Media is a powerful tool which forms the society, shapes people’s attitudes towards other nations and themselves, influences consumerism by means of advertising, and is even able to change the society. Moreover, media is often used as a persuasive political force for it is able to affect people’s views and beliefs (Park, Curtice, & Thompson, 2007). The roles which the media plays in the development of the American culture, such as dissemination of information, changing the consumers’ tastes, and extending their knowledge about other nations, allowed it to propagate three main trends, namely food, health clubs, and fashion which strongly influence the American’s views on consumerism, work, social responsibility, happiness, human body, justice, law, and order.
To begin with, print media has played a significant role not only in the development, but in spreading of the American culture as well. When shaping the American culture, print media performed mostly informative function. This is where newspapers and magazines played the most important role for namely they extended the Americans’ knowledge about their own nation and let them contrast the achievements of their society to those of other people. This comparison has shown that America is developed better than any country of the world, which contributed greatly to forming of the Americans’ pride in their nation. Another role of print media advertising in developing American culture consisted in its changing the consumers’ tastes and uniting Americans in their likes and dislikes. Those were the times of McDonald’s popularity and its becoming “one of the ultimate icons of American culture” (Berger & Huntington, 2002). McDonald’s then entered the markets of almost every country of the world, which resulted in the worldwide spreading of American culture. These days print media continues shaping and reshaping American culture contributing into its development through dissemination of information of all the possible kinds.
Furthermore, such an influence of the print media on the development of American culture allows distinguishing three trends which the media propagated within the American society. These trends are food, health clubs, and fashion with each of them having a great influence on the American people. Food is perhaps the most popular trend for quite a few Americans eat at home. This being the reason, the profits of restaurants, especially fast food ones, continue growing. At this, however, the Americans are greatly preoccupied with the quality of food they consume. In light of the weight crisis which the country currently experiences, more and more people start paying attention to the food they consume, as well as to the ways they spend their leisure. This is why health clubs trend is now no less popular than the food one. Health clubs are being visited by people of all the ages. Which club to visit is, of course, a matter of personal choice, but it is the task of the printed media to point at the best ones, thus making them attractive to the consumers and more popular than the others. Finally, print media is the best distributor of the fashion trend, because fashion magazines are now popular not only among women, but among men as well. Fashion trend, just like food and health clubs, is also popular among people of different ages and especially among those who have higher incomes. Therefore, food, health clubs, and fashion can be regarded as the main trends propagated by the print media.
Finally, these three trends of the printed media have a considerable influence on the consumerism, work, social responsibility, happiness, human body, as well as justice, law, and order. In terms of consumerism, for instance, food advertising shapes people’s taste preferences; health clubs promotion makes people choose the most popular clubs; and fashion magazines dictate which brands of clothes, shoes, perfumes, etc is better to buy. Sometimes, of course, the advertising promotes goods the quality of which is dissatisfactory and this largely accounts for people’s criticizing the print media. The trends’ influence on work is also immense. Good advertising of food, health clubs, and fashion attract a great number of people to these trends, which contributes to the development of the spheres where these trends are used. This expansion further entails higher demand at the labor market resulting in increasing the number of professions connected with these trends. These trends have a certain impact on social responsibility as well because the popularity of each of them depends on competition between them. Social responsibility regulates competition trying to make it fair (Carrol & Buchholtz, 2008); despite this, competition in food, health clubs, and fashion industries is not always fair due to competitors being numerous. This, in its turn, has a certain impact on the consumers’ happiness, because the stronger the competition within each of these industries is, the happier and more satisfied the consumers are.
In order to improve the consumers’ happiness, food trends, for instance, improve the quality of their goods; health clubs offer discounts and become modernized; and fashion trends diversify the range of goods they may offer. No less tangible is the influence of these trends on human body. Each of them may promote a healthy way of life followed by the loss of extra pounds; in this sense, the three trends under consideration are interrelated because people’s desire to be slimmer and wear fashionable clothes serves as a powerful motivation for their buying certain types of food and visiting health clubs. Lastly, these trends have an immense influence on justice, law, and order. Expansion of food, health clubs, and fashion industries has increased the number of lawsuits against the organizations regarding the quality of goods they offer to their customers. This has significantly affected legislation and resulted in adoption of new laws and provisions to them. Thus, food, health clubs, and fashion trends indeed have a strong influence on consumerism, work, social responsibility, happiness, human body, justice, law, and order and, correspondingly, people’s views and attitudes towards them.
In sum, mass media has a strong influence on the development of the society and people’s attitudes towards different issues. The American popular culture owns its development to the print media due to its information dissemination, shaping consumers’ tastes, and extending people’s knowledge. Performing of these functions allowed the print media to propagate such trends as food, health clubs, and fashion which are unique for the American society.
Reference List
- Berger, P.L. &Huntington, S.P. Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Caroll, A.B. & Buchhotlz, A.K. Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management. London: Cengage Learning, 2008.
- Park, A., Curtice, J., and Thompson, K. British Social Attitudes: Perspectives on a Changing Society: The 23rd Report. New York: Pine Forge Press, 2007.