The media industries provide information and entertainment, but media also can affect political, social and cultural institutions. Although the media actively influence society, they also mirror it, and scholars constantly strive to delineate the differences For example, when the advertising industry suddenly started using patriotic themes to market products after the U.S. military moved into Iraq in 2003, was the industry pandering to the public, or were advertisers proudly reflect- ing genuine American sentiment, or both? Did the spread of patriotic advertising themes silence those who disagreed with the government? What role did the mass media play in setting the political agenda? If you were a scholar studying the mass media, how would you view these developments? This is an example of the difficulty scholars face when analyzing the media's political, social and cultural effects . Early media studies analyzed each message in the belief that once a message was sent, everyone would receive and react to the message in the same way. Then studies proved that different people process messages differently-a phenomenon described as selective perception. This occurs because everyone brings many variables-family background, interests and education, for example-to each message. Complicating the study of the media's political, social and cultural effects is the recent proliferation of media outlets. The multiplying sources for information and enter tainment today mean that very few people share identical mass media environments. This makes it much more difficult for scholars to determine the specific or cumulative effects of mass media on the general population. Still, scholars' attempts to describe media's political social and cultural roles in society are important because once identified, the effects can be observed. The questions should be posed so we do not become complacent about media in our lives, so we do not become immune to the possibility that our society may be cumulatively affected by media in ways we cannot yet identify. "Marketers used to try their hardest to reach peopl home, when they were watching TV or reading newspapers or magazines. But consumers' viewing and reading bab are so scattershot now that many advertisers say the best way to reach time-pressed consumers is to try to catch their eye at literally every turn," reports The New York Times