Seats and forms of power

Power is the ability to influence people’s behavior. In order to live together, members of a community accept rules, regulations, and laws. This helps to create social cohesion but can also lead to conflicts and tensions. Even when authority seems absolute, there are always counter-powers which question it, aim at limiting its excesses and resist it. Jim Morrison said: “whoever controls the media controls the mind.” To what extent can Medias influence the population? First, I will talk about reality TV, then I’ll talk about the transmission of the information by Medias and finally I’ll talk about the fact that Medias maybe have too much power.

First, TV reality is shows that are diffused on TV. A lot of people are watching these programs and TV reality is developing itself more and more. They’re supposed to show the real life of people who are doing normal things in life, but often this reality is altered. TV reality, transform into sorts of movies where people are influenced to do thing that will appeal to people who watch this program. In this way, Medias are not really the reality, but there are presenting themselves as reality: people are influenced by the behavior of the TV reality actors. In this way, TV reality can influence people but I think that this is the lowest degree of influence.

Then, I think that Medias are very important because of the transmission of information. Medias by passing information can have a lot of power on society. Indeed, the news that are released by media are read by a lot of people who build their opinion on what they can read on these Medias. So, we can say that Medias shape the public opinion. Moreover, press can be considered as a form of counter-power. We can take the example of the Washington Post which is an American newspaper. The Washington Post is considered as an independent paper and a “truth seeker” because they’re always searching for truth for example with the publication of the secrets rapports of the Pentagon on the Viet Nam war in 1971. These Pentagon Papers revealed the American government’s lies on the Viet Nam war and on the decisions they made during this war. Later the same paper revealed the Watergate scandal: in 1972 there was an arrest of housebreakers in the Democratic Party’s premises. The investigation of the American Senate finally revealed the illegals activities of the presidential administration. This scandal led to the resignation of Richard Nixon at the time president of the United States of America. So, we can say that the Medias took the lead at this time and took off the power of the president, who is supposed to be the most powerful man or woman of the state. But, this counter-power can transform into an excess of power.

Finally, we can ask ourselves if Medias don’t have too much power. In today’s society, their supremacy can be frightening, especially in a society where medias have all this importance to people. To illustrate this reflection I’ll talk about the first episode of the TV show Black Mirror, released in 2011. Black Mirror is a TV show that talks about the rise of new technologies and the rise of Medias. The first episode begins with people that are waking up the Prime Minister of England right in the middle of the night. They show him a video that was released by an anonymous man on YouTube. In this video, we can see the princess Susannah, a member of the royal family, attached on a chair. She was

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