Many people hardly realize how much they are exposed to the media or how it impacts their everyday lives until it is actually identified.

Today’s society is a world in which citizens have become dependent on being fed information to keep them moving in the right direction.  Everything from work, education, relationships, traveling, entertainment and health concerns are influenced by what the media dictates through the use of advertisements, magazines, newspapers and the television.

“After seeing thousands of persuasive advertising messages, we make buying decisions based on what we saw in newspaper and magazine ads, saw and heard in television and radio ads, and saw and heard in ads on websites. Those ads tell us we can trust a product or service and that many people we know are buying the product or service and liking it,” says Dr. Anthony R Curtis, professor of the Mass Media Department at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, in a recent study.

One of the first things many people do when they wake up in the morning is turn on the computer and go online to check the weather. Doing this determines what clothes will be appropriate for the work day and the style of dress chosen is usually influenced, by others or from latest fashion trends seen on the TV or in magazines.

When getting ready to start the day, take notice of the items you use: toothpaste, toothbrush, deodorant, make-up etc. They are most likely popular brands that were either advertised in a commercial or from a magazine.

According to The Media Comparisons Study, from TVB with Knowledge Networks, consumers credit TV ads as most influential in making a purchase decision. It is also a key source of information that consumers are most likely to learn about products and brands they would like to try or buy. The internet was next followed by newspapers and magazines.

According to Bill Harvey, a long-time media thought leader and vice-chairman of TRA, a New York sales data provider, “Ad quality is, itself, a behaviorist measure, since it’s based on data from set-top boxes and frequent-shopper cards that tells them that higher-quality ads are relatively more likely to be watched than skipped over.” Moreover, he has found that quality ads cause positive changes in brand purchase and greater return of investment. Since these quality ads are watched and bring a greater ROI that further proves that the media does influence people’s decisions.

From a marketing perspective, an individual’s decisions are based on what is inherent from their own cultures, from outside social references or their personal experiences. In work and school people know what has to be done based on their learned experiences and studies, but in daily life they rely on media to get the current news, facts and trends concerning what is important and what they should be aware of.

If people did not watch TV or glance through magazines how would they know what to buy to support needs and wants? Society needs the media to make so many decisions in life thus making it hard to determine how they can live without it now that it so widespread.

The current generation of young people has grown up in this environment with technology present in almost every aspect and their lives are consumed by it.

“Today’s huge merged companies have the power to shape our opinions and beliefs and influence our decisions. This is why it’s important to be aware of what we are exposed to every day, so we can look at things from different perspectives and not just from the perspective of a medium,” Curtis said.

Although people appreciate the media for all the positive things that come from it, the influential implications result in a society of individuals unable to make independent decisions.

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It’s the business of engagement, of interpretation, of reaching people before they reach the product or service they love. Social media from an instrumental perspective has helped evolve a sub-class of new society based on their participation in online activities. It has changed the way we look around us.

Earlier it was considered a platform for socializing, a window that connects people, an auxiliary for leisure, a corner to share emotions and share ideas. Over a period of time it transformed into a major marketing pillar. From start-ups to local business and multinational corporations, all businesses recognized the need to expand their presence online using sites that connect and involve direct human participation.

Days of traditional marketing through newspapers, magazine advertisements, posters and television commercials seem to be fading. The size of human engagement online is greater than conventional marketing mediums.

Marketing, no matter conventional or technocratic, blows away barriers and distance between potential customers and the product. A real-time analogy tells us that online marketing through social media sites makes far-reaching interactions with millions of people at the same time easy.

Simple Facebook or LinkedIn user statistics are enough to support the view that, in comparison of conventional marketing, digital marketing through social media is powerful tool because it engages an unthinkably large number of people.

It all takes places beyond fun, games, status updates and tweets; an unimaginably vast playground filled with digitized thinking.

According to the Digital Marketing Ramblings‘ website release of statistics of the number of people using the most popular social media sites, Facebook is on the top slot with 1 billion users, followed by YouTube with 800 million users and 4 billion views per day, QQ with 700 million users, and the Micro-blogging platform Twitter has 500 million users.

Further, Sina Weibo has 400 million users and LinkedIn has 175 million users. According to Media bistro, in their social media marketing industry report, 83 percent of marketers believe that social media is important, and about 94 percent of marketers use social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter for business purposes.

A tally among the tools reveals that Facebook is in the top slot on the preference list of marketers, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn. This is testimonial information with an indication that social connectivity will be helpful for businesses based on customers’ presence.

However, some critics argue that as users gradually move to mobile phones from the computer, advertisements need to undergo technical renovation to keep the communication line alive, or else days are numbered for online marketers.

According to Mashable, Kleiner Perkins’ partner Mary Meeker illustrated the financial gap in her annual trend report that says mobile phones occupy 10 percent of people’s media consumption time and commands only 1 percent of advertising budgets.

It’s an indication that marketing will undergo change following consumer decisions; it means that as screen size expands or contracts (from personal computer to laptops, from tablets to mobile phones), advertisements will change to fit them.

But perhaps, no matter to what platform on-line marketing may divert, it is for sure days of digital marketing are greatly radiant.

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Kyiv, Ukraine — The World Newspaper Congress will take place in Kyiv on September 2-5, 2012 and is expected to bring up to 1,200 delegates, representatives of influential international media. The event will also feature the World Editors Forum as well as the annual Info Services Expo 2012.

Now that millions of European football fans and the leading international media discovered Ukrainian hospitality during the EURO 2012, it is high time to establish a deeper and more comprehensive cooperation between Ukrainian and foreign journalists, stated Oleksandr Kurdinovych. Number one objective of the World Association of Newspapers and Publishers (WAN-IFRA) congress is insuring that objective information on developments in Ukraine reaches the “western world,” he mentioned.

According to Ukrainian media the upcoming congress is going to be the second largest international event in Ukraine after EURO 2012 championship.

In preparation to the sports tournament Ukraine drastically improved its infrastructure and, according to Michel Platini, UEFA President, the country’s success was extraordinary. He also noted that the Ukraine’s infrastructure leaped 30 years into the future after having built and renovated airports, built new roads, constructed and renewed 290 hotels. In addition, Ukraine was listed as number one among CIS countries regarding railroad infrastructure development, according to the World Economic Forum’ latest Global Enabling Trade Report.

World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers is a global organization of the world’s newspapers and news publishers that represents over 18,000 publications and 15,000 websites in 120 countries. It has a status of an official consultant, which represents the interests of newspaper industry in UNESCO, United Nations and the European Council.

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The face of the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi became the image for the new campaign of the German public television networks ARD and ZDF, promoting the freedom and the independence of the media.

Next to the image of the smiling Italian Premier appears the slogan “Democracy is only as strong as its media”. Simple and clear the recall to the Italian “special situation” regarding media freedom and the concentration of powers in the Prime Minister’s hands.

Mr Berlusconi is the owner of Mediaset, the largest broadcast media group in Italy, but that’s not all. He is also the main Italian publisher because he owns the publishing house Mondadori, which controls the 50 per cent of the books market and a very large share of that of magazine too. Moreover his family is the owner of the newspaper Il Giornale, that constantly expresses support to him and to his political party.

Being the Prime Minister, the head of the government, he also exerts a strong influence over the public television RAI, that has always been characterized by a historical politicization and conditioning from the government and the political parties.

During his various legislatures since 1994 – the current is the forth – were passed numerous laws which favoured Mr Berlusconi and his family’s enterprises also in the regulations of the media sector.

The particular situation of Italy in matter of media freedom is an actual anomaly. The conflict of interest of the Prime Minister, the concentration of the media, the strong political control of the governments alternatively in charge over the broadcasting service are the peculiarities of this anomaly.

Since 2004 Freedom House in reporting its results of an analysis about freedom of press and information in the world’s countries, defined Italy as “partly free” according to its position in the rank scale. 2010 results see Italy at 75 position, just before Bulgaria and Namibia, still defining it as partly free.

Many international institutions and organization – as “Special Rapporteur” of UN, OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, International Press Institute, Council of Europe, EFJ International Federation of Journalists, OSI Open Society Institute, IHF International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights – expressed their concern on the Italian situation of independence and freedom of media.

The OSCE reported about the conflict of interest: “In a democracy, it is incompatible to be both in command of news media and to hold a public post”.

On the same issue the International Press Institute “Italy has a special place in Europe with regard to freedom of the media because in no European country does the prime minister, the head of the government, who is the politician that can exert the most power over the state media, own most of the other broadcasting media, and many of the print media”.

The European Commission gave notice also of “the imbalance between press and television, that absorbs the 60 per cent of the overall mass media advertising spending; the substantial monopoly of privately-owned television, with Mediaset that continues to show a significant increase in income and revenues every year, thanks to the “dragging effect” of the “Berlusconi-Prime Minister” factor.

The problems of the Italian style democracy in the media sector – and in other fields as well – are well-known, but been an insider the consciousness of a real lack of independence in the media is stronger than out of the country.

Just who is used to watch the various TV channels can feel the difference between them and their way to supply information. The same news can sound very different from channel to channel according to their political tendency or their ownership. Even the images can be totally conflicting. Television and press are clearly politicized. The “inconvenient news” for the ruling class and its head is opportunely avoided or disguised by the main channels and newspapers.

Only the opposition gives a wider view of the facts, but also in those channels and newspapers – which are not as influential as the others – is the political tendency or the membership to a political party that influence the news. Journalism is always political in Italy, in a way or another.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister’s image is being used in another country as a negative figure to promote the freedom of media, Italians have to face this sad reality – mostly unawares – which sounds very far from the Western democratic world.

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