What do Kyrie Irving, Tsai Ying Wen, and Donald Trump have in common? These people have all used mass media to influence the public and their opinions about certain products, people, or events. Mass media is a driving force of public opinion in modern democratic societies, influencing different aspects of all of everyone’s life. Internet, social networking, television, and print sources, such as newspapers, are examples of accessible sources of mass media that can shape the public and affect people’s opinions. Mass media can alter people’s perceptions and understandings through advertising, broadcasting, and advocacy groups (Bhardwaj, 2016).
Mass media changes public opinion through advertisements. These advertisements are public announcements, usually used for recommending a product or service. Advertising can affect people’s desires, consumer habits, and willingness to apply for jobs. For example, in the Pepsi advertisement on YouTube, Kyrie Irving, a professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association, is used in celebrity advertising to
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Advocacy groups are concerned with political, economic, and ideological issues, and these groups will collect data on a specific target part of voters and try to convert them to the group’s beliefs. For example, during Trump’s presidential election, the organization Cambridge Analytica (CA) and other companies spread “a disproportionate amount of pro-Trump messaging via automated bots and anti-Hillary propaganda” (Cadwalladr 2018). The former director of CA, Chris Wylie, collected up to 50 million Facebook user profiles and targeted these people because they were more susceptible to “fake news” (advertisement, fake information, videos, and so on) and could be made to think Trump was a better choice (Illing, 2018; Cadwalladr, C. 2018; Harrison, E. 2018). Thus, the winning of 2016’s election was considered the greatest success of the