Media Magic: Making Class Invisible By Margaret L. Andersen And Patricia Hill Collins

The assigned reading challenged my understanding of Class and the Media by showing me just how much the media influences the way that we view class. Specifically, the media shows the upper class to be hard-working and benevolent, the middle class as unified, and the lower class as lazy, and unimportant. Within this reading, they relate Class and the Media to both communication studies and women’s studies. Specifically, in the article “Media magic: Making class invisible”, by Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins, they state that the mass media is the most influential in molding public consciousness. This can be directly related to communication studies through the fact that communication studies look into disseminating information, reporting news, storytelling, analyzing media culture, etc. All of which can be covered through mass media, and how the mass media portrays certain

Specifically, it expanded my knowledge. I had little knowledge that the media was so controlled by the upper class. My personal experience and academic knowledge surrounding Class and the Media have many similarities and differences. Personally, I knew that certain people controlled certain media outlets, and that they were going to be biased. This was confirmed in the reading when they stated “23 corporations own more than one-half of all the daily newspapers, magazines, movie studios, and radio and television outlets in the United States” (CITATION). One similarity between my personal experience and academic knowledge surrounding Class and the Media is that I knew the media was biased. One difference between my personal experience and academic knowledge surrounding Class and the Media is that I personally, didn’t know that certain corporations controlled even what we saw in movies. I thought movies were made by groups, not corporations pushing their