Explain Marie Winn's ideas about how television functions, and show Essay

Explain Marie Winn's ideas about how television functions, and show how her ideas apply to other forms of mass media - Essay Example First there were newspapers. They informed people of the state of affairs and public believed them. Publishers sold scandals and negative emotions and public got depended. Papers served as a wonderful way out of an awkward situation. If you did not want to communicate with people in a public place, you read a newspaper. A father, afraid of communication with his children, could hide himself behind a morning paper during breakfast and then escape in reading evening papers. Today papers and magazines serve as a source of propaganda of way of lives. Reading certain magazines you feel belonging to certain groups. Radio helps you to passively entertain yourself both in free time and on your way to work. Television and internet absorb most of time and attention of millions of people in the world. A TV-set is an obligatory thing in every house. People get surprised learning that you do not watch TV. Internet is a new plague of the humanity. Seemingly inoffensive and enormously useful at fir st sight, it creates a generation of online people, afraid of living communication and unable to perceive a concrete person who could become a partner. Marie Winn in her book The Plug-In Drug: Television, Children and the Family provides keen observations of the impact of television on the life of modern people and families. It is a well known fact that a family is the smallest cell of the society. It is here that we start our life journey, learning how to deal with the world and people. Certainly, the problem of parents and children has always existed. Even Juliet Capulet found it difficult to explain herself with her mother and communicated with her parents mostly through the nurse. Yet, the Capulets did have a chance to inform their offspring about their demands, hopes and displeasure. The family also had some rituals uniting them into a family, different from the rest families in Verona. Modern children often learn their parents’