Media and Public Opinion - Book Report/Review Example

"This dependence gives the media an enormous capacity to shape public thinking 'The press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about. And it follows from this that the world looks different to different people, depending not only on their personal interests, but also on the map that is drawn for them by the writers, editors, and publishers of the papers they read'" (Iyengar and Kinder, 2) There have been several important works dealing with the role of media in relation to issue framing which can be fundamental in realizing how media influences the public opinion forming process on important topics. . In their book News That Matters: Television and American Opinion, Iyengar and Kinder deal with the essential aspects that help the mass media in shaping public opinion.

It is essential to comprehend that the news organizations possess fundamental power to determine what the public takes to be important issues. According to the authors, although there is considerable amount of research on agenda-setting of the mass media, there is an essential lack of a theory concerning media effects, which has significantly impended the general understanding of how democracy works. They maintain that it is essential to have a theory of how information about public affairs percolates through American society in order to understand and assess how well the American political system works.

In their work, Iyengar and Kinder attempt to develop a theory so as to understand the ways in which television news shapes the political thinking of ordinary Americans and it is through fourteen experiments of powerful method of investigation that the authors attempt to refine and test the common understanding of media. They also explain their process of investigation completely as these are unusual procedures and the authors define exactly what is meant by an experiment. In the chapter three of the book, the authors present results from a series of experiments on agendas-setting which is supplemented with complementary evidences from the analysis of national surveys.

"Our studies show specifically that television news powerfully influences which problems viewers regard as the nation's most serious. Rising prices, unemployment, energy shortages, arms control - all these (and more) become high priority political issues for the public only if they first become high priority news items for the