Over the last 500 years, the influence of mass media has grown dramatically with the advance of technology. First there were books, then newspapers, magazines, photography, sound recordings, films, radio, television, the so-called New Media of the Internet, and now social media. Today, just about everyone depends on information and communication to keep their lives moving through daily activities like work, education, health care, entertainment, travelling and the other stuff with which we are involved. It's now not unusual to wake up, check your phone for Twitter and Facebook notifications, look at the TV or newspaper for news, read emails and makes phone calls and make decisions based on the information that we gather from those mass media and interpersonal media sources.
One of the biggest influential things in media texts is newspapers when it comes to voting. Newspapers hardly have to wait until an election for them to strike an opinion on how their readers vote. There has been something of a change over the last 20 years – going back to the fall of Margaret Thatcher – because almost all papers tend to proclaim their independence from political parties. The best line I've ever heard come out of the media is "You are what you read" because anything we seem to read be believe to be true I mean how can anything in this powerful industry be lying to influence our choices and way of life because of course we can trust them on what they decide to publish which leaves the question how exactly are they doing this? Repeated exposure over time to similar messages makes it easy for people to accept them as true, and more importantly, act as though it is true, even when they 'know' the messages are false. Consider how often television ads are repeated. The companies behind the ads are only too willing to pay for such repetition. Because it works!
Another useful tactic whereby the media influence our decisions is that of commitment. When people commit to something, they tend to continue in this aspect because they want to appear consistent, not just to others, but also to themselves. If someone can get you to commit to something, especially if its public because then you need to consider that you committed to it yourself, you tend to build the justification as to why you should stay committed.
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