INTRODUCTION
Historically, the mass media has a continuous sensitive role in shaping individual and public opinion on pertinent societal issues that occur every day. In the past, only newspapers and magazines were popular mass media tools, but this has rapidly changed with the invention of electronic media and internet digitization (Berinsky, 2015 p. 11). The television, newspapers, blogs, radio, e-mails, and other social media sources have overtime, played undeniable roles in affirming public opinions, beliefs, and attitudes that are already existent. Over the years, mass media content regulation bodies have been established by some developed countries to ensure that information delivered to the public domain adheres to set codes and standards of practice.
While the mass media sources might meet the standards of practice, their capacity to influence people’s perception about the government, other institutions, state of the economy, religious dynamics, and social issues cannot be underrated (Neuner et al., 2019). Many people define and affirm their political and life decisions based on the news they watch on the television or read in political blogs.
United States (US) is a country that is not immune to overt mass media influence. Research shows that the protracted Democrat versus Republican divisive politics has been perpetuated mainly by the information the public consumes from the mass media (Kumar, 2018). The massive trust that Americans put in the press, coupled with the potential to meet large audiences, makes the mass media a sensitive tool in impacting public opinion (Loveless, 2018).
Policy makers and politicians in developed societies, pay much regards to media reportage of their actions and activities generally (Campbell, 2008). This is because, how the public receive information about current events depends largely on how it is being shaped by the media, which in turn, remains critical to their view and understanding of the particular event, the society and of each other.
Drawing from various models of communication processes, this piece explores mass media’s role in formulating or changing public belief and perceptions particularly in the United Kingdom (U.K), and the United States of America (U.S). Through findings from various dimensions of empirical studies, this article examines media influence in aspects of: the perception of mass collectives, policy responsiveness by the citizens, the agenda-setting and social persuasion role.
Conceptual Definition of Terms
Mass media: According to McCombs and Valenzuela (2020), mass media is defined as an array of technology that reaches a large number of people. In another study by Elliott (2017), mass media is defined as a mode of information delivery that can reach a mass population. Elsewhere, Kumar (2018) defines mass media as a technology that targets the mass over a definite or indefinite geographical coverage.
Public opinion: In defining public opinion, Loveless (2018) asserts that public opinions are perceptions and views on a matter related to politics and governance. Berinsky (2015) defines public opinion as to the wants, thoughts, and desires of a group of people or the larger population. Public opinion, according to Corbett (1991), is defined as the collection of views regarding an issue that affects many.
Political attitude: Kumar (2018) defines political attitude as a set of mental and emotional beliefs or behavior linked to certain political issues.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The study utilized the explorative research methodology, which involved a focused literature exploration to locate relevant peer-reviewed articles and literature sources for the research study. Major political science databases including; International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), ProQuest Social Sciences, and Web of Science, were consulted. The literature search was guided by the keywords; mass media, mass media role in the U.S, public opinion, political attitude. Inclusion criteria included works published in 1990-2020 selected based on the keyword-guided search criterion.
Only articles from approved nursing journals were included in literature compilation while non-peer-reviewed sites such as “Wikipedia” and editorials were excluded. The study categories included case studies, surveys, mixed qualitative and qualitative studies, single qualitative studies, and systemic reviews on studies covering the largely UK and few from US.
DISCUSSIONS AND CASE STUDIES
The mass media has a crucial role as a source of information in political science. According to Loveless (2018), mass media is considered the sole source of political information. The study discusses the theory of media dependency, which argues that the public relies on different mass media tools to understand the social and political issues that define their lives.
The narrative of media dependency is common among democratic countries where the common mass media bodies such as the print media and televisions enjoy the freedom to air information. The free availability of information in the public domain makes it possible for the public to attach their opinion, political behaviors, and attitudes (Loveless, 2018). According to Sanayoulu et al. (2017), the importance of mass media stems from the originator role. As the originator, the mass media forms robust platforms for communication that link up the public with political information, thus igniting political engagement.
In the 21st century, the work points out the outstanding role of social media and print media, which are incredibly available. Compared to the era of traditional media where people heavily depended on hardcopy paper print, today, the political information you may need is just an internet away. The public tends to lay huge trust in mature mass media sources, especially those that adhere to set regulations (Sanayoulu et al., 2017).
The mass media is also an essential tool for social persuasion in political science. Petrova and Yanagizawa-Drott (2016) explain social persuasion as a type of persuasion where the audience is deliberately swayed to take a particular course of action, stance or an attitude. An in-depth look at the contribution of major U.K magazines socio-political persuasion by Ali, Mitsikopoulou & Lykou (2015), the mass media can persuade the public to take an intended stand.
The authors focus on how the two political magazines portray the state of the economic crisis in Greece. The two magazines take sharp contrast; the Centre-left and the conservative political positions. The Centre-left school of thought argued that the economic crisis was a systemic one while the conservative approach took a financial construe (Ali, Mitsikopoulou & Lykou, 2015 pg. 53). Both the two sides of the debate supported their contrasting constructs strongly, winning massive support across Europe.
The interesting issue emphasized by the study was how the two magazines managed to convince an enormous mass to subscribe to them equally. It was evident that the persuasive language of communication by the magazines greatly contributed to shaping the political attitudes and opinions of the public (Ali, Mitsikopoulou & Lykou, 2015 pg. 56).
On describing the extent of social persuasion by the media, Wilmott (2017) describes the approach as “Politics of photography.” The article explains how the media report on the Syrian refugees living in the UK. The work asserts that emerging media images are largely negative. The media provides a vivid description of the refugees as a threat to the security of the citizens (Wilmott, 2017, p. 68).
The advanced sophistication in digital artists made it possible to accompany the information with quantitative photography. This made the citizens develop a dislike for pro-refugee policies, which puts their lives at risk by allowing an influx of refugees from Syria. The vivid photographic illustration by the current 4.0 era media has played a big role in reinforcing the beliefs and perceptions of the public on such socio-political issues (Wilmott, 2017 p. 78).
The media’s influence on the perception of mass collectives, cannot be over-emphasized. According to Mutz (1998), findings on the effects of media postulates that its primary impacts is on social-level perceptions rather than on personal beliefs or attitudes. People tend to respond more to a media-constructed social problem than their personal experiences or that of close relations.
For instance, an individual may be wealthy and feel relatively safe in his neighborhood, but still feel that the government needs to do more regarding the security and economy of the nation, due to the general experiences of others brought to the individual by the media. In the U.S, another example given by Mutz (1998) in this regard is, the manner at which the media report on violent crime in the country. They often report on increases in the number of crimes without converting the figures to rates and without reporting the simultaneous changes in the population size.
An individual who has not personally fallen victim of violent crime, may believe in its prevalence and ubiquity, based on the perception of mass collectives about crime rates reported by the media. This is also the situation in the U.S health care system. Jacobs and Shapiro (1994, citated in Mutz, 1998), opines that a great percentage of Americans are personally satisfied with the treatment provided by their doctors and hospitals, as well as the quality and accessibility of their health care. But then the support for healthcare reforms is very high, and this is due to the media proliferation of the issue.
A case study into the trends of UK elections revealed that the electorate is commonly swayed by the media. The electorate is likely to vote for a candidate that is mostly portrayed as good by the common, while at the same time can develop a contrary opinion based on information consumed from these media platforms (Kumar, 2018 p. 36).
The current political campaigns are largely televised, and the politicians find it easy to access the compact majority and persuade them to subscribe to their philosophies, values, and political beliefs (Protess, and McCombs, 2016 p. 201). Research shows that many politicians in the 21st century win voters through the use of these common mass media tools. With a large population embracing the culture of watching television, especially late evening, politicians tend to reap a lot (Kumar, 2018 p. 38). Today, it is close to impossible to be known by the public when your political campaigns and activities, are not covered on television.
Mass Media and Agenda-Setting
McCombs & Valenzuela (2020) explore the agenda-setting role of the mass media in influencing public opinion and political attitudes. According to the study, the mass media has the power to influence the public to focus on particular issues in the nation. This can be achieved through vivid audio-visual descriptions or well-documented tools of communication that convey information to the people.
The public is likely to pay close attention to issues that have to attract massive media interest and coverage (McCombs & Valenzuela, 2020, p. 12). In explaining the agenda-setting role, the study argues that the media goes beyond informing the people to creating centres for debates depending on the emphasis they put on their reports. When particular cues are repeated daily over the media, for instance, the television, it raises curiosity, making a point of discussion by the public over time (Elliott, 2017 p. 81). With the increased dependency on the mass media, many people will consume the information and shape their opinion on particular national matters based on the way it is presented in the mass media tool.
Social scientists examining this agenda-setting influence of the news media on the public usually have focused on public issues. The agenda of a news organization is found in its pattern of coverage on public issues over some period of time, a week, a month, or an entire year. Over this period of time, whatever it might be, a few issues are emphasized, some receive light coverage, and many are seldom or never mentioned. It should be noted that the use of the term “agenda” here is purely descriptive.
There is no pejorative implication that a news organization “has an agenda” that it relentlessly pursues as a premeditated goal. The media agenda presented to the public results from countless day-to-day decisions by many different journalists and their supervisors about the news of the moment (McCombs & Valenzuela, 2020 p. 18). Whenever one visits a foreign country, they need orientation to develop some knowledge about the new environment. The foreigner shapes their attitudes, beliefs, and mentality based on the population provided by the inducing party. This applies to the civic arena, where the media sets an agenda and point of deriving opinions (McCombs & Valenzuela, 2020 p. 22)
In a related study by Allern & Christian (2018), the authors explore the origin and coverage of major scandals in the past five decades in Europe and North America. The study reports that almost every scandal in these continents was revealed courtesy of the effort of brave mass media in these countries. The revelation of a political scandal sets an agenda to the public, and many people will view the victimized individual, institution or government based on the provided information (Allern & Christian, 2018 p. 29).
The gun violence issue is an agenda that was set by the mass media and has continuously been a subject of contentious debate due to the way it is covered by the media. The media keeps the public posted on the street shootings, homicides and genocides attributed to the gun violence (Allern & Christian, 2018 p. 32). These findings were similar to that of Lee (2018) study unveiling the role of the social media on the frequency of shooting incidents, reference to the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting. During the period, the media hugely depicted the evident misuse of firearms and the need for stricter gun control laws. Since the government has the power to develop more protective laws, the pro-gun control group felt that it was the government that had failed to prioritize the dream of a safer America (Lee, 2018 p. 16).
For many months, the incident was the subject of public discussion, with many people reacting to the news based on opinions developed. Many people who were initially anti-gun control started to develop different attitudes (Lee, 2018 p. 26). It was evident that the persuasive coverage by the media made the issue a Centre of focus inviting massive government and political involvement. The emergency needs to rethink on gun control, and regulation eventually becomes the subject of focus by the government. Ideally, the mass media has remained instrumental in setting the path straight in discussing key issues affecting the people (Fuochi et al., 2020 p. 19).
Media Coverage and political responsiveness/Behavior
The mass media influences the public responsiveness to political policies right from initiation, planning, and implementation stages. The public responsiveness creates a link to political attitude and opinion (Elliott, 2017). As an informative tool, the mass media has consistently provided an explainer on crucial government policies. The media introduces the policies to the public and informs of what will come with the policies (Williams and Schoonvelde, 2018).
In most cases, people are likely to resist those policies depicted by the mass media as oppressive. They develop a negative political attitude and may boycott against the government supporting these policies (Ayers et al., 2016). The UK and the US governments have witnessed a series of boycotts over the years following a negative public response to particular policies. People might not be conversant with the policy implications but slowly develop a stance following knowledge development promoted by the persuasive media coverage (Williams and Schoonvelde, 2018).
A comparative analysis of the state of public responsiveness in totalitarian countries reveal that political policies are least likely to encounter resistance in those countries (Neuner et al., 2019). Unlike the UK, countries like North Korea report below 10% of public indulgence in policy development. One of the major reasons for contrasting percentage engagement is the freedom of the media in these countries. Totalitarian countries suppress the freedom of the mass media and manipulate it to cover only what they want (Allern and Christian, 2018).
As a result, the people fail to have a true reflection of the state of affairs in the country from which they can shape responsiveness in the form of opinion and political attitude (Neuner et al., 2019). The freedom of the UK mass media ensures that the people access information, especially on trending policies, right from proposal to the approval of actions while developing opinions and thoughts that shape the responsiveness (Allern and Christian, 2018).
The salience of issues and other topics on the media agenda also influences observable behavior. Extensive news coverage of crime and violence, including a murder and rapes, on the University of Pennsylvania campus a few years ago contributed to a significant drop in applications by potential first-year students, according to the university’s dean of admissions (Philadelphia Inquirer, 1996).
This decline occurred predominantly among women. Moreover, other comparable universities experienced an increase in applications during the same period. Another example of media influence on the behavior of young adults is Harvard University’s successful use of entertainment television programming to spread the idea of “the designated driver,” that member of a party group who abstains from drinking in order to safely drive his or her friend’s home afterward. (New York Times, 1989)
The public and the media
Although the influence of the media agenda can be substantial, it alone does not determine the public agenda. Information and cues about object and attribute salience provided by the news media are far from the only determinants of the public agenda. This substantial influence of the news media has no way overturned or nullified the basic assumption of democracy that the people at large have sufficient wisdom to determine the course of their nation, their state, and their local communities. In particular, the people are quite able to determine the basic relevance – to themselves and to the larger public arena – of the topics and attributes advanced by the news media. The media set the agenda only when citizens perceive their news stories as relevant.
The spectacular failure in the U.S. of the intensive news coverage on the Clinton- Lewinsky scandal to set the public agenda and sway public opinion, an effort that failed despite persistent coverage frequently described as “All Monica, all the time,” speaks in a loud voice about the limits of media influence. Overwhelmingly, the U.S. public rejected the relevance of that scandal as the basis of their opinion about the president’s success or failure in governance (David, 1997)
The presence – or absence – of agenda-setting effects by the news media can be explained by a basic psychological trait, our need for orientation. Innate within each one of us is the need to understand the environment around us. Whenever we find ourselves in a new situation, there is an uncomfortable psychological feeling until we explore and mentally grasp at least the outlines of that setting. Recall, for example, your initial feeling upon visiting a foreign city. This innate need for orientation also exists in the civic arena, especially in those elections where citizens are faced with unfamiliar candidates or referendum questions on which they are less than fully knowledgeable. In all these situations, and many more, people experience a need for orientation.
Because it is a psychological trait, the degree of need for orientation varies greatly from one individual to another. For some individuals in any situation, there is a high need for orientation. For other individuals, there is little or no need for orientation at all. They just aren’t interested. Need for orientation is defined by two components: relevance and uncertainty. Relevance is the initial defining condition that determines the level of need for orientation for each individual. If a topic is perceived as irrelevant – or very low in relevance – then the need for orientation is low. Individuals in this situation pay little or no attention to news media reports and, at most, demonstrate weak agenda-setting effects.
For individuals among whom the relevance of a topic is high, their degree of uncertainty about the topic determines the level of need for orientation. If this uncertainty is low, that is, they feel that they basically understand the topic, then the need for orientation is moderate. These individuals – for whom a situation has high relevance and low uncertainty – will monitor the media for new developments and perhaps occasionally dip into a bit of additional background information. But they are not likely to be avid consumers of news reports about the topic. Agenda-setting effects among this group are moderate.
Finally, among individuals for whom both the relevance and their uncertainty about a situation are high, need for orientation is high. These individuals typically are avid consumers of the news, and strong agenda-setting effects typically are found among these individuals.
CONCLUSION
In sum, this article reveals that mass media has a significant direct role in influencing public opinion and political attitude in the 21st century. Important roles identified includes the role of social media as a source of information, perception of mass collectives, social persuasion, agenda-setting, policy responsiveness, and opinion-shaping. The advancement in media photography, expansion in internet use, and digital media are among the innovative approaches that promote these roles (Berinsky, 2015 p. 19).
This increased innovation and enhanced media freedom in democratic countries like the US and UK provide a supportive platform for media proliferation. In agreement with the position of Mutz (1998) as it relates to American politics, the examples illustrated in this article point to the fact that the governments general policy interventions are geared towards the perceptions of collectively defined social problems put forward by the media. Since society is a sum of its values, beliefs, culture, and attitude of the people, countries like the U.S live in the era of media-defined ways of life, with socio-political forecast affirming that this is not stopping anytime soon (Kumar, 2018 p. 36). Mass media is considered the sole source of political information.
As the originator, the mass media forms robust platforms for communication that links up the public with political information, thus igniting political engagement (Loveless, 2018 p. 19). The information shared on a given platform, has a critical impact on social interaction, perception of others, and the government, which shapes diverse political attitudes and opinions towards the negative or positive direction.
