In either case this perspective, which had been encouraged strongly by the commercial broadcasting industry, remained prominent in mass communication circles well into the 1970s, thus the real emergence of media conformity. Conformity of the media means that less and less companies exist today and the major corporations have bought out all the smaller ones. What people watch, see, read, and even talk about has been effected by the media. With the emergence of these changes we are now more interested in entertainment. This will be explained later. .
Effects and Changes in Mass Media .
A description of mass media in the United States can help to explain much of why they do what they do. There are two categories of media defined as follows: print (newspapers, magazines, etc); and electronic which is the radio, television, movies, and the internet. These media carry messages quickly to a wide range of audiences (Heibert 4-5). With this technology media has conformed slowly over time, and less companies produced because they have either been bought out or fell off the charts as these numbers show (Heibert 4-5). At the end of the twentieth century, about 1,550 daily newspapers were published, which is down from about 2,600 at their peak earlier in the century (Heibert 5). .
Some questions can be brought to light such as, do the media make things happen, or do they merely report what has happened? Do they make us act? Do they influence people's opinions? Obviously this cannot be answered with undeniable certainty, but one can argue. In the 1950s, television was still primarily a limited adult activity. Most people's values had already been shaped by other forces - namely, family, religion, teachers, and print media (Heibert 7). By the end of the twentieth century, social scientists were ready to assign a more direct and powerful impact to television (Heibert 7-8). The most important has been the work of George Gerbner, whose "cultivation analysis" is based on theory that television, as a dominant medium, has a cumulative effect, ultimately creating the culture in which we live (Gerbner 23).
