Effects Of Media Effects On Politics

Media Effects
Media is not something new to the world but its influences are ever evolving and increasing exponentially. Whether through print or television each type of media is vitally important to a politician. Politicians must focus on the message that is to be conveyed and be aware of the influence each media type has. Print ads, radio shows, television interviews, magazine articles and debates all have a degree of effectiveness on a voting demographic. Mastering the media effects on the people that are to be influenced is the key to successful communication of ideas and a successful political career.
James Druckman in “The Power of Television Images: the first Kennedy-Nixon debate revised” looks at how television affects political behavior.

Mutz and Byron Reeves in “The New Videomalaise: effects of televised incivility on political trust” wanted to test if incivility in political discourse have adverse effects on public regard for politics. They proposed a theory that people will expect political actors who appear on television to abide by the same social norms acknowledged by ordinary Americans. They hypothesized that when political actors violate interpersonal, social norms on television, viewers react as they would if they were witnessing the same interactions in real life. Therefore, to test this theory they used professional actors and a live audience and found there was a correlation between the attitudes of the candidates and social norms. For the simulation experiment they had two actors that played candidates on a talk show that had a live audience, and the audience was instructed to rate the candidate on trust after the show. During the first experiment the candidates acted very civilized, however, during the second they were told to be uncivilized in reference to social norm and what would be considered acceptable behavior. Unsurprisingly the audience trusted the candidates during the first experiment much more compared to the second experiment when the candidates were much more

Iyengar also talked the current models of the media; framing, agenda setting, and priming.
“Among the advanced industrialized democracies, the United States exhibits an unusually low level of civic literacy. Unable to weigh the pros and cons of policy debates, citizens make do with what they have: the images and sound bites transmitted by the media. They follow the lead of news programming when asked to identify the important issues of the day. Those who influence the media agenda also hold a great deal of power to mold public opinion because issues in the news become the principal yardsticks for evaluating public officials. The impact of media messages on political attitudes, however, are limited by the audience’s partisan predispositions.”
Perception and the role of the media and its influence of politics leaves the average person with a slice of the truth. To get the full story citizens have to research individually and challenge the news that the media produced for the public. They are filled with their own bias and fail in the journalism of yesteryear that provided only facts, leaving us with more questions than