The Impact Of Media On Politics

A Famous physicist named Albert Einstein once said, “Whoever is careless with the truth of small matters cannot be trusted with important matters”. His belief or words of wisdom is what we uphold the most. For we believe that our world is filled with lies sugar-coated with bribes and at the same time, a dessert that we all crave for. The media is like a window to an unknown story. Politics is a story that we should be aware of. For we have the right to know the results of our powerful votes. It seems like the media is just a door that makes us enter a story where politicians can be our hero and at the same time, demons. It seems like for us to be able to know the truth, we should be a witness and strive for it.

Politics is the present world process of getting the power to govern. It was defined as ‘an art of government’ and was introduced by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He introduces politics to achieve peace and unity among people which benefits the common good. Politics so far help civilization to improve and enhance themselves, orderly and prosperity can be gained by means of politics. Politics makes people called civilized because laws and taboos are produced through it. Politics has a major part in gaining one’s culture, in fact it is actually the centerpiece of having one.

Politics here in the Philippines has many dilemmas. It can be the dynasties, the tradition, even the culture itself, but importantly, as technology grow vast, social media did a lot of changes on modern politics, well today’s generation is all about social media, it is the center of news and information gathering. One tends to know liable facts through the use of social media platforms. But social media is not perfect as you may think it is. Its flaws are remarkable, when people learn something interesting it eagers them to share the information to someone, and that’s when the problem arises, fake news is a common thing in the social media community, most information are not liable and not entirely true, news about politics interest people with what they are curious about. They prefer to see news through social media because it’s easy and instant, as instant as people’s opinion can change in a blink of an eye, we can call common folks as bandwagons for they believe something when many does believe in it.

Media, describes any channel of communication. Nowadays media seems to affect our daily lifestyles, including our daily activities, our social life and all the news that we heard or read from magazines, books, and social media. One of the biggest impact of media is about the politics.

According to Heather Satterfield (2016), the political landscape has changed a bit in the last couple of decades. One of the biggest factors is the “Internet”. Nowadays internet as one of the most commonly used in political campaigns. The candidates use Facebook to spread their campaign jingles and to inform people that they are running for candidacy. Here are some examples given by Heather Satterfield that influences our politics today. The first one is “News around the clock”. One of the ways that social media has transformed politics is the sheer speed at which news, poll results and rumors are shared. Social media has taken this a step further. This means that you get all of the latest trending news stories and opinions shared by your friends whenever you log on. The second one is “Impact of Polls”. Political polls are an important part of every campaign. They are often confusing, because you can often find multiple polls with contradictory results posted on the very same day. A poll can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The third one is “Direct interaction with Politician”, One of the positive effects that social media has on politics is the opportunity for voters to interact more easily with candidates and elected officials. Traditionally, if you wanted to meet a politician or candidate, you’d have to attend a live event. Not everyone is able to do this. With modern technology, it’s now possible to attend virtual events where you can participate in live streaming events and interact with politicians and candidates. The Forth one is “Demographics and Targeting”, Targeting is used throughout the advertising industry to make sure that ads and messages reach the right audience. Politicians do this as well. In the age of social media, politicians and people running for office are able to target their campaigns. If a candidate wants to address the concerns of women, college students, retired people, Latinos or any other group of voters, they can now tailor their messages via Facebook or messenger. The fifth one is “Rumors, Fake news and conspiracies”, Political campaigns are now influenced by every story, whether true or not, that gets spread around social media. It’s getting more and more difficult to separate actual news from fake news online. Social media makes this distinction especially confusing. The sixth one is “The power of confirmation bias”, One of the hidden forces that operates on social media is confirmation bias. This is especially powerful when it comes to controversial topics, including politics. If you’re like most people, the majority of your friends and followers on social media probably share your outlook. This means that the vast majority of tweets, Facebook posts, pins or other content you read on these sites tend to express the same point of view, one that you already hold. For this reason, social media may reinforce our opinions and make it more difficult to entertain alternative points of view. In politics, it can help to make people more opinionated and less tolerant of others. On the other hand, if you make an effort to connect with an assortment of people with diverse viewpoints, you can overcome confirmation bias and use social media to make you more open-minded. The last one is “Social media and the future politics”, Because social media is relatively new, we’re just starting to see its impact on society. There are sure to be many political changes that come about due to social media. Other advancements will also change politics. Polling techniques on social media will become more common and, hopefully, more accurate. More virtual political rallies and town halls will take place. As social media becomes ever more popular, its impact on politics will only increase over time. It will be interesting to observe how this plays out.

Media has an effect on politics, it’s been that way for ages now that’s a given. We must accept that media holds a great power over our lives and decisions we make by the information they provide to us. It can even be said that there isn’t any argument that can be made if the question of whether the media can manipulate the reality of our society, if ever that question is to ever be asked again. But now, the generation of the 21st century, a new problem seems to have arrived. There were already problems with the media even before our generation, too many to be counted as a matter of fact, problems of all caliber from those that has minimal effect to large scale controversies that affects our society so much. To the point that we still feel the effects of these scandalous controversies to this day, in our generation. As we stated earlier, the problem we could say has “evolved” to a much more bigger problem. One that we feel we have less control over since it’s too big for one person or even one organization to handle. The problem is because of the macro use of the internet, the internet itself isn’t the issue here but the platforms that can be found on the internet and the information these platforms give us. These platforms are social media and it has been shown how the information that are found in this platform are sketchy to say the least, meaning there are issues in the information that looks to be staged, rigged and any more words that could describe it in a bad light. These are called “fake news”, twisted information based on what the media wants to hear. They could bend it the way they want. This has a bad effect on our politics, since politics is one of the most covered subject by the media. The media could change it the way they want people to hear it which will be fake, since it has been change from the original version of what has originally been reported, they could change it before releasing the piece to the public.

The problem of media being able to easily change the news is horrible in terms of politics, it could not only ruin a politician. We must also think of the implications of this on our society, the effects of media on our government is an important issue, one that we cannot overlook, it shouldn’t be tackled with ease, because at the end of the day it will have an effect on our society and could possibly ruin the community we have.