Media Influence on Politics - Research Paper Example

Influence of the media on politics in the society Influence of the media on politics in the society Introduction The topic has been very controversial due to different opinions. Some people believe that the media is influential in framing issues and setting agendas in the political world. Other people believe that the media is an educative tool, and it just informs the public and does not influence their political decisions. Media just tell people what to think about instead of how to think. Each side of the argument has been previously confirmed based on the perception of different researchers to the topic. However, I didn’t find a research that has provided a clear explanation to the issue: If the media decides where the public cast their vote during an election? Therefore, there is a knowledge gap, and this research paper intends to explain the influence of the media on politics in the society. Media is a pivotal part of today’s society. Across the world, people rely on media for almost everything to do with information and communication. It has become significant to understand how to balance media influence the life of people and society. In these pressurized eras, it is becoming tougher and tougher to balance a family, work, and technology. Ages ago, it was just family and work. Currently, with social networking, blogging, gaming, and supplementary undertakings, technophile parents have discovered that harmonizing all that out with a proficient family life has become somewhat of a task in the aforementioned (Hawn, 2009). Research questions 1. Do media direct the public on what to do politically? 2. Does information provided by the media influence the opinions of the public? 3. How do the media influence the voting exercise? 4. What is the impact of media on the society? Problem definition Media have significant impacts on the society and politics. Misuse of media in itself can result to numerous challenges in the society. Too much of a thing is pestilential. There are disadvantages to the media. Parents should ensure their kids are safe while online as not all individuals are well intentioned, and even beware of the content that the kids seek from the media (Lowe, 2013). Most of the television content are not appropriate for all audience, and have age limits. Such content influences the opinion of the public. Media has also been associated with high rates of violence, crimes, bullying, and culture shock. Many of these contents influence the way the public think and act politically. The research seeks to know if politics has any influence on the political decisions of people. It will seek to identify if the media directs the public on what to think and what to do. The research will also investigate on whether the public opinions on political aspects are based on the information supplied to them by the media. Research approach and methodology To be able to find out the above information and make final conclusions, my research will use two different research methods. The research will use questionnaires that will contain research questions. In order to gain valid information, it will include multiple answer questions and open-ended question so as not to limit the interviewee. The final research method will be observation. The researcher will observe the public reaction on prevailing political topics and the exam the influence of the media on decisions and stands made by the public. The research will also use the available literature in books and journals to study the influence of the media on political behavior of the public The research questions will be answered through consulting secondary sources. There are a lot of already existing sources on media and society that discuss the impacts of media on society. Household, teens, and school educators will also be consulted for their views on media and public relations. Data will be collected from social media users. Parents will be consulted in search of what they feel the media is doing to their children. The available literature on the topic will be a source of information towards answering the research question. Literature review According to Popkin (2006), the media have a great influence on how voters make their choices during elections. He argues that the larger percentage of the society makes decisions on whom to vote for based on the media TV stations or radio stations that they listen to (Popkin, 2006). The uses the example the 1988 trade fair election which proved to be a battle between media stations rather that a voting exercise. Popkinthinks that society is normally in an informational deficit state, and they blindly follow the opinions of different media groups (Popkin, 2006). His research identified that politicians most politicians use the media to get their opinions across since it has been identified that the media is an easy way to the decision of the voters. He concludes that elections are driven by the media and the public is just a tool for media houses to actualize their political opinions (Popkin, 2006). Rozell identifies that the media uses framing a major tool to influence the political environment in the society. He argues that the media does not directly tell the public what to do or what to think, but it gives clues (Rozell, 2003). The clues are very influential towards directing the public on what to do or what political stands and opinions to have. Through this misconception, the society has greatly being influenced by the media especially in political topics and voting exercises (Rozell, 2003). From his research, he notes that the media is selective in the kind of information that it gives to the public. Filtering of information and covering of information steers the societies’ opinions to certain issues. The media may choose to air the positive sides of politicians and keep away their negative sides in order to buy the confidence of the public. On the other hand, the media house does not like a certain political opinion, they might choose to air it disadvantages and remain silent on its advantages (Rozell, 2003). Nesbitt-Larking says that racial and ethnic enmity are created and catalyzed by the media (Nesbitt-Larking, 2007). The media speaks to people of all races and diversified ethnic backgrounds. The media can therefore either influence unity between them or enmity between them through its opinions. The writer notes that the political racial divide in the USA has been induced by the media airing information that favors or criticizes certain races (Nesbitt-Larking, 2007). He concludes that political racial divide and ethnic political opinions are heightened and minimized by the media (Nesbitt-Larking, 2007). He appreciates the media role in reducing racial divide but blames it on the situation in the past. Comstock and Scharre say that the media influence the public on what to do by controlling their psychology Comstock & Scharrer, 2007). They argue that the media influences the political decision of the public by manipulating their psychology. According to them, the public’s ideas on politics are bases on what the media thinks is right and what it considers wrong. Among the western countries democracies, America is the most unique due to its public reliance nearly in nature to the commercial media. The media presents information which is comprehensive about politics and the government. This is so as to hold the elites of politics and businesses accountable through the investigative reporting and critical commentary. Media also provide a broad range of forum for the voices and viewpoints of the public citizens (Hawn, 2009). This system of media reporting as at its best produced prize winning of Pulitzer in investigative reporting based on a long in-depth system of journalism to the public. But for most of the time and majority of media outlets as well as the audiences, disaster and crime news, entertainment, and stories of human interest have been the tendency. The media outlets of PBS and NPR which were created in 1970s, were the most modest attempts undertaken so as to add public affairs a little more to the media content balance. However, in the recent years, internet and cable television have provided an additional media outlets for the public content purposes. But quite few of these media outlets, whether funded publicly or privately, are able to reach a broad audience of the public (Blankenhorn, 1995). In contrast to the most fragmented American commercial media, the media in its entirety is virtually in every western democratic state in a public and private mix. In most cases, the public media are always the leading ones. The public media leads both in terms of the size of the audience, independence, and the quality. They hence have much more control on the public towards political operations in U.S. A number of numerous studies have been conducted to explain and indeed prove that media directs the public hugely on what to do politically in various nations (Ghimire & Arathi, 2013). The first study is the comparative study of the election news coverage by both the public and private television channels in U.S, Germany, France and England. The study found out that there is a more extensive coverage of election the public media than the commercial (private) media. This scenario situation was applicable in all of the European states. The French public media like the France 2’s election coverage was found to be more focused on the policy substance. This was done through the airing of the toughest interviews of candidates on the British media channels with an inclusion of the public BBC media platform (Comstock & Scharrer, 2007). The other study is the recent research which comparing the privately and publicly owned media news like television in U.S, U.K, Finland and Denmark. The research is conducted by the scholars Anker Brink, James Curran, and Shanto Lyengar. The research showed that the televisions of public services give greater concern and attention to the affairs of the public and international news. The media channels and televisions are therefore proved to foster greatly on public knowledge in the areas of public maters than the ones for market model. This study was of a sophisticated nature and had a combination of both the analysis content and survey research (Dutta, 2010). Curran and the colleagues found out that public media television channels encourage consumption of news at higher levels (Lowe, 2013). This contributes to a smaller gap within the nation between the disadvantaged and the advantaged public. Also, it was shown by the research that newspapers that are publicly standardized in France, Sweden and Norway have a tendency of providing more critical, original, and in-depth public concerns coverage. The coverage that are public related was the composition of more of the content than counterparts which were dependent on advertising either in U.S or their own countries (Gentile & Bushman, 2012). Do the media influence the opinion of the public? The answer is obvious in a broad outline. The media influence on the opinion of the public now arises through the attitude of rationality ignorance by the public towards political news. The public will mostly disdain it yet the truth is that the voters do pay little attention to cases that can be of huge importance to the journalists and politicians. This is because the attitude of both the politicians and journalists is dependent on the public response through the political news or mass audience. There are very many kinds of news besides political that do influence the opinion and attitude of the public like voters. The news is in the varieties of sports news, medical news, consumer news, economy news and entertainment news. So the question that, therefore, pegs is that, what do citizens who rationally ignorant ant out the relatively political news which are small amounts? To answer this question, suggestions of several interests are made. Each of the interest is of a loosely deductive sense form the rational ignorance basic notion. Rational voters are having the need and desire to keep a tab on the political events. May be to know how their benefit checks or tax bills are likely to change. They do not really want to vote much energy to the whole process of voting or politics. The rational voters hence do not want to be immersed in the political details. Also they do not want to large dense quantities of substantive analysis and information, nor do they want the reports of news that are attempting to be comprehensive and encyclopedic (Ferguson, et al. 2011). In addition they do not as well want the full history and context of pertaining to the every public affairs aspect. Stated negatively, the message which is overriding about the rational voters to their respective information providers is do not waste my time. The rational voters to whatever extent seek information with the purpose of helping them to form opinions which are informed or cast a vote wisely. The voters will seek for information on controversial matters. When the elites achieve a policy consensus, the possibility of the policy being adopted is high no matter wins in the election. There is no reason then for every to try figuring out for him or her on which the best is or which candidate is of its favor if this is true. On the other hand, if the elites disagree then the outcome of the election may be the determination of the policy to be adopted. This thus gives the voters the incentives of paying some attention bit. Due to this reason, it is therefore possible for a conclusion to be made that, rational voters are engaged by the conflict of politics and are bored by the consensus of politics (Dutta, 2010). Social media has and has had an enormous impact to the society. For instance, in the past five years the websites of social media have provably become an ubiquitous which gives the youth a new way of interaction and communicating with the world. The new form of communication established in the society through the social media is dependent on contents created by users. The user contents are mostly produced by the media and do come from large companies of media (Foster, 2011). The media has developed an embed code and share buttons. In the couple of years past, the society has began to see more and more of the various media contents such as you tube, twitter, facebook, and the little button reading share. The embedded share codes are easy and fast ways enabling the quick diffusion and sharing of information. The media has enabled the communication means to rise to many platforms. Technology has created new communication templates anywhere allowing for faster and effective communication from person to person, person to media and the vice versa. The notion of free speech is always along the ride with such open access to communication. The media though the adoption of technology has raised the amount and level of free speech to a whole new level. Instead of reading propaganda and opinions through commercials, newspapers, billboards and posters, free speeches are texted and written and consequently get to be transmitted all over the world (Gentile & Bushman, 2012). Conclusion In conclusion, despite the huge advancements forward strides made by the development and adoption of media. A number of challenges are imposed, occur and are faced by it. These challenges include social media harassment, media illiteracy in its existence, usage and application. The most important impact is the influence of media on political opinions. Majority of people follow political arguments and assertions from media, and tend to make decisions depending on what they watch, read, or see. There has, therefore, been a proposal that perhaps some teachings to provided media literacy should be undertaken to eliminate or reduce the existing illiteracy level. The teachings are proposed to be conducted in platforms like televisions, Facebook, etc. Social harassment was determined to be fueled by huge number of fake media accounts that are being ran by some anonymous individuals. The justice system of America has been challenged to step up and ensure that they provide and guarantee safety in social media networking. References Blankenhorn, D. (1995). Fatherless America: Confronting our most urgent social problem. Broach Jr., V. Carter, Thomas J. Page Jr., & Dale W. (1995). Television Programming And Its Television Influences, And Body Image Dissatisfaction. Journal Of Social & Clinical Psychology 30.5: 458-483. Comstock, G. A., &Scharrer, E. (2007). The psychology of media and politics. Amsterdam [etc.: Elsevier. Dutta, S. (2010). Whats your personal social media strategy? Harvard Business Review, 88(11), 27-130. Ferguson, Christopher J., et al. (2011). Mirror, Mirror On The Wall: Peer Competition, Pleasantness. Journal Of Advertising 24.4: 45-54. Foster, M. (2011). Finding Balance between Social Media and Family - Melissa Foster. Melissa Foster. Retrieved 7 October 2014, from http://www.melissafoster.com/finding-balance-between-social-media-and-family/ Gentile, D.A., & Bushman, B.J. (2012). Reassessing Media Violence Effects Using a Risk and Resilience Approach to Understanding Aggression.Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Vol. 1, No. 3. Ghimire, N. & Arathi R. (2013). Comparative EvaluationOf The Influence Of Television Advertisements On Children And Caries Prevalence.Global Health Action 6. 1-8. Hawn, C. (2009). Take two aspirin and tweet me in the morning: how Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are reshaping health care. Health affairs, 28(2), 361-368. Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., &Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media and young adults. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 3. Lowe, S. (2013). Helping Our Kids Strike a Balance between Life and Social Media. Center Point Counseling. Retrieved 6 October 2014, from http://centerpointcounseling.org/helping-kids-strike-balance-life-social-media/ Nesbitt-Larking, P. W. (2007).Politics, society, and the media. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press. Popkin, S. L. (2006). Changing media, changing politics. Perspectives on Politics, 4(02), 327 341. Rozell, M. J. (2003).Media power, media politics. Lanham: Rowman& Littlefield. Russell, C., Antonia, H., Jensen, S. & David, C. (2013). Cultural Diversity In Television Influence On Viewers Perceptions Of Commercials: The Role Of Program Arousal And Narratives: Homophilization, Appropriation, And Implications For Media Advocacy. Journal Of Public Policy & Marketing 32: 119-130. Zillmann, D., Bryant, J., & Huston, A. C. (Eds.). (2013). Media, children, and the family: social scientific, psychodynamic, and clinical perspectives. Routledge. Read More