How Media Shape People’s Perceptions of World Events

SHANDONG UNIVERSITY
山东大学
School of Political Science and Public Administration
MASTERS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
TERM PAPER
How Media Shape People’s Perceptions of World Events
Presented By
Bright Mhango (M2013071)
Presented To
Zhu Guichang, Professor
(International Relations Theory)
April 2014
How Media Shape People’s Perceptions of World Events
1

The University of Fairleigh Dickinson published research which purports that Americans who
watch Fox News Television know little compared to people who do not watch news at all. Some
Fox News viewers sampled in the study thought that it was the United States that bailed
economically bailed out Greece and some failed to correctly point that Egyptians successfully
overthrew their government, (PublicMind, 2011).
The University of Maryland also found that Fox News viewers are the most misinformed
(Mirkinson, 2010) – there must be something, therefore, about Fox News that makes its
viewers more ignorant of world events.
Media content influences audiences – the effects manifest in opinions, attitudes, knowledge
and world view. This paper will try to explain how media shape the audiences’ perceptions of
world events.
Many people know of events via the media and most of them believe what the media say and
some even take it as well balanced gospel truth (Carron, 2010).
But not all the media says is true and balanced, every story is told from an angle, either the
journalists’, the advertisers’, the politician’s, the source’s or the media house’s, and
as filmmaker and journalist Ruth Broyde Sharone said at a UN roundtable in Geneva in 2008;
“There is no truly neutral story or truly objective story, every story is told through the eyes and
ears of whoever is covering the story…” (Sharone, 2008)
Psychologists such as Bandura (1976) with his bobo doll experiment, Silver et al (1969) and
Wolfgang and Ferracuti (1967) all support the fact that social learning- where audiences copy
what their role models do – happens. Social learning supports the assertion that media
influences people since many people depend on media not just for gratification but also
surveillance and interpretation among other uses. And if the media is or provides the role
models and we know people tend to copy role models, the media therefore probably influence
masses, (Wiener et al 2003:593 and Dominick, 1994).
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Media can also influence audiences through a number of ways such as priming, agenda-setting,
framing and cultivation (CommGap, 2009: 2-3).
Priming is when media text trigger recalling of stored ideas, knowledge, attitudes and
experience related in some way to the media message at hand. Media houses remind
audiences of a lot when they mention 9/11, Tiananmen Square and Berlin Wall, an effect that
can be used to subtly alter opinion on some issue.
Agenda-setting is when the media influences what people think about via the choice of which
topics to cover and what things to emphasize. It’s the editors and the journalists that decide
what to leave out or what to include in the news casts and in so doing they champion certain
things – a good example would be right after Sept. 11, CNN repeatedly ran the Saira Shah
documentary, "Behind the Veil," against the Taliban to raise public support for then President
Bush's plan to go to war in Afghanistan (Koolbreeze, 2011).
The other way in which media influence people is via the concept of framing – frames are the
particular treatment or “spin” an individual media organisation gives to a text. Unlike agenda-
setting which is about choosing what to tell the audience, framing is about how to tell that
which has been chosen. Frames may “promote a particular problem definition, causal
interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation,” (CommGap, 2009:2).
In 2006, controversy erupted when a Reuter’s photographer was found to have altered a
photograph of burning Beirut to make it seem as if the Israeli bombing was extensive (BBC,
2006). This is a classic example of framing – Adnan Hajj- the photojournalist, was trying to raise
a case for Hezbollah, to draw sympathy to Beirut via Photoshop and for any normal being,
seeing a dark smoke from a city would easily have caused them to react with concern.
Media has power to influence, it can raise or lower support for an issue of person via coverage
and non-coverage (Zaller, 1999:164)
3

The media also cultivates beliefs. Since George Gerbner’s work back in the 70s it’s not very
difficult to see the effects of television and cultivation analysis especially after watching a
horror movie, it is as if the world becomes filled with zombies and usually the walk to the
bedroom after the movie is a scary one. Cultivation is where heavy consumers of media text
start believing that the real world is similar to the television world. Ask any man on the streets
about African Americans and he will speak of Hip Hop and crime, a view which has been
cultivated via television - which through its repeated portrayal of African Americans as rappers
and criminals has made that view stick.
The same can be said of Muslims- the really typical ones; with beards and robes, sitting next
such a man on a plane and then seeing him play with a black Smartphone really works one up,
it’s as if the phone is a detonator and that the guy is a terrorist- a stereotype being scaffolded
by the media- through movies and television’s emphasis on terrorism images/stories.
As Peterson and Steen (2002:250) state: “Television’s proclivity for ruminating in its news
coverage compounds a tendency to magnify stories of violence in a self-serving way that may
slant factual presentation… Unfortunately, the distortions in permanence and pervasiveness
that serve the interest of the networks do not serve the best interests of young viewers who
may adopt the pessimistic explanatory style to which they are repeatedly exposed.”
When the Twin Towers were struck in the US, it was as if evil was let loose, the world felt so in
danger, stepping on a public bus was a risk and images of death kept ringing in many a
television viewer’s head, but really it was just like any other day, the media chose to speak
about it and the rest of the world started discussing it.
The influx of Vietnam War movies in the 80’s is a good example of how media can help shape
audiences’ perception of world events. To this day many Malawians can still be heard saying
that the United States army is not to be played with, that one US Marine is capable of doing
what can take many Malawian soldiers- such sentiments are obviously just movies like Bye Bye
Vietnam, Cross Bone Territory, Platoon Leader and Missing in Action speaking.
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The movies did a public relations function for the Americans who are said to have struggled
with the Viet Cong, instead there stands a flowery picture painted about the war with of course
America winning it with the smallest effort and manpower possible.
The same can be said of the Iraq invasion by the United States in 2003. Many Americans
supported the war because by watching news outlets like Fox and CNN, they were made to
believe the untruths that Iraq was supporting Al Qaeda and that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear
weapon program on-going somewhere in his tightly guarded lairs.
Most 24/7 US cable networks tended to provide highly sanitized views of the war. These
networks rarely showed Iraqi causalities, Arab outrage about the war, global anti-war, anti- U.S.
protests, and the negative features of the war; they only beamed pro-military patriotism,
propaganda, technological fetishism, celebrating the weapons of war and military humanism,
highlighting the achievements and heroism of the U.S. troops (Carron, 2010).
It thus can be said that as in the case of the Iraq Invasion that if one watched Al Jazeera they
would likely have an Arab centric view of the war and those on the side of Fox News would
have the opposite.
It all proves, arguably, that media shape audiences perception of world events. The media does
this by way of setting the agenda, by framing, by priming and by cultivating beliefs. The media,
which according to Stuart Hall are vehicles of those in power, take advantage of the fact that
audiences trust them to sell the same unsuspecting audiences ideology.
People are intelligent, yes, and they can read between some lies of the media, but after all is
said, the media still has power in shaping people’s perceptions of world events by simply
highlighting, championing, twisting or ignoring issues.
5

Bibliography
BBC, 2006 Reuters Drops Beirut Photographer [Online article] retrieved on 04/05/2014 from
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5254838.stm
Broyde Sharone, Ruth (2008) UN Roundable [sic] on Media's Influence on World Events [video]
retrieved on 04/05/2014 from URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rafhEQtNjsQ
Carron, Francine (2010) A Content Analysis of “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War” by Kull,
Ramsay and Lewis [online article] retrieved on 04/05/2014 from
URL: http://www.scribd.com/doc/44234140/Media-Politics-Framing-the-Iraqi-War
ChallengingMedia (2006) Constructing Public Opinion [video] viewed on 04/05/2014 from URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvodhsMc2QM&feature=player_embedded#!
CommGap, 2009, “Media Effects” Technical Brief, Communication for Governance and
Accountability, [online article] retrieved on 04/05/2014 from
URL: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGOVACC/Resources/MediaEffectsweb.pdf
Dominick, J,R, (1994), The Dynamics of Mass Communication, McGraw-Hill, Anthens
Koolbreeze, Angus (2011) How Does TV Convey Information & Influence Public Opinion? [online
article] retrieved on 04/05/2014 from URL: http://www.ehow.com/info_8712701_tv-information-
influence-public-opinion.html
Mirkinson, Jack (2010) Fox News Viewers Are The Most Misinformed: Study [online article] retrieved on
04/05/2014 from URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/17/fox-news-viewers-are-the-
_n_798146.html
Peterson, C and Steen, T ‘Optimistic Explanatory Style’ quoted in Snyder, C and Lopez, S (Editors)
(2002) Handbook of Positive Psychology, Oxford: OUP
PublicMind Poll (2011) Part Deux: Many think US is bailing out Greece; NPR, Jon Stewart Out-Fox
Cable News [online article] retrieved on 04/05/2014 from URL: http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/outfox/
Weiner, I, Lerner, M and Millon, T (Eds) (2003) Handbook of Psychology (Vol. 5) New Jersey: John Wiley
and Sons
Zaller, John (1999) A Theory of Media Politics: How the interests of politicians, journalists and citizens
shape the news, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
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