Social Media Ruining Politics Analysis

Journalists play an important part in the democratic process. Traditionally, the roles of the news media are to provide a forum for debate, represent opposing perspectives on the day’s issues and hold public officials accountable while serving their constituents. However, in recent decades, media has given way to biased forms of news— partisan media. In Matthew Levendusky’s “How Partisan Media Polarize America,” he explores if these partisan media influences viewers. The book’s second chapter, “What Do Partisan Media Actually Say?” concludes that partisan media promotes a larger agenda separately to Democrats and Republicans, attack the opposing side while denouncing compromise, and usually side with their candidate of choice during

Does Nicolas Carr, author of “How Social Media Is Ruining Politics” provide enough evidence that social media is ruining politics? The answer is a very obvious yes. Overtime, social media has slowly polarized the political perception of the American people. Social Networking is a new, popular medium that has changed the nature of political conversation. Therefore, it has become both a good thing and a bad thing. It has encouraged those who once did not partake in the political process to participate. Social networking is very useful to find out news and information ahead of the news media.. “It has become an easy way for political candidates to connect and communicate with the American people.” (Carr 1) While social media might provide the candidates with a form of convenience because it simplifies and speeds up the communication process, it also provides many ways for their campaigns to be easily and deliberately attacked. Unfortunately, what receives the most attention on social media is outrageous statements. Some candidates like Donald Trump know how to use this to their advantage. The danger in this is that candidates tend to use abrasive soundbites to grab the attention of the social media user. Unfortunately, the abrasive soundbites are often taken out the intended context. Other candidates like Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush did not come to this realization as quickly because they did not want to take the chance of hindering their image. They understood that a

Partisan news has recently become under scrutiny for the biasness that they hold. With CNN being exposed for their fake news and their relentlessness to undermine Trumps presidency. Despite this embarrassment, there have been some pros proclaimed by an author in the article, Public Opinion and the Media: Is Partisan Media Exposure Bad for Democracy? Sides believes that partisan news doesn’t create polarize news rather they attract already polarized people (Sides 5). Additionally, Sides states that partisans are the ideal citizens in our democracy (6). With this being said, Sides believes he is onto some correlation between partisan news and participation amongst citizens.

Sunstein argues that an echo-chamber effect results when people receive news from various media outlets. Sunstein asserts that, when a person gets their news from a medium which embraces similar ideological viewpoints, this person’s beliefs not only harden, but become situated on more extreme ends of the political spectrum. Three-stage academic studies conducted over the past three decades have found that balanced presentations of news, which carefully examine both sides to an argument, are more likely to increase polarization, rather than to reduce it. This is due to “biased assimilation”, where a person credits the information which supports their original view and dismisses information which opposes it. This also explains why it is difficult to force out false rumors and factual errors, since corrections can be self-defeating, leading people to having a firmer commitment to their erroneous beliefs. However, Sunstein argues, surprising validators can be used to allow people to reconsider information from a source they find credible. Sunstein concludes with arguing that what matters most is not what is being said, but who is saying

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.

In the more recent years due to the increased use of the everlasting advancements in technology, such as social media; and biological understandings of how the human brain works, the American media has corrupt many different aspects of the American society such as politics and racial discrimination.

The purpose of this essay is to explain how the media is biased and in what direction the bias leans towards. For a long time, there has been speculation that there is a liberal bias in the mass media. This is a problem because, “citizens cannot cast informed votes or make knowledgeable decisions on matters of public policy if the information on which they depend is distorted, it is vital to American democracy that television news and other media be fair and unbiased.” [1] Unfortunately, the information we receive in the news, campaigns, and other media are often portrayed to be or look a certain way, either to favor a particular political party, just make it look negative, or scare and the divide the public.

People, politics, and the channel of communication between the two all have suffered from increasing political polarization. Polarization of news channels stems from the emphasis on entertaining viewers. Most major news organizations foster either a left or right-leaning bias displayed through talk show hosts, guest speakers, or published content. As a result, the viewership of news networks is very politically divided. People who follow political coverage through any outlet are more inclined to believe stories that align with their personal views. In contrast, people are more likely to discredit stories that conflict with their personal beliefs. Business Insider published a statistic from a study that noted, “Both CNN and Fox News are among the most trusted news networks; it found 88% of its conservative participants trusted Fox News, while only 14% of the same group trusted CNN”.

The media, defined as any organization producing a form of mass communication, is a controversial, board, and a context system. According to a September 2016 Gallup Poll, 32% of the respondents said they have a “great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the media (Swift). In fact, there has been a steady decline in trust in the media by the public since the turn of the century (Swift, 2016). As the media’s trust has fallen the perception and the notion of bias in media has increased. For this context, bias is defined as favoring one ideology, candidate, or party over the other in an unfair manner. Furthermore, it could be also mean portraying an ideology, candidate, or party over the other in an unfair manner. It is frequently debated whether or not the media or the public is biased, however, upon further examination, it is both the public and the media who is bias because of the hostile media phenomenon and confirmation bias for the public and the market and ideology for the media.

People are forced into these filter bubbles by the social media giants. A study was done from a statistical standpoint by Seth Flaxman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, Sharad Goel, an assistant professor in the at Stanford University, Stanford and Justin M. Rao, senior researcher at Microsoft Research, where they examined the browsing histories of fifty thousand users in the US who draw their daily news through social media. It was found that people mostly clicked on what was recommended to them by the algorithm. They were unknowingly becoming a part of the echo chamber problem as “algorithms inadvertently amplify ideological segregation by automatically recommending content an individual is likely to agree with” (Flaxman et al 299). The study concludes that “individuals generally read publications that are ideologically quite similar, and moreover, users that regularly read partisan articles are almost exclusively exposed to only one side of the political spectrum” (Flaxman et al 317). If people surround themselves with only confirming views they will never know what the other side stands for. In more recent times we saw an abundance of new news sources come up, which are more share driven than factually. The news sources online only cares about the number of likes, retweets and shares, they can easily put a hashtag followed by some “news” to please either side. The United States saw this bridge get larger, with the

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

Mass communication outlets have become fundamental parts of modern society in the recent years. Americans rely on these media outlets to stay updated on the worlds issues. However, these outlets know exactly how to shape and influence people inconspicuously. The News often caters to certain groups and the truth is usually dismissed. Instead of being informed about the important issues, the media tends to focus on entertaining topics. Most Americans are not aware that their views are being dictated by the media and the

In United State mass media has always been known for being biased. And that’s dating back in the early 1700s. For instance, in 1798, 4 laws of Alien and Sedition Acts was passed by the Congress of U.S in which they state that “The Sedition Act made it a crime for American citizens to “print, utter, or publish… any false, scandalous, and malicious writing”. Thus, these laws straightly go against the political parties and the journalists and newspapers. Consequently, by the beginning of 1801, this act was abolished. Until the 19th century, it’s clearly that the rise of bias in mass media has never gotten any diminished. These mainstream such as CNN, BBC, NBC News, MSNBC, Daily Show, or New York Times versus Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Drudge Report or Rush Limbaugh Show still battling for their political supports, Democratic-liberals versus Republican-conservatives. Their biases are most likely to be seen in the editorial section of the newspapers. However, it’s seemed to be true that the vast majorities of mass media nowadays tend to be biased, more towards progressive-liberal values. The Gallup reveals that the polls of American’s Trust in the Mass Media has been decrease by a lot since 1997. 53% in comparison to 40% in 2013. The people confidence in television and news also dropped majorly, 46%, almost 50% in 1994 in comparison of 18% in 2014. In addition, a fewer number of Republicans believe in media to report as such “fully, accurately and fairly”. Also, we

Jim Morrison, an american song writer, singer and poet, once said, “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”. The Media have becoming one of the most dominant source of education of the 21st century. We could argue that most americans use the media as their main source of information. The side effect on that is the fact that the media is very polarized. With the ongoing polarization, we could hypothesize that people would have been more politically educated and oriented if the media was not infiltrated.

In Changing Minds or Changing Channels, the authors Kevin Arceneaux and Martin Johnson state that we live in an area where it is easy for people to tune in to a television channel or any other source where we can be inform of current or past events which best fits our ideological predispositions. Although, it is very easy to tune in to programming that fits our ideological views there are political consequences of media choice. The authors state that partisan news have been known to reinforce prior beliefs and polarized the environment that we have today. Yet, the authors failed to support their claim that news media reinforces people’s beliefs and polarizes the environment because they use studies to support their claim that were conducted when viewers only had six channels to choose from.