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Television has had a significant influence on the culture of many societies. To
Mass media is something fabulous and dangerous at the same time…
The invention of television is the culmination of a long journey of discoveries and inventions made at the end of the 19<sup>th</sup> century. January 26, 1926 saw the first public broadcast of television images by Scotsman John Baird.
Confidential and for a long time in black and white, TV then experienced a dazzling development from the 1950s, gaining color and inviting itself into most homes.
A big step forward for the society! Through television, information and culture can be spread on a larger scale.
But at the same time, it became quite quickly a tool to manipulate politic and people behavior. Furthermore, the companies realized the huge potential for advertising, nudging more and more people to consume.
One of the major points about this mass medium is the public’s passive role. Often people get sucked intowatching it and soak up the content without putting their filters and reflections.
In my experience, having lived in 2 different countries, I’ve been able to see how television can affect the cultural development of the society. When I used to live in Italy I didn’t like how, in most of the channels, an important part of the images gravitated towards appearance. And I remember how sometimes I felt uncomfortable about the image of the woman that TV spread.
In a nutshell, I would say that television has both positively and negatively affected the cultural development of our society.
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3 Replies
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Really well written @Wanda – what a pleasure to read; very fluid and natural, and some lovely vocab in there 👍
I have the same feeling about Italian TV. The way women are portrayed on some of the channels can leave me feeling very uncomfortable. In fact, I never put the TV on to be honest. I tend to use my i-pad to stream series when I want to watch telly.
Some notes for you:
> Confidential and for a long time in black and white … (What do you mean by ‘confidential’? I’m not sure it’s the right word)
> A big step forward for the society – you don’t need ‘the’ here. Articles can be tricky! If you want to have a look into it, this is a very good lesson: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/course/intermediate/unit-16/tab/grammar
> it became quite quickly a tool to manipulate politic and people behavior – word order
it QUITE QUICKLY became a tool to manipulate POLITICS AND PEOPLE’S BEHAVIOUR or POLITICAL and people’S behavior
> in most of the channels – preposition: on + channel > on most of the channels
> I felt uncomfortable about the image of the woman that TV spread – we need to use the plural here and again, no article – I felt uncomfortable about the image of WOMEN that TV spread.
Let me know if anything isn’t clear or if you have any questions 🤗
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Thanks so much for your feedback Kerin! What you do is really great! It’s fabulous (and unique on online courses) the feeling of having a “real” teacher who takes care of her pupils.
About my notes:
> Confidential: I used a kind of French false friend here! I wanted to say: something that is not widely findable. Not many people used to have TV at home at the beginning. Maybe the word “undisclosed” could be the right one?
Everything is super clear about the other notes 👍 And thank you for the link on articles, things are easier for me now 🙏🙏🙏
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Oh, thanks so much for saying that @Wanda -that means a lot! 😊
okay – yes, ahaha! These false friends… let me think… maybe one of these could be good:
Little-known …
Not widely distributed/used …
Uncommon …
👍 (That was a toughie!)
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