Importance of Media

By: Sofia Kerpel

Word of mouth has always been the most effective and efficient way to promote ideas or ventures, as well as transmit data and discoveries. Those pigeons that carried letters, later evolving into newspapers, and today becoming our social networks have given us the ability to share our experiences almost instantly and to a nearly infinite audience. If we think about it, we all have a friend, relative, or acquaintance, who surely at this precise moment, is making use of a social network, which reveals the great importance that such applications have today. According to studies, the average time that each person spends connected to a social network is 5 hours and 36 minutes a day, which shows that it is the main way in which we communicate, we find out what is happening in the world, and we even have conversations about topics that interest us.

Today, with the situation that we are going through, the great influence of social networks has been evident, when informing and raising awareness of what is happening. It is also clear that social media has great power over us, by manipulating and influencing us. The influence of the media has reached such a point that there are key moments such as the presidential election, where the candidates preferred to share their opinion through applications such as Twitter and Instagram rather than through the news or magazines since they were very clear that In order for them to have a greater influence. Marketing nowadays happens mostly on social media rather than on TV channels or street advertisement, as its target audience is wider than what TV alone can reach. It is also clear to marketers that the public finds it more objective as they perceive it as recommendations from someone that has used the product and believes it's worth spreading. Believe it or not, nine out of ten marketers have hired influencers as part of their marketing strategy, as it generates the highest return on investment. That's why it is predicted that the influencer marketing industry will increase by 87.5% in the next few years due its incredible success in marketing brands.

Nevertheless, social media has opened a gap for superficiality to the point that the only thing we care about is watching and gossiping about other people's life, based on their rehearsed spontaneity, and sadly as Juha Manukka, an academic that has spent years studying and analyzing the influence of media, states, “Most influencers peddle in sharing private or supposedly private information about themselves, but various studies show that all aspects of these disclosures are thought through and intentional.”

That is why a conscience call should be made not only to subscribers but also to influencers so that they use their media to transmit messages with some social value so that it is useful as a type of influence, in order that important news is transmitted, and give a place to those really delicate messages that many media censor and ignore for supposedly not being of great importance. Immense advances could be made to benefit society such as finding a missing person, helping financially a foundation or community that needs it or even reporting a crime ignored by the authorities.

In conclusion, the influence of the media should be used to inform and help people and the world, instead of being a superficial medium where the only objective is to get more likes and followers. A tool this powerful should not be misused.