The Mass Media and the Formation of Public Opinion
How do millions of individuals, residing in various locations, come to a common conception of what is a crisis, a priority, or a hero? It is not simply the events themselves, but clever techniques employed by the mass media. This massive communication device- the news alerts on our phones, the news on television- does much more than report; it selects, promotes and determines what is real. The media can influence the way people think, believe and do. In a bid to understand this power, we need to consider three important concepts: Agenda-Setting, Framing, and Priming.
The Mass Media as the Fourth Estate: More Than Reporting
The media is commonly referred to as the Fourth Estate. Its classic role is similar to a watchdog: it provides the citizenry with the facts they require to run a democracy. However, in modern days where news cycles are constant, social media dictates, and there is a large number of outlets that are owned by a few large companies, the media does far more than report.
It is generally accepted that the media does not simply present reality but refracts and constructs it. We all believe that what we think is our opinion is actually what the media has chosen to present and the way the media has presented it. Any piece of information released by the media is a decision that influences popular discourse. This powerful yet indirect impact can be best elucidated using simple theories that demonstrate how the media has power.
Basic Theories of Media Influence
Three prominent theories, Agenda-Setting, Framing and Priming demonstrate the influence of media content on what people know and feel. These concepts tend to collaborate, influencing the minds of people in varying capacities to dictate what the masses perceive to be important, how they interpret it, and how they evaluate it.
Agenda-Setting Theory: What we think about
The Agenda-Setting theory, developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, argues that the media cannot tell you what to think, but it is very good at telling you what to think about. This is a central concept of media power.
Mechanism of the First-Level Agenda-Setting
The First-Level Agenda-Setting is how the media can make issues appear significant to people. People begin to think that certain issues are more significant when news outlets write about them frequently, particularly on the front page, as the lead television coverage, or in a special report. The simple rule is simple: anything that is big and repeated has to be important.
To illustrate it, consider environmental concerns in the late 1960s. Few people believed that pollution was a significant issue before mass and regular reporting. But once the news began covering a lot of stories about oil spills and polluted air, everyone became more worried. This compelled political authorities to intervene and establish new regulations. The news is what brought the topic to the fore by extensively reporting on it.
Journalists and editors are also gatekeepers and determine which stories qualify as news and the extent of publicity they receive in terms of space or time. This ability to choose and set priorities actually forms the mental map of the world in the minds of the citizens, so that some issues are easy to remember and consider when talking about politics or society.
Framing Theory: How We Think About It
After Agenda-Setting determines what issues matter, it is Framing Theory that determines how those issues are defined and understood. According to scholars such as Robert Entman, framing can be defined as the act of selecting and emphasizing certain aspects of a story so that people will perceive it in a particular manner, so that they will have a particular opinion or they will desire a particular fix. It’s how the story is packaged.
The Power of Selecting and Emphasis
The process of framing can be implemented with the help of a few tools:
- Selection of Details: Which facts, numbers, or quotes to include or omit.
- Use of Language: The use of certain words, emotional language or comparison (example, calling refugees a flood but not calling them a family in need of protection).
- Visual Imagery: Pictures and video clips can have a powerful emotional and cognitive impact.
- Story Structure: The introduction of a problem that has a clear cause and a solution.
Imagine a local protest. The media might frame it in a law-and-order frame, with broken window and police reaction. This helps make the people believe that the protestors are lawbreakers. Or as an alternative frame, a civil rights frame, demonstrating people with signs and discussing their just demands, shifts popular opinion to empathy and support. How this event is framed alters what citizens blame, what they believe is right to do, and the opinion they have.
Priming Theory: Influencing Evaluation Criteria
Priming Theory: Manipulation of Evaluation Criterion
Priming Theory is connected to the Agenda-setting, and it is concerned with the way in which media attention to a problem can impact our subsequent evaluation of a problem. Priming occurs when media information causes some ideas to be easy to recall, leading individuals to apply these ideas in large evaluations. The media prepares the audience to judge something or a person based on certain information.
Priming and Political Judgment
Priming is used most frequently in political coverage. When the media puts a consistent emphasis on covering the track record of a politician on matters of national security (in the form of numerous reports and analyses), the people then get preprogrammed to consider the overall competence of such a politician to be highly dependent on that particular issue. Other problems, such as healthcare or education, are less significant in their decision.
The same example applies to shopping choices: Picture a brand of cereals that is repeatedly mentioned in the news articles, associating it with the loss of weight and gaining of energy. Media emphasis on fitness standards makes clients preconditioned to apply those standards in their evaluation of the cereal, and therefore, they pay little attention to other aspects, such as the sugar level, when they purchase it.
The process works like this:
- Media Focus (Priming): A news station uses an excessive amount of time discussing the increasing debt in the country.
- Cognitive Accessibility: The debt problem becomes one that is very simple to remember in the mind of the audience.
- Judgment: The audience, in most cases, without conscious thought, uses the debt crisis as the primary method to determine the approval rating of the current leader when questioned to rate the current leader.
Thus, Priming reveals the strong capacity of the media to alter the criteria according to which individuals and phenomena are evaluated by society.
Synthesis: The Interplay Influence of the Mass Media
When these three theories are interpreted as a unity, the real strength of the mass media becomes apparent.
- The first step, Agenda-setting, determines the priorities of the issues (e.g., it was decided that ‘energy policy’ should be ranked as one of the top stories).
- Second, Framing determines how we should talk about that issue (e.g., framing energy policy as a battle between the environment and money-making).
- Lastly, Priming involves the repeated exposure to that framed issue to guide actions (e.g., voters rely on the stances of the candidate on that particular framed conflict-environment versus money to vote).
This omnipresent, three-step impact demonstrates that consumers of media are not passive receivers of information. Yet, the careful editorial decisions of media producers firmly imprint their feelings, their priorities and their rules of judgment.
Conclusion: Navigating the Mass Media Landscape
It is obvious that the strength of the mass media to influence our perceptions about the world is unchanging. We have also observed that the media cannot be called a mere mirror which reflects reality, but rather a tool which helps to create it. The three significant communication theories provide us with a definite map of the way this is done.
Agenda-setting determines the issues that are the most significant in the minds of the people, such as climate change or the economy. Framing then dictates the prism through which we perceive these issues and who the hero or the villain is in a story. Lastly, Priming affects our judgmental standards and makes us judge politicians depending on the most popular issue that the media has been discussing in the media.
These things do not happen out of thin air, and they are the outcome of conscious decisions taken by journalists, producers and editors daily regarding what is going to be covered and what is going to be omitted. We will have to learn to be more attentive to these impacts as we continue watching, reading, and scrolling news. et to know the fundamentals of Agenda-Setting, Framing, and Priming.
It is important to learn how to question why a story is being told in a particular manner and why this or that fact is brought out. This is known as media literacy. Having the skill of media literacy, as listed in this article, is our best defense to ensure that we are the ones who are really opinionated and that we can be informed, active, and independent citizens in an increasingly complex world of mass media.
