Theme 2: Critical media studies

1. A long time ago almost every man and woman believed in myths, religion and other fantasies. To see the world as it really was they needed enlightenment. It was a set of mind created through the gain of new knowledge. Because with new knowledge it was possible to break the myths through reasoning and logical deductions. This lead to a new era where science out conquered the religion.
2. Before the enlightenment myth were what people would call the truth. They believed in myths just as we believe in science today. The difference between myth and science is that a myth does not have any proof. It is just an attempt to describe the truth about something without any logic or reason to support its value.
3. Examples of old medias are paintings and phones and examples new medias are radio and TV. It seems like the main difference according to the authors is the way they can be consumed. Radio and TV can be reached by millions of people at the same time whereas the phone call can only be done by two persons at the time. This lead to that the new media gets more powerful and has a greater influence on society because everyone who uses is passive.
4. The culture industry is simply the culture being industrialized. The society is at the same time starting to get capitalized a good way of making money is to sell a lot. Production at a lower cost implies standardization. People become more and more passive. Before you could go to the painter and ask him to make a painting for you but now you can only accept what the industries gives to you. This lets them control society and make more money. Because they do not care about you, they care about your money.
5. A lot is already mentioned in the answer above but it is that the greater the media gets the less influence do the consumers get. This means that the media can control the audience and affect their minds regarding how you should live your life.
6. I think that it was a valuable insight to understand what enlightenment and myth really was and also how you still find it a valuable knowledge. Because how we look at science is just how they looked at myths a long time ago. Maybe after a thousand years everything we know as the "truth" has become myths.
   
   Also that the media has such a great influence on us. Especially young people fall victims of what the media is trying to convince us about. It is almost religious like how the media is controlling the society. Before people met at churches to get the news and to share their stories and the church could take advantage of that and fool people to obey them and live a life that benefited them. Now large companies has the power and through media they manipulate us and make us live their way, just so that they can become a little richer.