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Television is the most influential medium in American society and has been for many years.

Americans perceive television primarily as an entertainment medium, but many Americans also depend on it as a source of information about many issues, including politics.

In 2004, the American National Election Study found that 86 percent of people said they followed the 2004 presidential campaign on television.

Television is perceived as more credible than print, according to studies by Journalism.org, the Pew Research Center, and others, and this is probably due to the visual nature of the medium. However, the same reports show that trust in both local television and national networks has steadily declined (as has trust in all media sources).

Reporters seem to be automatically suspicious of the motives of elected officials and politicians running for office.

Politicians believe that the time, money, and energy they devote to press relations will pay off in the form of reelection or support for their policy proposals.

While the public relies on the news media as a source of information about politics, politicians also depend on the press, both in elections and in governing.

Since the 1970s, Americans have become much more likely to identify themselves as independents rather than as Democrats or Republicans. The weakening of the political parties has made it possible for more individuals to run for office without spending years paying their dues in the parties. But it has also affected the ability of the parties to speak effectively to voters and mobilize them at election time.

As a result of the weakening of the political parties, candidates have to cultivate their own relationships with voters, and the way they do that is through the mass media.

In the early days of the nation, the press was blatantly partisan, as it still is in many other democratic countries.

Theodore Roosevelt, our first truly media-savvy president, tried to use the reporters who covered the White House for his own benefit. He gave them access that they hadn't previously enjoyed, but he also threatened to take away that access if their reporting displeased him.

Elected officials and candidates for office need to get their views out to the voting public, and the members of the press see their job as screening those views for truth. The result is that the press and politicians have very different imperatives that clash with each other dramaticall

The Kennedy-Nixon presidential debates of 1960 were another important series of events in the emergence of television as a political medium.

Today, thanks to the development of cable and satellite technology, television provides a twenty-four-hour forum of political news and information.

The equal time rule originated in the Radio Act of 1927, and it can also be found in Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934. It requires that stations provide all political candidates the opportunity to appear. If a station sells or gives advertising time to one candidate, it must offer the same opportunity to the other candidates in that race.

Copyright 1998 Jack M. Balkin. All Rights Reserved

J.M. Balkin Yale University

This essay concerns the mass media’s contributions to the political values of openness and democratic accountability that go by the name of ‘transparency.’

References

Our goal should be to understand how existing structures operate and to change them for the better.

The Influence and Relationship of the Media in Politics, Campaigns and Elections - In an age of timeliness and demand for information

But while the public demands information from the media, there is also an underlying cynicism in the American culture against the media and politicians for negative campaign coverage and a perceived media bias.

Nixon on the other hand, did not have such a good relationship with the media and did not understand the importance of mass coverage. Just before Election Day, Kennedy visited northeastern states with large electoral votes and more importantly, major media outlets where he would be seen by a large audience. Nixon on the other hand, wanted to fulfill his promise of going to every state and went to Alaska. Wha

Nov 14, 2007

By Jonathon Hardcastle

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jonathon_Hardcastle

The interaction of mass communication and political actors -- politicians, interest groups, strategists, and others who play important roles -- in the political process is apparent. Under this framework, the American political arena can be characterized as a dynamic environment in which communication, particularly journalism in all its forms, substantially influences and is influenced by it.

But really, does anyone think that in 2020—or maybe even 2015—we'll still have big-money television ad buys, regardless of who's paying for them?

Media are means of transmitting information, which is important for a democracy in which citizens must make their own informed decisions.

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Key Points

Examples

Social media is playing an increasingly important role in the way campaigns are run and how elected officials govern. It allows candidates

Amina is a freelance journalist in Chicago. Her work has previously appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Grid and Popular Science, among others.

and officeholders to not only communicate more effectively to a larger audience, but it creates a two-way street for constituents to respond and interact with leaders,”

If there is anything recent elections have proven, it’s that reaching out to voters online is not only important, it’s essential. The first notable use of social media to rally the voting community was during the 2008 Presidential election, when the Obama campaign took to the web to draw out the young vote. According to research by the Pew Foundation, 83 percent of 18-24 year-olds had social networking accounts in 2008, and two-thirds of those used those sites for political activity at that time.

Though social media has certainly changed the face of political campaigns, it has not replaced other traditional forms of communication. “It’s additive,” says Greenberg. What she means is that having a social media campaign does not mean politicians can forego television and radio commercials. Greenberg also emphasizes that in-person rallies and town halls are an essential component of campaigns and that these venues won’t go away just because people spend more time online.

The media remains important since they are the means by which people obtain current affairs both inside and outside of the United States- however bias it may be.

Nov 14, 2007

Laura Lane, Yahoo Contributor Network

CONCLUSION

A more reflective consideration of the relationship between media and society might find this simple marketing analysis lacking in substance. The Swedish media researcher Göran Bolin  writes, in a paper on libraries, that it isn’t “a question of society being ‘mediafied’ through the transformation of information but, rather, that society itself is enclosed in human communication, in the way we all communicate with each other.”

Those of us active in media will look for the influence of new technology on media and media structure, not least because the effects in this area of society have been so tangible. The new technology affects media and media structure directly. In the next steps toward the further development of Internet society, changes in the entire production order could be the most important. The effects on media and media structure might then be more indirect—but not necessarily of lesser impact.

As a counterforce, every soldier and citizen in a war zone has become a potential journalist able to report with both text and film. A cell phone is enough. And the reports can be distributed without being screened—or checked or authenticated—by a professional media company. The mobile [cell phone] changes journalism more than

 new Pew report on

March 19, 2013 at 6:30 am

By Chris Cillizza and Sean Sulliva

Here's a look

Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put the industry down 30 percent since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978," according to the Pew report. With fewer reporters and more to cover -- thanks to the endless churn of social media, cable television and so on and so forth -- the tendency to do a sort of paint-by-numbers reporting takes over.

Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

"Facebook is transformed from a public space to a behavioral laboratory," says the study, which cites a Harvard-based research project of 1,700 college-based Facebook users in which it became possible to "deanonymize parts of the data set," or cross-reference anonymous data to make student identification possible.

Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer, of the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, outlined what the company is learning as part of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology meeting in Austin. Its president, social psychologist James Pennebaker, of the University of Texas-Austin, says privacy is a big issue for the research world.

"Facebook especially, and Microsoft, is scared to death about privacy issues," he says. "A bunch of researchers have access to everybody's posts and Facebook is built on what's yours is private. They are struggling with the problem the same way as the scientific community."

Attorney and privacy expert Parry Aftab, of New York City — a member of Facebook's Safety Advisory Board — suggests that users shouldn't worry because the very large companies such as Twitter, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have privacy policies for users."The sites will never provide personally identifiable information unless they have the consent of the users. And there is legal recourse if they're using it in any other way," she says.

"Be aware it is a space that is watched,"

March 12, 2014

Every time you search online for the best restaurant deal, share good news or bad with your Facebook friends, or tweet to your followers, your "audience" is bigger than you know.

ed massive amounts of money to purchase air time to run their political campaigns from media companies that are licensed to use the airwaves which are owned by the America

Neither the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is concerned with the average middle-class Americans upon whose backs the prosperity of America was built. Both parties ne

n peopl

corporate donors

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ernment Americans need to listen very carefully to the mass media pundits and then realize that six conglomerates control nearly all the media in America. Americans need to listen for what they are not being told is to blindly accept mass media's version of reality. Americans need to stop tuning in to hear the latest titillating gossip about this missing person, that sensational murder and the escapades of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

For Americans to regain control of the

Plastic surgeons are performing on patients younger than 20 years ago.

About the author: TR 18 year old student living in London. Infatuated with movies, television, music, gaming, and the news. Currently studying History, Economics, and Politics at A-Levels.

The current generation of teens (myself included) are considered to be the most pompous, self-absorbed and the most narcissistic generation yet by our elders. Why I hear you ask? Because of mass media.

What’s most worrying is the situation will inevitable become worse.

Mass media has a prominent role to play in modern society. It can bringabout radical changes and improve social situation as it influences our social, civil, cultural, political,economic and aesthetic outlook. Modernization has converted media into an indispensable feature of human activity. However, factors like age, education, economic condition, personal needs and availability of proper components decide the quantum and frequency of media use.

Media influence isrelated to other aspects such as the nature of a communicator, the content / information from themedia itself, as well as responses from the community.

information

International Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences

1 Virginia Paul, 2 Priyanka Singh and 3 Sunita B. John

Associate Professor, Department of Home Science, 2 In charge & Assistant Professor, 3 Head & Assistant Professor, Department of Physical EducationSchool of Social Work, SHIATS, Naini, Allahabad, UP

Understanding the effects of media on individuals and society requires that we examine the messages being sent, the medium transmitting them

Many people claim that the media are biased toward one political view or another. Conservative critics argue that there is a liberal bias arising from the tendency of reporters to be more liberal than the public at large. The liberals’ counterargument is that the pre

ss has a conservative bias because most media outlets are owned by giant corporations that hold pro-business views.

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