Mass media has a large effect on society today.

For example as the text states the theory of agenda setting is the theory that the media has a large influence on society by deciding what stories should be in the news and how much time and importance to give each story.

Messages sent by mass media would be putting a story on the air more then any other story this will automatically make the audience more interested in the story.

where as if the media only spoke of the same story once all day it would not be a big deal to anyone, so just by making it so newsworthy and giving it a lot of air time it makes it a big story.

Thus impacting society by basically telling them what news is important and what stories they should be concerned with. the media effects society in other ways such as stereotyping, or even role modeling, basically the media can show society how to live in general.