Carl Hovland's Why We Fight Experiments

The media is an important part of our daily lives. It shapes and molds the lens through which we see the world. It controls everything you see, read, and hear. Media also determines what is said, who said it, how it can be said, and who can hear it. The news for a lot of Americans calls them into action. Depending on what is being discussed it can really sway your emotions. The News can make you happy as well as make you sad or angry. Contrary to popular belief manipulation does not require a device or hypnotism; we are being brainwashed right before our eyes. Television is that most sophisticated media of worldwide communication and viewers are completely susceptible to the media molding their opinions and attitude; as well as influencing what is acceptable and what is not. There is an unconscious “groupthink” mentality that taints news coverage and allows only one side of a debate to receive a fair hearing.  When that happens, the truth suffers. In this essay, I will discuss the types of bias and manipulation, how it affects us, and the ways to prevent it.

The media in American society has a major influential impact on the minds and beliefs of millions of people. Whether through the news, television shows, or film, the media acts as a huge database for knowledge and instruction. It is both an auditory and visual database that can press images and ideas into people's minds. Even if the individual has no prior exposure or knowledge to something, the media can project into people's minds and leave a lasting impression. Though obviously people are aware of what they are listening to or watching, thoughts and assumptions can drift into their minds without even realizing it. These thoughts that drift in are extremely influential. The massive impact it

Today’s media (news) plays an enormous role in the lives of people in directing a specific perception of the world around them. Most often media conduct's a subconscious effect upon its spectators in which the upshots are deliberately or illdeliberatly towards a particular topic.

Many historians have written about the use of propaganda over the centuries, but very few have written about how the effects of mass media has affected the American publics opinion of the government during times of war. Historians have written a lot about how mass media has increased over time, yet they have not made the correlation between the effective use of propaganda and public favor, or the ineffective use of propaganda and public distrust. The types of mass media articles that will be investigated will be articles on print media (magazines, pamphlets), posters,

World War II is one of many, most horrific and crucial events in world history and one of the most important events in the 20th century. Leonard and John (2007) define propaganda as “notions, facts, or accusations that are spread purposely with the objective of furthering one’s cause or damaging an opponent’s cause”. (7) They used media and propaganda in order to increase support for their side of the war. An immense feeling of patriotism was building up, and the nations used all the resources at their disposal to get their nations ahead of the race regardless of how humiliating and misleading the allegations were. Throughout World War II, propaganda was used to maintain the heat in fights and create unity among the citizens of a nation to achieve a single cause. People receive information on a daily basis since the beginning of the war and the parties of the confrontation. United States of America used propaganda for the creation of massive advertisements in the course of the war that could be interpreted as degrading to rival forces (Cogan, Brian & Tony, 53). Propaganda and information were distributed through numerous sources—radio, films, books and newspapers. The major aim was to impose on people the way of thinking and acting, both consciously and subconsciously (Rhodes 5). Though news sources attempted to be objective, there has always been ways to influence the way in which people interpret information.

The experiment was conducted in class during lecture hours and 11 participants reported they never purchase sugar and were omitted from the results. Experimenters explained that participants were to answer a short survey about media impact on purchase decisions and handed out randomly two versions of a two-page pamphlet. In the first page, participants were asked to read a newspaper article about an expected shortage in sugar that is about to be published. In the second page, the participants were asked to answer three questionnaires, one measuring reactions to the publication of the shortage of sugar, and the second served as a manipulation check, and the final set of questions were demographic. The manipulation of perceived influence followed research demonstrating that perceived exposure is a strong predictor of the perception that media affects others. The respondents were given information about the shortage of sugar being posted on the front page of a newspaper, and others were told that the story was located in the internal page of the economic news area. The independent variable in this study was the condition in which the news story was located on the front page, or located within the paper. This would be measured by stating either 0= front page or 1= inside story. The dependent variable is the reaction of students

Still today the media affects the way people think about a war. It is almost as if the media decides who wins the war and who loses the war. Take for example World War II where we lost battle after battle. The media mostly talked about when we were victorious and how patriotic everyone should be for our country. It may be the fact that we were attacked on our own soil which made the war seems justifiable, but there are other wars where the media thought otherwise. The one that people notice and remember the most is Vietnam War. This was the first war that people could actually see on television. It made the war come into the people’s own homes. Know the public knows how brutal wars can be and the cause of destructions from both sides but then they were just not sure. They knew that people died but they never had to see it. See the United States won almost every battle in the Vietnam War but somehow lost the war. The media only talked about how bad the war was and showed the United States losing or just fighting where it looks like we lost. The media even claimed that we lost battles that we had won. It made the general public think that the war was useless and we were giving up lives for a lost cause. The Vietnamese never attacked us so why should we attack them ran through people's minds. Patriotism was nowhere to be found in the media. Just strikes against the war in

The media in American society has a major influential impact on the minds and beliefs of millions of people. Whether through the news, television shows, or film, the media acts as a huge database for knowledge and instruction. It is both an auditory and visual database that can press images and ideas into people's minds. Even if the individual has no prior exposure or knowledge to something, the media can project into people's minds and leave a lasting impression. Though obviously people are aware of what they are listening to or watching, thoughts and assumptions can drift into their minds without even realizing it. These thoughts that drift in are extremely influential. The massive impact

World War I had a massive impact in Europe and North America and all over the world. It had an influence on all the spheres of individuals, especially in Europe and North America. The word propaganda is defined as the "doctrines, ideas, arguments, facts, or allegations spread by deliberate effort through any medium of communication in order to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause" (Dombrowski, 1999, 59). In simple terms, it is defined as the strategy and course of action taken to influence a cause and promote it within the entire community. It is also considered to be the publicity of ideas in order to convince the public. In order to promote a propaganda, it is essential that strong media is utilized to transmit it to a large audience in order to accomplish its objective(Gavin, 2007, 46).

The media has been able to manipulate people by making them believe what they say. One example that satirizes the media is a movie called The Truman show. Throughout the Truman show, the main character, Truman Burbank, is trapped in a stage set which he perceives as the real world. As he has lived there for around 30 years he starts to get the perception of being in a false environment. The media plays a big role in our lives as Truman is exposed to the corrupt side of them.

During the early 1900’s audiences were considered to be passive, an audience that merely observed events rather than actively responding to the event in the media. During this time, several theories were developed on the media’s ability to provide information to a group of people that did not think about the information just simply receive the information. Hypodermic Needle Model by Katz &

We live in a world of technological innovation where mass media is a major part of us today. People make assumptions on what they hear. They do not try to analyze the situation to see who is right and who is wrong, and mass media is the main source of manipulating one's mind. The concept of propaganda has changed over time. Propagandists create ideas stereotypically through the use of propaganda and use media to promote it and target people's minds to have influence on their views towards a certain group of people. These ideas create negative or positive images in the intended audience's minds. However, it is notable that the information is only the one that is exemplified through media and therefore, can be

     The mass media prevents us as human beings to be fully human. Propaganda unconsciously causes the public to act in ways they may not

“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” – Joseph Goebbels, German Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This is the exact words of Nazis most famous propagandist in using media as a mass weapon of propaganda and mind control. Could you imagine Germany in 1930s, without Television channel, without the Internet, without every mobile device in your palm, what channel of information will you get? Of course, newspapers, flies, images, celebrities were used as tools for propaganda purposes, designed to provoke a reaction, and ultimately, a form of control over their citizen. Nowadays, with all the advanced of technologies, information can reach everyone in every corner of the Earth, the message is delivered in the subtlest ways, without people’s conscious, has shaped everyone’s decision, or at least shape their behavior toward the decision that the orchestrator want the audience to perceive. With the booming of internet, information sharing seamlessly, we must ask ourselves, the role of media in conveying, shaping the society that we are living in. Let look at few examples of U.S propaganda machine, and later, the particular case of fish sauce in Viet Nam back in October 2016.

Throughout society, the mass media constantly changes over time. The mass media play a prominent role in informing the public about what occurs within the world, especially in areas which audiences do not acquire direct experience and knowledge. This essay will argue that the propaganda model is no longer valid as it has become outdated. This essay will also discuss the model in relation to the five filters and draw on Rampton's critique of the propaganda model in contemporary society.