Effects of the Media on Politics

Scholars once believed that the mass media have only a minimal effect on politics, but that view is now discredited. The media do make a difference. They have an impact on public opinion and on policymaking in a number of different ways.

Several studies, for example, have demonstrated that the media play an important role in setting the policy agenda. The topics that get the most coverage in the media are the same ones that most people say are the "most important problems" facing the country. Of course, media managers don't arbitrarily decide what news to emphasize. Their decisions reflect what is happening in the world and what American audiences care about.

Nonetheless, some research has indicated that trends in what the media cover sometimes diverge from actual trends in problems. Examples include periodic surges and declines of stories about the AIDS epidemic or about the drug problem.

Experiments also show that the media's framing or interpretation of stories affect how people think about political problems. What appears in the media also influences people's policy preferences. One study found that changes in collective public opinion (i.e. changes in the percentage of the public that favored various policies) could be predicted fairly accurately by what sorts of stories were on the network television news between one opinion survey and the next. By affecting what people think is
important, how they understand problems, and what policies they want, media broadcasters and news publications indirectly influence when and how government responds to public opinion.