CAMUA, KAPAYAPAAN YUBILEO D.

BACM-A1

Communication, a word that has a lot of connections, and it holds a lot of meaning. A
simple act of talking, sharing, or expressing ourselves is called communication. But
when I hear the word “Communication”, the word “Media” always come to mind. Time
after time, we have been evolving, and so is the media. We have come a long way, from
radio to television, but now we have the internet. It became easier to access into some
certain things, and it certainly became easier to be updated or be entertained by the
media. Just one click, then you can go where ever you please and you will know what
you want to know, thanks to the internet. Throughout the existence of media, we the
people have encountered many theories about the media. A theory that once was just
someone’s idea is now a part of history and is being taught to students all around the
globe.

Of all the theories that were given, I was interested with these two theories. "People’s
Choice" and "Uses and Gratification" Theory grabbed my attention. I was interested with
those theories because it focuses on the people or the consumers. It involves the wants
of the consumers and for in my opinion, these theories validate people's opinions. It
really voices out what the people want to see and why they want to consume.

Like for instance, The Uses and Gratification Theory, this theory focuses on what
people do with the media. It was first researched back in the 1940s by Elihu Kutz and
Jay Blumler. Both of them are Emeritus Professor at University of Leeds. This theory
states that the people are active participants of the media meaning to say, we have the
power and the freedom to consume what we want to consume. Like we can filter out the
things that we don't want to see and replace it with things that we're more interested to
see or watch. There are many factors on why we chose to consume just certain things,
perhaps because we want diversion. Just one click, and then we can watch or read the
things that we want to escape reality, or maybe because they use media as a sort of a
personal relationship. I can admit that we get alone sometimes, and the only thing we
have is the media, so we use the media as some sort of substitution or companion to
our love ones, because we tend to think that the media is making us feel better. Another
factor is enhancing our personal identity through the use of media. In media, some user
seek validation to their online friends to boost their self-confidence, example of this is
posting your own picture on Facebook and expecting reactions or comments from our
friends. If we sum it all up, we often think that the media controls us, but in reality, we
can control it.
Now when it comes to The People's Choice Theory, it is basically said on the name of
the theory, "People's Choice". This theory focuses on our decisions as a whole group.
Some of its subject matters are the theory of the state, voting rules, voter's behaviour,
party politics, and bureaucracy. So in other words, it focuses on politics and the people's
decision. These consumers or individuals come together or join forces in terms of
agreement and they can be the main reason for a change to their country. Example of
this is the traditional voting. We, the citizens have the rights to vote for someone of who
we think is going to make a change to our country, so we encourage the people to vote
for someone right. We are encouraging them to agree with us and vote for the same
person. So if you build this up with many people, we can catapult the one that we voted
for, thus helping them win. That's how The People's Choice Theory works, making a
small group building it up to be bigger, basically revolution but more casual and formal.

But not everything stated on these are right and perfect. There are also criticisms
involved that can debunk a whole theory; however we cannot debunk this theory
anymore. In Uses and Gratification Theory, it says there that the individuals have the
power over the media usage, rather than being a standard consumer of media.
However, for me we can’t control what the media is giving, yes we can filter the things
that we don’t want to see, but you are clearly being closed-minded to some certain
topics. If the consumers keep getting things that they want, then that is a problem. We
try to keep escaping reality, but in the end, we still need to know and see what is
happening to our world. This theory is teaching us to mask our flaws and just forget the
world and do what you want. That’s not how to live life, we need to face the reality and
just accept the fact that the world isn’t perfect. As for the People’s Choice Theory, the
idea behind this theory is good,but we are depending too much to the people. What if
we miscalculated? What if he or she’s is not the right person? We keep depending to
the opinion leader as said in the “two-steps flow”, but what if the opinion leader’s opinion
is wrong? Sometimes in life,we need to make choices for our own self.

In conclusion, media is complicated. Normal people would think that media is just
books, social media, and stuff like that, but little do we know, there are still some things
that we need to learn about media. There are theories, teachings, and books about
media. There are many things to learn which is hard, but at the end of the day, It will be
all worth it.

II Write an essay about the role and impact of communication and media technologies
in social processe and institutions.

- Communication and media technology makes information spread quickly and they also
provide fast and timely communication within and across institutions. But because of the
easy processes done by the technology, it also became more easier to spread false
information or fake news.
III. Discuss one relevant social issue

-The rice industry is one relevant social issue in the Philippines today. This is a big
issue for us because, many of our citizens can’t live without rice in their meal. We
consume 3 or more cups of rice in a day, but do we really know how rice is
harvested? Do we know the process of how it is produced? This past few weeks, the
issue between the farmers and Cynthia Villar, a senator who is also a business
woman has took the social media by storm, mostly of the netizens criticizes her for
her side on this matter.

The main issue here was that how Cynthia Villar is buying the farmers’ land on a
cheap price, while other farmers starve to death to sustain their livelihood, thus while
being on a position as a senator, even though her husband was also on position, but
they did nothing but to capitalize on how poor the farmers to sell their land, and kill
their livelihood. According to what I read, they even mocked the farmers by telling
them that they’re getting paid fairly, but I think the opposite thing is happening. Many
questions are still left unanswered, how is such a thing like this was even allowed by
the government? Do people still care about the farmers and their livelihood?
Something must be done.