Running head: DOES MEDIA REFLECT CULTURE OR DOES IT CREATE CULTURE? 1 DOES MEDIA REFLECT CULTURE OR DOES IT CREATE CULTURE? 4 Title: Student’s name: Instructor: Course: Date: DOES MEDIA REFLECT CULTURE OR DOES IT CREATE CULTURE? Both media and culture are connected and they are inseparable. Various levels of understanding influence the contents of the media; on the other hand, platforms and contents of the media have a big impact on the day to day and cultural practices. One of the practices influenced by the media is the health-related decisions of individuals (Georgiou, 2017). Therefore, media has measurable effects which come as a result of the messages given by the media. We can, therefore, say that media both reflects society and shapes the culture. Media reflect culture Taking legacy media for instance, for a magazine dealing with fashion, in determining what ladies should and should not dress, they need first of all to mirror the present-day society so that they will be able to establish what the women want. Without doing this, the magazine will be nothing than common sense within a typical mind of the woman. This, therefore, means that the media has to establish certain things to do or not do which means they are reflecting the society (Berger, 2017). Secondly, Legacy media depend more on society than society depends on them. Even if without the mass media the society would struggle getting news broadcast and entertainment, the society will still be alive but without the society, the media will not be there. They, therefore, have to reflect what the culture of the society wants. For instance, there is this radio show which conducted a publicity stunt which shocked the audience, what followed was unanimous public reactions of condemnation from the public. The culprits engineered the stunt which was to push the boundaries of acceptable decency, but the reactions of condemnation caught them by surprise. This is simply because they failed to realize that society is much more conservative than they expected. The stunt itself as something of a mirror, but the society did not like what they saw. They believed that the stunt crossed the lie and the society cried out. The line that marks out the acceptable and unacceptable things is still clear to society, and the media just reflects it. Media create culture In another sense, the media pushes the boundaries of values, therefore, contributing to the shaping of the culture. The media is capable of controlling a whole nation if the media barons or political parties manipulate it (Fiske, & Hancock, 2016). The media sometimes cannot be trusted in giving out facts without slanting them in one specific direction of interpretation. The reporting offered is based on some hid.