Have you ever stopped to wonder how you came to know the things you know? How do you decide what’s true and what isn’t? And when you think about your ideas, or even your experiences, are they truly yours, or have they been shaped by forces around you? That’s the tricky part about knowledge. Sometimes it feels objective, sometimes personal, but more often it’s something we’ve constructed together as a society.

This is where studying mass communication gets fascinating. If there’s one lesson that keeps standing out, it’s this: the media is powerful. Not just in obvious ways, but in quiet, subtle ways that slip into our everyday lives. The media doesn’t simply show us the world, it filters it. It tells us what to notice, what to value, and even how to behave.

I remember a course I took with Dr. Kabiru Danladi Lawanti at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. It was all about media criticism and analysis. One assignment required us to critique selected movies and music albums. At first, I thought it would be simple: judge whether a film was good, or a song was catchy. But the real task was to peel back the surface and see what was underneath. Using mass communication theories and literary tools, we had to uncover the hidden assumptions, the messages embedded in the storylines, the ideologies tucked inside the art.

That’s when it clicked for me. Media doesn’t just entertain. It molds us. It quietly shapes the way we see ourselves, the way we relate to others, and the way we move in society. It can make certain ideas feel natural, even inevitable, when they’re really constructed. It can make us believe we’re thinking freely, while guiding us within invisible boundaries it has already drawn.

Communication theories help explain this. Agenda Setting Theory shows how media shapes what issues dominate our attention. Hegemony Theory exposes how powerful groups normalize their worldview through media, making it feel like common sense. Social Constructionism highlights how much of what we take as “reality” is actually built and reinforced by media. Gender Role and Social Role theories explain why recurring portrayals of men, women, and groups create expectations of what’s “appropriate.” Marxist Theory and False Consciousness remind us that media often hides underlying systems of control. The Culture Industry argues that even entertainment is manufactured to maintain conformity. Media Effects theories explore how exposure changes us psychologically and socially, while Normative Theories ask how media should ideally serve the public.

Taken together, these perspectives make something clear: media is never neutral. It doesn’t just mirror society, it builds it. It decides what gets amplified, what gets silenced, and whose stories become “normal.” It defines what is celebrated and what is pushed to the margins.

And so, I return to those opening questions: how do we know what we know? How do we decide what’s true? The hard truth is, many of our beliefs and even the experiences we hold close aren’t entirely our own. They’re shaped, sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully, by the media we consume every day.

But this realization isn’t a dead end. It’s an invitation. It means we can be more alert, more critical, and more reflective about the media we take in. Because once you understand how media molds reality, you can begin asking harder questions: Whose reality is being presented? Whose voice is missing? And how can we reclaim the space to see, think, and choose for ourselves?