It's kind of difficult to talk about the effects of culture on our media, since there are so many forms of it available to all kinds of people--save for those who don't have the means to access these technological resources. I do think, though, in the words of Adorno and Horkheimer, that "the whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry." This culture, as it were, to me seems to be a desire for perfection, which we can see manifest itself in our popular media. As we are all familiar with, Adobe Photoshop and like software provides the means to essentially change the very meaning of images--whether it be the communication of one's age or framing of a situation (scenarios abound).

But the good thing is that with the increase of creative resources available to society, innovation increases--albeit not exponentially. Perhaps, then, the democratization of media can gradually alter popular media's status quo. In fact, maybe we can even say that this change is already occurring. Simply through user-defined sites, such as Digg, del.icio.us, and YouTube (of course), we can see a plethora of content that would otherwise be untouched in the mainstream media. Consequently, while there may be a "popular media," there is certainly still are forms of it out there that are created by and catering to select communities.