According to the ‘‘Dependency Theory’’ a person depends on media and eventually it becomes more and more important in a persons’ life thereby increasing the influencing power of the media. Thus media satisfies a persons’ need by giving him/her what he/she needs or wishes for. These needs/desires are produced to an individual through various deceptive information about a particular thing/idea which generates intense interest towards that thing leaving an individual with no questions to ask nor have any ambiguity.
The most prominent and powerful tool of media which is ‘propaganda’ is in itself is a ‘weapon of mass persuasion’. Propaganda is most commonly used by different forms of media to convince the audience about certain policies, schemes, social or religious ideologies and of course to sell lifestyle products –( take fairness cream adds as an example which portrays Indian females possessing low self-esteem due to their skin colour which is not ‘WHITE’). Ever questioned what is wrong with the colour ‘BROWN’ or even ‘BLACK’ for that matter? Why do we need to change our skin colour? Should the skin colour determine the manner in which he/she will be treated in the so called ‘’society’’?
It is the media that has been biased towards the interpretation of the skin colour white as compared to other skin colours. The whites were always considered as sophisticated people and other skin coloured people as barbaric because it was portrayed so by ‘’some media’’ and was not questioned by anyone due to the high dependency rate of the public on media. This unquestioning of ‘’media portrayals’’ has resulted into false consciousness among a large number of audience and still is very much evident in the 21st century.
People are often confronted by the media with attractive and persuasive messages which produces a ‘’trancey’’ and a vivid image of a particular ideology or a product and hence are intimidated to follow/purchase it. This wittily injected image in the brain is deposited in the unconscious area of an individuals’ brain. An individual tends to forget the ‘’discounting cues‘’ generated by the media over a period of time and then generates a feeling of need or necessity in that individual to satisfy his/her ego. The information given by the media, though is portrayed to be with an individuals’ interest, is in fact towards the interests of the media.
IT IS NOT WHAT YOU WANT BUT WHAT THE MEDIA WANTS YOU TO WANT, AND SO, GIVE YOU WHAT IT WANTS TO GIVE AND NOT WHAT YOU ACTUALLY WANT!
Hence the benefit of this entire process of generating an image of an idea in an individuals’ mind resulting in the sale of the idea is clearly one sided and an individual is not able to realize this due to the generated false consciousness by ‘’the media’’ and unknowingly accepted by the individual due to unquestioning. Media hypnotizes a persons’ mind and keeps him/her in that hypnotized state for as long as it benefits from him/her.
This mastery of the art of deception by the media can be challenged by the common man by asking basic questions like – who, why, wat, when, and how. Asking these questions to the confronted message by the media enables and individual to think from the conscious mind and understand the practicality of it and not let the deceptive information persuade or intimidate, which when let, surrenders the thinking capacity of an individual to the media, therefore giving it the authority to control an individuals’ thoughts and perceptions. The media is like the religious missionaries who hunt for people having no religion to introduce their religion to them in a fancy and flowery manner and thereby increasing their own power/jurisdiction circle eventually oppressing an individuals’ freedom by persuading them to act and do things in the direction of their interests and comfort zone.
So if you are made to act according to some organizations or a particular groups’ interest without your consent or knowledge, are you really living in a free world? Is this FREEDOM? Time to ‘’THINK’’!
