What is the importance of the media for global citizenship?

"Communication itself takes place at a number of levels, including intrapersonal (within the self), interpersonal (between individuals), group (between three or more individuals), and mass (between a single sender and a large audience). Mass communication is a communication process that covers an entire society, in which an individual or institution uses technology to send messages to a large, mixed audience, most of whose members are not known to the sender. Mass communication can be examined in terms of the process of transmission; the rituals surrounding its consumption; the attention messages draw to persons, groups, or concepts; or how audience members create meaning out of media content.

The rapid growth of the mass media has led the public and media critics to raise questions about the effects various media might have on society and individuals. Scholars have suggested that the best way to control the impact of the media in our lives is to develop high levels of media literacy—an understanding of what the media are, how they operate, what messages they are delivering, what roles they play in society, and how audience members respond to these messages. Media literacy includes cognitive, emotional, aesthetic, and moral dimensions.

Understanding the effects of media on individuals and society requires that we examine the messages being sent, the medium transmitting them, the owners of the media, and the audience members themselves. The effects can be cognitive, attitudinal, behavioral, and psychological."

Theoretically, all media members must respect some media ethic principles that include: truthfulness, fairness, and standards of decency, however news can be transmitted in many different ways and those interpretations may be directly related with political or economic positions. So, how can we found out if what a newspaper is saying correspond what really happen?

There is no prompt answer for this question, however what I try to do is always search for at least two different and conflicting sources of information, so that I can understand which position media takes and create an overview about the real situation, developing a critical thinking less susceptible to media manipulation.Those behavior is even more important nowadays for global citizens once information are being spread all over the world and can influence opinions in a large scale.

Reference

http://college.cqpress.com/sites/masscomm/Home/chapter1.aspx