Media Bias In Elections

Media Bias While the media and its bias have had an effect on elections for decades, in the more recent elections its influence has increased exponentially. With the development of new technologies, the media has expanded and its presence has become very major. The media nowadays plays a key role in our everyday lives. It has become so important to us that it has started to affect us, the human race, negatively, especially during the most recent election, the election of 2016. Before diving deeper into the topic of media bias throughout the years, we must first understand what it is. To begin, let us start with the definition of media. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the word “media” is defined as “the system and organizations
of communication through which information is spread to a large number of people.” These ways of communication can come in many forms. Modern media usually refers to print media (books, magazines, newspapers), television, movies, video games, music, cell phones, various kinds of software, and the Internet. Obviously many of these devices did not exist in the past; in the 1800’s media consisted of signal lamps, newspapers, and the electric telegraphs, and in the 1960’s the most popular forms of media were televisions, radio broadcasts, newspapers and magazines. Now that there is an understanding of what the media is we must discuss what the term “bias” means. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary the definition of bias is:“a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment.” Bias usually tends to disguise itself within articles that are intended to be objective (Aliprandini, Isadora). This is most likely the reason why so many people have grown to distrust the media, and why terms such as “fake news” and “alternative facts” have developed. Also, people such as Donald Trump, make news sources that are actually reliable, seem unreliable. He has often refers to it as the “opposition party” and believes that reliable sources like The New York Times and CNN are biased towards him (Ember). The most common word used to describe the media, especially during election season, is “bias”. A poll taken by YouGov shows that 69% of U.S. voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful, and 78% of voters believe news coverage of the presidential race was biased, the Media Research Center, which sponsored the survey, reported. If a majority of the voters believe that the media is biased then why do they let the biased media affect their voting decisions? Surely the media can not be blamed for influencing the decisions of these voters. The media is not a magical force that appeared out of thin air. It was created by us, the humans, so therefore we are the ones to blame. Why then, do we keep placing the blame on the media? It is essentially the same thing as placing the blame on ourselves. To understand why people this, we have to look at how the media effects the voters in the election psychologically. It is evident that the media has an overwhelming effect on voters, but the real question is why does it work so effectively?
In the past the media was still developing and there wasn’t a very strong sense of what it was, so it did not have a large influence on politics. As the media started developing and more forms of it were created it started to have a larger influence on our daily life. In the 1800’s there was no such thing as televisions, smartphones, or any sort of social media platforms such a Facebook or Twitter. The most popular form of media they had was the newspaper, which spread news much slower than the more modern forms. Politics aside the media in general can have some pretty negative effects on humans. Using tools such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) we can now measure how exactly media affects us. Recent studies done using this tool show the development of Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD for short. This disorder “can cause tremors, shivers, nausea and anxiety in some addicts and many professionals now consider IAD analogous to substance abuse” (Luskin). It has even been compared to eating disorders and gambling addictions. According to Bernard J. Luskin, Ed.D, people tend to use media as a way to cope with their emotions or feelings. These addicts are connected to their computer screens and exclude the world around them; they tend neglect their work, family, relationships, studies, social life, and themselves. They negative causes of media include, but are not limited to the decrease of attention spans, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), increase in violent behavior or thoughts, crimes such as identity theft, and a decrease in the average number of sleep hours per
night.