IMPACT OF MEDIA ON PUBLIC OPINION

Impact of media on public opinion

LITERATURE REVIEW

The media shapes public opinion on various issues within the society by educating the masses, enhancing protection of human rights, promoting tolerance among various social groups and by ensuring that the governments of the day are transparent and highly accountable to their citizens on decisions made and actions implemented (Stuart 2001). The media can however produce democratic decay due to manipulation of the freedom extended by instilling fear, division and violence among citizens through increased propaganda and suggestive slogans meant to alter public opinion thus leading to increased war and conflict which leads to increased unsettlement in both the political and social spheres (Walgrave & Van, 2006).

The Media, Politicians and Institutions

According to Cook (2005), the media is faced by several constraints which enhance provision of unbiased and factual news but at the same time, helping propel bias. One of these factors is the stringent government control over media coverage and release of information. These controls ensure that news reported is in line with the government's agenda through influencing positive public opinion. In Syria's case, foreign media channels were not fully permitted to report on the ongoing unrest and the local media channels were monitored on the content they relayed to the citizens (Zakaria 2012). Banning of these media houses was due to increased biased reporting by BBC and other media channel on the happenings as they insinuated that the government was the perpetrator of violence. Such reporting influenced the British and worldwide public opinion that Syrian government was the enemy which was contrary to surfacing evidence and facts such as the 9 year old photo which showed poor fact-finding and possible conspiracy and propaganda developments. Miller (2007) cites that monopolistic ownership of the media is another chief contributor into how the media relays its information. The owners are influential and information reported is twisted to concur with their objectives and values. The media takes advantage of this position assuming that as long as the decision has been influenced by a public outcry, it is not their influencing capability thus enforcing the agenda and strategies of either the owners and the government or both (Dearing & Rogers 1996).

The problem with media interfering with nationalism is that the large media moguls control what the youngsters reads, what they do not read, and how information is presented to them. This media manipulation “means that those who produce the discourse also have the power to make it 'true' that is, to enforce a particular reading of a threat according to which people and groups are defined,” according to Kinnvall (1999). Thus, newspapers and television can manipulate news using a variety of techniques, such as phenomenon distraction and yellow journalism, to skew or spin stories so that they make foreign countries look bad and America look good (Fox 2004 536).

In addition to negatively portraying alien countries, the media also tends to represent America as the heroic nation of liberty and ...