section_path: News consumption/Social and cultural cohesion
section_name: Social and cultural cohesion
paragraph_text: Social and cultural cohesion
  
  An important feature distinguishing news from private information transfers is the impression that when one reads (or hears, or watches) it, one joins a larger public. In this regard news serves to unify its receivers under the banner of a culture, or a society, as well as into the sub-demographics of a society targeted by their favorite kind of news. News thus plays a role in nation-building, the construction of a national identity.
  
  Images connected with news can also become iconic and gain a fixed role in the culture. Examples such as Alfred Eisenstaedt 's photograph V-J Day in Times Square, Nick Ut 's photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc and other children running from a napalm blast in Vietnam; Kevin Carter 's photograph of a starving child being stalked by a vulture; etc.
  
  With the new interconnectedness of global media, the experience of receiving news along with a world audience reinforces the social cohesion effect on a larger scale. As a corollary, global media culture may erode the uniqueness and cohesion of national cultures.