desirability. Media set stereotypes that are rarely reachable, and turns want into needs. Think for example of the key role that they take in the advertising field. Advertising through the media has introduced a range of needs that go beyond essential goods, and we cannot deny that factors such as behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs are influenced by the media and the channels through which these messages are conveyed. Media affects all of us every day, through advertisement, social media, television, magazines. There is no aspect of our life that is not shaped, at least in part, by the stereotype that media gives us; from how you should look to what you should buy and where you should go, people that state the contrary are either lying or do not recognize the effect media has on their daily life.

But for a 21-year-old Italian girl in exchange in Hong Kong, twelve hours of flight and six hours of time zone away from home media is much more than that, it has merely nothing to do with stereotypes or with what effect television and advertisement has on her, since here she does not own a television, but it has more to do with that the connection to internet let her do. Internet is the means through which she can talk to her family and her friends, every day, so that the distance sims less and the time will pass faster; is also the means by which she can stay near her family that is going through major changes without her being able to physically be with them, how can she do that being 9,257 km away from them. And last but not least is what keeps her updated not only with what is happening everywhere in the world but at home too, that for an exchange student is the most important thing of all. So every day she wakes up and checks her accounts starting with WhatsApp, finishing with Facebook passing through Instagram and Snapchat, so that she knows what her friends are doing and what they talked about in group chats she is part of but cannot give a contribution too since 6 hours of difference are a lot. That is the start of her day every day, it was the start of her day also at home but here is even more important to her since she is not going to see them, both her family and her friends, in a few hours or few days but in a few months. And after checking what happened back at home and that everything is fine