how mass communication shapes public opinion
Answers
Answer:
The Communication of mass media has an effect on many aspects of human life, which can include voting a certain way, individual views and beliefs, or skewing a person's knowledge of a specific topic due to being provided false information. ... Not all effects result in change; some media messages reinforce an existing belief.
Explanation:
Mass media frame the details of the story.
Mass media communicate the social desirability of certain ideas.
Mass media sets the news agenda, which shapes the public's views on what is newsworthy and important.
Increasing scandal coverage, as well as profit-motivated sensationalist media coverage, has resulted in young people holding more negative, distrustful views of government than previous.
Terms
framing: the construction and presentation of a fact or issue "framed" from a particular perspective
mass media: The mass media are media technologies like broadcast media and print media that are designed to reach a large audience by mass communication.
Mass media effects on public opinion
Media can have an important effect on public opinion in several ways.
Setting the news agenda, which shapes the public's views on what is newsworthy and important
Framing the details of a story
Communicating the social desirability of certain kinds of ideas
The formation of public opinion starts with agenda-setting by major media outlets throughout the world. This agenda-setting dictates what is newsworthy and how and when it will be reported. The media agenda is set by a variety of different environmental and network factors that determines which stories will be newsworthy.
Another key component in the formation of public opinion is framing. Framing is when a story or piece of news is portrayed in a particular way and is meant to sway the consumers' attitude one way or the other. Most political issues are heavily framed in order to persuade voters to vote for a particular candidate. For example, if Candidate X once voted on a bill that raised income taxes on the middle class, a framing headline would read "Candidate X Doesn't Care About the Middle Class". This puts Candidate X in a negative frame to the newsreader.
Social desirability is another key component of the formation of public opinion. Social desirability is the idea that people in general will form their opinions based on what they believe is the popular opinion. Based on media agenda setting and media framing, most often a particular opinion gets repeated throughout various news mediums and social networking sites until it creates a false vision where the perceived truth is actually very far away from the actual truth.
Public opinion can be influenced by public relations and political media. Additionally, mass media utilizes a wide variety of advertising techniques to get their message out and change the minds of people. Since the 1950s, television has been the main medium for molding public opinion, though the internet is becoming increasingly important in this realm.