By Mohd Azri Nor Azmi

The media as it is control by a certain organizations or individual it will help we grow as an active seeker for knowledge. Capitalism is a form of government economic system in which investment in and ownership of themeans of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is madeand maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned meansof wealth that determines on what form of information is disperse to the public. For example when we know such media is slanted towards one side we will seek alternative information from other sources to get a more clear view on what the issue is about. The news of Bersih rallies for example it when it surface through Facebook, twitter, newspaper and other medias it made us wonder the truth behind it. The society begins to shift from only receiving whatever the media throws at you toward the questioning phase as we now want to know more and not only from one point of view. If the media is prone on one side then we will start the question its truth and seeks for transparency. This helps other kinds of media to grow as well. For example if we are not satisfied with the news on Utusan newspaper we can seek the other point of view from other newspaper such as New Strait Times, The Star and other newspaper that we think can provide more on what we want to know.

The media’s ability to grow and develop is positively link to media acquisitions. From one point of view it might seem like everything is the same but the blogs and other social networks began to evolve to provide information thus making an evolution of information circulation possible in the present times. The growths of blogging, twittering, Face-booking are also indirect influence by the media acquisition itself. In Malaysia for example, people tend to get information from twitter, sharing it on Facebook and then confirming it on blogs.

In the book “MASS MEDIA FLOW AND DIFFERENTIAL GROWTH IN KNOWLEDGE” written by Philip J. Tichenor, he said that media acquisition actually stimulates the information cycle in the media. It acts as a new push for other media to get recognized and sought after if they are unsatisfied with the current media. He then claimed that the process increase the numbers of active persons have gaining extra knowledge. This shows that the action of acquiring one media will make the public who depends on the media to be more critical and no longer believe one source and instead branch out and seek for balance in both sides of the story.

According to Janis E. Jacobs when a study or research focus on the popular press, the media are believed to have a strong influence on public opinions and makes the people seek external information to clarify any ambiguity that they felt when exposed to the information. This alone makes the public think more and become an informative society. The positive attributes of media acquisitions actually force the public to be more intellectual and included with as the knowledgeable society. Nowadays information is more precious than gold. The more we know the more we will be look up upon. Power lies in knowledge and with the effort to seek other information due to the media acquisition it makes us more favourable due to our knowledge on both sides of the story.

“The intellective dyad member effectively shares factual information that each individual independently held”. This is one of the supporting roles that show that the laws that binds the media and acts as the gatekeepers make bloggers, journalist and opinion leaders more creative in terms of transmitting the information towards their intended public. The limitations to the media practitioners in Malaysia due to the laws and regulations does exist however there are ways to penetrate the gatekeeping loopholes by resorting to new media. Clarifying limitations provide extensions to demonstrating how variations in the processes of disseminating information. Communication media actsas mediators and change the whole style of informing the public’s with many kinds of variations to supplement the voids in information due to the strict rules and regulations of the media.

Reference