Beyond the Media?

As I was thinking about what I would post for this week I came across a website that gave me my idea. The website is called http://www.beyondmedia.org/ and its primary purpose is to depict the overall diversity of women in different cultures through promoting free individualistic self expression. I was instantly fascinated by this websites collaboration effort in presenting to society many women’s stories through media arts forums. Here is Beyond media’s vision, “Beyond media Education envisions a compassionate and just society where universal access to media tools and information equip women and youth to document and communicate their stories, serve as educators and role models for others, influence public policy, and generate social transformation”. What a great idea that is in action. This web site offers a variety of positive ideals which can have a great effect on society and the way people in society view women. I feel that this website can show people the greater sides of powerful, smart, innovative, women.
I really liked their preference ideal over what media education should be like, they stated that, “Beyond media, defines narrative agency as the linchpin of personal and global transformation: to frame and speck one’s point of view, and derive response”. This is a very important concept that should be taken very seriously in a world where people are conditioned to view our society as a place where ideals are to simply be accepted and not questioned, but rather that should simply not be the case. Instead all people should constantly be questioning the roles that society plays in our daily lives. If more people did this than people may not stereo type women into one main group, or judge people based off of the designer label they are wearing on their backs. I think that Beyond media, has got it right. It is imperative for more people to discern the idea that the media is a forum in support of the greater social structure.
As a result the media allows for diversionary tactics to occur in their forums in order to allow for main issues to be conveniently forgotten. This clutter provided by the media, (which is false consciousness), allows for the main issues to be diverted away from. False consciousness ultimately keeps people away from the truth because of the illusions that take the main issues out of focus. Ultimately these events in the media create the perfect grounds for our current socioeconomic structure to stay the same. I do think that Beyond media is a website that I will continue to investigate because they are on to something that has the potential to help many people gain more knowledge, creating a better world.