What Are Influential Media Networks

Now, it seems that media coverage is the opposite. News stories today are ones that involve scandals, polls, and the personal lives of the candidates rather than policies and issues. It is concerned more with profit than it is with educating the American people well, so they can make an informed decision. Today’s media has deteriorated in value to the public who wish to choose the best president for America, but has increased in value to the news networks, who make a large amount of money off the presidential election. The media has become a calculating business firm, who chooses what stories to run based on the money the stories will bring in rather than which story is more important. And, the stories that are making the most money, are those that entertain the American people. Therefore, the media has become biased toward stories that entertain rather than send an important message. Thus, the coverage of the presidential election has little value in

The 2016 election has been the first election where social media has been a key player to how people got their information. Statistics say “44 percent of American adults said they had learned something new in the past week about the election from social media.” However, with social media such an important influence on the younger generation it is important for all of this information to be legitimate and truthful. Google and Facebook have recently changed their policies to try to stop fake news articles from popping up within their ad space. The spread of fake news articles skews the public's perception of the candidates. The guardian talks about how the American voter is not just one demographic (college educated individuals, white men, minorities etc. ) because of this lack of (straightforward), it's hard to get an accurate prediction on who would have won the election. Additionally, the media affected the election negatively because they did not give the general public enough information to understand the statistics that they were

More and more people are getting their news from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Tumbler and many more, and candidates are using this to their advantage. This election is probably one of the first were candidates have actually used social media sites as their direct communication line to potential voters. Social media today had gone from gossip and family pictures to a location for political strategy. Thanks largely to trumps regular social media first declarations and its actually working particularly with the younger voters. A study released last year from the Pew Research Center that Marissa Lang cited showed that “Among 18- to 29-year-olds, nearly two-thirds said social media is the most helpful means of learning new things about politics.” (Lang, 2016). Even if the candidate isn’t the one posting the video or message in the end it will still end up on social media. For example, Trump had announced his plan to ban all Muslims from entering the united states in South Carolina not on social media however it found its way there and spread like wild fire. This sent those who were outraged to respond in disgust and those who encouraged it to share it so that their friends could see and so on and so on. Even if those who shared it did it to

This result suggests that the NBC prediction did have an impact on the election. Additionally, this result supports the impact of the media on political behavior.

The results of this research should indicate the across the board a majority of the participants would prefer the negatively presented news, rather than the positive; as demonstrated in What's Good for the Goose is Bad for the Gander: Negative Political Advertising,Partisanship, and Turnout and Editorial Cartoons 2.0: The Effects of Digital Political Satire on Presidential Candidate Evaluations. Regarding the control groups; Group 1 (those who viewed CNN regularly) would likely prefer CNN, however since CNN is a centrist news outlet, individuals in this group might lean towards MSNBC or Fox News, as well. Group 2 (those who viewed MSNBC regularly) would prefer MSNBC across the board and group 3 participants (those who viewed Fox News regularly) would prefer Fox in all the categories. However, it is a little more difficult to predict which news outlet will be most preferred by those in group 4 (individuals who never or rarely watch CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News). It is likely that they will prefer either Fox News or CNN, since those are both more popular than MSNBC (Partisanship and Cable News Audiences, 2008).

A news programs bias and political party standings can effect what types of propaganda they show of certain candidates. For example, FOX news is a strictly Republican news channel, it supports Republican candidate, meanwhile news channels such as MSNBC and PBS are extremely democratic programs and support Democratic candidates in elections. News programs political bias can affect the way that particular program portrays a candidate for an upcoming election and a candidate’s portrayal can change a voter’s opinion of a candidate and can cause that candidate to lose viewers’ votes. The broadcasting of malicious rumors and gossip in any form by news programs gives a negative conception to a viewer. No viewer wants to vote for a candidate that is portrayed in a way that makes the viewer believe that they are bad for the country. Every viewer needs to take in to consideration the political bias of a news program before changing his or her opinion of a candidate as well as do some research on the candidates of an election themselves.

During the recent 2016 presidential election, candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton could be seen glorified on the television screens of an MSNBC segment. On the other hand, viewing Fox News reveals a very noticeable conservative bias, favoring ideology from candidates like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and John Kasich. CNN, thought to be the most neutral of the three, is only considered unbiased because it always has “at least one conservative and one liberal pundits” reporting on an issue (Garcia). News media rarely provides information unbiasedly, there seems to be some sort of political leaning to almost every news report. Although biased news allows for more perspectives and grants more information to the audience, the extent to which

In the article “Hype Versus Substance in Network Television Coverage of Presidential Election Campaigns”, authors Julia R. Fox, James R. Angelini, and Christopher Goble analyze political coverage on broadcast news during the final weeks of presidential elections. In the end they found that in the final weeks of campaigns many voters are still undecided. “Voters making up their minds at the end of the campaign tend to be less partisan and more likely to use-and to be influenced by-media messages in making their decision ” (Fox, J., Angelini, J., & Goble, C). This tends to be enough to cause a last minute “swing” in an election. With this being said the authors also found that these broadcast news stations very rarely address the critical

But it is not unusual for certain outlets to have a specific person favored in their time on air over their opponents. And this once again can detour the publics opinion if they see one candidate more than they do another.

There are three widely accepted options for influence and power to surge from in the election process, as stated above. First and foremost, the media is widely perceived as the top dog in the election process; society as a whole holds the assumption that media sets the agenda and controls the political process. This idea is embellished by the cynics of the world and there have been a number of studies with findings disputing these perceptions. Dalton’s paper tracked over 6000 newspapers articles, during the 1992 presidential election, from a stratified sample of counties across the nation and their research points to a much weaker position being held by the media as a whole, in respect to its influence over elections within the United States (466). The research focused of the viewpoint and time given to either candidate during the election season. Overall the findings showed little to no bias, outside of the editorial section, with in the overall information of each candidate. The argument is summed up in the article stating, “Certainly, some newspapers and journalists have distinct views, but such individual biases appear small and tend to cancel out when aggregated. Moreover, a newspaper’s presidential endorsement had little impact on its news coverage of the issue themes of the campaign” (Dalton, 476). The media seems to play a part in

Media is known as the “king maker” for many reasons, such as shaping candidates in audience’s perspective. Television has been a big influence in shaping voters choice and labeling political parties, even though some believe media information can be scant in regards to candidates. Media can be anything from television to social media networks and how many people think that media is a great influence, some also think it can be a problem. “It only takes 140 characters to damage a political campaign” in which Smith is referring to social media as being a problem. (Smith, K. 2011. Pg. 9) At the state and local levels party affiliation remains the most important. “In television age, journalist became the chief influence in the selection of candidates

Since the inception and massive growth of the 24-hour news cycle, Americans have become more dependent and reliant on news media outlets for their facts and opinions. While many, if not most, news stations and their pundits took polling information and assumed a Clinton victory, the news stations relied too purely on this information and ended up overlooking the closeness of the race. The six point lead in Wisconsin that Clinton, “Lost” was not truly a loss, but the improper gifting of a win by polling experts and media

“The roots of media bias go back to the nineteenth century, and complaints about bias in part reflect a questionable idea about the media’s role and purpose: that newspapers and other dispensers of public information exist to transmit objective, factual information gleaned and communicated by credentialed professionals.” – Bruce Thornton

The effects of mass media and social media have changed the way people have experienced presidential campaigns in many ways. With the development of new technologies through the last hundred years many different ways of experiencing the campaigns have taken place. Newspapers, radio, television, internet and social media websites have changed the ways we all have experienced elections.

“FDR used radio, JFK used television, President Obama used the internet, and Donald Trump was very adept at social media, but more so in my mind understanding cable news,” Dylan Byers explains at the beginning of a panel put on by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Some form of media has been around through most, if not all, election cycles since the beginning of our country. I think that the media played no more a role in this election cycle than they have in the past, but they were not able to effectively present it in a fair and balanced as they could have. The candidates just used them to more of their advantage, or disadvantage in some cases. The media was only doing their job, covering popular stories and informing the public.