NON-FICTION.materials / ~Mass Media and Politics_STDUDENTS' COPY

Mass Media and Politics

Speaking. Task 1.

Look at the pictures below and say what idea these pictures have in common.

(Images are taken from

http://manusiasepertikamu.blogspot.com/

http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/2012/08/fourth-estate-collusion-in-conspiracy.html)

Speaking. Task 2.

Read through the following quotations. What quotation would you use as a caption for the pictures given above? What quotation echoes with your understanding of mass media and politics interrelation?

• “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.” Jim Morrison

• “Whoever controls the language, the images, controls the race.” Unknown

• “We can't quite decide if the world is growing worse, or if the reporters are just working harder.” The Houghton Line, November 1965

• “If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read:  ‘President Can't Swim’.” Lyndon B. Johnson

• “You can crush a man with journalism.” William Randolph Hearst

• "For a politician to complain about the press is like a ship's captain complaining about the sea". Enoch Powell

• “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” Ben Hecht

• “The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” Malcom X

• “We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.” Wendell Phillips

• “If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed.  If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” Author unknown, commonly attributed to Mark Twain or Thomas Jefferson

• “We can't quite decide if the world is growing worse, or if the reporters are just working harder.” The Houghton Line

Speaking. Task 3.

With your partner(s), talk about the following opinions on the influence of the media in politics, campaigns and elections:

• The media helps influence what issues voters should care about in elections and what criteria they should use to evaluate candidates.

• The media works more effectively by placing a spotlight on certain issues they feel the public should be concerned with.

• Just as the government influences the media, the media can help set the political agenda by focusing on specific issues and influencing what issues the public and government should be concerned with.

• Newspapers have a central viewpoint throughout all coverage and news stories often mirror the political views expressed in editorials.

• The media is forced to make decisions when covering politics about who to interview, what quotes and facts to select and how to interpret information.

• By spotlighting what issues the public should focus on, the media helps to dictate what issues voters should be concerned with in elections and what criteria they should use to judge politicians by.

• The media can greatly influence the public by limiting coverage of certain candidates.

• Media coverage practically ignores political parties and focuses instead on the candidates themselves.

• The media can greatly affect elections by generating attention, whether it is through negative campaigning or through their choice in coverage of a candidate.

• The media influences the public's perception on the viability of a candidate.

• Paid media can make or break a campaign depending on how much a candidate has to spend on television, posters, fliers, etc.

(Adapted from http://voices.yahoo.com/the-influence-media-politics-campaigns-and-651361.html?cat=9)

Listening. Task 1.

Listen to a fragment of a programme about mass media influence on the elections in the USA and complete the following sentences:

(Taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8KVk96GtU)

1. Candidates running for presidency had huge __________ ______________.

2. Without travelling at all their __________ ______ ____________ could be brought to virtually every voter in the country.

3. The ________ of mass media __________ political communication and campaigning.

4. The broadcast media are the ________ ____________ for _________ ________ _________ to voters.

5. They can also control the __________ they create through what they ________, how they ___________, what ________ they make and so on and so forth.

6. And with this control comes the ability __________ ___________ __________and possibly the _____________ _______ ____________.

7. People look ____________when they are ___________ or ____________.

8. Candidates must appear ___________on camera – they help to ____________ ___ ____________ _________ __________.

9. ____________or _____________ can make a candidate seem _________ or even ____________.

Listening. Task 2.

Listen to the fragment again and answer the following questions.

1. In what ways do the candidates use media?

2. When do candidates lose the ability to fully control voters’ perceptions and possibly the outcomes of elections?

3. What is a sound-bite?

4. What candidates are “mediagenic”?

5. What can influence voters’ perception?

6. What are the advantages, dangers and pitfalls of broadcast media for candidates?

Reading. Task 1.

Read the following article focusing your attention on the main problem(s) under discussion.

(Taken from http://www.isnare.com/?aid=88672&ca=Society)

Do Mass Media Influence the Political Behavior of Citizens

By Jonathon Hardcastle

Outside of the academic environment, a harsh and seemingly ever-growing debate has appeared, concerning how mass media distorts the political agenda. Few would argue with the notion that the institutions of the mass media are important to contemporary politics. In the transition to liberal democratic politics in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the media was a key battleground. In the West, elections increasingly focus around television, with the emphasis on spin and marketing. Democratic politics places emphasis on the mass media as a site for democratic demand and the formation of "public opinion". The media are seen to empower citizens, and subject government to restraint and redress. Yet the media are not just neutral observers but are political actors themselves. 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.

According to the theory of democracy, people rule. The pluralism of different political parties provides the people with "alternatives," and if and when one party loses their confidence, they can support another. The democratic principle of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" would be nice if it were all so simple. But in a medium-to-large modern state things are not quite like that. Today, several elements contribute to the shaping of the public's political discourse, including the goals and success of public relations and advertising strategies used by politically engaged individuals and the rising influence of new media technologies such as the Internet.

A naive assumption of liberal democracy is that citizens have adequate knowledge of political events. But how do citizens acquire the information and knowledge necessary for them to use their votes other than by blind guesswork? They cannot possibly witness everything that is happening on the national scene, still less at the level of world events. The vast majority are not students of politics. They don't really know what is happening, and even if they did they would need guidance as to how to interpret what they knew. Since the early twentieth century this has been fulfilled through the mass media. Few today in United States can say that they do not have access to at least one form of the mass media, yet political knowledge is remarkably low. Although political information is available through the proliferation of mass media, different critics support that events are shaped and packaged, frames are constructed by politicians and news casters, and ownership influences between political actors and the media provide important short hand cues to how to interpret and understand the news.

One must not forget another interesting fact about the media. Their political influence extends far beyond newspaper reports and articles of a direct political nature, or television programs connected with current affairs that bear upon politics. In a much more subtle way, they can influence people's thought patterns by other means, like "goodwill" stories, pages dealing with entertainment and popular culture, movies, TV "soaps", "educational" programs. All these types of information form human values, concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, sense and nonsense, what is "fashionable" and "unfashionable," and what is "acceptable" and "unacceptable". These human value systems, in turn, shape people's attitude to political issues, influence how they vote and therefore determine who holds political power.

- to bias / to twist the set of goals of an ideological group or the topics under discussion by a government

- the main battlefield

- creative presentation by selectively presenting facts to support ideal positions

- to give somebody the power or authority to act

- a thing that limits or controls something

- a set of conclusions, estimates, etc, arrived at by guessing; the process of making guesses

- the greatest number or part

- awareness of political issues

- rapid growth of the means of communication that reach large numbers of people