Nesbitt-Larking

“Since media are part of the political class and talk mostly to the political class, the myth of popular polarization took root and grew.” (Fiorina, Abrams, Pope, 2005, p. 167). Recently media has played a huge role in the country’s politic; they share information, report events, and frame opinions.

Political scientist, journalists, and politicians alike often discuss the role of the news media’s place in affecting campaigns, and voter perceptions. Claims of media bias in political news coverage have risen over the past two decades. Scholarly research has explored concerns that broadcast and print media shape voting decisions in democratic processes.

Chun-Fang Chiang and Brian Knight discuss the significance that media bias has on voters in America. They conducted a study in which subjects select a candidate to vote for after reading a biased newspaper article. After the research is conducted, they determine that media is influential in determining who people will vote for, but there are different degrees of influence. For example, people are more willing to be influenced when their source is more credible and when the voters tend to be more moderate.

A major modern problem with the media is the sublimation of, and reaffirmation of, stereotypical female gender roles. “The media treats women like shit” (Cho). Which is a serious issue because of Marshall McLuhan’s famous words, “The Medium is the Message” (Warwick). The medium up for discussion is the media, which can be fundamentally defined as the most significant “single source of information that people have today (Katz). Therefore, in order to understand “what’s going on in our society” (Katz) it is “absolutely imperative to “understand media” (Katz). Media and technology are “shaping our politics, our national discourse and most of all, they’re shaping our children’s brains, lives and emotions” (Steyer). Caroline Heldman, PhD, and

The development of opinions, attitudes and political values results from the interaction that occurs within the social environment of an individual through contact with family, friends, at school, work and church. Families especially help shape interest in politics and party affiliation while educational institutions encourage support of the political system. The mass media also influences public opinion through newspapers, radio, television and the Internet by reaffirming attitudes and opinions that individuals have already established. According to Doris Graber, author of Mass Media and American Politics, “people do not necessarily adopt the precise attitudes and opinions that earn the media’s praise: rather, mass media information provides the ingredients that people use to adjust their existing attitudes and opinions to keep pace with a changing world” (11). Therefore, the news media focuses the attention of the public on certain issues or individuals, which causes individuals to form opinions on these particular topics.

Media representations are ways in which a particular group, communities, ideas, topics, and experiences are portrayed (Breach, 2012). Media representations shapes the audience perceptions of experiences from their beliefs about race, gender, class, and their expectations about what is appreciated or accepted in society, and their notions of suburban, urban, and rural life. However, it is vital to know that people are not simply inert beings who consent with all of these representations without questioning. Social scientists argue that scholars are able to resist these representations, resistance that is often specific to adopting stances valued in certain context, particularly if they can parody or adopt creative alternatives to representations. Whether intentional or unintentional, the news and the entertainment media teach the public about other ethnic groups as well as minorities, and societal groups’ such as women, the LGBTQ community. Second, this media program or society has a particularly powerful instructive impact on people who have little contact with members of the direct groups being treated. Media images have the highest impact on perception when the viewers have fewer reality experiences with the topic (race, etc.), meaning what is viewed, read, or heard can be in relation to the real world.

“The collective opinion of many people on some issue, problem, etc., especially as a guide to action, decision, or the like.” Dictionary.com. 2015. dictionary.reference.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/public-opinion. [Accessed 17 November 15]. When looking at the cultural, financial and ideological aspects of our world today it is hard to dismiss the pressing influence that the media has. In this essay I will be analysing how the media uses different methods to manipulate the public and the influence it has on society and how it shapes public opinion, alongside public opinion in democracy now. I will also be discussing theories in which people don’t believe the media moulds the public’s opinions. The media industry is very essential but on the other hand the public opinion is indispensable, without the public opinion there is no media. The media becomes an influential determinant of public opinion, and sometimes it has the power to change public sentiments in terms of controversial issues.

The media has grown and become more prevalent in the lives of everyday people, causing it to be a very large industry that looks to expand its audience and be profitable while doing so. Elections are very important to people and the easiest way to access the information regarding the candidates is through the media. “Agenda setting can thus be seen as another name for successfully performing the first function of framing: defining problems worthy of public and government attention.” (Entman, 2007). The media pushes their agenda regarding

The media also influences how the public perceives issues. The placement of political issues during news coverage influences the importance of political issues on society. The ranking of media issues and society’s ranking suggest that the media influence the public (Weaver, 1996). The importance of an issue may rests on its time slot, sequence in the news story, or in the advertisement for the news.

Social media has been known to help students develop important knowledge and social skills. “At first glance this may seem like a waste of time; however it also helps students to develop important knowledge and social skills, and be active citizens who create and share content.” (Chen 3). The more time teens spend on social media the more they become aware of their own social side and how to interact with others, especially their peers. “Some types of social media has beneficial effects, like helping adolescents establish some sense of identity and build networking skills” (Riley Davis). Too much time being spent on social media can also exploit teens to some harsh realities that they’ve probably never experienced in their lives before.

Social media is described, by the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2015), as “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)”. As few as 10 years ago the term social media was yet to be coined, but within that decade the use of these blogs, websites and sharing platforms has increased exponentially with no plateau in sight. From creating Instagram accounts for household pets, to sharing Halloween themed baking ideas over Pinterest, people today have access to social media outlets for almost everything. Today about 74% of people ages 18-65 use some form of a social networking site (Pew, 2014). Facebook takes the lead in social media usage with about 71% of those adults. LinkedIn and Pinterest are tied for second at 28% of users, 26% use Instagram, and Twitter falls last in the top 5 most used social medias with 23% of users (Pew, 2014). In September of 2013 the Pew Research Center measured that 90% of adults ages 18-29 used these social media outlets on a daily basis, which is an astonishing increase from the 9% that was measured in February 2005 (Pew, 2014). Due to the fact that young adults are increasingly involving themselves in these online platforms, it is very important to understand the long term and psychological effects (such as depression, social anxiety,

There are two main schools of thought on this issue: (1) that media only has an impact on beliefs and voting in the short run and (2) exposure to the media may affect beliefs and voting in the long run. If a viewer doesn’t know the bias of a particular news outlet, such as in the launching of that news outlet or the first time that a person watches/reads it, the news outlet will likely alter her perception of reality. Even in the long run, while identifying the existence of bias is easy, identifying the extent to which it exists is often far more difficult. About 8-10% of the audience of a news network is persuaded, on average. The media isn’t just trying to put objective information on the table so that we can sort through it and sift through it on our own time, but rather implicitly directs our views and opinion in one direction. Baseline calibrations indicate that 4 to 8 percent of the audience of Fox News was persuaded to vote Republican that wouldn’t have voted Republican normally. Regardless of whether the influence is short term or long term, it has real world effects that can’t be discredited. The results of elections are hugely swayed by the media, both in terms of advertising and web marketing. Again, the media doesn’t get used as a platform for objective knowledge, but rather as a platform for specific

Mass Media has perpetuated racism through the inaccurate coverage of news in our country. The media has played a huge role in prolonging racism by disproportionally reporting on events and news that are tied to minority races. Decision makers should take notice to this awful trend because are country is becoming more and more racially divided day after day. The media has only weakened already weak ties between the white majority and minorities, creating much controversy and hostility. It is vital for policy makers and the american people to realize that the media’s agenda is much different from the public agenda and that the media does not operate in the benefit of American society. It is important to know that the media has drastically affected core values and put our country’s progression of race relations in danger.

However, just because the media does not always lead public opinion is not to say that the role of the media in agenda setting is not important. It is in fact the disproportionate influence that politicians ascribe to the media which gives the media some power in being able to influence elections. As Walgrave & Van Aelst state (p.100, 2006), political actors follow media cues in the election period due to the fact that ‘media coverage is associated with public opinion’. In this sense it is irrelevant that the views of the media and the public are not the same, so long as political actors consider the media to be a gauge of the public mood. This is reinforced by Schudson (1996), who argues that the power of the mass media lies not in manipulating the general public, but in the belief from

The first thing one must prove is that the media is an effective vehicle to influence public discussion in a democracy. This is key before examining the motives behind any bias that exists. The reach that different mediums have is the main thing that shows how media can influence public discussion. For example, according to the Pew Research Center, in the United States, 93% of adults get their news from digital sources.1 This includes online-only news outlets along with the digital arms of traditional news outlets. The ease of accessing media outlets is unprecedented when one compares it to previous generations. With the number of people with smartphones growing exponentially in recent years, people are having an easier and easier time to access the news right at their fingertips. It’s not just digital sources that are seeing an increase. News watching on TV’s has also grown over previous years. Neilson Media Research has found that news consumption through television has grown by 45% in 2016 compared to the year before. This also far surpassed previous presidential election years.2 This prevalence of news in the daily lives of citizens is the main reason why media can influence public discussion. Since there are so many people viewing so many different sources, that fall across the political spectrum, there will many different points of view. This difference in perspective will lead to people discussing their differences of opinion, hence encouraging healthy discussion in