 In this video, I'd like to focus on how persuasion comes through the media and how is it used and enacted in the media and things we ought to be aware of as critical consumers of media when it comes to persuasion. So first of all, I'd like you to think about how much media do you take in and how much thought do you put into the media that you consume? Do you just kind of let it wash over you and take it for granted or are you really critical and thoughtful about what the intention is behind that, where that news is coming from, where the gatekeeping functions are on that media? For most of us, it's probably on the lighter end of critical consumers. We may give some thought to it, but probably not. Too terribly a great deal of thought about whether it's accurate, about whether it's trustworthy and things like that. We kind of get sewn into these particular areas of media and just become very trustful of it. I want to talk a little bit about that and how persuasion is a factor in all media outlets. So let's start by defining media. What do we mean by the media? Media is the means of communication, such as radio, television, newspapers, magazines and the internet that reach or influence people widely. The idea of media is that there's multiple channels, first of all, that's technically what media means. It's multiple mediums, mediums being channels, so it's just multiple ways that people can use to connect with a large audience. So media is concerned with having the broadest possible audience for their message. So that's what we're using to define media, meaning anything that would fit in that definition could be defined as a media. So television, newspapers, again, the internet, social media, even to a certain extent could be defined as media if their intent is to reach a large number of people and they're using technology to do so. Several media innovations have come through over the years. Starting with just the spoken word, I mean, the ability that we have to speak and followed shortly by the not really shortly, but followed by the written word, truly expanded our communication capabilities and our ability to reach people across broad distances and reach wider audiences. That expanded even more when we get to the printed word. The invention of the printing press really was one of the just truly groundbreaking inventions of all mankind, of all human history, really. The ability that it gave people not only to spread their message more widely, but the ability of people to be literate and to have a direct connection to that to that news with just the written word. There were still very few people who could read only the only really rich people and probably people educated for religious purposes for the primarily the ones who could read. So the vast majority of the human population was still illiterate. But with the printed word, the written word became more accessible to all kinds of people. So you had really this significant expanse of people being able to identify things on their own, to take in media on their own and really to take this news in without the intermediary of having someone else having to tell them, well, this is what this says. So with the printed word, which is a significant step forward, then you have the electronic word coming through the radio and television and things like that. But those were one way, right? We're still getting we're getting news, we're getting information, we're getting things from the media there. But on a one way basis, we're not really able to contribute to that ourselves until you get into the interactive electronic word, which is brought on really by the Internet, where we have the opportunity to be participative in these things, right, to be immediately participating in the taking in of this news and the disbursement of this news and the commenting on this news and almost sort of the creation of this news ourselves through that interactive electronic word. So we have all kinds of media inventions that have taken place over the history of humankind to really to really showcase different types of media and different opportunities that media presents in different ways of interacting with that media. So a couple of the major functions of the media, though, as we have it today, we're going to discuss a couple of major functions that the media performs on the first of which is what we call agenda setting function. You know, the there's no saying in in media criticism and things that the media doesn't tell us what to think. The media tells us what to think about. The media doesn't tell us what to think, but the media does tell us and influence what to think about. They decide what gets in front of us here. So they have this agenda setting function. They get to set the agenda in a way, right? So we need to keep in mind, though, that the purpose of the media is to make money. That's their goal for the most part. I mean, the goal of the media is to make money, and that's not a slam. Most of these are for profit companies. We don't expect Walmart to just be totally altruistic, right? They're there to make money and the same with Amazon and the same with Starbucks. And so the media is no different. Their purpose is to make money. So they do have a specific outlook on these things and a specific methodology behind these things, because their intention is to make money. They do that in part through what they call gatekeepers. And this is where the agenda setting function comes in. The media acts as what we call gatekeepers for what information gets through. Now, these gatekeepers in, you know, older history, for example, would have been, like I said, in the invention with the advent of the written word. Only a few people could read. So you look at things like religion and you had the massive centrality of power with the with the priests and other religious leaders, because they were the only ones who could actually read the Bible and really study it and understand it. And so they were the ones who could tell us, oh, this is what the Bible means here. And this is what we had. We just had to take their word for it and really kind of go along. Once you had the printed press, the printed word, people could start to read the Bible on their own. People could start to have their own interpretations. They didn't need that intermediary. Didn't have that gatekeeping. The church didn't have to play that gatekeeping function anymore. Contemporary media does this as well, though, in a really strong way. They are gatekeepers of information. They determine what goes out and what doesn't. And they do this. They perform a number of gatekeeping functions. These gatekeepers do a variety of things. First of all, for the most part, again, remembering that the media is there to make money, the gatekeepers, first of all, tend to lean on the least objectionable programming, the programming that people are going to find the least offensive and that the most people are going to have the broadest possible appeal, right? So they're going to go after the least objectionable programming, which isn't necessarily to say the best programming or the most accurate programming or what have you. It's going to be the least objectionable. What's going to get the broadest audience for us here so that we can sell commercials? We can pull in more advertisers because we have a large audience and so forth. So they're concerned with the least objectionable programming. Gatekeepers are also concerned with the known audience. Who's their audience? What do they know? Who are they selling to? And so they're going to put on programming and talk about stories that appeal to that particular audience, right? Not just to anybody and everybody. Gatekeepers go after who they know to be their audience and who they want to draw in. Gatekeepers are also looking for the ability to deliver in sound bites. They don't want massive, long stories. What they want is something that they can tell an audience in 20 to 30 seconds. Looking for that sound bite, something to hook the audience, something to make it memorable, and then looking for the next big thing to come along. They're looking for the ability to deliver the news and deliver this information, deliver everything else in sound bites. They're also looking for dramatic quality of the message, right? They want something that has dramatic video or photographs to go with it. Something that's going to sensationalize this and really make it stand out to the audience. So they're looking for the dramatic quality of this message. So gatekeepers aren't necessarily, again, looking for the best story or the story that the audience needs to know. They're looking for these things that their audience wants to see and will pull in the broadest possible audience so that they can sell advertisements and make money. That's their whole purpose here. So in doing so, they set the agenda, though. They decide what stories are going to be told and which ones aren't. So we need to remember that, that there's an agenda setting function there. There's also a role modeling function. So we have the media presents these roles to us, what we call assigned roles and assumed roles assigned roles are the ones that media assigns to us. And, you know, the Preturias sports loving man is big, tough guys and not very smart and so forth. Right. And then assumed roles, the ones we take on ourselves. So it has this role modeling function that tells us in large way. It expresses our culture and how we ought to behave, what ought to be normal and so forth, right, as far as the TV is concerned or as far as this media is concerned. So it presents as role modeling function for us. We also need to remember that there's frequently, more frequently than we'd like to think about, there's news manipulation and persuasion. So the people use the news to manipulate stories. And again, this is all about drawing in an audience and boosting ratings and so forth. But but it's there's some news manipulation and persuasion goes on in different forms. First of all, keep in mind that we have limited news sources. If you look at your newspaper, for example, almost all the stories in there, except for a few locals, maybe are going to be from the AP or UPI or Reuters. It's going to be from one of these major news services. So you already have this narrowed down function of these gatekeepers at these three institutions deciding really what's going to be told because 75 percent of your newspaper is going to come from these sources. And a lot of your your even cable news, for example, is sourced from other news sources, right, which, you know, so they're they're using those as sources. And so we do have a limited number of new sources in some way. So so we're not getting the full story necessarily in that way. There's also limited time dedicated to the news, right? So we just we just don't spend much time there. People are willing to spend what when I was younger, the evening news was a big deal and it was an hour long. People would sit for my dad would sit for an hour every night and watch the evening news. Then people got, you know, their attention spans got a little shorter. And now we want the evening news in a half an hour and better yet, let's go watch something on, you know, a major. News network, cable news network that repeats stuff every 10 minutes. So we don't have to watch for a full hour. We can get everything we need in 10 minutes, right? And we are dedicating less and less time to this news ourselves. And the newscasters are dedicating less and less time to different stories and things in in favor of repeat repetition and and keeping the audience interested and engaged in that way, right? Well, some of the blurring of news with opinion and entertainment, right? There's a blurring of news with opinion and entertainment. You know, Fox News is a great example. They have their news side, what they would call their news side. And then they have their opinion and entertainment and CNN has the same. They have their news stuff. Usually during the day is news stuff, news, news gathering functions and things like that. But then the evening primetime hours, it's more about opinion and entertainment, right? So no better place is there is there a good example of this than Sean Hannity. Sean Hannity has nothing to do with the news. I hate Fox fan or not. I don't care who you are. And he would probably admit this if he was being honest as much as anybody. He is not about the news. He is about shaping opinion, sharing his opinion, providing entertainment, pulling in viewers. He's interested in the numbers and the statistics and and and viewership, right? But he's not interested in news. He's not a news gathering person. His organization does not gather news. They pull in news stories from other places and then they give their opinion about them, right? But most people don't recognize the difference. We don't see the difference between a legitimate and traditional news organization where there's news gathering going on and their vetting sources, their vetting information and just something that that somebody pulls off the random source on the internet that has not been verified at all, has not been legitimized at all. But it gets legitimized because this person says it is, right? This person says that that that it's legitimate. So we have this blurring of news with opinion and entertainment. I also have these common manipulations that take place in news organizations and and newscasting and especially now with social media and things becoming, you know, user identified news. We have times when the news news stories are just ignored for whatever reason, either because it's not glamorous enough or because it, you know, has a contrary feeling to what the network would like to put out there or because they're favoring a sponsor. They don't want to share information about a sponsor that's going to reflect in the negative light. So so they don't share the news story for that reason. They tend to gravitate towards pseudo events, which are, you know, not really news, not things that are happening with things that are preplanned, things that we have a known outcome here, but we know it's also going to be dramatic and things and appealing to people. So we have this focus on pseudo events and then just in general bias. I mean, just just a general bias that news organizations can have now. Again, blurring the lines between news and opinion here. But but, you know, we have Fox News, which is clearly a conservative news outlet. MSNBC, which clearly a liberal news outlet, CNN, which tends to lean a little bit to liberal, but is more in the middle than the other two. So but they all have their biases, both verbal and nonverbal biases that they that they present as part of their newscasts. And so we need to be aware of that. In general, we need to understand that persuasion is prevalent in the news, that it's not just a straight out, you know, fact sharing function that there's and so we need to be skeptical. We need to be looking at the news with critical eyes and critical ears and really understand that what is happening here with in terms of persuasion manipulation within the media. If you have any questions about this related to persuasion in the media or anything else related to persuasion, don't hesitate to shoot me an email and be happy to respond to the email and discuss this with you there. In the meantime, be vigilant, be critical consumers of the media and recognize persuasion where and when it comes, even if it comes through a quote unquote news organization.