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How Does Mass Media Influence American Politics

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Chapter 2: Literature Review
This research study will address the problem of how mass media has the influential power of influencing individual attitude and perspective regarding national political candidates. The purpose of this study is to examine why the mass media has a voluminous impact on a person's decision making when it comes to voting for a particular political candidate. Within this chapter, the scholars use the data to examine three theoretical concepts of how American politics works in the degree of influencing the way media have in the decision-making process. This chapter is section into seven broad sections. The first section provides a comprehensive perspective of the agenda-setting function of the mass media in America. A …show more content…

Donald Shaw & Maxwell McCombs (1972) are the first originators of the theory; known as The Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media. McCombs and Shaw argued that the most significant effect that the mass media has been its power to persuade (McCombs and Shaw, 2003). Stating, that the agenda setting theory can place the importance of particular news story at a higher level than any other news story when reporting on political candidates. So the media can persuade viewers to think that an individual story or an individual running is more important than …show more content…

People not only want to acquire information about public affairs, but people also want to have a connection with how valuable the information is that the news attached to a topic (McCombs, 2003). Public opinion polls asked a variation of long-standing Gallup Poll question like, "What is the most important problem facing this country today?" When the media discuss particular issues such as global warming, or health-care, they make us think about it. Research shows if the press makes us focus on one topic than that issue is being presented as more

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