With the presidential campaign so close to elections chapter 28 shed some insight to the mass media reporting of this campaign. The agenda-setting theory of McCombs and Shaw hypothesis is defined by Griffin (2009) as, “the mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda” (359). This morning on Good Morning America there was a segment on undecided voters and the impact the media has had on their subconscious. It was really interesting because the participants were asked if they though McCain was too old to run the country. They all stated “no” but when they took an online quiz and all of the participant’s scores demonstrated the word old and McCain were correlated. The same held true for Obama. When the participant’s were asked if they believe Obama has terrorist/Muslim ties they all replied “no” and again after the quiz there was a correlation between Obama, terrorist, and Muslim. There have been many stories about both of these issues regarding the candidates that the media has reported. After watching this segment on Good Morning America, I have to say that I am inclined to think that the media do present a picture in our head and we derive our opinions by these pictures. What do you think?
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