Globally, approximately 2 billion people access news daily through social media. This number is a powerful wake-up call, enough to awaken anyone indifferent to world affairs. From political maneuvering to everyday life, social media is transforming how we obtain information in unprecedented ways. But upon closer examination, is this content the truth, or a carefully crafted algorithmic illusion? Does such a massive user base bring more transparency to news, or more noise?
Because reality is so complex, and people's cognitive abilities are so limited, they are forced to rely on mass media for information. The more mass media reports on an issue, the more likely the public perceives it as the most important issue. In this way, mass media can influence people's perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors through carefully selected content.
Regarding Agenda-Setting Theory
Agenda-setting theory posits that people pay attention to what mass media reports, and the more media coverage of a topic, the more likely it is to be perceived as the most important issue.
Previously, communication scholars generally believed that mass media's influence on public opinion was very limited. Agenda-setting theory overturns this perception, arguing that mass media can manipulate our perception of reality through carefully selected content. For example, researchers found that during the Vietnam War, media coverage increased when US troop deployments to Vietnam decreased, and decreased when troop deployments increased. Media coverage and reality were exactly opposite. However, public perception of the importance of the Vietnam War closely followed the amount of media coverage. In other words, it wasn't reality that influenced public judgment, but rather the reality created by the media that truly swayed public opinion.
Compared to the complexity of the world, human thinking ability is very limited
For people, understanding their surroundings is a basic security need. However, in the modern world, compared to the complexity of the environment in which people live, human thinking ability is extremely limited. Therefore, when making judgments, people cannot consider everything comprehensively and can only think based on the first fragments of memory that come to mind. It is the mass media that determines which fragments flash in our minds first. The mass media acts as a transporter between people and the real environment; it selects and records important events that occur in the real world and then passes them on to us. At this point, the more coverage an issue receives from the mass media, the more important it becomes in our memory, and the more likely we are to think of it first when considering other issues. This is why agenda-setting theory works.
Regarding the paving effect:
The mass media can guide what issues people think about. American scholar Einger argues that, more than that, the mass media can also guide how people think about these issues.
In his research on the US presidential election, Einger found that Americans often evaluate a presidential candidate based on their first impression—that is, the political issues that are most important to them. When television news extensively reports on the US economy, voters tend to cast their ballots for presidential candidates who present grand economic plans, because they feel that this issue is the most important. The news emphasizes certain aspects of national life while ignoring others. Through this strategy, the media confines voters' political judgments to a certain range, manipulating how voters think about the issue. Einger calls this phenomenon the "paving effect." Because voters cannot understand the world as it is, the media paves a path for them, leading them to think in that direction.
Regarding the "Evil World Syndrome":
Building on agenda-setting theory, American scholar Gerbner went a step further, discovering that frequent television viewers are more prone to "evil world syndrome." The mass media, driven by sensationalism, often reports alarming crime stories. The likelihood of violence on television is actually far higher than in reality. As a result, frequent television viewers may perceive violence as the norm in the world, believing their living environment to be terrifying and fraught with danger. Gerbner calls this the "cultivation effect."
