Reflections

After careful consideration of several studies, I have figure out the topic for this assignment. Inter-connectivity or underlying pattern between media and love is my choice of discussion. I believe love is the essential element of life and everybody carries a certain degree of enthusiasm towards this topic. In brief, love is an extra complicated topic as humans are complicated. So, I will ignore the complications of love and focus my work on correlations between media and love. Besides the relationship between the two subjects, I am also looking at how we can make use of media to build more intimate relationship between couples.

Mass media is the type of media that can deliver message to the public by broadcast television, radio, newspaper and magazines. On the other hand, niche media is a much more limited scope media but allows interaction between producer and audience, and even between the audiences through the internet. In mass media, love that is presented influence depends a lot on producers’ subjectivity or experiences. Corresponding to mass media, audiences also convey their love through niche media either in words, audio or video form. Thus, I have recognised the general pattern of couples’ relationships currently and also in the past by studying the media presentation of couples. Besides, Linke (2011) states that mediatisation occurs inevitably reconstructing our relationships.

Besides that, media is not a passive body but reacts actively by conduct its power of affection through its inescapable proliferation to all classes of society. Media has accelerates the evolution of couples relationship from a more secretive and conservative pattern to a relatively modern pattern. Thus, traditional concept of marriage is losing its dominance. On the other hand, the individual expectation towards a life partner has been shaped by media. By portraying an ideal partner as good-looking, high socio-economic status and caring characteristic, audience expects their spouse to meet certain criteria. This is especially significant in an information flourish country like Singapore where public receives images and description of a possible ideal partner. Thus, it is more likely that they are having difficulties in choosing a life partner as their expectations become higher.

Though complication exists in constructing a love relationship, the applications of media should be utilized to its fullness to navigate this phenomenon. We can manipulate media as a tool to build closer relationships between either people or couples. As Leah A. Lievrouw (2004) stands that new media is a product of political interests, so the real political interests will shape media’s direction. In this case, fertility rate is one of the common political concern of Singapore reputable politician, Lee Kuan Yew. Although Lee Kuan Yew has mention before in his written book that Singapore’s media is independent of government’s control, I would like to propose that fertility issue or couple issue is more suitable to consider in social context rather than politic context. This is because as status or economic achievement of women becomes higher, affecting their chances of getting married as they are more independent. Hence, promoting closer relationships through media is necessary to advance this politic concern.

(Picture showing  homosexuality)

Besides these, we should also concern about the love of minority group, such as homosexual relationship. There are a lot of movies portraying homosexual relationship; some of them are “BrokebackMountain”, “Bent” and “Boys don’t cry”.Despite the fiction part, there are a lot of talk shows and articles reporting on real individual cases.  Anderson, Fakhfakh, and Kondylis (1999) puts in although the purpose of talk show is actually making profit for the producer, this kind of shows has actually provided a platform for the homosexual to voice out their homosexual relationship. Public has gain a chance to know more about homosexual relationship and hence gradually accepting homosexual relationship is only another kind of love and not a disease. Thus, media unquestionably affects the public attitudes towards homosexual relationships either in a positive way or negative way.

(Picture showing the movie "Boys Don't Cry" , a dramatization of a real life story)

In conclusion, the flow of information between media and public is not one way and thus creating new perception of love. Although the perception of love is subjective to individual, it is clear that media is an integrated part of relationships. The love that media portrays is more likely to influence the public without conscious effort especially the youth which are vulnerable to media’s effect.