The main functionalities of media systems across the divides

Abstract

This article is a broad-stroke review of the universally agreedupon functions of the media systems. The review is guided by a framework that merges a variety of media models from a range of disciplines addressing the multiple issues of media content, context, and its functions. Arguably, such merger occurs across historical periods, national boundaries, and disciplinary perspectives, otherwise called across the global digital divides. Important beautiful and dreadful events occur regularly across all regions in the world. There is consensus that these events cannot make the news unless they reach the vast majority of the audience and, by extension, the larger public. Since news is an event shared via a medium, media systems should invest in collecting relevant facts, evidence, and impressions that can later be translated into the story carrying the news. A media system is expected to play an essential role in ensuring that the human person can see, hear, touch, and connect with other people. Indeed, it is through such a process that we can all come to the realization, that journalism can be informative, balanced, and well-informed. Such a line of reasoning forms a backdrop for developing an argument that, as of today, journalism comes in a variety of forms. Within the context of such an argument that this paper is qualitatively developed through an integrative literature review to look at the greater influence of media systems across the global digital divides. The paper establishes that media systems play an essential role in many areas including linkages, policies, politics, literacy, socialization, and development. It behooves, in this regard, each nation to facilitate the establishment of a media system that is necessary and desirable for achieving its needs.