This week's lab was the visit to the Newseum, where I got to see the impact of media in relaying information of two catastrophic crisis, Katrina and 9/11, to the public.
As a person who didn't live in the US at the time of these crisis, I was detached from the event and when the American people showed extreme reaction to these events, I was actually surprised. However, the visit to the Newseum served to explain these extreme reactions; through the displays of the front pages during the times of crisis, I saw how the media relayed the information in such a way that it aroused strong emotions. Moreover, when I watched the video of the 9/11 and how reporters were working on scene and just the pure emotion on the scree, I was actually moved and could understand how such extreme reactions could be expressed.
However, something I learned through this week's lab that is worth far more than understanding the American minds at the times of crisis, was realizing the power of the media and how it had the strength to move an entire nation. Of course, the events themselves were atrocious, but without the media publicly denouncing these acts, it may have been possible that American wouldn't have gone as far as it have. This can be related to our class discussion of realism, where we saw that public image as a means to gain security was part of realist ideology, and big part of promoting a good image is through the power of media.
It just seemed interesting to me that the media had so much force in today's society and has the power to gain security as well as motivate entire country, and also the fact that it has already been interpreted as a "weapon" of a sort for realists.
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