How Did Media Change America

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From 1890s to 1945, media played an important role to spread news and change Americans’ opinions about different events. I believe that media changed Americans ideas by exaggerating the truth, propaganda and providing information. There are some examples about how media controlled Americans’ thoughts. Firstly, the Yellow Journalism, which used exaggerations, and emotional ways to provide information to the public, affected Americans a lot. For example, from 1895 to 1898, the tension between Spain and America increased because of Cuba. The war started not only because of the Sinking of the Maine, an American warship, but also because of the New York Journal, an epitome of Yellow Journalism. On the newspaper, it said, “Destruction of the …show more content…

During WW1, the United States joined the war after Germany sank Lusitania, a passenger ship carrying military supplies from America. To convince people enter the war and recruit the army quickly, the government used poster propaganda because posters could be produced in huge amount in a very short time in different kinds of languages and put everywhere. James Montogery Flagg’s Uncle Sam “I Want You” poster is a very famous poster not only in the war time but also famous now. In that poster, Uncle Sam is pointing at the viewer with the sentence, “I want you to for U.S, army.” (History on the Net) The poster was very attractive and easy to understand. After looking at this poster, the viewer might think the country needs him so that he would join the army. David H. Mihaly, as one of the viewers of these posters today, said, “These posters inspired you to enlist, to pick up the flag and support your country. They made you in some cases fear an enemy or created a fear you didn’t know you had.” (Cook) This shows that the posters still can inflame people today; this shows that the influence of propaganda posters is huge. As a result, during WW1, these posters must play an important role of pushing Americans enter the war and make them believe that it is worth to do

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