mass media opinion essay

Essay On Mass Media

500 words essay on mass media.

All kinds of different tools which come in use to help in distributing and circulating information and entertainment to the public come under the term of mass media. In other words, everything including radio, newspapers , cable, television and theatre are parts of mass media. These tools include exchanging opinions and public involvement. Through essay on mass media, we will go through it in detail.

Introduction to Mass Media

In today’s world, mass media embraces internet , cell phones, electronic mail, computers, pagers and satellites. All these new additions function as transmitting information from a single source to multiple receivers.

In other words, they are interactive and work on the person to person formula. Thus, it revolves around the masses i.e. the people. It is true that radio, television, press and cinema are in the spotlight when we talk about mass media.

Nonetheless, the role of pamphlets, books, magazines, posters, billboards, and more also have equal importance if not less. Moreover, the reach of these tools extends to a huge amount of masses living all over the country.

Television, cinema, radio and press are comparatively expensive forms of media which private financial institutions or the Government runs. These tools centre on the idea of mass production and mass distribution.

Therefore, newspapers, television and radio cater to the needs of the mass audience and accommodates their taste. As a result, it will not always be refined or sophisticated. In other words, it displays popular culture.

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The Function of Mass Media

The main function of mass media is to reach out to the masses and provide them with information. In addition to that, it also operates to analyze and observe our surroundings and provide information in the form of news accordingly.

As a result, the masses get constantly updated about not just their own surroundings but also around the world. This way mass media spreads and interprets information. For instance, weather forecasts equip people and farmers to plan ahead.

Similarly, fishermen get updates about the tidal activities from the news. In addition to this, mass media also strives to keep the fabric of our social heritage intact which showcasing our customs, myths and civilization.

Another major product of mass media is advertising. This way people learn about the goods and services in the market. It also spreads social awareness. For instance, anti-smoking campaign, women empowerment, green earth clean earth and more.

Most importantly, with the numerous mediums available in multiple languages, the masses get entertainment in their own language easily. Millions of people get to access a cheap source of relaxation and pass their time. In fact, it also helps to transport momentarily from our ordinary lives to a dream world. Thus, it remains the undisputed leader in reaching out to the masses.

Conclusion of Essay on Mass Media

All in all, while it is an effective tool, we must also keep a check on its consumption. In other words, it has the power to create and destroy. Nonetheless, it is a medium which can bring about a change in the masses. Thus, everyone must utilize and consume it properly.

FAQ on Essay on Mass Media

Question 1: Why is mass media important?

Answer 1: Mass media is essential as it informs, educates and entertains the public. Moreover, it also influences the way we look at the world. In other words, it helps in organizing public opinion.

Question 2: How does mass media affect our lives?

Answer 2: Mass media affects many aspects of human life, which range from the way we vote to our individual views and beliefs. Most importantly, it also helps in debunking false information.

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Mass media and social media

Interest groups, opinion leaders, complex influences.

• Public opinion and government
• Opinion research
• Regional and global surveys
• World opinion
• Political polls
• The universe
• Probability sampling
• Nonprobability sampling
• Size and precision
• Sample size and definition
• Phrasing of questions
• Interviewing
• Presentation of findings
• Nonscientific polling
• Criticisms and justifications

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• University of Minnesota Libraries - What is Public Opinion?
• Digital Commons@University of Nebraska Lincoln - Theories of public opinion
• Academia - Public Opinion and Propaganda in Governance
• University of Central Florida Pressbooks - The Nature of Public Opinion
• Social Science LibreTexts - What is Public Opinion?
• Table Of Contents

Newspapers and news and opinion Web sites , social media , radio , television , e-mail , and blogs are significant in affirming attitudes and opinions that are already established. The U.S. news media, having become more partisan in the first two decades of the 21st century, have focused conservative or liberal segments of the public on certain personalities and issues and generally reinforced their audience’s preexisting political attitudes.

Mass media and social media can also affirm latent attitudes and “activate” them, prompting people to take action. Just before an election , for example, voters who earlier had only a mild preference for one party or candidate may be inspired by media coverage not only to take the trouble to vote but perhaps also to contribute money or to help a party organization in some other way.

Mass media and social media, to varying extents, play another important role by letting individuals know what other people think and by giving political leaders large audiences. In this way the media make it possible for public opinion to encompass large numbers of individuals and wide geographic areas. It appears, in fact, that in some European countries the growth of broadcasting, especially television, affected the operation of the parliamentary system . Before television, national elections were seen largely as contests between a number of candidates or parties for parliamentary seats. As the electronic media grew more sophisticated technologically, elections increasingly assumed the appearance of a personal struggle between the leaders of the principal parties concerned. In the United States , presidential candidates have come to personify their parties. Once in office, a president can easily appeal to a national audience over the heads of elected legislative representatives.

In areas where the mass media are thinly spread or where access to social media is limited, as in developing countries or in countries where print and electronic media are strictly controlled, word of mouth can sometimes perform the same functions as the press and broadcasting, though on a more limited scale. In developing countries, it is common for those who are literate to read from newspapers to those who are not or for large numbers of persons to gather around the village radio or a community television. Word of mouth in the marketplace or neighbourhood then carries the information farther. In countries where important news is suppressed by the government, a great deal of information is transmitted by rumour. Word of mouth (or other forms of person-to-person communication , such as text messaging ) thus becomes the vehicle for underground public opinion in authoritarian or totalitarian countries, even though these processes are slower and usually involve fewer people than in countries where the media network is dense and uncontrolled.

Interest groups , nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), religious groups, and labour unions ( trade unions ) cultivate the formation and spread of public opinion on issues of concern to their constituencies . These groups may be concerned with political, economic, or ideological issues, and most work through the mass media and social media as well as by word of mouth. Some of the larger or more affluent interest groups around the world make use of advertising and public relations . One increasingly popular tactic is the informal poll or straw vote. In this approach, groups ask their members and supporters to “vote”—usually via text messaging or on Web sites—in unsystematic “polls” of public opinion that are not carried out with proper sampling procedures. Multiple votes by supporters are often encouraged, and, once the group releases its findings to credible media outlets, it claims legitimacy by citing the publication of its poll in a recognized newspaper or other news source.

Reasons for conducting unscientific polls range from their entertainment value to their usefulness in manipulating public opinion, especially by interest groups or issue-specific organizations, some of which exploit straw-poll results as a means of making their causes appear more significant than they actually are. On any given issue, however, politicians will weigh the relatively disinterested opinions and attitudes of the majority against the committed values of smaller but more-dedicated groups for whom retribution at the ballot box is more likely.

Opinion leaders play a major role in defining popular issues and in influencing individual opinions regarding them. Political leaders in particular can turn a relatively unknown problem into a national issue if they decide to call attention to it in the media. One of the ways in which opinion leaders rally opinion and smooth out differences among those who are in basic agreement on a subject is by inventing symbols or coining slogans: in the words of U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson , the Allies in World War I were fighting “a war to end all wars,” while aiming “to make the world safe for democracy”; post-World War II relations with the Soviet Union were summed up in the term “Cold War,” first used by U.S. presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in 1947. Once enunciated , symbols and slogans are frequently kept alive and communicated to large audiences via the mass media and social media and may become the cornerstone of public opinion on any given issue.

Opinion leadership is not confined to prominent figures in public life. An opinion leader can be any person to whom others look for guidance on a certain subject. Thus, within a given social group one person may be regarded as especially well-informed about local politics, another as knowledgeable about foreign affairs, and another as expert in real estate. These local opinion leaders are generally unknown outside their own circle of friends and acquaintances, but their cumulative influence in the formation of public opinion is substantial.

Because psychological makeup, personal circumstances, and external influences all play a role in the formation of each person’s opinions, it is difficult to predict how public opinion on an issue will take shape. The same is true with regard to changes in public opinion. Some public opinions can be explained by specific events and circumstances, but in other cases the causes are more elusive . (Some opinions, however, are predictable: the public’s opinions about other countries, for example, seem to depend largely on the state of relations between the governments involved. Hostile public attitudes do not cause poor relations—they are the result of them.)

People presumably change their own attitudes when they no longer seem to correspond with prevailing circumstances and, hence, fail to serve as guides to action. Similarly, a specific event, such as a natural disaster or a human tragedy, can heighten awareness of underlying problems or concerns and trigger changes in public opinion. Public opinion about the environment , for instance, has been influenced by single events such as the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962; by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 ( see Chernobyl accident ); by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 address to the Royal Society on a number of environmental topics, including global warming ; by the accidental spill from the oil tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989; and by the Academy Award-winning documentary on climate change , An Inconvenient Truth , in 2006. It is nonetheless the case that whether a body of public opinion on a given issue is formed and sustained depends to a significant extent on the attention it receives in the mass media.

Some changes in public opinion have been difficult for experts to explain. During the second half of the 20th century in many parts of the world, attitudes toward religion , family, sex, international relations , social welfare, and the economy underwent major shifts. Although important issues have claimed public attention in all these areas, the scope of change in public attitudes and opinions is difficult to attribute to any major event or even to any complex of events.

Short Essay: Mass Media

Mass media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion, disseminating information, and influencing culture and politics. Writing a short essay on mass media requires a concise exploration of its functions, impacts, and the issues surrounding its influence. This guide will help you structure a comprehensive, engaging, and informative essay on this broad topic.

Table of Contents

Title and Introduction

Title : Choose a title that reflects the scope and angle of your essay, such as “Mass Media: The Engine of Modern Influence.”

Body of the Essay

Challenges and Ethical Considerations :

Mass Media Essay Example #1

Mass media refers to the various platforms through which information and entertainment are delivered to a large audience. These include television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and, increasingly, digital channels such as social media and online news websites. This essay explores the significant role mass media plays in shaping public opinion, influencing culture, and its implications on democracy and individual behavior.

In democratic societies, the media is often termed the “fourth estate,” highlighting its role as a watchdog of the public interest. It serves to check and balance the powers of government by exposing wrongdoing, corruption, and abuse of power. Investigative journalism, for instance, has been crucial in uncovering scandals and holding public officials accountable.

Ethically, the media has a responsibility to provide accurate, balanced, and fair reporting. However, the pressure to increase viewership or readership can sometimes lead media outlets to engage in practices that compromise these ethical standards. The representation of minorities, the handling of sensitive issues, and respect for privacy are ongoing ethical concerns in media practice.

Mass Media Essay Example #2

Work-life balance refers to the equilibrium where individuals prioritize both work and aspects of their personal life. This balance is crucial because it affects physical, emotional, and mental health. When work dominates life, it can lead to stress, burnout, and other health issues. Conversely, inadequate engagement in work can lead to a lack of career fulfillment and potential financial instability, affecting one’s sense of purpose and well-being.

Individual strategies to achieve work-life balance include setting clear boundaries between work and personal life. This might involve turning off work-related notifications after work hours or dedicating specific times for family and leisure activities. Effective time management also plays a critical role, as it allows individuals to maximize productivity during work hours, thereby freeing up time for personal pursuits.

In conclusion, achieving a healthy work-life balance is essential for both personal well-being and professional success. In the modern workplace, both employers and employees need to actively pursue strategies and policies that support this balance. As the nature of work continues to evolve, fostering environments that prioritize both productivity and well-being will be crucial for sustainable professional and personal development.

Mass Media Essay Example #3

Mass media also serves as a cultural conduit, spreading and normalizing societal norms and values. Through movies, television shows, and advertisements, media not only reflects cultural trends but also actively shapes them. This can be seen in the way global media phenomena, like American movies or Korean pop music, influence fashion, language, and behaviors across different cultures, promoting a homogenized global culture.

Ethical considerations in mass media are manifold. Issues such as bias, manipulation, privacy, and the representation of minority groups are perennial concerns. The ethical mandate for accuracy and fairness often clashes with the commercial imperatives of attracting a large audience. Moreover, in the digital age, the rapid spread of misinformation online poses additional ethical challenges for media practitioners and platforms.

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Essay on Mass Media

Students are often asked to write an essay on Mass Media in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Mass Media

Introduction.

Mass media refers to various platforms that communicate and distribute information to a large number of people. These include television, radio, newspapers, and the internet.

Role of Mass Media

Mass media plays a crucial role in society. It educates, entertains, and informs people. It also influences public opinion and trends.

Types of Mass Media

There are traditional forms like print media (newspapers, magazines) and broadcast media (TV, radio). The internet is a modern form, including social media, blogs, and news websites.

In conclusion, mass media is a powerful tool that can shape society. It is vital to use it responsibly for the benefit of all.

250 Words Essay on Mass Media

Introduction to mass media.

Mass media refers to the diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. It encompasses various forms of communication tools such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and digital platforms. The power of mass media lies in its ability to disseminate information, influence public opinion, and shape societal norms.

The Evolution of Mass Media

The journey of mass media began with print media, with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. The advent of electronic media, such as radio and television, in the 20th century, revolutionized the way information was shared. In the digital age, the internet has further transformed mass media, allowing for instantaneous global communication and interactivity.

Impact of Mass Media on Society

Mass media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and culture. It has the power to influence political discourse, societal norms, and individual behavior. However, it can also propagate misinformation, leading to public confusion and mistrust. Hence, the ethical use of mass media is crucial.

The Future of Mass Media

The future of mass media lies in its convergence with digital technology. With the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, mass media is likely to become even more personalized and interactive. However, this also raises concerns about privacy and the potential manipulation of information.

In conclusion, mass media, as a powerful tool of communication, has a profound impact on society. Its evolution and future developments pose both opportunities and challenges that need to be addressed responsibly.

500 Words Essay on Mass Media

Mass media, an essential component of modern society, plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and disseminating information. It includes various platforms such as newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, which collectively serve as a mirror reflecting societal norms, values, and transformations.

The Role of Mass Media

Mass media is not merely an information-dissemination tool; it is a potent force in shaping public opinion and culture. It serves as a platform for debate, influencing political discourse and social issues. It has the power to set the agenda for public discourse, highlighting certain issues while downplaying others, thereby influencing what the public perceives as significant.

Democratization of Information

The advent of the internet and digital platforms has democratized information access, transforming mass media’s role. Previously, media was a one-way communication channel, with the public as passive consumers. However, the internet has made the public active participants, enabling them to generate, share, and react to content. This shift has democratized media, giving voice to previously unheard sections of society.

Mass Media and Social Change

Mass media has the potential to drive social change by bringing social issues to the forefront. It can expose injustices, spark debates, and drive collective action. For instance, the #MeToo movement gained momentum through social media, leading to significant shifts in societal attitudes towards sexual harassment.

The Dark Side of Mass Media

The need for media literacy.

Given mass media’s influence, media literacy is crucial. It involves the ability to critically analyze media content, discerning between credible information and misinformation. Media literacy education can empower individuals, enabling them to make informed decisions and participate effectively in the digital age.

In conclusion, mass media is a double-edged sword with the power to shape society positively or negatively. As we navigate this digital age, it is crucial to harness its potential for societal good, while mitigating its negative impacts. This balancing act requires critical media literacy, stringent regulations, and active participation from all stakeholders. The future of mass media is not just about technological advancements, but also about the ethical and responsible use of these powerful platforms.

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POLSC101: Introduction to Political Science

How mass media forms public opinion.

As described in the last section, the "media" is considered an important agent of political socialization, as it can teach people certain political beliefs or values. Besides the socializing role, the media also serves as a "watchdog", drawing attention to government corruption or mistakes, which promotes government transparency and accountability. The media can also serve an agenda-setting role. By covering some news stories and not others, the media has the power to shape what people will think or talk about. Similarly, by "framing" a story from a particular perspective, the media often influences both public opinion and influence government leaders.

Media can have an important effect on public opinion in several ways.

Learning Objectives

Explain the different ways that the mass media forms public opinion

• 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 generations.
• 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

• 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.

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Mass Media - Essay Samples And Topic Ideas For Free

Mass media, a formidable force in shaping public opinion and cultural norms, encompasses a wide range of platforms including newspapers, television, radio, and digital outlets. Essays could delve into the historical evolution of mass media, exploring its role in political communication, social mobilization, and cultural exchange. The discourse might extend to the examination of the challenges and opportunities posed by the digital revolution, discussing issues like fake news, media literacy, and the consolidation of media ownership. Discussions could also focus on the societal and psychological impacts of mass media, exploring its influence on body image, consumer behavior, and political polarization. Moreover, a comprehensive exploration could include a discussion on the regulatory frameworks governing media, the ethical considerations in journalism, and the future of mass media in the face of emerging technologies and changing societal dynamics, offering a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted role of mass media in contemporary society. We have collected a large number of free essay examples about Mass Media you can find in Papersowl database. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

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Public Opinion: Mass Media and Social Media

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An Issue of Fake News in World

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Influence of Social Media on Youth

Media is quickly evolving, especially social media that has captured the attention of many children. There are new forms of media that are coming up with the rapid rise in technology. It is clear that media has been influential factors on how it benefits children's interaction. Media is not only an essential part in influencing socialization among children, especially the peer group but now it has become part of the community marketing and motivation of people. However, it has been […]

Yellow Journalism Today

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Internet Censorship should it be Allowed

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Essay on Mass Media 1000+ Words

Mass media plays a significant role in our lives, shaping the way we receive information, interact with the world, and make decisions. In this essay, we will explore the importance of mass media, its impact on society, and how it has become an integral part of our daily lives.

Information Dissemination

Mass media serves as a powerful tool for information dissemination. It delivers news, updates, and knowledge to people worldwide. Statistics show that television, newspapers, and online platforms are primary sources of information for a vast majority of the population.

Education and Awareness

Mass media is an essential educational resource. It provides opportunities for learning, raising awareness, and sharing knowledge. Educational programs, documentaries, and online courses are readily accessible through various media channels.

Shaping Public Opinion

Mass media influences public opinion and helps shape our understanding of current events and issues. Expert opinions and analysis provided by journalists and experts guide our perception of the world. Media outlets often serve as watchdogs, holding governments and institutions accountable.

Entertainment and Culture

Mass media offers a wide range of entertainment, from movies and television shows to music and literature. It reflects and shapes our culture, showcasing different perspectives and creative expressions. Experts highlight the role of media in preserving and promoting cultural heritage.

Social Connection

In an increasingly digital world, mass media facilitates social connection. Social media platforms, for instance, allow people to connect, share experiences, and build communities. Statistics indicate that billions of people use social media to stay connected with friends and family.

Advertising and Consumerism

Advertising is a significant aspect of mass media. It influences consumer choices, promotes products and services, and drives the economy. Expert opinions emphasize the role of advertising in shaping consumer behavior and driving economic growth.

Political Influence

Mass media plays a critical role in politics. It informs citizens about government actions, elections, and policy decisions. Media outlets provide a platform for political discourse and debates. Statistics reveal that many voters rely on media coverage to make informed political decisions.

Public Health and Awareness

Mass media contributes to public health by disseminating information about health risks, medical breakthroughs, and healthy lifestyles. It raises awareness about epidemics, emergencies, and vaccination campaigns. Experts stress the role of the media in promoting public health initiatives.

Environmental Awareness

Mass media helps raise awareness about environmental issues and climate change. Documentaries, news reports, and educational programs inform the public about environmental challenges and encourage sustainable practices. Statistics show that media coverage influences public support for environmental policies.

Adaptation and Evolution

Mass media continues to adapt and evolve with technological advancements. It has transitioned from traditional forms like newspapers and television to digital platforms, enabling real-time information sharing and global connectivity. Expert opinions predict ongoing changes and innovations in the media landscape.

Conclusion of Essay on Mass Media

In conclusion, mass media is an integral part of our modern world, influencing how we receive information, make decisions, and connect with one another. It serves as a valuable source of information, education, and entertainment. Mass media shapes public opinion, reflects our culture, and plays a significant role in politics, advertising, and public health.

As a fifth-grader, you can start by using mass media responsibly and critically evaluating the information you encounter. Be aware of the impact it can have on your understanding of the world and the choices you make. Mass media is a powerful tool, and by using it wisely, you can become a more informed and responsible consumer of information in our media-driven society.

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More Americans now see the media’s influence growing compared with a year ago

Americans’ views about the influence of the media in the country have shifted dramatically over the course of a year in which there was much discussion about the news media’s role during the election and post-election coverage , the COVID-19 pandemic and protests about racial justice . More Americans now say that news organizations are gaining influence than say their influence is waning, a stark contrast to just one year ago when the reverse was true.

When Americans were asked to evaluate the media’s standing in the nation, about four-in-ten (41%) say news organizations are growing in their influence, somewhat higher than the one-third (33%) who say their influence is declining, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 8-14, 2021. The remaining one-quarter of U.S. adults say they are neither growing nor declining in influence.

To examine Americans’ views about the influence of the news media, Pew Research Center surveyed 12,045 U.S. adults from March 8 to 14, 2021. Everyone who completed the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology . See here to read more about the questions used for this analysis and the methodology .

This is the latest report in Pew Research Center’s ongoing investigation of the state of news, information and journalism in the digital age, a research program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

By comparison, Americans in early 2020 were far more likely to say the news media were declining in influence . Nearly half (48%) at that time said this, compared with far fewer (32%) who said news organizations were growing in influence.

The 2021 figures more closely resemble responses from 2011 – the next most recent time this was asked – and before, in that more Americans then said the news media were growing in influence than declining. Views could have shifted in the gap between 2011 and 2020, but if so, they have now shifted back. (It should be noted that prior to 2020, this question was asked on the phone instead of on the web.)

What’s more, this shift in views of the media’s influence in the country occurred among members of both political parties – and in the same direction.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are about evenly split in whether they think news organizations are growing (40%) or declining in influence (41%). This is very different from a year ago, when Republicans were twice as likely to say their influence was declining than growing (56% vs. 28%).

And Democrats and Democratic leaners are now much more likely to say news organizations are growing (43%) than declining in influence (28%), while a year ago they were slightly more likely to say influence was declining (42% vs. 36% growing).

Overall, then, Republicans are still more likely than Democrats to say the news media are losing standing in the country, though the two groups are more on par in thinking that the media are increasing in their influence. (Democrats are somewhat more likely than Republicans to say news organizations are neither growing nor declining in influence – 29% vs. 19%.)  

Trust in media closely ties to whether its influence is seen as growing or declining. Those who have greater trust in national news organizations tend to be more likely to see the news media gaining influence, while those with low levels of trust are generally more likely to see it waning.

Americans who say they have a great deal of trust in the accuracy of political news from national news organizations are twice as likely to say the news media are growing than declining in influence (48% vs. 24%, respectively). Conversely, those who have no trust at all are much more likely to think that news organizations are declining (47% vs. 33% who say they are growing).

Black Americans are far more likely to think that the news media are growing in influence rather than declining (48% vs. 19%, respectively), as are Hispanic Americans though to a somewhat lesser degree. White Americans, on the other hand, are about evenly split in thinking the news media are growing or declining in influence (39% vs. 37%, respectively). And while men are about evenly split (39% growing vs. 38% declining), women are more likely to say news organizations are growing (43%) than declining (29%) in influence.

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, along with responses, and its methodology .

• Media Attitudes
• Politics & Media

Jeffrey Gottfried is an associate director focusing on internet and technology research at Pew Research Center .

Naomi Forman-Katz is a research analyst focusing on news and information research at Pew Research Center .

Americans’ Changing Relationship With Local News

Introducing the pew-knight initiative, 8 facts about black americans and the news, u.s. adults under 30 now trust information from social media almost as much as from national news outlets, u.s. journalists differ from the public in their views of ‘bothsidesism’ in journalism, most popular.

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The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field We invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter .

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By Jennifer Akin  and Heidi Burgess

Original Publication (of Jennifer Akin's essay): March 2005. 

Current Implications and new material was added by Heidi Burgess in June 2020.

Current Implications

Jennifer Akin wrote this article fifteen years ago, and while most of what it said then is still very much true, it is astonishing, to me at least, how much these trends have been accelerated with the new forms of media (particularly social media) that didn't exist when this essay was first written. Since we no longer are in contact with the author (who was a graduate student working with us in 2005), I (Heidi Burgess) have taken the liberty of updating this essay by adding additional material about what has happened in the period 2005-2020. More...

"Mass media" is a deceptively simple term encompassing a countless array of institutions and individuals who differ in purpose, scope, method, and cultural context. Mass media include all forms of information communicated to large groups of people, from a handmade sign to an international news network. There is no standard for how large the audience needs to be before communication becomes "mass" communication. There are also no constraints on the type of information being presented. A car advertisement, a fake social media post coming from Russia, and a U.N. resolution are all examples of mass media.

Because "media" is such a broad term, it will be helpful in this discussion to focus on a limited definition. In general usage, the term has been taken to refer to only "the group of corporate entities, publishers, journalists, and others who constitute the communications industry and profession." This definition includes both the entertainment and news industries. Another common term, especially in talking about conflict, is "news media." News media include only the news industry. It is often used interchangeably with "the press" or the group of people who write and report the news.

I n 2020, this definition of mass media is clearly too narrow.  Social media--including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr and the like -- allows anyone in the world to post pretty much anything they want--true or false--with very little oversight or censorship.  This has resulted in the widespread use of "bots"--computers--that generate millions of fake, almost always inflammatory, stories which they widely post on these social media apps, masquarading as real people, even as known friends of real people.  This is thought to significantly sway public opinion toward the extremes--in the U.S., for example, making conservatives think that liberals are far worse than they really are, and making liberals think the opposite. The result is increasing polarization of both the electorate and our decision makers, making our political processes largely dysfunctional.

At the same time, in the U.S., the Trump administration has demonized the legitimate news media, calling any story that criticizes him, and others, "fake news," and declaring journalists to be "enemies of the people."  This has led his followers to rely on media that is friendly to Trump--Fox News and social media, and to distrust anything they get from traditional news outlets. It has also led to numerous physical attacks on journalists.  Most recently, this happened on several occassions during the May-June 2020 protests about police brutality following the death of George Floyd. 

Attacking journalists is not limited to the United States of course.  Perhaps the most high-profile recent example was the Saudi Arabian murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post reporter and Saudi dissident, who was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Instanbul in 2018. But journalists have been at risk world wide for a long time. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 1373 Journalists have been killed between 1992 and 2020, all over the world. 

So being a journalist is a dangerous business, and it seems to be getting more dangerous all the time.

Going back to what Jennifer Akin wrote in 2005, the distinction between news and entertainment can at times be fuzzy, but news is technically facts and interpretation of facts, including editorial opinions, expressed by journalism professionals. Which facts are included, how they are reported, how much interpretation is given, and how much space or time is devoted to a news event is determined by journalists and management and will depend on a variety of factors ranging from the editorial judgment of the reporters and editors, to other news events competing for the same time or space, to corporate policies that reflect management's biases.

The distinction between news, entertainment, and opinion has gotten much fuzzier since 2005.  The U.S.-based Daily Show,  aired on the cable news channel Comedy Central, hosted by Jon Stewart from 1999-2015, was one of the earliest (and best known) examples of a TV show that blended news and entertainment. (It still does so, although the host is now Trevor Noah.) Although Stewart defended his clear leftist bias at the time by asserting the show was "only entertainment," many people--particularly young people, relied on the Daily Show as their primary or only sounce of news. [12]

"Legitimate" news organizations, too, seem now to be blurring the distinction between "news" and "opinion."  In response to the New York Times' firing of its Editorial Page director, James Bennet, over the publication of an op-ed by Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton in June 2020, Roger Cohen penned an editorial arguing that "both sides" journalism is under attack by those who advocate journalism that operates from a "place of moral clarity." [13].  This notion is echoed and taken further by another Times opinion writer, Ross Douthat, who wrote (also in response to the Bennet firing) 

[There is a] growing newsroom assumption that greater diversity should actually lead to a more  singular  perspective on the news, a  journalism  of “truth” rather than “objectivity,” in which issues that involve black — or gay or female or transgender or immigrant — interests are covered less as complex debates and more as stories of good versus evil. ... The results of this shift have been particularly apparent lately at this newspaper, especially in the transformed relationship between our news and opinion pages. The Times of my youth and adolescence aspired to be nonpartisan in its news gathering, while the editorial page was frankly liberal and the Op-Ed page mostly (William Safire excepted) left-of-center. But as our news pages have become more ideological, oriented toward the perceived truths of the successor ideology — a shift documented last year by Zach Goldberg, a Ph.D student at Georgia State, in a series of striking charts showing how  the shifting vocabulary of activists  has taken off in Times stories — the Op-Ed page has gone from being to the left of the news pages to being, strangely, somewhat to their right. [14]

Mass communicated media saturated the industrialized world in 2005; this is true for the non-industrialized world, too, in 2020.) The television in the living room, the newspaper on the doorstep (not so much anymore!), the radio in the car, the computer and tablet, the fliers in the mailbox, and now most importantly, perhaps in 2020, the cell phone are just a few of the media channels daily delivering advertisements, news, opinion, music, and other forms of mass communication.

Because the media are so prevalent, they have an extremely powerful impact on how we view the world. Nearly everything we know about current events and politics comes from the media--it is only the most local and personal events that are experienced first-hand. Events in the larger community, the state, the country, and the rest of the world are experienced almost entirely through the media, be it a professional journalist or a "citizen journalist" posting on social media. 

Not only do the media report the news, they create the news by deciding what to report. The "top story" of the day has to be picked from the millions of things that happened that particular day. After something is deemed newsworthy, there are decisions on how much time or space to give it, whom to interview, what pictures to use, and how to frame it. Often considered by editors, but seldom discussed, is how the biases and interests of management will impact these determinations. All of these decisions add up to the audience's view of the world, and those who influence the decisions influence the audience.

The media, therefore, have enormous importance to conflict resolution because they are the primary -- and frequently only -- source of information regarding conflicts. If a situation doesn't make the news (now including social media), it simply does not exist for most people. When peaceful options such as negotiation and other collaborative problem-solving techniques are not covered, or their successes are not reported, they become invisible and are not likely to be considered or even understood as possible options in the management of a conflict.

The news media thrive on conflict. The lead story for most news programs is typically the most recent and extreme crime or disaster. Conflict attracts viewers, listeners, and readers to the media; the greater the conflict the greater the audience, and large audiences are imperative to the financial success of media outlets. Therefore, it is often in the media's interest to not only report conflict, but to play it up, making it seem more intense than it really is. Long-term, on-going conflict-resolution processes such as mediation are not dramatic and are often difficult to understand and report, especially since the proceedings are almost always closed to the media. Thus conflict resolution stories are easily pushed aside in favor of the most recent, the most colorful, and the most shocking aspects of a conflict. Groups that understand this dynamic can cater to it in order to gain media attention. Common criteria for terrorist attacks include timing them to coincide with significant dates, targeting elites, choosing sites with easy media access, and aiming for large numbers of casualties.[1] Protesters will hoist their placards and start chanting when the television cameras come into view. It is not unusual for camera crews or reporters to encourage demonstrators into these actions so they can return to their studios with exciting footage. The resulting media coverage can bestow status and even legitimacy on marginal opposition groups, so television coverage naturally becomes one of their planned strategies and top priorities. The "30-second sound bite" has become a familiar phrase in television and radio news and alert public figures strategize to use it to their advantage.

In most parts of the industrialized world, the news has to "sell," because the handful of giant media conglomerates that control most of the press (media outlets) place a high priority on profitable operations. Their CEOs are under relentless pressure to generate high returns on their shareholders' investments. Media companies face tight budgets and fierce competition, which often translate into fewer foreign correspondents, heavy reliance on sensationalism, space and time constraints, and a constant need for new stories. Reporters with pressing deadlines may not have time to find and verify new sources. Instead they tend to rely on government reports, press releases, and a stable of vetted sources, which are usually drawn from "reliable" companies and organizations. Most overseas bureaus have been replaced by "parachute journalism," where a small news crew spends a few days or less in the latest hotspot. These same media outlets are also dependent upon advertisement revenue, and that dependence can compromise their impartiality. Many newspapers and television stations think twice before reporting a story that might be damaging to their advertisers, and will choose to avoid the story, if possible. According to a survey taken in 2000, "...about one in five (20 percent) of local and (17 percent) (of) national reporters say they have faced criticism or pressure from their bosses after producing or writing a piece that was seen as damaging to their company's financial interests."[2] The drive to increase advertising revenue has led many local news shows to measure out world news in seconds to accommodate longer weather and sports reports.

In 2005, (Aiken wrote) the news that was reported in the West came from an increasingly concentrated group of corporate- and individually-owned conglomerates. The majority of all media outlets in the United States and a large share of those internationally were owned by a handful of corporations: Vivendi/Universal, AOL/Time Warner (CNN), The Walt Disney Co. (ABC), News Corporation (FOX), Viacom (CBS), General Electric (NBC), and Bertelsmann.[3] These companies' holdings included international news outlets, magazines, television, books, music, and movies as well as large commercial subsidiaries that were not part of the media. Many of these companies are the result of mergers and acquisitions that began in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan's de-regulatory policies began to facilitate such consolidation, and further mergers have occurred ever since.

Recently (now speaking of the period 2015-2020), this trend has continued and even accelerated.  It has been particularly evident in "local news." Edmund Andrews, from Stanford wrote in 2019 that 

Local TV news shows collectively attract 25 million nightly viewers, far more than national cable programs such as Fox News and MSNBC. And that’s been attractive to major media conglomerates, which have been snapping up local TV stations in recent years. As of 2016,  five big companies controlled 37%  of these stations. [15]

Andrews sites a study co-authored by Gregory Martin of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Joshua McCrain of Emory University who studied the behavior an impact of such conglomerate, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which, at the time, owned 191 stations that reached almost 40% of the U.S. population.  It has attracted attention, Andrews points out, for its conservative political views.  

During the 2016 election campaign, for example, Sinclair stations aired  15 “exclusive” interviews  with Donald Trump. In 2017, it hired a former Trump White House official as its chief political analyst and made his commentaries must-run on all stations. Last year, all of its anchors were ordered to read an identical script that  echoed Trump’s rhetoric about “fake news” . [16] ... The first thing they found was that the newly acquired Sinclair stations increased the time allocated to national politics by about 25%. That increase came largely at the expense of local political news. Existing Sinclair stations also allocated about 25% more time than their rivals to national politics.  [17]

The result of this trend is negative for two reasons.  One, the increase in national coverage comes with a decrease in local converage.  This results in a decrease in citizens' knowledge about and engagement with the politicians and issues in their own communities.  So one potentially important way in which "ordinary citizens" can become empowered and engaged in issues that affect their lives--through their local political processes--is increasingly turned off to them.  

In addition, the Stanford/Emory study suggested that media conglomerates could sway national elections. 

“There is a lot of evidence from other research that the political content of news affects election outcomes,” Martin says. “So the evidence that we present, which shows that the tastes of media owners affect local news content, means the owners of media outlets have a lot of political power. That’s something that regulators of media should take into account.” [18]

The same thing is happening with local newspapers--they have been increasingly bought out by large conglomerates such as GateHouse Media (which recently bought Gannet, also a large conglomerate owner of local papers), and Alden Global Capital. According to Leonhardt of the New York Times (and many other observers as well,) these conglomerates don't care at all about the quality of local media.  Rather, they usually gut the papers of reporters, replacing the local coverage with one-size-fits all national news, slanted the way the conglomerate wants.  Or they just run the newspapers into the ground and close them down. According to Julie Bosman, also of the New York Times, 

School board and city council meetings are going uncovered. Overstretched reporters receive promising tips about stories but have no time to follow up. Newspapers publish fewer pages or less frequently or, in hundreds of cases across the country, are shuttered completely. All of this has added up to a crisis in local news coverage in the United States that has frayed communities and left many Americans woefully uninformed, according to  a report by PEN America  released on Wednesday. [19]

Quoting the report by PEN America, she says 

“A vibrant, responsive democracy requires enlightened citizens, and without forceful local reporting they are kept in the dark,” the report said. “At a time when political polarization is increasing and fraudulent news is spreading, a shared fact-based discourse on the issues that most directly affect us is more essential and more elusive than ever.” [20]

The report, itself, goes onto say:

Without reliable information on how tax dollars are spent, how federal policy affects local communities, and whether local elected officials are meeting constituent needs, how can citizens make informed choices about who should govern? [21]

Going back to Aiken's words in 2005, in addition to the control exercised by owners, there are also government controls and self-censorship. The United States, governed by a constitution where the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press, has arguably one of the most free presses in the world, and is one of the few countries where the right to free speech is expressly written into the constitution. Yet even the U.S. government exerts control over the media, particularly during times of war or crisis. In many other countries around the world, especially emerging nations and dictatorships, governments impose tight restrictions on journalists, including penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment and execution. In these environments, rigorous self-censorship is necessary for survival. In a major survey of 287 U.S. journalists, "about a quarter of those polled have personally avoided pursuing newsworthy stories."[5]

This problem, too, has gotten much worse since Donald Trump was elected U.S. President in 2016.  As we said above, he routinely labels any story he doesn't like "fake," and uses Twitter as his mass media outlet to let everyone know what is "real" in his view.  According to David Markowitz, writing in Forbes in May 2020,  

As of early April, Trump has told 23.3 lies per day in 2020, a 0.5-lie increase since 2019. What’s more, Trump has averaged 23.8 lies per day since the first case of COVID-19 was reported in the US — another 0.5-lie increase. Even during a pandemic, when the public needs to trust and rely on him the most, deception remains a core part of the president’s playbook. What’s unusual about Trump is not just how often he lies, but what he lies about and where he communicates his lies most often. [22]

Trump's favorite topics, according to Markowitz are guns, the economy, education, and elections, although the Coronavirus is particularly popular right now (May - June 1020). "President Trump seems impervious to the threat of detection or harsh  public opinion . He continues to deceive at record-setting rates using forums that amplify his lies, rather than hide them." [23]

While this is not exactly censorship, Trump is trying to make as many people as possible believe that the mainstream press is lying, and only he is telling "the truth." 

(Aiken's commentary from 2005) Without the media, most people would know little of events beyond their immediate neighborhood. The further one goes outside of one's circle of friends and family, the more time-consuming and expensive it becomes to get information--without media. Very few, if any, individuals have the resources to stay independently informed of world events. With the news and social media, however, all one has to do is turn on a television or turn to the Internet. Even when it is biased or limited, it is a picture of things that are happening around the world.

The more sources one compares a diversity of sources, the more accurate the picture that can be put together. In addition to the media conglomerates, there are also a range of independent news outlets, though they have a much smaller audience. Some of these provide an alternative view of events and often strive to publish stories that cannot be found in the mainstream media. So, too, in 2020, does social media, although it is increasingly hard to tell what social media posts are "legitimate" and which are, indeed, fakes--brought to you by Russian "bots," for instance.  However, the Internet now makes it possible to read papers and watch broadcasts from around the globe. While language skills can be a barrier, it is possible to live in the United States and watch Arab-language broadcasts from the Middle East, or to get on the Internet and read scores of Chinese newspapers. Having access to these alternative voices limits the power of monopolies over information.

Another important benefit of a functioning mass media is that information can be relayed quickly in times of crisis. Tornado and hurricane announcements can give large populations advance warning and allow them to take precautions and move out of harm's way. In a country suffering war, a radio broadcast outlining where the latest fighting is can alert people to areas to avoid. In quieter times, the media can publish other useful announcements, from traffic reports to how to avoid getting HIV. It is a stabilizing and civilizing force.

This, too, of course, is under attack in 2020, as Donald Trump is using Twitter and other mass media (such as ally Fox News) to spread massive amounts of false information about the COVID-19 pandemic.  So, the while the mass media still has the potential to be a "stablizing and civilizing force," As Akin wrote in 2005, it no longer so clearly is. 

Along the same lines, the news media allow elected and other officials to communicate with their constituents. Frequently, the delegates at a negotiation will find they understand each other much better over the course of their discussions, but that understanding will not reach the larger populations they represent without a concerted communications effort. If constituents are not aware of these new understandings (and subsequent compromises) during the course of negotiations, they will almost certainly feel cheated when a final agreement falls far short of their expectations. To achieve ratification, delegates must justify the agreement by discussing it with and explaining it to their constituents throughout the entire process[6] and the media is often used for this purpose.

"CNN Effect"

A recent media (in 2005) phenomenon dubbed the "CNN effect" occurs when powerful news media (i.e. CNN) seem to be creating the news by reporting it. It has been argued that CNN, with its vast international reach, sets the agenda by deciding which items are newsworthy and require the attention of government leaders. Traditionally, agenda-setting has been seen as the prerogative of government. It is also argued that emotionally-charged footage of people suffering, such as mass starvation, bombed-out markets, and burning houses, arouse the public to demand immediate action. This gives leaders little time to think through an appropriate response and can force them to take valuable resources from more urgent, less photogenic issues.

This use of sensational imagery is cited as being responsible for the United States' ill-fated involvement in Somalia : "In the words of one U.S. congressman, 'Pictures of starving children, not policy objectives, got us into Somalia in 1992. Pictures of U.S. casualties, not the completion of our objectives, led us to exit Somalia.' "[7] On the other hand, failure of the media to fully report on the genocide that claimed an estimated 800,000 lives in Rwanda during a 100-day period in 1994, made it easy for Western governments to ignore the crisis that they preferred not to acknowledge until long after it ended.

The CNN effect also brings up issues of accuracy. The New York Times, with its vast resources, has long been known as "the newspaper of record; once something is reported by this leading news outlet it is accepted as fact (unverified) and carried by other outlets, even when errors creep into the Times' account. (In 2020, the Times is now considered the newspaper of record by liberals only; it is seen as a top purveyor of fake news by President Trump and many of his allies and followers.  

Some observers argue that the CNN effect is overrated, if not complete myth. Warren Strobel and Susan Carruthers, for example, argue that the U.S. government has not been forced into doing anything; rather, it used reaction over media stories to introduce policies that it already desired. Strobel also argues that any action a politician undertakes as a result of this pressure will be merely a "minimalist response" -- a limited action that suggests a greater response than has taken place.[8]

Theories of Journalism

Any discussion of media and conflict eventually leads to the purpose and responsibilities of journalists. A Western audience expects objectivity of its news reporters. While most citizens take this for granted, objective reporting has not been the historical norm. The concept of objectivity itself has often been the focus of debate. As Susan Carruthers states, "... news can never be 'value-free,' from 'nobody's point of view.' "[9] It is a sentiment voiced by numerous journalism professionals and teachers.

Deciding what the news is requires a value judgment . In the Western news media there is a consensus that news is something unusual which departs from everyday life and is quantifiable. For example, the outbreak of war is news, but any fighting thereafter might not be. As the war continues, its newsworthiness depends on whether the news agency's home troops are involved, whether the troops of close allies are involved, how many casualties are reported, how photogenic the victims are, whether reporters have access to the fighting and information about it, and what other stories occur at the same time. Western news consists of events, not processes. This bias can result in news reports where events seem to have no context.

In response to the drawbacks of 'objective' journalism, some journalists have begun advocating for alternative models, such as "peace journalism" and "public journalism." Peace journalism advocates the belief that journalists should use the power of the media to help resolve conflict rather than report it from a distance. Its detractors argue that "[o]nce a journalist has set himself the goal of stopping or influencing wars, it is a short step to accepting that any means to achieve that end are justified. ... There can be no greater betrayal of journalistic standards."[10]

The June 2020 dispute over the New York Times ' publication of Tom Cotton's op-ed is another example of this same conflict.  Both Roger Cohen and Ross Douthat wrote that the Times (the 2005 "Newspaper of Record") now is leaning toward a far-left interpretation of one view as "news," and relegates all other views to the opinion pages or out of the paper all together.  Although Cohen and Douthat agree that Tom Cotton's op-ed was odius, it still should have been published (as it was), and the Editorial Page Director who was fired for publishing it should not have been let go.  According to Cohen, 

I still believe in both-sides journalism. “A place of moral clarity” can easily mean there is only one truth, and if you deviate from it, you are done for. The liberal idea that freedom is served by open debate, even with people holding repugnant views, is worth defending. If conformity wins, democracy dies. [24]

Another "new" trend (in 2005) was "public journalism" which seeks to explore issues affecting a community and stay with those issues long enough to give the community enough information to understand the conflict and get involved. This, however, often requires a long-term commitment by the journalist and news media to follow a story over the course of the conflict. If the story is of continuing high importance to the readers -- such as a war that involves local troops, such coverage is common. If the story is not deemed continuously "newsworthy," however, it takes a committed journalist to continue to write about it and a news outlet the permits such committed reporting. [11]

Jennifer Akin wrote this article fifteen years ago, and while most of what it said then is still very much true, it is astonishing, to me at least, how much these trends have been accelerated with the new forms of media (particularly social media) that didn't exist when this essay was first written. Since we no longer are in contact with the author (who was a graduate student working with us in 2005), I (Heidi Burgess) have taken the liberty of updating this essay by adding additional material about what has happened in the period 2005-2020.

The biggest change, of course, is the development of social media which didn't exist when this essay was first written.  Social media has, in a sense "democratized journalism," since everyone can be a journalist, reporting on what they see from their vantage point to the entire world.  They can also give their opinion on world events and share them widely--something that was impossible to do when this essay was first written. 

Ironically, however, this "democratization of journalism" might actually destroy democracy, as it has allowed for the massive proliferation of fake stories--not the "fake news" that Donald Trump decries (which is most often factually correct), but rather the millions of fake stories, tweets, Facebook posts and the like that are being created by robots ("bots") working both in the U.S. and abroad, particularly, it seems, in Russia and Iran. These tweets and posts  have been designed to disrupt local, national, and global political debates, and influence elections in the U.S. and abroad. Indeed, the Meuller report confirms that Russian interference, mostly through mass media efforts, did significantly effect the 2016 Presidential election in the United States. 

Although Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets have said that they have made some efforts to prevent such manipulation, many observers feel they have not done nearly enough. Also, Trump (along with Congressional Republicans) have blocked a number of governmental efforts to protect our election processes.  So continued, even more massive, media manipulation is likely to influence the U.S. presidental election this November as well.

Back to Essay Top

[1] Schaffert, Richard W. "The Media's Influence on the Public's Perception of Terrorism and the Question of Media Responsibility." Media Coverage and Political Terrorists . New York: Praeger Publishers. 1992: 61-79

[2] Kohut, Andrew. "Self-Censorship: Counting the Ways." Columbia Journalism Review . May/June 2002. http://www.cjr.org/year/00/2/censorship.asp

[3] http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml

[4] Sanders, Edmund. "Results of FCC's Media Studies Are Released." Los Angeles Times . Oct. 2, 2002. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/202977141.html?did=202977141&FMT=ABS&FMTS=FT&desc=California%3b+Results+of+FCC%27s+Media+Studies+Are+Released

[5] Kohut, Andrew. "Self-Censorship: Counting the Ways." Columbia Journalism Review . May/June 2002.

[6] Laws, David. "Representation of Stakeholding Interests." The Consensus Building Handbook . Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. 1999.

[7] Carruthers, Susan L. The Media at War . New York: St. Martin's Press. 2000. p 206

[8] Strobel, Warren. 1996. Managing Global Chaos: Sources and Responses to International Conflict , eds. Chester A. Crocker and Fen Osler Hampson with Pamela Aall. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press. p. 366.

[9] Carruthers, Susan L. The Media at War . New York: St. Martin 's Press. 2000. p. 17.

[10] Weaver, Tim. "The End of War." Track Two . Vol. 7, No. 4. http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za/archive/two/7-4/p21-endofwar.html

[11] Special thanks to Richard Salem, President of Conflict Management Initiatives, for his assistance in drafting this essay.

[12] The New York Times published a lengthy interview with Stewart in June 2020 in which he reflected on his role in blending news and entertainment, and contributing, perhaps, to the confusion of the two. (Search for the phrase "We jused to have news and we had entertainment" to see Stewart's thoughts on this topic.)

[13] Roger Cohen, "The Outcry Over ‘Both Sides’ Journalism"  New York Times. June 12, 2020.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/journalism-debate.html

[14] Ross Douthat: "The Tom Cotton Op-Ed and the Cultural Revolution." New York Times, June 12, 2020.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/nyt-tom-cotton-oped-liberalism.html

[15, 16, 17, and 18] Edmund L. Andrews "Media Consolidation Means Less Local News, MOre Right Wing Slant," Insights by Stanford Business    https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/media-consolidation-means-less-local-news-more-right-wing-slant

[19 and 20] Julie Bosman "How the Collapse of Local News is Causing a 'National Crisis'" New York Times. November 20, 2019.  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/local-news-disappear-pen-america.html

[21] Pen America "Losing the News"  https://pen.org/local-news/

[22 and 23] David Markowitz "Trump is Lying More than Ever:  Just Look at the Data" Forbes.   https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmarkowitz/2020/05/05/trump-is-lying-more-than-ever-just-look-at-the-data/#10ca8c31e176

[24] Roger Cohen, "The Outcry Over ‘Both Sides’ Journalism"  New York Times. June 12, 2020.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/journalism-debate.html

Use the following to cite this article: Akin, Jennifer. "Mass Media." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: March 2005 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/mass-communication >.

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• Published: 26 July 2021

Large-scale quantitative evidence of media impact on public opinion toward China

• Junming Huang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2532-4090 1 ,
• Gavin G. Cook 1 &
• Yu Xie 1 , 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  181 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies
• Politics and international relations

Do mass media influence people’s opinions of other countries? Using BERT, a deep neural network-based natural language processing model, this study analyzes a large corpus of 267,907 China-related articles published by The New York Times since 1970. The output from The New York Times is then compared to a longitudinal data set constructed from 101 cross-sectional surveys of the American public’s views on China, revealing that the reporting of The New York Times on China in one year explains 54% of the variance in American public opinion on China in the next. This result confirms hypothesized links between media and public opinion and helps shed light on how mass media can influence the public opinion of foreign countries.

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Introduction.

America and China are the world’s two largest economies, and they are currently locked in a tense rivalry. In a democratic system, public opinion shapes and constrains political action. How the American public views China thus affects relations between the two countries. Because few Americans have personally visited China, most Americans form their opinions of China and other foreign lands from media depictions. Our paper aims to explain how Americans form their attitudes on China with a case study of how The New York Times may shape public opinion. Our analysis is not causal, but it is informed by a causal understanding of how public opinion may flow from the media to the citizenry.

Scholars have adopted a number of wide-ranging and even contradictory approaches to explain the relationships between media and the American mind. One school of thought stresses that media exposure shapes public opinion (Baum and Potter, 2008 ; Iyengar and Kinder, 2010 ). Another set of approaches focuses on how the public might lead the media by analyzing how consumer demand shapes reporting. Newspapers may attract readers by biasing coverage of polarizing issues towards the ideological proclivities of their readership (Mullainathan and Shleifer, 2005 ), and with the advent of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, traditional media are now more responsive to audience demand than ever before (Jacobs and Shapiro, 2011 ). On the other side of this equation, news consumers generally tend to seek out news sources with which they agree (Iyengar et al., 2008 ), and politically active individuals do so more proactively than the average person (Zaller, 1992 ).

Two other approaches address factors outside the media–public binary. The first, stresses the role of elites in opinion formation. While some, famously including Noam Chomsky, argue that news media are unwitting at best and at worst complicit “shills” of the American political establishment, political elites may affect public opinion directly by communicating with the public (Baum and Potter, 2008 ). Foreign elites may also influence American opinion because American reporters sometimes circumvent domestic sources and ask trusted foreign experts and officials for opinions (Hayes and Guardino, 2011 ). The second stresses how the macro-level phenomenon of public sentiment is shaped by micro-level and meso-level processes. An adult’s opinions on various topics emerge from their personal values, many of which are set during and around adolescence from factors outside of the realm of individual control (Hatemi and McDermott, 2016 ). Social networks may also affect attitude formation (Kertzer and Zeitzoff, 2017 ).

In light of these contradictory interpretations, it is difficult to be sure whether the media shape the attitudes of consumers or, on the other hand, whether consumers shape media (Baum and Potter, 2008 ). Moreover, most of the theories summarized above are tested on relatively small slices of data. In order to offer an alternative, “big data”-based contribution to this ongoing debate, this study compares how the public views China and how the news media report on China with large-scale data. Our data set, which straddles 50 years of newspaper reporting and survey data, is uniquely large and includes more than a quarter-million articles from The New York Times.

Most extant survey data indicate that Americans do not seem to like China very much (Xie and Jin, 2021 ). Many Americans are reported to harbor doubts about China’s record on human rights (Aldrich et al., 2015 ; Cao and Xu, 2015 ) and are anxious about China’s burgeoning economic, military, and strategic power (Gries and Crowson, 2010 ; Yang and Liu, 2012 ). They also think that the Chinese political system fails to serve the needs of the Chinese people (Aldrich et al., 2015 ). Most Americans, however, recognize a difference between the Chinese state, the Chinese people, and Chinese culture, and they view the latter two more favorably (Gries and Crowson, 2010 ). In Fiske’s Stereotype Content Model (Fiske et al., 2002 ), which expresses common stereotypes as a combination of “competence” and “warmth”, Asians belong to a set of “high-status, competitive out-groups” and rank high in competence but low in warmth (Lin et al., 2005 ).

The New York Times, which calls itself the “Newspaper of Record”, is the most influential newspaper in the USA and possibly even in the Anglophonic world. It boasts 7.5 million subscribers (Business Wire, 2021 ), and while the paper’s reach may be impressive, it is yet more significant that the readership of The New York Times represents an elite subset of the American public. Print subscribers to The New York Times have a median household income of $191,000, three times the median income of US households writ large (Rothbaum and Edwards, 2019 ). Despite the paper’s haughty and sometimes condescending reporting, it “has had and still has immense social, political, and economic influence on American and the world” (Schwarz, 2012 , p. 81). The New York Times may be a paper for America’s elite, and it may be biased to reflect the tastes of its elite audience, but the paper’s ideological slant does not affect our analyses as long as the its relevant biases are consistent over the time period covered by our analyses. Our analyses support the intuition of qualitative work on The Times (Schwarz, 2012 ) and show that these biases remain more or less constant for the decades in our sample. These analyses also illuminate some of the paper’s more notable biases, including the paper’s particular predilection for globalization.

The impact of social media on traditional media is not straightforward. While new media have certainly changed old media, neither has replaced the other. It is more accurate to say that old media have been integrated into new media and, in some ways, become a form of new media themselves. Twitter has accelerated the 2000s-era trends of information access that made it possible for news readers to find their own news and also enabled readers to interact with journalists (Jacobs and Shapiro, 2011 ), and the The New York Times seems to have made a significant commitment to the Twitter ecosystem. A quick glance at the follower count of The Times’ official Twitter account shows that it is one of the most influential accounts on the site, with almost 50 million followers. For comparison, both current president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris have around 10 million followers. Most New York Times reporters additionally have “verified” accounts on the platform, which means that individual reporters may be incentivized to maintain public-facing profiles more now than in the past.

The media consumption patterns that made new media possible have changed the way The New York Times interacts with its audience and how it extracts revenue. The New York Times boasts a grand total of 7.5 million subscribers, but only 800,000 of them subscribe to the print edition. The Times’ digital subscription base has boomed since the election of Donald J. Trump, growing almost sixfold from a paltry 1.3 million in 2015 to a staggering 6.7 million in 2020 (Business Wire, 2021 ). The Times increasingly relies more on digital subscriptions and less on print subscriptions and ad sales for revenue (Lee, 2020 ). Ad revenue for most papers has been in sharp decline since the early 2000s (Jacobs and Shapiro, 2011 ), and this trend has only continued into the present. The New York Times now operates almost like a direct-to-consumer, subscription tech startup. New media have not replaced but have certainly changed old media. The full impact of these changes is beyond the scope of this paper, and we suggest it as an area for further research.

A small body of prior work has studied the The New York Times and how The New York Times reports on China. Blood and Phillips use autoregression methods on time series data to predict public opinion (Blood and Phillips, 1995 ). Wu et al. use a similar autoregression technique and find that public sentiment regarding the economy predicts economic performance and that people pay more attention to economic news during recessions (Wu et al., 2002 ). Peng finds that coverage of China in the paper has been consistently negative but increasingly frequent as China became an economic powerhouse (Peng, 2004 ). There is very little other scholarship that applies language processing methods to large corpora of articles from The New York Times or other leading papers. Atalay et al. is an exception that uses statistical techniques for parsing natural languages to analyze a corpus of newspaper articles from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other leading papers in order to investigate the increasing use of information technologies in newspaper classifieds (Atalay et al., 2018 ).

We explore the impact of The New York Times on its readers by examining the general relationship between The Times and public opinion. Though some might contend that only elites read NYT, we have adopted this research strategy for two reasons. If the views of NYT only impacted the nation’s elite, the paper’s views would still propagate to the general public through the elites themselves because elites can affect public opinion outside of media channels (Baum and Potter, 2008 ). Additionally, it is a widely held belief that NYT serves as a general barometer of an agenda-setting agent for American culture (Schwarz, 2012 ). Because of these two reasons, we interpolate the relationship between NYT and public opinion from the relationship between NYT and its readers, and we extrapolate that the views of NYT are broadly representative of American media.

Our paper aims to advance understanding of how Americans form their attitudes on China with a case study of how The New York Times may shape public opinion. We hypothesize that media coverage of foreign nations affects how Americans view the rest of the world. This reduced-form model deliberately simplifies the interactions between audience and media and sidesteps many active debates in political psychology and political communication. Analyzing a corpus of 267,907 articles on China from The New York Times, we quantify media sentiment with BERT, a state-of-the-art natural language processing model with deep neural networks, and segment sentiment into eight domain topics. We then use conventional statistical methods to link media sentiment to a longitudinal data set constructed from 101 cross-sectional surveys of the American public’s views on China. We find strong correlations between how The New York Times reports on China in one year and the views of the public on China in the next. The correlations agree with our hypothesis and imply a strong connection between media sentiment and public opinion.

We quantify media sentiment with a natural language model on a large-scale corpus of 267,907 articles on China from The New York Times published between 1970 and 2019. To explore sentiment from this corpus in greater detail, we map every article to a sentiment category (positive, negative, or neutral) in eight topics: ideology, government and administration, democracy, economic development, marketization, welfare and well-being, globalization, and culture.

We do this with a three-stage modeling procedure. First, two human coders annotate 873 randomly selected articles with a total of 18,598 paragraphs expressing either positive, negative, or neutral sentiment in each topic. We treat irrelevant articles as neutral sentiments. Secondly, we fine-tune a natural language processing model Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) (Devlin et al., 2018 ) with the human-coded labels. The model uses a deep neural network with 12 layers. It accepts paragraphs (i.e., word sequences of no more than 128 words) as input and outputs a probability for each category. We end up with two binary classifiers for each topic for a grand total of 16 classifiers: an assignment classifier that determines whether a paragraph expresses sentiment in a given topic domain and a sentiment classifier that then distinguishes positive and negative sentiments in a paragraph classified as belonging to a given topic domain. Thirdly, we run the 16 trained classifiers on each paragraph in our corpus and assign category probabilities to every paragraph. We then use the probabilities of all the paragraphs in an article to determine the article’s overall sentiment category (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral) in every topic.

As demonstrated in Table 1 , the two classifiers are accurate at both the paragraph and article levels. The assignment classifier and the sentiment classifier reach classification accuracy of 89–96% and 73–90%, respectively, on paragraphs. The combined outcome of the classifiers, namely article sentiment, is accurate to 62–91% across the eight topics. For comparison, a random guess would reach an accuracy of 50% on each task (see Supplementary Information for details).

American public opinion towards China is a composite measure drawn from national surveys that ask respondents for their opinions on China. We collect 101 cross-sectional surveys from 1974 to 2019 that asked relevant questions about attitudes toward China and incorporate a probabilistic model to harmonize different survey series with different scales (e.g., 4 levels, 10 levels) into a single time series, capitalizing on “seaming” years in which different survey series overlapped (Wang et al., 2021 ). For every year, there is a single real value representing American sentiment on China relative to the level in 1974. Put another way, we use sentiment in 1974 as a baseline measure to normalize the rest of the time series. A positive value shows a more favorable attitude than that in 1974, and a negative value represents a less favorable attitude than that in 1974. Because of this, the trends in sentiment changes year-over-year are of interest, but the absolute values of sentiment in a given year are not. As shown in Fig. 1 , public opinion towards China has varied greatly from 1974 to 2019. It steadily climbed from a low of −24% in 1976 to a high of 73% in 1987, and has fluctuated between 10% and 48% in the intervening 30 years.

This time series is aggregated from 101 cross-sectional surveys from 1974 to 2019 that asked relevant questions about attitudes toward China with the year of 1974 as baseline. Years with attitudes above zero show a more favorable attitude than that in 1974, with a peak of 73% in 1987. Years with attitudes below zero show a less favorable attitude than that in 1974, with the lowest level of −24% in 1976. The time series is shown with a 95% confidence interval.

We begin with a demonstration of how the reporting of The New York Times on China changes over time, and we follow this with an analysis of how coverage of China might influence public opinion toward China.

Trend of media sentiment

The New York Times has maintained a steady interest in China over the years and has published at least 3,000 articles on China in every year of our corpus. Figure 2 displays the yearly volume of China-related articles from The New York Times on each of the eight topics since 1970. Articles on China increased sharply after 2000 and eventually reached a peak around 2010, almost doubling their volume from the 1970s. As the number of articles on China increased, the amount of attention paid to each of the eight topics diverged. Articles on government, democracy, globalization, and culture were consistently common while articles on ideology were consistently rare. In contrast, articles on China’s economy, marketization, and welfare were rare before 1990 but became increasingly common after 2000. The timing of this uptick coincided neatly with worldwide recognition of China’s precipitous economic ascent and specifically the beginnings of China’s talks to join the World Trade Organization.

In each year we report in each topic the number of positive and negative articles while ignoring neutral/irrelevant articles. The media have consistently high attention on reporting China government & administration, democracy, globalization, and culture. There are emerging interests on China’s economics, marketization, and welfare and well-being since 1990s. Note that the sum of the stacks does not equal to the total volume of articles about China, because each article may express sentiment in none or multiple topics.

While the proportion of articles in each given topic change over time, the sentiment of articles in each topic is remarkably consistent. Ignoring neutral articles, Figure 3 illustrates the yearly fractions of positive and negative articles about each of the eight topics. We find four topics (economics, globalization, culture, and marketization) are almost always covered positively while reporting on the other four topics (ideology, government & administration, democracy, and welfare & well-being) is overwhelmingly negative.

The panel reports the trend of yearly media attitude toward China in ( A ) ideology, ( B ) government & administration, ( C ) democracy, ( D ) economic development, ( E ) marketization, ( F ) welfare & well-being, ( G ) globalization, and ( H ) culture. The media attitude is measured as the percentages of positive articles and negative articles, respectively. US–China relation milestones are marked as gray dots. The New York Times express diverging but consistent attitudes in the eight domains, with negative articles consistently common in ideology, government, democracy, and welfare, and positive sentiments common in economic, globalization, and culture. Standard errors are too small to be visible (below 1.55% in all topics all years).

The NYT views China’s globalization in a very positive light. Almost 100% of the articles mentioning this topic are positive for all of the years in our sample. This reveals that The New York Times welcomes China’s openness to the world and, more broadly, may be particularly partial to globalization in general.

Similarly, economics, marketization, and culture are covered most commonly in positive tones that have only grown more glowing over time. Positive articles on these topics began in the 1970s with China–US Ping–Pong diplomacy, and eventually comprise 1/4 to 1/2 of articles on these three topics, the remainder of which are mostly neutral articles. This agrees with the intuition that most Americans like Chinese culture. The New York Times has been deeply enamored with Chinese cultural products ranging from Chinese art to Chinese food since the very beginning of our sample. Following China’s economic reforms, the number of positive articles and the proportion of positive articles relative to negative articles increases for both economics and marketization.

In contrast, welfare and well-being are covered in an almost exclusively negative light. About 1/4 of the articles on this topic are negative, and almost no articles on this topic are positive. Topics regarding politics are covered very negatively. Negative articles on ideology, government and administration, and democracy outnumber positive articles on these topics for all of the years in our sample. Though small fluctuations that coincided with ebbs in US–China relations are observed for those three topics, coverage has only grown more negative over time. Government and administration is the only negatively covered topic that does feature some positive articles. This reflects the qualitative understanding that The New York Times thinks that the Chinese state is an unpleasant but capable actor.

Despite the remarkable diversity of sentiment toward China across the eight topics, sentiment within each of the topics is startlingly consistent over time. This consistency attests to the incredible stability of American stereotypes towards China. If there is any trend to be found here, it is that the main direction of sentiment in each topic, positive or negative, has grown more prevalent since the 1970s. This is to say that reporting on China has become more polarized, which is reflective of broader trends of media polarization (Jacobs and Shapiro, 2011 ; Mullainathan and Shleifer, 2005 ).

Media sentiment affects public opinion

To reveal the connection between media sentiment and public opinion, we run a linear regression model (Eq. ( 1 )) to fit public opinion with media sentiment from current and preceding years.

where μ t denotes public opinion in year t with possible values ranging from −1 to 1. F k j s is the fraction of positive ( s  = positive) or negative ( s  = negative) articles on topic k in year j . Coefficient β k j s quantifies the importance of F k j s in predicting μ t .

There is inertia to public opinion. A broadly held opinion is hard to change in the short term, and it may require a while for media sentiment to affect how the public views a given issue. For this reason, j is allowed to take [ t , t  − 1, t  − 2, ...] anywhere from zero to a couple of years ahead of t . In other words, we inspect lagged values of media sentiment as candidate predictors for public attitudes towards China.

We seek an optimal solution of media sentiment predictors to explain the largest fraction of variance ( r 2 ) of public opinion. To reduce the risk of overfitting, we first constrain the coefficients to be non-negative after reverse-coding negative sentiment variables, which means we assume that positive articles have either no impact or positive impact and that negative articles have either zero or negative impact on public opinion. Secondly, we require that the solution be sparse and contain no more than one non-zero coefficient in each topic:

where r 2 ( μ , β , F ) is the explained variance of μ fitted with ( β , F ). The l 0 -norm ∥ β k , ⋅ , ⋅ ∥ 0 gives the number of non-zero coefficients of topic k predictors.

The solution varies with the number of topics included in the fitting model. As shown in Table 2 , if we allow fitting with only one topic, we find that sentiment on Chinese culture has the most explanatory power, accounting for 31.2% of the variance in public opinion. We run a greedy strategy to add additional topics that yield the greatest increase in explanatory power, resulting in eight nested models (Table 2 ). The explanatory power of our models increases monotonically with the number of allowed topics but reaches a saturation point at which the marginal increase in variance explained per topics decreases after only two topics are introduced (see Table 2 ). To strike a balance between simplicity and explanatory power, we use the top two predictors, which are the positive sentiment of culture and the negative sentiment of democracy in the previous year, to build a linear predictor of public opinion that can be written as

where F culture, t −1,positive is the yearly fraction of positive articles on Chinese culture in year t  − 1 and F democracy, t −1,negative is the yearly fraction of negative articles on Chinese democracy in year t  − 1. This formula explains 53.9% of the variance of public opinion in the time series. For example, in 1993 53.9% of the articles on culture had a positive sentiment, and 46.9% of the articles on democracy had negative sentiment ( F c u l t u r e ,1993,positive  = 0.539, F democracy,1993,negative  = −0.469). Substituting those numbers into Eq. ( 2 ) predicts public opinion in the next year (1994) to be 0.208, very close to the actual level of public opinion (0.218) (Fig. 4 ).

The public opinion (solid), as a time series, is well fitted by the media sentiments on two selected topics, namely “Culture” and “Democracy”, in the previous year. The dashed line shows a linear prediction based on the fractions of positive articles on “Culture” and negative articles on “Democracy” in the previous year. The public opinion is shown with a 95% confidence interval, and the fitted line is shown with one standard error.

By analyzing a corpus of 267,907 articles from The New York Times with BERT, a state-of-the-art natural language processing model, we identify major shifts in media sentiment towards China across eight topic domains over 50 years and find that media sentiment leads public opinion. Our results show that the reporting of The New York Times on culture and democracy in one year explains 53.9% of the variation in public opinion on China in the next. The conclusion that we draw from our results is that media sentiment on China predicts public opinion on China. Our analysis is neither conclusive nor causal, but it is suggestive. Our results are best interpreted as a “reduced-form” description of the overall relationship between media sentiment and public opinion towards China.

While there are a number of potential factors that may complicate our conclusions, none would change the overall thrust of our results. We do not consider how the micro-level or meso-level intermediary processes through which opinion from elite media percolates to the masses below may affect our results. We also do not consider the potential ramifications of elites communing directly with the public, of major events in US–China relations causing short-term shifts in reporting, or of social media creating new channels for the diffusion of opinion. Finally, The New York Times might have a particular bias to how it covers China.

In addition to those specified above, a number of possible extensions of our work remain ripe targets for further research. Though a fully causal model of our text analysis pipeline may prove elusive (Egami et al., 2018 ), future work may use randomized vignettes to further our understanding of the causal effects of media exposure on attitudes towards China. Secondly, our modeling framework is deliberately simplified. The state affects news coverage before the news ever makes its way to the citizenry. It is plausible that multiple state-level actors may bypass the media and alter public opinion directly and to different ends. For example, the actions and opinions of individual high-profile US politicians may attenuate or exaggerate the impact of state-level tension on public sentiment toward China. There are presumably a whole host of intermediary processes through which opinion from elite media affects the sentiment of the masses. Thirdly, the relationship between the sentiment of The New York Times and public opinion may be very different for hot-button social issues of first-line importance in the American culture wars. In our corpus, The New York Times has covered globalization almost entirely positively, but the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump suggests that many Americans do not share the zeal of The Times for international commerce. We also plan to extend our measure of media sentiment to include text from other newspapers. The Guardian, a similarly elite, Anglophonic, and left-leaning paper, will make for a useful comparison case. Finally, our analysis was launched in the midst of heightened tensions between the US and China and concluded right before the outbreak of a global pandemic. Many things have changed since COVID-19. Returning to our analysis with an additional year or two of data will almost certainly provide new results of additional interest.

Future work will address some of these additional paths, but none of these elements affects the basic conclusion of this work. We find that reporting on China in one year predicts public opinion in the next. This is true for more than fifty years in our sample, and while knowledge of, for example, the opinion diffusion process on social media may add detail to this relationship, the basic flow of opinion from media to the public will not change. Regarding the putative biases of The New York Times, its ideological slant does not affect our explanation of trends in public opinion of China as long as the paper’s relevant biases are relatively consistent over the time period covered by our analyses.

Data availability

All data analyzed during the current study are publicly available. The New York Times data were accessed using official online APIs ( https://developer.nytimes.com/ ). We used their query API to search for 267,907 articles that mention China, Chinese, Beijing, Peking, or Shanghai. We downloaded the full text and date of each article. The survey data were obtained from three large public archives/centers, namely Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (ROPER), NORC at the University of Chicago, and Pew Research Center (Pew Research Center, 2019 ; Smith et al., 2018 ). See Supplementary Information for a full list of surveys. The source codes and pretrained parameters of the natural language processing model BERT are publicly released by Google Inc. on its github repository ( https://github.com/google-research/bert ). The finetuned BERT models and the inferred sentiment of The New York Times articles in our corpus are publicly available at Princeton University DataSpace. Please check the project webpage ( http://www.attitudetowardchina.com/media-opinion ) or the DataSpace webpage ( https://doi.org/10.34770/x27d-0545 ) to download.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Chesley Chan (Princeton University), Wen Liu (Renmin University of China), Yichun Yang (Renmin University of China), and Emily Yin (Princeton University) for coding The New York Times articles with the topic-specific sentiment. The authors thank Chih-Jou Jay Chen (Academia Sinica), Cheng Cheng (Singapore Management University), Shawn Dorius (Iowa State University), Theodore P. Gerber (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Fengming Lu (Australian National University), Yongai Jin (Renmin University of China), Donghui Wang (Princeton University) for valuable discussions. The authors thank Xudong Guo (Tsinghua University) for helping fine-tune the BERT model and analyze the calculation results. The authors thank Tom Marling for proofreading the manuscript. The research was partially supported by the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China at Princeton University and Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.

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Huang, J., Cook, G.G. & Xie, Y. Large-scale quantitative evidence of media impact on public opinion toward China. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 181 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00846-2

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00846-2

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Ielts writing task 2 sample 102 - the mass media have great influence in shaping people's ideas, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, the mass media, including television, radio and newspapers, have great influence in shaping people's ideas..

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PTE EXAM PREPARATION

PTE Academic Exam Practice Material

Mass Media Essay – Importance & Role of Mass Media

Mass Media Essay – Do you think mass media including television, radio, and newspapers, have great influence in shaping people’s ideas?

Mass Media Essay

Mass Media Essay 250 Words

I strongly support that people’s ideology is influenced by the mass media. In the current scenario, mass media has become an essential part of everyone’s life and every family has television, radio, or newspaper. Everyone obtains information from a feasible source and mass media is the perfect & simple way of obtaining the latest update around the world. For instance, Melbourne city is better known for the capricious climate, so people check weather predictions before going out. This habit of checking weather conditions is an example of the impact of mass media. Thus Television, radio, and newspaper have contributed a lot in molding people’s habit.

In the global youth culture, one finds young people around the world, displaying common interests in the field of music, movies and dressing styles. For instance, Television and newspaper often cover the lifestyle of celebrities and in the same way, youngsters try to act and dress up like them. This shows how an individual is influenced by the mass media. The development of technology creates a new trend of enjoying the mass media on the internet. The Internet is easy to access, cost-effective and mobility that leads to increasing the number of people for obtaining information. It is likely that media’s influence will grow stronger with the passage of time.

To conclude, people’s thinking is affected by the information obtained from the mass media. There is a strong positive correlation between mass media and people’s ideology.

Mass Media Essay 300 Words

Media refers to diverse ways of mass communication such as television, internet, newspaper, telephones, radio etc. The modern media provides visual representations in the form of images and videos which help the audience better understand the news and topic.

Media plays an important part in our lives as people can now get connected all across the globe and can see each other even if they are located at far off places. Also, television, internet, and social media increase our knowledge by giving us information about various things occurring in the world. It is with the help of media that this large world has shrunk into a village.

Media offers various benefits to the world such as it promotes harmony among various countries and makes people aware of different cultures and religions. It also provides entertainment to the people by broadcasting various channels related to sports, religious events, movies, comedy shows, and much more. Basically, media reflects the image of the society and depicts its true picture.

Well, along with these positive aspects of media, it also has some negative impact on the society such as sensationalism to provoke the public, blackmailing people in order to have personal gains, showing vulgarity due to the influence of foreign culture which affects the moral values of the children, wastage of time by watching unnecessary dramas and much more.

In conclusion, we can say that media has strengthened relationships among different countries and has also provided education through various educational content channels. It has managed to develop a well-informed society which will ultimately help the nation to grow and succeed. Media acts a watchdog of the government and the society and makes people aware of the atrocities and humanities of the world and also helps them in decision making. Media is a great means of knowledge therefore it holds great importance in the society.

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Social Media Essay

Everyone knew the Biden presidency was a scam

The debate fiasco should make it clear that the elected president does not run the executive branch. now the truth is too obvious to ignore..

After a disastrous debate performance, the news media, which had been shamelessly gaslighting the public over Joe Biden’s cognitive capacity for years, seemed to turn on the president in unison. Biden stuttered, stumbled, and bumbled his way through a grueling 90 minutes during which he alternated between slurring his confused answers and staring into nowhere with his mouth agape.

Examples of the president’s cognitive decline have become so prevalent that journalists were forced to label any embarrassing videos of the geriatric commander in chief as “cheap fakes” in the hopes of shaming the public into ignoring the obvious. Despite this deep investment in running cover for Biden’s senility in the past, anchors on networks like CNN and MSNBC spent their post-debate spin sessions speculating on the possibility that the elderly leader might need to step aside. This discussion was treated as a sudden revelation instead of acknowledging the self-evident fact: The Biden presidency was a scam from the start.

Americans seem more interested in speculating on who will get the rose next rather than facing the reality that our political system is fake.

The election of 2020 was probably the most contentious presidential result since 1876. The American people were asked to believe that Biden, who hid in his basement for much of the campaign, also won the most votes in the nation’s history. The future president was in better shape back then, but it was still quite clear that he was starting to lose the ability to recall key facts or engage in discussion for extended periods. Even in 2020, several pundits joked that they did not care if Biden collapsed and was replaced after his election if he kept Donald Trump out of the White House.

The regime officials went all out to prevent Trump’s re-election. They raised pandemic fears to an apocalyptic level, actively encouraged coordinated race riots across the nation, and radically transformed the voting process forever. Even if one doubts the more salacious claims of voter fraud, Mollie Hemingway’s excellent book “ Rigged ” lays out how tech CEOs, government actors, Democratic operatives, and the media openly colluded to defeat the incumbent president. An oligarchy installed Biden as president, never expecting him to fulfill the duties of the office.

Biden started his term with at least some degree of awareness, but it has been clear for the last few years that he has not been running the show. The American people are completely unaware of who, in fact, is responsible for disastrous inflation, open borders, and endless foreign war, which is exactly how the ruling class likes it. Oligarchies prefer to avoid accountability, and Biden creates the perfect shield. An unspecified set of elites make decisions in the shadows, and then the shambling zombie of a president is wheeled onto the stage to read a teleprompter and take the heat.

None of this resembles the system outlined in Article II of the Constitution, but no one seems to care. The corporate press praises how spry Biden looks and dismisses contrary evidence as “fake news.” Conservative commentators play endless videos of Biden wandering the stage after forgetting where he is but still pretend the president is responsible for his administration's decisions. While it’s common for presidents to delegate significant tasks to advisers, it’s clear that under Joe Biden, unelected bureaucrats and power brokers have completely captured the Oval Office.

When it comes to public discourse, setting the frame is key. The frame of a discussion delineates its boundaries. While endless speculation and debate may fill that frame, the discussion is ultimately defined by the space the media has created to contain it. If you, as a journalist with a duty to hold the powerful accountable, had instead propped up an obvious fraud, how would you avoid the consequences?

People are highly sensitive to status, which in our modern world is conferred by credentials, wealth, and media visibility. Even when something is obvious, if the facts go against the narrative power is advancing, people are scared to notice it. Everyone already knew Biden was a zombie. We learned nothing new last week. With his particularly embarrassing debate performance, however, the media gave people permission to acknowledge what was already clear. This permission acts as a pressure release valve, allowing all the pent-up discourse around the topic to fill the frame the media had constructed.

With proper framing, the entire discussion shifted seamlessly from “Biden is just fine; it’s all fake news” to “Biden is feeble; who should replace him?” Speculation about whether and how Biden can be replaced, along with the pros and cons of each alternative candidate, now dominates the discourse. The event has become part process story and part reality television show. No one takes the time to acknowledge the more serious implications of this revelation.

The Biden fiasco should make it clear that the elected president does not run the executive branch. This has probably been the case for a very long time and should have been evident as the entire deep state defied Trump. Now it’s too obvious to ignore.

An unaccountable oligarchy installed a senile fake president through a soft coup. Instead of grappling with this stunning truth, the media, both left and right, debates whether Gavin Newsom is too white to overtake Kamala Harris and run in Biden’s place. The Biden presidency was always a sham, but Americans seem more interested in speculating on who will get the rose next rather than facing the reality that our political system is fake.

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Today’s Alito dissent can become tomorrow’s law

No, the rights to free speech and religious liberty are not under attack, despite warnings from justice samuel alito. but his dissent serves as a warning for what could be yet to come from this court..

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito doesn’t like it when powerful people use the lever of government to impose their views on others. Unless, of course, that powerful person is Alito.

That’s the only explanation for his dissent Wednesday assailing the court’s reasonable ruling tossing out the longshot claim that the Biden administration trampled on the First Amendment when it communicated with social media companies about the dangers of COVID-19 disinformation.

Why is this important? After all, Alito couldn’t even get the majority of his fellow GOP-appointed colleagues to join his fringe view that governments cannot play any role in helping to stop the online spread of dangerous lies.

But it does highlight why the recent controversies over Alito’s words and actions outside the courtroom are so important. Alito’s repeated warnings about a war between Christian and secular America , the flying of a flag closely associated with the Christian right (including anti-vaccine movements) outside his home, and his close ties to deep-pocketed conservatives aren’t just a problem in abstraction. Justices are allowed to have personal views. But they aren’t allowed to let those views affect the outcome of their rulings. I’m not sure Alito knows the difference.

Wednesday’s 6-3 opinion by Justice Amy Coney Barrett held that plaintiffs in the case — which included two Republican-controlled states and the head of a group that advocated against COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates — lacked standing. That means they didn’t have the legal right to sue because they couldn’t demonstrate that any action by the Biden administration caused them injury. Because of that, the court didn’t have to consider the case’s main issue: whether White House officials unconstitutionally “coerced” social media platforms in a way that violated the free speech rights of users.

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But in its reasoning, the court did note that there was no clear causal line between communications from White House officials, the platforms’ content moderation policies, and specific actions the platform took to remove or flag individual posts. Long story short, these plaintiffs weren’t going to win this case even if they had standing.

That didn’t stop Alito’s ire.

“For months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech,” Alito fumed, scolding the majority for refusing “to address this serious threat to the First Amendment.”

But this isn’t the first time Alito has railed against restrictions imposed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The pandemic has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty,” Alito said in an address to the conservative legal group the Federalist Society in 2020 — remarks that were given remotely because, you know, COVID is dangerous.

He was referring to challenges by churches to pandemic mitigation measures, masking requirements, and other rules restricting some religious gatherings. But these challenges were a part of a broader religious rights movement that saw such government intervention as a threat to individual liberty — and among the symbols used in that movement was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag seen outside Alito’s New Jersey home.

Even before Alito penned the blistering rejection of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs ruling two years ago, his opinions on the court as well as his speeches outside of it made his views clear. He believes there is an attack on the constitutional rights of the religious faithful in this country.

Never mind the fact that it isn’t true. No constitutional rights, save maybe the right to bear arms, have received more robust protection by this court than the rights to free speech and religious liberty.

That’s why the court ruled that the Westboro Baptist Church could shout horrific anti-gay slurs while protesting outside military funerals. That’s why the court blessed the ability of a public high school coach to lead prayer on the football field . That’s why Maine couldn’t ban taxpayer funds from going to religious school tuition . That’s why Boston’s open flag policy on City Hall Plaza had to allow Christian flags to fly too .

Alito should know this, because he voted with the majority in all of these rulings. Yet he still is playing the role of a religious warrior, both on and off the court.

As his battle cries get louder, it’s important to remember that the only difference between now and a decade ago is there are fewer moderating voices on the court to counter his. Depending on the outcome of November’s election, there could be fewer still. That means today’s dissents could become tomorrow’s law.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @KimberlyEAtkins .

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To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom.

President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy.

Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to that democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats. If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system.

Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.

At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.

The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.

Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.

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