Media Manipulation
To what extent are our actions and thoughts controlled by what the media gives us, or perhaps construes for us? Everything we know not from personal experience or anecdotal evidence from close friends and family is basically delivered in some form by the media, whether that be television, internet, radio, etc. Although some of you may be lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you want to look at it, enough to experience a local newspaper or broadcasting station, for people like me, in cities such as Los Angeles, there is no friendly personal relationship. All we get is this mass bombardment of advertising, biased news, etc.
If all we know comes from these things, won’t our opinions automatically be biased based on the information we have, or the information we don’t have – omission is a huge issue. So the media can basically manipulate how it presents the news, or what it purports to be the news, and we basically have to take it in and treat it as truth. So we can be manipulated by the media. Personally, I try very hard to question everything I hear or see – who wrote that, who funded that, and why? But since, questioning everything would lead to an extremely hard life, I have to accept some things. Do I really know that Kosovo declared independence? Maybe the news is just in a big conspiracy and tricking me.
This can be seen for the worse after 9/11 – the news wasn’t exactly completely neutral or complete in its news, and people basically began to hold prejudices against Muslims. We are also all influenced by advertising, the products of big business trying to steal our money.
So how are we influenced by the media, and to what extent?
