Mass media plays a crucial role in forming and reflecting public opinion,

connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society.

Critiques in the early-to-mid twentieth century suggested that media weaken or
delimit the individual's capacity to act autonomously.

It is through the persuasiveness of media such as television, radio and print media that
messages reach their target audiences. These have been influential media as they have been
largely responsible for developing a culture.

For Example: Television broadcasting has a large amount of control over the
content society watches and the times in which it is viewed. This is a
distinguishing feature of traditional media which New media have challenged by
altering the participation habits of the public. The internet creates a space for
more diverse political opinions, social and cultural viewpoints and a heightened
level of public participation.

Increasing media exposure has an influence over the overall lifestyles of society
and has an great impact on culture as well for example after watching
“Dabbang” youth has started to follow Salman Khan’s moustache trend.

Bindis, blouses, and bangles define the concept of beauty for girls in small towns --influenced
by the looks of the saas-bahus in the umpteen TV serials beaming into their drawing rooms
on various satellite channels.

A recent WHO report said that Hindi film heroes shown smoking on screen is a major
promotion of the smoking habit -- instigating the government to ban smoking on screen.

.Communication in India often took on a musical tone, especially in the

communication of religious works or literature. Folk Music, poetry and religious
texts were often sung previously .The advent of television however has made
this rather obsolete. Similarly, village theatre and dance (nautanki) has been
replaced by cinema and television serials.

Finally, the music of India includes multiple varieties of folk, pop and classical
music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music,
has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains
fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration,
cultural expression and pure entertainment. India is made up of several dozen
ethnic groups, speaking their own languages and dialects, as a result, folk music
plays an essential role in uniting people of the same dialect group who may be
far apart geographically. An example is the folk music of Bihar and Uttar
Pradesh, Bhojpuri music. It serves as a means of communication as the lyrics of
the songs often cover recent cultural changes and events; as well as religious
content. Bhojpuri music is spread through visiting singers as well as everyday
singing by laypeople. The songs are not static and their lyrics are often played
around and substituted by the singers. This allows for communication between
gepgraphically disparate groups. Later in this essay, the loss of such a means of
communication will be examined with regard to the invention of casette tapes
and television.
Television has had a more or less similar impact due to its widespread reach.

Zee was launched in October 1992 and depended initially on recycled

programming. It then broke television taboos by broadcasting programs about
sex, relationships, and horoscopes. The channel thrives on a mixture of Hindi
film, serials, musical countdowns, and quiz contests. Zee’s innovative
programming includes news in “Hinglish.” Despite the influence of the English
language in India, the biggest media growth is in regional languages. Even U.S.
series like “Friends” (known as “Hello Friends” in India) have been hybridized,
although the latter has not been as successful as expected—the lifestyle of the
Hyderabadi versions of the New Yorker originals did not settle in the Indian
imagination.
Such television shows are the prime example of how American culture has
become more popular in India than Indian culture. Even Indian soap operas, set
in traditional households often portray traditionally dressed women who behave
and dress in a completely Western manner out of the house. Television serials,
both Indian and western oriented ones have deemphasized traditional dress. As
a Bengali fieldworker commented, in the cities it is difficult to tell men and
women apart by their dress. Movies and television have created a new fashion
that is being emulated all over the country, rural and urban.

However, such interaction means that traditional social structures have been
destroyed and more people are flocking to the cities that they see on television
in the hopes of achieving the material goods that are telecast. This has resulted
indirectly in an increasing number of unemployed in the cities as well as a
growing number of slums, as these internal migrants are often lowly skilled and
unable to find suitable jobs in the city.

Other than changing the social structure and norm, the media revolution has
also contributed to the disintegration of so-called 'Indian norms'. Movies such as
"Monsoon Wedding" are an ideal demonstration of the culture shock faced by
many young Indians today. There is a chasm between traditional values of
chastity and dressing conservatively and the TV values of stylish and often
skimpy dressing and more liberal values, including dating before marriage and
other 'western norms'.

Although information and communication links that television, cinema, radio and
newspapers have brought about are immense; it is undeniable that they have
had a very strong and not altogether beneficial impact upon the masses who
watch them. Culture and social structures have suffered, as have traditional art
forms and methods of communication.
We today are immersed in media and consumer society to such an extent that
media teaches us how to dress, how to talk, how to think ,how to feel what to like
and what not to like. Media today provides us the symbols, myths, and resources
through which we constitute a common culture and through the appropriation of
which we insert ourselves into this culture. Media spectacles demonstrate who
has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence,
and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that are
and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed. In
case of children and adolescents the media has a high contribution in shaping of
their minds and their growth. This is mostly because adolescence is a time when
young people are identifying themselves with important aspects like
socialization, gender roles, and the development of moral values and beliefs.
However this is also a time when the young are likely to listen to outer factors
rather than to their families and peers. Youngsters seek for advice not from their
parents but from their favorite pop stars actors and other artists and thanks to
the media they continuously get what they want to hear because celebrities as
we know make it a point to say just what their target audience wants to hear so
as to sell their albums, movies to ever remain popular. Another problem seen
among children as an adverse effect of media is the violence shown on television
and films. It increases aggressiveness and anti-social behavior, makes them less
sensitive to violence and to victims of violence, and it increases their appetite for
more violence in entertainment and in real life. Media violence is especially
damaging to young children, age 8 and under1, because they cannot tell the
difference between real life and fantasy. Violent images on television and in
movies may seem real to these children and sometimes viewing these images
can even traumatize them. The television and the internet are the major sources
of information. The internet for example is booming and is extremely popular
among the youth and this can be seen by the number of cyber café s opening at
every corner of the street. The content sometimes has been characters that are
not relevant to our society or are those containing violent messages and mass
marketing messages.