Relationship between Mass Media and People's Opinion

The Agenda Setting Theory by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw started when they saw an connection between mass media and people's opinion. McCombs also search for the meaning of Agenda Setting which is a robust and widespread effect of mass communication, an effect that results from specific content in mass media". In time like this, mass media is needed by people for them to be aware on what is happening and get information. It was "been a powerful force in today’s world" because it reaches large numbers of people like tv, radio, newspapers or what so we called old media and new media. He emphasize that "media influences the way we think", because we only see what they want to show us. They filter some of the information to make them clean in the eyes of others.

One of my reactions to the article was the relationship I saw between mass media and public opinion which is the agenda setting theory attempts to prove if the media is able of telling the public what current issues are important. But does the media really tell important issues that the public want to hear or only the things they want to show? Because during this time of pandemic, there some issues that the public wanted to hear like for example, the specific plan of the government to an increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines. I believed that the mass media is truly performing their role in society if they following the demands and tell important issues with transparency and honesty to public.

In regards to public opinion, everyone of us had their own different understanding and ways to express opinions in a particular issues. Some of us uses social media like facebook and twitter to convey their own thoughts and access any information. Also, other opinion are influenced by media because in groundbreaking study of McCombs and Shaw which they observe the capacity of mass media in influencing the voter's opinion during a presidential election campaign and found out that mass media did have a higher percentage who referred their information that provided by the media.

But for me, not all information in media are reliable because nowadays some politicians might use their power to threatened the media and hold their freedom of expression or speech if they will not serve them, just like what they did in the largest entertainment media platform in our country. They were deprive them the rights to express what is really happening in our society.

I also find out that the two hypothesis that involved in agenda which is opinions and behavior are cause to the agenda-setting theory to be influential even through media contexed and opinions. Also, the new media is more ifluential in comparison to old media. The new media include blogs, ebooks, streaming and etc. that helps us to access reliable and credible sources of information easily.

In conclusion, I would strongly agree to "not just what to think, but how to think about it". Everyone should be given a proper knowledge so they can assess all the facts before they formand give their opinion correctly in the issue. Its important for the public to not depend in totality of information given by the media.

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Happ Friday Read.Cash! Hope you enjoyed reading this article, even though it is not a typical content you want, haha.

Images source: Unplash

# 11
: Friday
: August 19, 2022
: Re-joyce