section_path: Influence and sociology
section_name: Influence and sociology
paragraph_text: Influence and sociology
  
  Limited-effects theory theorizes that because people usually choose what media to interact with based on what they already believe, media exerts a negligible influence.
  
  Class-dominant theory argues that the media reflects and projects the view of a minority elite, which controls it.
  
  Culturalist theory combines the other two theories and claims that people interact with media to create their own meanings out of the images and messages they receive.
  
  In 2012, an article asserted that 90 percent of all mass media—including radio broadcast networks and programing, video news, sports entertainment, and other—were owned by six major companies (GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS). According to Morris Creative Group, these six companies made over $200 billion in revenue in 2010. More diversity is brewing among many companies, but they have recently merged to form an elite which have the power to control the narrative of stories and alter people's beliefs. In the new media-driven age we live in, marketing has more value than ever before because of the various ways it can be implemented. Advertisements can convince consumers to purchase or avoid a particular product. What a society accepts can be dictated by the amount and kind of attention the media gives it.
  
  The documentary Super Size Me describes how companies like McDonald's have been sued in the past, the plaintiffs claiming that it was the fault of their liminal and subliminal advertising that "forced" them to purchase the product. The Barbie and Ken dolls of the 1950s are sometimes cited as the main cause for the obsession in modern-day society for women to be skinny and men to be buff. After the attacks of 9/11, the media gave extensive coverage of the event and exposed Osama Bin Laden's guilt for the attack, information they were told by the authorities. This shaped the public opinion to support the war on terrorism, and later, the war on Iraq. A main concern is that due to this extreme power of the mass media, portraying inaccurate information could lead to an immense public concern. In his book The Commercialization of American Culture, Matthew P. McAllister says that "a well-developed media system, informing and teaching its citizens, helps democracy move toward its ideal state".
  
  In 1997, J. R. Finnegan Jr. and K. Viswanath identified three main effects or functions of mass media:
  
  Since the 1950s, when cinema, radio and TV began to be the primary or only source of information for most of the population, these media became the central instruments of mass control. When a country reaches a high level of industrialisation, the country itself "belongs to the person who controls communications".
  
  Mass media play a significant role in shaping public perceptions on a variety of important issues, both through the information that is dispensed through them, and through the interpretations they place upon this information. They also play a large role in shaping modern culture, by selecting and portraying a particular set of beliefs, values and traditions (an entire way of life), as reality. That is, by portraying a certain interpretation of reality, they shape reality to be more in line with that interpretation. Mass media also play a crucial role in the spread of civil unrest activities such as anti-government demonstrations, riots and general strikes. That is, the use of radio and television receivers has made the unrest influence among cities not only by the geographic location of cities, but also by proximity within the mass media distribution networks.