media effects

this is a comic strip entitled "Rumors, lies and innuendo spread far, wide, and fast on the Internet." taken from "Introduction to Mass Communication: Media Literacy and Culture" by Stanley Baran, pg 324.

Do you often take what is on the Internet as truth without thinking much about it? If yes, why? If no, why? Discuss this in your own words.

Each student must post at least 2 critical reflection on topic given (4%), 1 personal reflection on the media culture class (1%), over a period of 5 days to 7 days.


Critical Reflections :

• i admit that every time i needed to do a research for my assignments, the first place i would go to search for information is the internet. with the internet, every information i need is just a click away. it's so quick and easy. however, i never really believe everything that is on the internet and take it as the truth. not all, at least. i say so because, everybody is able to access to the internet. so, anybody from any part of the world can write anything they want, what they believe in, and what they think is true as there is nobody that monitors or decide the reliability of what is written in the internet. take the comic strip, for instance. an adult actually believes what a little boy wrote in the website. just because the name of the website is "The Official National News", the adult believe that the news are authentic. it only goes to show that anything in the internet could be a lie but we are not aware of it. we have used a little too much of the internet everyday, that our brains just absorb and except whatever we read in the internet and take it as the truth without much thought about it.
  

• recently, quite often i did some research about what happened in Gaza. however, there were just too many websites with too many different stories from different point of view. it was so hard for me to know which one is actually telling the truth and which one is the fake. this made me took some extra hours to deliberate and decide which site i wanted to trust. even the most reliable websites such as the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera, tell me different stories. i wanted to believe that the writers/editors of those websites are professionals that only deliver correct and reliable news. but with so many different opinions, one (or more) might not be telling the truth.

Personal Reflection :
this week, the class was almost uncontrollable. some students, i thought, were a little rude. they talked non-stop from the start to the end of the class. even after they have been warned. thank god i managed to concentrate on the class. from the lecture, i learned that people rely too much on media. when the logic system is not working especially, this is when people start to believe everything that the media has grafted towards them. however, issues like religion, race, class, and public affiliations are more powerful than media in shaping the behaviour of citizens. therefore, not everyone will listen to or will be affected by what the advertisements tell them. even so, the effects of media will forever stay.