Essay Example: The Role of Mass Media in Shaping Public Opinion

Mass media involves technology intended to reach a mass audience and is the primary means of communication used to contact the vast majority. The most popular platforms for mass media are television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the internet. The general public usually relies on the mass media to provide information concerning social issues, entertainment, political issues, and news in popular culture. Generally, the news media focuses the public’s attention on specific topics and personalities, driving many people to form opinions about them. However, the media’s role in shaping public beliefs and perceptions about significant political and social issues has long been the subject of much debate and speculation. This paper explores the role of mass media in shaping public perception and opinions.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

According to Junsheng et al. (2019), the role of the media is to transmit the reality and uncover the underlying facts of information; changing people’s mentality through media to more understand, permissive and educative. However, audiences usually form their attitudes and beliefs, either by themselves or with others, in response to mass media reports. Although the media’s level of influence varies, messages from the media are not received uniformly by all audiences. The mass media can also reinforce underlying attitudes and activate them, prompting the public to take action. For instance, before an election, voters who earlier had only a mild preference for a candidate or party may be inspired by media coverage not only to make the choice to vote but possibly also to contribute money or to support a party its organization. Again, the mass media play another critical role by letting the public know what other individuals think and by providing political leaders considerable audiences. Therefore, the mass media also make it possible for public opinion to encompass vast numbers of people and broad geographic areas. In some European countries like the United States, the growth of broadcasting, particularly television, influenced the operation of the parliamentary system. Before television, national elections were mainly seen as contests between some candidates or parties for congressional seats; however, it currently encompasses public participation.

Interest groups, religious groups, labor unions (trade unions), and non-governmental (NGOs), foster the formation and spread of public opinion on matters of concern to their constituencies (Baxter, 2018). These groups may be concerned with ideological, political, or economic issues; they most operate through the mass media and word of mouth. Some of the larger or more affluent interest groups worldwide use public relations and advertising; thus, media help the public know more about the goals of these organizations. An increasingly popular strategy is the straw vote or informal poll. In this way, groups ask their supporters and members to vote generally by phone or via the internet. Many votes by supporters are often encouraged. Once the organization releases its findings to reliable media outlets, it claims legitimacy by citing the publication of its poll in a recognized newspaper or online news source. However, since psychological makeup, external influences, and personal circumstances all play a role in forming each person’s opinions, it is challenging to predict how public opinion on an issue will take shape. Specific events and circumstances can explain some public opinions, but in other cases, the causes are elusive (Baxter, 2018). For instance, public opinion regarding the environment has been influenced by single events like the publication, such as the Academy Award-winning documentary on climate change and inventory truth (Bell et al. 2019). Therefore, a body of public opinion on a given issue is usually formed and sustained, depending to a significant extent on the attention it receives in the mass media.

Opinion research generated from market analysis on mass media has much influenced public opinion on some goods and services. Early market researchers selected small samples of the population that they used to obtain information on such issues as how many individuals listen to a given the radio or read a magazine and what the public likes and dislikes regarding various consumer goods. George Gallup, an American public opinion statistician, started conducting nationwide surveys of social and political issues in the United States in 1935 (Baxter, 2018). Again, policymakers can both feed information into the range of media and attempt to anticipate audience response to how policy is shaped and presented.

Conclusion

The information given to the public in media reports can both legitimize the actions of the powerful and promote change at the collective level; however, it can also limit and shape public opinion, central to more extensive social, political, and economic change. However, mass media may help or harm the public. Almost everything is online now; it is challenging to hide information because individuals can look anything up. Media has a significant impact on how the public views things, especially religion, and political and economic issues. Political and economic issues will always be controversial in public opinion, mainly because it has been all since the creation of both. As long as the public uses reliable information, they will be able to formulate an objective opinion over a particular topic through media.

References

Baxter, A. (2018). Modeling Public Opinion. https://scholarship.rollins.edu/honors/67/

Bell, S. E., Fitzgerald, J., & York, R. (2019). Protecting the power to pollute: identity co-optation, gender, and the public relations strategies of fossil fuel industries in the United States. Environmental Sociology, 5(3), 323-338. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2019.1624001

Junsheng, H., Akhtar, R., Masud, M. M., Rana, M. S., & Banna, H. (2019). The role of mass media in communicating climate science: An empirical evidence. Journal of Cleaner Production, 238, 117934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117934