News

===Social and cultural cohesion===
An important feature distinguishing news from private information transfers is the impression that when one reads (or hears, or watches) it, one joins a larger public.<ref name=Starr24>Starr, ''Creation of the Media'' (2004), p. 24. "Publications weave invisible threads of connection among their readers. Once a newspaper circulates, for example, no one ever truly reads it alone. Readers know that others are also seeing it at roughly the same time, and they read it differently as a result, conscious that the information is now out in the open, spread before a public that may talk about the news and act on it."</ref> In this regard news serves to unify its receivers under the banner of a culture, or a society, as well as into the sub-demographics of a society targeted by their favorite kind of news.<ref>Salmon, ''The Newspaper and the Historian'' (1923), p. 17. "The newspaper has ceased to be a personal organ and has become a social product; it no longer represents the interests of an individual, but it represents rather a group activity. The press groups society and unifies each group, as Scott-James has pointed out. It unifies society on national lines and thus the press of each country has developed in its own characteristic direction. It unifies the groups interested in religion, in politics, in business, in automobiles, in sports, in education, or in fashion, and from these groups having unified interests there has developed the press that ministers to each specialized group."</ref> News thus plays a role in [[nation-building]], the construction of a national identity.<ref>Motti Neiger, Eyal Zandberg, and Oren Meyers, "Localizing Collective Memory: Radio Broadcasts and the Construction of Regional Memory"; in ''On Media Memory'' (2011), ed. Neiger, Myers, & Zandberg; pp. 156–160. "In Israel, radio played a decisive role in establishing and consolidating the nation during the first decades after the creation of the State (Pansler, 2004). The exclusive position enjoyed by radio in the field of electronic broadcasting during the crucial first twenty years of Israel's existence since 1948, when the press was politically divided and television was absent—Israel's first television channel started broadcasting in 1968—gave it much weight in setting the collective agenda."</ref>

[[Photojournalism|Images connected with news]] can also become iconic and gain a fixed role in the culture. Examples such as [[Alfred Eisenstaedt]]'s photograph ''[[V-J Day in Times Square]]'', [[Nick Ut]]'s photograph of [[Phan Thi Kim Phuc]] and other children running from a napalm blast in Vietnam; [[Kevin Carter]]'s photograph of a starving child being stalked by a vulture;<ref name=Zeiler31 /> etc.

With the new interconnectedness of global media, the experience of receiving news along with a world audience reinforces the social cohesion effect on a larger scale.<ref>McNair, ''Cultural Chaos'' (2006), pp. 6–7. "But [news] is an illusion which, when we receive it, and when we extend to it our trust in its authority as a representation of the real, transports us from the relative isolation of our domestic environments, the parochialism of our streets and small towns, the crowded bustle of our big cities, to membership of virtual global communities, united in access to ''these'' events, communally experienced at ''this'' moment, through global communications networks. […] It is, indeed, more like the fear and exhilaration experienced by watching a movie on the big screen, but with an added viscerality contributed by the awareness that this scene, unlike a movie, is ''really happening'', right now, to real people."</ref> As a corollary, global media culture may erode the uniqueness and cohesion of national cultures.<ref name=SilverblattZlobin28>Silverblatt & Zlobin, ''International Communications'' (2004), pp. 28–31. "A major liability of transnational media conglomerates is the loss of distinctive local culture. Transnational media conglomerates have a distinctly American influence—regardless of their country of origin. For instance, although Bertlesmann is a German-based corporation, in 2001, its largest proportion of its revenue (35 per cent) came from its U.S. media subsidiaries, including Bantam, Doubleday Dell, and Random House publishing companies, ''Family Circle'' and ''McCall's''' magazines, and Arista and RCA record labels."</ref>