Who dictates what? Media vs The Public.

A recent point of discussion in one of my courses was whether we thought the media influenced public opinions or the other way around. And though the opinions varied, the majority believed that it was the public who held the power on what makes it on the news.

Most argued that the news, much like everything else we see on TV, print, or radio is a product. A product that must be sold to the masses in order to be deemed successful and by extension lucrative. There is of course truth in this, but I believe that it is not such a black and/or white issue. I agree that the news outlets must satisfy their audience, but I think that there are those who go to the news to be told what to think. Unfortunately not everyone has strong enough opinions so they turn to their most trusted sources, often the media, to form and shape how to view the world around them. Much like the retail shopper going shopping for nothing in particular, waiting to find something that will catch their eye.

I would like to think that the media isn’t just churning out stories based on what they feel is the most popular. Let’s face it, if that were true then all we would have are entertainment magazines. I would like to think that there are editors out there that recognize the importance of certain stories. Ones who will publish articles that they feel would affect people and make a difference. But then one could argue that if editors used purely personal opinions to make decisions, then they would be the ones directly influencing the huddled masses. But that’s a rant for a different day.

Click Whirr….

Influence by Cialdini

 

Just a few pages into reading a book called Influence:The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini, I have already learned something new. It’s refered to in the book as ‘Click Whirr’ or fixed-action patterns. Why the odd wording? Well it’s because in one of the examples he talks about in the book an experiment was done to turkeys and polecats. Basically a mother turkey will tend to its young because it hears its ‘cheep cheep’ sound, if it doesn’t then it will abandon or even attack the little chicks. Curiously when a tape recorder (hence ‘click…whirr’) is placed inside a fake pole cat, a natural enemy of the turkey, and the ‘cheep cheep’ sound is played from it the turkey does not turn aggressive towards the dummy. This same experiment was done on Robins and red feathers to elicit a response with visuals instead of sounds. It was also tried on humans and it was found that when asking a favor of someone, that giving them a reason for the favor, like using the word ‘because’, has the same response effect. So it seems that people has similar fixed-action patterns as our animal cousins.