Medias Influence in Life

          In the article Mass Media Influence on Society, the author goes out to state tht the media is the means of support of the people in the world. It shapes their attitude, opinion, and makes them to think before they start doing a particular work. The most beautiful thing is that it helps the people stay informed. The author states that, we live in a society that depends on information and communication to keep moving in the right direction and do our daily activities like work, entertainment, health care, education, personal relationships, traveling and anything else that we have to do.
          To support his arguement, the author lists five companies that own nearly 95% of all media that we get every day.  By doing this, he builds a good sense of ethos towards himself because not only did the author list out and name the companies, but also gave examples of places that they own. These places include, major entertainment theme parks, entertainment movie studios, television and radio broadcast networks and programing, video news and sports entertainment.

          The author continues to talk about how the media appeals towards the thoughts of teens. He states "what their favorite celebrity advertise and what is acceptable by society based on the fashion that the media has imposed them". In addition, he adds the positive and negative influences that the media portays towards those of the teenage era.
          This article is aimed towards the media and how its gained the ability to shape our society and dominate. Given the messages being fed at every turn, studends heed to be taught how external messages shape internal perspectives.

Link: http://rayuso.hubpages.com/hub/Mass-Media-Influence-on-Society

Redefining Definition

In Redefining Definition, former editor-in-chief of American dictionaries for Oxford University Press Erin McKean makes one consider the thoughts of where dictionary definitions come from, who writes them, and how consensus might be reached on what a word "means". Throughout the article, McKean criticizes the ability of a dictionary to properly help people grasp meanings

Author Erin McKean

In the second paragraph, she states that “a good dictionary derives its reputation from careful analysis of examples of words in use…”. That statement sets the basis for her criticisms that shall follow throughout the article. McKean continues as to say that dictionaries provide us with overly abstract definitions. To prove her point, she pulls out the words subtle and attenuate and states how difficult it would be to match the words to their definition.

Furthermore, it’s not only your average Joe that suffers from these “overly abstract definitions”, children are also “victims”. Author Erin McKean builds up her credibility when she pulls out the facts of the oft-cited 1987 study on the fifth graders that were given dictionary definitions and told to use them in a sentence. Again, McKean provides to her ethos in the article with the statement of 13% of nouns, verbs and adjectives were used in senses not found in a large desk dictionary.

            Unlike traditional dictionaries, the website features pronunciation sound files, related words, usage patterns and information derived from social networks.

To finalize it all, she proposes that the solution to all our troubles could be an online dictionary that is continuously updated.  One that is user friendly and suitable for all.

This article really does open its reader’s eyes and lead them to a new perspective towards tangible dictionaries. One is lead to believe that the information in them could be old/wrong compared to that of an online dictionary.