The United States, as it exists today, is heavily influenced by the media especially during election years. Young Americans are the most susceptible to media influence as they are entering the political platform for the first time in their lives and seeking to define their own political identity. In this past election season there was a high demand for the “millennial vote”, millennials are young voters between the ages of 18 and 25 who have not yet cemented their support in one party or one candidate. The two front runners in this election, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, were able to use their media influence in order to achieve success which was highly attributed to their ability to appeal to younger voters. The media has the power to take any story and spin it in the way they see fit which is why the role of the media in today’s society has such a pivotal impact on our everyday lives. For example, media outlets such as Fox News or CNN are known for siding with a specific political party which alters the way they choose to report the news and even what stories they choose to run on air. Another Issue presented in today’s media climate is that of social media. Social media is a platform which gives a voice to any person with access to the internet and allows for uncensored communication of beliefs, opinions, and information. Because so many people rely on media platforms as a source of information and connection with the world around them it presents a problem within the system when bias and illegitimacy become factors in the way news is reported and received by the masses.

Many people in America are too trusting of the media for all the information they receive, and they allow themselves to be told what is and isn’t true by one source of news without ever researching beyond what they are told is the truth. Now more than ever before the world has access to so much information at the press of a button but so often we decide our opinions about something before taking the time to learn more about why things happen before accepting the information being presented to them. Meghan Gupta, a Ted talk youth speaker, presented an articulate report on media bias in the US especially as these reports pertain to terrorism overseas. At one point in her presentation she makes the claim that “Attacks in Africa, the middle east, and other developing countries are often swept under the rug simply for being too foreign”. (Gupta, 2:53) The ability to pick and choose what stories to air and which to ignore exemplifies the dangers of media bias in today’s society. In fact, 90% of American media is controlled by six major corporations which are Comcast, Viacom, CBS, News core, Time Warner, and Disney. The CEO’s of these companies, as she points out, are all white men who are in an elite tax bracket granting validity to the idea of a white-washed media. The power of these media tycoons is not however limited to their own networks, in fact their influence spans far beyond the reach of their own networks and into the realm of something much more powerful, that being the realm of popular opinion.

When Al Jazeera, a popular news network focusing on the actions of worldwide terrorist groups especially in the middle east, began it was placed under harsh scrutiny by news networks that have already been established and held in high esteem by the American people. “Because Al Jazeera was exclusively focused on Arab related news American media executives demonized the network…In the end Al Jazeera disappeared from the American media at the behest of white executives who were afraid that the network was too Arab based”. (Gupta, 4:49) The fact that our current system of media grants a select few people the ability to sway public opinion towards the ideas they agree with presents an issue in the way our current media climate operates. 

Another issue that is present in our nation’s current media climate is its omnipresent link to a political agenda. People are inherently influenced by their own beliefs and often times are unable to recognize bias in the actions of their own lives. In fact, in a recent study by Jonathan Morris, a political science professor at East Carolina University, it was observed that, “Democrats are more likely to see a Republican bias in the news, and Republicans are more likely to see a bias toward Democrats”. (Morris, 2007) This fact, though it may seem obvious when it is presented to you, is too often not as noticeable as we would hope. Though it is true that most people often wish to ignore bias from their own side of the political spectrum it is important that we are more in tune to biases of our own beliefs as they can often be the most dangerous. If we never listen to viewpoints in opposition with our own, we will never be challenged to accept new ideas and will therefore be trapped in our own ignorance of other opinions.

A new epidemic which has also recently been scourging our media systems is the presence of “fake news” and “click bait”. These are articles created to increase traffic to different media sites and often have no actual true content to them. Titles that begin with false accusations such as “Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS” or “Donald Trump is an informant to the Russian government” have become common place in the world of online media and though they do not often gain traction in the world of fact they can damage reputations of the people they accuse. In an article published by the Huffington Post, author Phillip N. Howard blames the recent rise in “fake news” on the creation of information inequality during the 2016 presidential election season. He stated that the creation of “fake news” not only effects the people who read it by giving them a false sense of knowledge on important subjects but it also grants false accusations the ability to take root against certain candidates. In a recent tweet by the New York Times the accusation was made that a high percentage of players and staff on the New England Patriots skipped their meeting with President Trump because they did not agree with his policies. They made this claim based on a photo taken of the team in 2015 when they met with President Obama on the white house front steps compared to a photo the team took with president Trump this past Wednesday. The Patriots fired a tweet back claiming that information was being overlooked and that unlike in 2015 when the entire staff was seated on the steps this year accommodations had been made for many people to be seated on the lawn and were therefore not pictured in one of the photos which is the one the New York Times chose to share. Fake news of this sort is what discredits media sources and causes the public to question the reliability of the information they are receiving.

Social media can be a useful tool but it also has the potential to mislead and confuse voters who choose to take everything they view on these platforms for fact. Social media has become an important part of our current media climate because of its ability to expand the platform on which ordinary people interact with the world. It grants everyone the opportunity to put their thoughts out to an entirely new audience that they would not otherwise be able to reach on their own. A study conducted in 2011 by Alexa, a company which studies web traffic patterns, showed that social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter were among the most visited on the internet. This trend has only increased today with the creation of so many new social media websites, and especially with the development of apps which allow easy shortcuts to these websites in the convenience of a smart phone. 

Though social media seems to be helpful for sharing news and communication it also has its drawbacks. Because the point of these websites is to allow easy access and free communication they often become unreliable sources due to the fact that anyone with access to the internet can use these sites to state their beliefs regardless of their actual qualification to do so. While this opens the lines of communication among people with varying beliefs who would otherwise not communicate so openly it also leads to the open transfer of misinformation among people seeking real answers to questions. With the expansion of social media, even within the past decade, a trend, comparable to that of Wikipedia, has been noticed by many social media researchers. Nakwon Jung claims in his article on social media usage that on Wikipedia information can be edited by any person with access to the internet therefore the information found on this site does not hold a substantial amount of credibility, likewise because anyone can post their ideas and viewpoints on platforms like Facebook and Twitter it is often difficult to tell how credible the source of these posts truly is. (Jung 2012)

In a study conducted by Jonothan S. Morris, a professor at East Carolina University, a bias was demonstrated in the amount of perceived bias in media outlets by members of either left or right leaning individuals. His experiment showed that people not only inherently choose to rely on news sources which correlate to their own beliefs but also they are less likely to recognize bias in a source which validates their own opinions. This exemplifies a problem in the way people choose to seek information because people are subconsciously seeking validation for their own beliefs without bothering to look beyond their own comfort zones to find information about world issues and politics. Similarly, in the world of social media, problems have come about with people finding their news feed to be tailored to their own beliefs. During this past election season an algorithm was tested out in Facebooks software which caused videos and posts similar to things a user had liked in the past to be the first things viewed on their news feed. This became an issue during the election season when people who, in the past had liked videos relating to their own views were now shown only videos which were in relation to their own beliefs. This created an issue because at this time the website lacked objectivity and sought to appeal to each user individually which, in turn took away opposing viewpoints from the feeds of users and kept some people in the dark in terms of ideas not in line with their own. An executive for Facebook, Sheryll Sandberg, later apologized for this imbalance in objectivity shown by the website in a press conference where she described the websites actions as a social experiment to see how an influx of advertisements and content tailored to the views of each Facebook user could be both beneficial to users and lucrative for companies who choose to advertise with Facebook. 

The age of social media participants also has a lot to do with the purpose of these sites, as technology becomes increasingly available the people who use this tech seem to get younger. Because technology is advancing at such a rapid pace it is becoming increasingly difficult for members of older generations to remain ahead of the curve. The importance of remaining in tune to social media trends has become a necessity within the world of politics, with many politicians and media outlets employing full time social media correspondents as a way to branch out and reach the younger generation. Especially in this past election season with the immense size of the Millennial generation, which mainly includes people between the ages of 18-25, it became a theme among the front runners to make their best effort to try and relate to the younger generation. In an article published by the Huffington Post, author R. Kay Green stated, “The ability to reach the millennial demographic is an important component to campaign efforts. And the reason why is simply because young adults are shifting more of their attention online to social networks”. Through the use of social media outlets such as Snapchat, which allows participants to send quick 10 second video clips, and Twitter, which limits users to a 140-character limit blurb, candidates such as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were able to send out quick messages to their supporters in a short and to the point fashion.

With the increasing focus on making social media messages shorter a lot of crucial information is lost. It is extremely difficult to condense ideas on complex social and international issues into a ten second clip or a 140-character blurb, and in the process some important aspects of the argument forgotten. This has become an issue because in today’s society people are so used to seeing everything in front of them condensed into tweets, captions, or statuses. People do not want to take the time to read an article in our fast paced world because they would rather live with decreased information than take time out of their fast paced lives to dig deeper than the tweet by a public figure which to them says more than their ideas on certain issues. An article published in Forbes magazine examines the possibility that social media could in fact be shortening our attention span. In the Forbes article the author Ty Kiisel states, “It’s probably unfair to blame social media specifically, but I think it’s safe to say that the 24/7 media barrage of soundbites we face every day could be taking its toll.” This is an important observation to make because due to our ability to send and receive messages at a lightning fast pace our world revolves around the “immediacy of the medium”, meaning that because we have the ability to receive information at such a fast pace we are not used to taking the time to have a real conversation or even elaborate on a thought beyond the point of a status update. Kiisel continues to make the claim that our reliance on media sources has shortened our attention span when he says, “Twitter users need to make their point in 140-characters or less, USA Today, Fox News, and others have shortened their stories to be quickly digested”. This is important because it not only outlines the problems with condensing information to such a low level of explanation but also explains how news outlets have followed in the footsteps of Social media platforms. 

Another issue presented by social media accounts is the permanence of the information shared on these websites. It is said that once something is put on the internet it is out there forever. This problem has presented itself in many forms especially in the form of scandals with public figures and politicians. This past election season especially has shown evidence of the danger that these social media platforms create for people in the public eye especially in the case of Donald Trump. In an article published by the Huffington Post, author R. Kay Green stated that the key component which made social media a determining factor in this past election was the ability to use the platforms to reach out to a younger audience and appeal to more voters at a much faster speed than traditional news sources. Although, as Green continues these platforms can cause issue in a candidate’s campaign especially in the case of Donald Trump where his use of social media became a hot button issue in the election. Because of the permanence of the internet people were able to dig back months and even years into Donald Trump’s social media history and pick apart certain messages they found to be offensive or were not in agreement with. As with his rhetoric in interviews on television people also took issues with the crass nature of his social media presence and often used the messages he posted out of context in an attempt to damage his campaign and his reputation. 

Media sources are not inherently detrimental to society’s views of people and events although in today’s society where lives can be changed in an instant simply based on the way a message is delivered people tend to abuse their power. We give our media outlets too much power because it allows for a connection between all people due to its relative accessibility and ability to relay information that would not otherwise be readily available to all people. We tread a dangerous trail in doing so because we need media outlets to remain connected and informed but we also must hold these sources to a higher standard so they do not have the ability to control public opinion without any sort of balance on their power. The media has the ability to be a tool used for the benefit of the people and in creating a more positive media environment it can become the source of information it was meant to be.