Conf Dr Nistor Mihaela, III B

Roske Octavian Portuguese-English, group 6

The American Political Science

Shaping Public Opinion: The Media

The role of the media in shaping public perceptions and opinions about significant political and
social issues has long been the subject of both speculation and research. It is widely accepted that what
we know about, think and believe about what happens in the world, outside of personal first-hand
experience, is shaped, and some would say orchestrated, by how these events are reported in newspapers
and communicated through the medium of radio and television.
Few people experience first-hand a terrorist attack, most don’t know what it is like to be held in a
foreign prison while undergoing a trial for suspected drug trafficking. Thankfully, relatively few of us are
the victims of a violent crime or are close to those who are the victims or even the perpetrators of such
acts. The reality of those events and our responses to them are experienced vicariously through the word
pictures created by journalists and the visual and auditory realism of television reports. The mass media
brings simulated reality into our lives and we find ourselves relying on those sources to provide a
conceptualized image of the real world.
In our modern times, which are marked by rapid succession of events and information, people
desire to be supplied with information that gives a clear picture of the developments taking place around
them.
Everyone wants not only the reports about events but also logical analyses that correlate events
enabling them to form an opinion on everything that happens locally and internationally.
Public opinion is the aggregate of this process. Floyd Allport 1, in his book “Towards A Science of Public
Opinion,” says public opinion is “an expression by a large collection of individuals of their views on a
particular situation formulated either by themselves or on the basis of an appeal made to them. It could be
an expression supporting or opposing an issue, a person or a proposal of great significance. The
proportion of the supporters (or opposers) in the number and degree of their conviction, steadfastness and
persistence... becomes sufficient to make an impact on taking a particular step directly or indirectly
toward an objective they want.” So the creation of an effective public opinion requires the existence of a
free and responsible press that can undertake the enlightening of the society on social issues and events
and can supply the society with facts that instill in people a desire to express their viewpoints in order to
sway the course of events the way they want.
A free and understanding press has the power to influence public opinion. The media uses many
tools and methods, and its effectiveness depends on the awareness of journalists. Journalism has
developed considerably in the 20th century, especially with its concern for the welfare of human beings.
It is capable of translating the dialectical association and interactions between it and the events that
concern individuals and so it shapes the pattern of presenting events in its publications.

1
Floyd Henry Allport (August 22, 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA - October 15, 1978 in Los Altos, California,
USA) was professor of social psychology and political psychology at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs (in Syracuse, New York, USA) from 1924 until 1956, and visiting professor at
University of California, Berkeley. He is considered the founder of social psychology as a scientific discipline.
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Journalism has a supervisory mission in society and hence its basic pillars should be social and ethical
commitment. Media is the cornerstone of any public opinion. With a policy of transparency and
refinement it can set trends in solving important or controversial issues.
This view of the influence of the media is elaborated on in what is called ‘Cultivation Theory’ 2
(Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1980). Cultivation Theory holds that the popular media, such as
television, has the power to influence our view of the world and it is “primarily responsible for our
perceptions of day-to-day norms and reality” (Infante, Rancer & Womack, 1997, p. 383). Television, in
particular, is our major source of information today and has become a part of us and part of our family
life. George Gerbner likened it to a “key member of the family, the one who tells the most stories most of
the time” (Gerbner et al 1980, p. 14). Research has taken this one step further. According to Severin &
Tankard (1997) heavy television viewers are more likely to perceive the world as it is portrayed on the
television screen. The limitations of such a ‘world view’ are strikingly portrayed by the character Chance
in the movie Being There3, the story of a gardener who had spent his entire life in the house of an old man
and whose only knowledge of the world outside the house was through television. When the man dies,
Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he had learned from
television.
The media can and does wield a lot of influence. We have seen how media pressure influenced
the Queensland government to make state school suspension and expulsion data available to the public.
We have seen how persistent media reports about violent and disruptive behaviour in schools and the
rising tide of suspensions and expulsions prompted the NSW 4 government to support an independent
report on the situation (Gonczi & Riordan, 2002). A plethora of news reports on unruly student behaviour
on school buses prompted the NSW government to pass the Passenger Transport (Bus Services)
Regulation, 2004; a regulation allowing for fines and the banning of students from school buses. Both
Queensland and NSW have passed laws providing for fines and jail sentences for intruders on school
campuses who threaten or assault students or staff. Queensland has introduced a police presence at some
schools, a measure spurred on by news reports about the safety of students at school. Queensland’s
‘Education Laws for the Future’ discussion paper has prompted a proposal that parents be required to sign
a document that they support the Code of Conduct of their children’s school (Department of Education &
the Arts, 2004).
One of the most significant educational decisions made by a state government has been be
introduction of separate educational facilities for chronically misbehaving students. The facilities,
behaviour management schools and ‘suspension’ centres, have been established in NSW. The efficacy of
such segregated facilities has been questioned on educational and social justice grounds. Their
establishment is no doubt based on political reasoning that public opinion is firmly behind removing
disruptive students from regular schools. The media has been at the forefront of reporting these opinions
and similar newspaper reports and the promotion of the idea of alternative schools and centres for
difficult to manage and alienated children and youth have appeared in the press around the country.
The power of the news media to set a nation’s agenda, to focus public attention on a few key
public issues, is an immense and well-documented influence. Not only do people acquire factual
information about public affairs from the news media, readers and viewers also learn how much
importance to attach to a topic on the basis of the emphasis placed on it in the news.

2
Cultivation theory is a social theory which examined the long-term effects of television on American audiences of
all ages.
3
Being There is a 1979 American comedy-drama film directed by Hal Ashby, adapted from the 1971 novella
written by Jerzy Kosinski. The screenplay was coauthored by Kosinski and Robert C. Jones
4
New South Wales
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Bibliography :

1. Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1980). The "mainstreaming" of America:
Violence profile no. 11. Journal of Communication 30(3), 10-29.
2. Infante, D. Rancer, A. & Womack, D. (1997). Building communication theory (3rd ed.). Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland.
3. www.infoamerica.org/documentos_pdf/mccombs01.pdf

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