Throughout this course, the idea that media shapes the values and effects people has been drilled into us constantly. As we learned in earlier chapters there are gatekeepers and all different types of censors on what kind of news can be told and what cannot be told.
Agenda setting, the idea that media tells people what to think about is the major force in mass media. The media today easily shapes the publics agenda of issues. If there is news on the war over seas or another scandalous issue with the president, the media will most likely choose to tell the public about the scandalous issue about the president. The media wants to tell the people the news they believe is the most important or the most though provoking. When the public watches they news they don’t have a choice in what they are told. What they hear is what they hear.
The effect that this has on the public is grand. The public get used to hearing similar news over and over again, so they start to only worry about certain things more than others. Then when the news tells them about another type of issue they take it a lot harder because it is so different from what they are used to hearing.
Something that I worry about now is how the long term effects of media will impact us later. Will we still be strongly influenced by the media? Will we ever realize the effects of the media and stop? What can we do to change this?
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