Hey everybody, welcome back. It's the final lesson of AP Gov, so let's talk about something you might be familiar with, the media. Lights, camera, action, smash that like button, and let's get started.
The last of our four linkage institutions is the news media. Recall that with linkage institutions, we're talking about things that connect people to the government, and the government to the people. So that's kind of the context for this lesson. Let's start with three roles of the news media in American politics.
The media's role as gatekeeper means that news organizations choose what to report and how long to focus on it. This is monumentally important. If news media ignores things, the public may not learn about it at all. But if they report on something incessantly, it will likely become more important in the public consciousness.
So the news media heavily influences what political issues the public focuses on, which is significant in agenda setting. Here's how it works. The news media reports on an issue a bunch, let's say mass shootings, for example.
As the issue is reported on, it becomes more important to people, and they demand that policymakers address the issue legislatively. Policymakers want to be re-elected and to please the public, so the issue becomes part of the government agenda, the issues that policymakers are considering working on. As a result of this, the news media heavily influences what issues get addressed legislatively.
The media also fulfills the watchdog role, protecting the public from government overreach, corruption, or incompetence when it engages in investigative journalism. This is probably the ideal media role, where they protect and inform the public. Unfortunately, many news organizations seem to find it easier to focus on the scorekeeper role, framing political issues as a game or sport to be won or lost. So there's a hurricane.
Here's why it's good for the president. There's a battle over the federal budget. It's a win for the red team, but a loss for the blue team.
That kind of thing. Instead of substantive reporting, it's just politics as sport. More specifically, as part of the scorekeeper role, many outlets embrace horse race journalism, choosing to report on polls and popularity of candidates. I mean, okay, reporting on polls is fine, but at times there's an over-reliance on polls and turning politics into a popularity contest.
This comes at the expense of real journalism. reporting on the qualifications and platforms of candidates. It also has the potential to affect electoral outcomes.
There have obviously been huge changes in how people get their news and political information. More and more people rely on social media, especially younger people, and this certainly affects both the news they receive as well as how information is presented. And with this, there's been a blurring of the lines between news reporting and political commentary, and that makes it difficult for some to feel fairly informed.
Without a doubt, there's been a dramatic increase in media choices, more than ever, but we're not necessarily better informed. Part of the problem is uncertainty over the credibility of news sources. I don't think I need to tell you that there has been a lot of discussion about fake news in the last few years and debates over media bias.
In recent years, more and more outlets seem to proudly wear their bias on their sleeve, which again can potentially lead to people being less informed. With this, there's been a rise in ideologically oriented programming, which is basically news that's targeted to specific people, be they conservative, liberal, alt-right, progressive, what have you. And this also has that same effect of reinforcing existing beliefs.
They likely report on completely different stories. Something that's a top story for one source might not even be mentioned by another. It's to the point that if you take two people, one of whom exclusively watches conservative news sources and the other who relies only on liberal sources, and have them talk about current events, it'll be like they're talking about two totally different worlds. Not just that they'll disagree about the meaning and causes of events, but they likely won't even know about what the other person is talking about.
Similarly, consumer-driven media outlets'main goal is to make money, and so they basically give their audience a version of the news that they want, which has the effect of, again, reinforcing their existing beliefs. Since they're trying to draw and keep an audience, they likely focus on more dramatic stories designed to stoke the emotions of their viewers as opposed to informing them as well as they can. The goal is views, clicks, and engagement, and ultimately, money.
not enriching democracy. Similarly, the goal of social media platforms is to maximize engagement, and in turn, ad revenue. The almighty social media algorithms are masterful at finding content to keep you engaged and your eyeballs on the screen.
Unfortunately, fear and anger lead to lots of engagement, so social media is happy to give you plenty of both. Additionally, it's very easy for you to get into an ideological social media bubble, unattached to alternate perspectives, Even as your own biases are being continuously reinforced and becoming even more entrenched and perhaps extreme I'm not saying we're officially in the era of groupthink and Orwellian thought police But I'm also not not saying it and I think that's the perfect happy thought to conclude AP GovOn Until next time this has been Alamoney production One last time. I just want to thank you so much for supporting me and my channel I can't tell you how much I appreciate it and what it means to me.
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