Abstract The media remains a powerful presence in U.S. culture. It gives people news of world and local events, it entertains, and it may even function as a companion to children. Because it functions as a window to the outside world, what appears across its landscape actually may become people's reality. Thus, the potential for distorting their view of that world is high if the picture provided is unrepresentative of actual events. For example, the prevalence of violent acts on television has been linked to increased aggression and escalating impressions of a dangerous world, and the overrepresentation of youth and beauty disorders. may be a causal factor of eating disorders. In this article, we explore the possibility that the media may also serve as a powerful creator of the very public opinions it seeks to reflect in its news. Subtle nonverbal cues of newscasters have been shown to influence voting behavior, and the media's overrepresentation of the proportion of blacks in poverty may decrease whites' support of welfare. By portraying a world in which people's opinions are based on their ethnic or demographic group membership, the media may also subtly but powerfully create the very opinions they seek to reflect. Show Journal Information Current Directions in Psychological Science reviews current trends and controversies in psychology. It contains concise reviews of research in all subdisciplines of scientific psychology. Written by leading experts in terms that are accessible outside of their particular subspecialties, the reviews published in Current Directions in Psychological Science cover such current topics as theory of mind, neural bases of memory, face recognition, expression of emotion, cognition and aging, and attachment and personality in mammals. Publisher Information Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 900 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. www.sagepublishing.com Rights & Usage This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. LAWRENCE — An old adage in journalism research holds that the media can’t tell you what to think, but it can tell you what to think about. A first-of-its-kind study from the University of Kansas shows that despite a rapidly changing media landscape and ever-increasing globalization, factors that affect how people view media and important topics differ widely from country to country. Agenda-setting theory has studied how media influence what people think about and how they view media since the early 1970s. The KU study, however, moved beyond studying a single country and conducted a big-data analysis of agenda-setting in 16 nations on five continents. They found that numerous factors contribute to how much people are influenced by media and how they view it.  The study, co-authored with Peter Bobkowski, associate professor of journalism, and doctoral student Liefu Jiang, both at KU, is forthcoming in the journal International Communications Gazette. The authors used survey data collected by the International Social Survey Programme, which collected data from 33 countries. The authors used data from 16 of the countries chosen because they are geographically, economically and politically diverse: Argentina, Austria, Canada, Chile, Taiwan, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States. The authors worked with researchers who are either native speakers or fluent in the languages of each of the 16 countries and analyzed nearly 80,000 articles from 31 major newspapers across the countries. The articles were scanned using a computer-assisted program to analyze how frequently words in public affairs categories were used. Those results were compared to the survey data in which respondents rated the importance of certain issues in their country, including health care, education, crime, the environment, immigration, the economy, terrorism and poverty, or “none of these” or “can’t choose.” Scanning results showed which issues the newspapers covered most often, or the most salient media agenda. Analysis showed economy was the most salient media issue in 11 nations, crime the most salient in three, while health and education were most important in one each. Terrorism was the least salient issue in seven countries’ respective media, poverty least prominent in five, immigration least pressing in two and environment least salient in two as well. The media agendas showed moderately high correlation with the issues the public deemed most important; however, only six nations showed statistically significant relationships between media and public agendas, including South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Philippines, Mexico and Chile. Results were analyzed on both a national and individual level and showed that four of five individual demographics — age, education, living area and political ideology — predicted how distant people were from media agendas. Younger, more educated and politically liberal individuals were all less likely to be as influenced by media agenda. Residents of big cities were more influenced by media agenda than rural residents, and sex was the only individual factor not associated with issue distance, or how influenced individuals were by media agenda. National results examined how factors including economic development and media freedom influence individuals’ agenda overlap with media agenda and found both were strong predictors of alignment. Specifically, economic development measures showed people from developed nations were more likely to sway from the national media agenda, while lack of wealth tended to show individuals in agreement with media on top issues. “It’s possible people in more developed countries are more skeptical and the media doesn’t have as much influence on them,” Vu said. “However, when you have enough economic resources, you can think about things like the environment or gender equality. When you’re living in poverty, it’s hard to think about anything other than putting food on the table. Also, people in nondeveloped countries often have few media options or don’t have as much media contact.” While increases in economic development showed an increase in distance between individuals’ and media agendas, the researchers found that in countries with little press freedom, as development increased, so did agenda overlap. Therefore, overlap between public and individual agendas was greatest in rich countries with little press freedom, such as Israel, and the least in rich countries with high press freedom, such as Switzerland. The findings show that media can still influence what people think about, but several national and individual factors greatly influence how it happens. Effects are not the same from one country to the next or even from one person to the next. The research “is among the few studies that investigated media effects in association with national macro factors,” the authors wrote. “It empirically corroborates the argument that examining the complex relationship between the media and the public in general needs to be conducted within the wider context of economic development, media systems and culture.” The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. The university's mission is to lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities and making discoveries that change the world. The KU News Service is the central public relations office for the Lawrence campus. | 1450 Jayhawk Blvd., Suite 37, Lawrence, KS 66045 How do media influence public opinion?There are two primary areas of media agenda-setting: (i) the media tells us the news and (ii) the media tells us what to think about the news. Press coverage sends signals to audiences about the importance of mentioned issues, while framing the news induces the unsuspecting viewer into a particular response.
How does media help in public opinion class 6?The news media focus the public' s attention on certain personalities and issues , leading many people to form opinion about them.
How Does the media help in generating public opinion in a democracy?The media has given political parties the tools to reach large numbers of people and inform them on key issues ranging from policies to elections. The media can be seen as an enabler for democracy; having better-educated voters would lead to a more legitimate government.
What is the role of media?Relationships and Influence
Advances in communication, largely through the internet, have improved community access to information. Therefore the media play an important role in society as a source of information, but also as a “watchdog” or scrutiniser.
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