The Media Torrent And Disposable Feeling By Todd Gitlin

Media has been so rampantly incorporated into everyday life that it is difficult for one to escape its reaches. As the power of the media grows, so does its effects on daily life and social behavior. Although some of the effects do benefit society as a whole, many do the exact opposite. One such capability of media is its ability to flood the population with a constant flow of images. In his essay, Supersaturation, or, “The Media Torrent and Disposable Feeling”, Todd Gitlin addresses the issue of the alarming speed at which media is taking over the lives of the population. In the beginning of his essay, Gitlin introduces The Concert, a portrait painted by the artist Vermeer in 1660. Gitlin uses paintings to compare two different time periods …show more content…
There was once a time when journalists monitored the flow of graphic content and what the people saw. The journalists understood that flowing graphic information in with no filter did more harm than good. However, with the rise of Twitter there was no such need because the filter was discarded. Twitter has become a hub for free speech and unedited content flowing continuously People see so many gruesome pictures and images on Twitter that they become used to seeing those types of images. There can be no surprise to the indifference of a society when their norm is a constant bombardment of horrid images because in a culture “in which violence and suffering become an endless show, indifference to the vision of human suffering gradually sets in” (qtd. in Marziali, Carl). People do not recognize the true tragedy behind an event because all they are given to make sense of it are pictures and 140 characters. Such a small amount of characters cannot really be tasked to sum up tragic events that occur. These characteristics of Twitter make people less sympathetic to the severity of the plight. The society can no longer identify with the plight of others so they chose to ignore it