The developments that have been taking place in the media have led to a mediatization process that makes the media to frame and shape the views that the audience has on what they see, read or watch. From the political economy of the media, the media exists to serve the purpose of the political and economic class which means the message that comes out must be shaped and framed to meet the interests of the controller (Van-Gorp 2007, p. 62 ). Valenzuela, Pina, & Ramirez (2017, p. 804) suggests that framing is thus the social construction of the audience by the mass media to determine the perception of the audience when the information reaches them. The topics and content are keenly selected to set an agenda in the mind of the audience on what they should hear. The media frame is, therefore, the way media gatekeepers select, organize and relay information to the public to shape the interpretation of the audience through abstract notions that structure the meanings that people have on the content they receive. This discussion analyses the concept of media framing and how it affects the audience.
Scheufele & Tewksbury (2007, p. 11) suggests that framing is regarded as a communication tool for making people select, choose and agree to the content they receive over what they know or they heard from somewhere else. When the media is used, it shapes the minds of the people to ensure that they only react and feel information directed to them and not the actual reality that exists in the society (Byrant & Oliver 2009, p. 22). For example, Johnson & O’Neil (2018, pp. 3-5) present a media frame on how sexual violence has been turned from an individual problem to a social and cultural problem. With this frame, the views of the society are shaped and changed from an individualistic perspective to social-cultural problem where the issue is seen as beyond the individual. Such framing allows the society to understand the issues people face and makes it to design interventions based on the frames that exist in the society.Since the society has accepted the media as the only surveillance tool, people believe more what they hear on the media because it is framed to satisfy their information egos. Through the use of language, the opinions and minds of people are shaped by making them reflect on their interpretive frameworks by revealing information in a manner that they want to hear. Bowe & Makki (2016, p. 547) suggest that by twisting words to justify situations, the media makes the audience to see the reality that they report even if they are wrong. According to agenda-setting theory, information is designed to set an agenda that the reporters want the public to hear and influence them. For example, in a public place, when a Muslim says the words “Allahu Akbar”, people see terrorism because that is what the media has shaped their minds to think.
To have an impact on the consumer, agenda setting and framing effects are used to present the content to the audience. Through agenda setting, the media is seen as the gatekeeper of information where it releases the information at the right time when the audience seeks answers (Fairhurst & Sarr 2009, p. 15). For example, when funny things happen in the society, the media does digging to reveal the real truth to the public even if the same truth has not been substantiated. On the hand, Reese & Lewis (2009, p. 781) suggest that framing allows packaging of information so that it can be presented in a way that relays certain meanings to the public.
Through the use of language, the media develops cognitive frameworks that make it easy for the audience to understand the real world from the context of the message being presented. This means that the media will use specific demographics of people to report the hunger and poverty situation in Africa rather than the use of an objective framework to report information. From this situation the way African stories are reported to make people have the perception that Africa is a poor continent which only requires aid, despite the fact that there are brighter sides of the continent. This is what Adichie (2010, pp. 2) calls the dangers of a single story, where the media frames and makes people to see only one side of the story.
According to framing theory, mass media platforms do agenda setting through working on events that take place in the society and giving them meaning by relating through giving them meaning to depict certain reality (Moody-Ramirez, Tait, Smith, Fears, Randle 2016, 44). Therefore, framing theorists focus on the way the information is presented to the audience rather than the content that is presented. This means the media frames certain events by placing attention on them and giving the required meaning for the public to understand. This means that the quality of the content does not matter whether it is a single side of the story or the meaning is skewed so that the facts of the story are left out, but how the information is presented to the audience. According to Happer & Philo (2013, p. 5), media framing and perception shaping is worse in areas that the audience lacks direct knowledge and experience thus relying on the media to report the facts. For example, elections and public opinions are largely shaped by the way the media reports about the candidates. The media reports information in a manner that shapes public reception and ensures to fit in the public opinion being generated.
Since the world is made up of disjointed, contradictory and circulating information, the media has taken the gatekeeper role for editing and interpreting mass information to make it sensible to the audience. Clifford, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng, & White (2009, p. 12) suggest that when such information is presented it is carefully crafted to produce particular meanings in the eye of the public and at the same time boost the reputation of the media house. This means that the mass media’s role is to tell us what to think about by organizing the world for us. This process allows some certain knowledge to be promoted by giving them privileged status thus making them more truthful or authoritative. This means that the media intentionally remove issues from public opinion and presents those that are consistent with its story rather than giving mixed reactions to the audience.
Therefore, media frames are used by the media to present information to the public in an organized manner that delivers the expected message. News can have a chaotic flow making it difficult for people to understand social relationships that exist. This is why the media takes the gatekeeping role to collect, analyze and present information in a manner that the public understands. Since masses are seen as chaotic and disorganized, they need to be given only relevant information that is framed to meet their needs. As such the media is used as a tool for shaping public opinion and presenting information in the required manner. The media thus plays a major role in the society to shape the way information is received by the public and how opinions are shaped.
The nature of audiences has been evolving since the rise of the media to an information era where the digital audience is ore polarized as compared to the past. The rise of technology has created different audiences due to different media sources that people can derive information from which affects the nature of audience and the issues that affect them. As the society advances and new technologies come up, contemporary issues arise in the modern world that makes it difficult for the media to play its traditional role (Havens & Lotz 2012, p. 19). Advancements in the society have brought new changes to the society and increased the quest for information. Today, the society is information thirsty due to the rise of new media forms that allow access to information. The contemporary world, therefore, presents certain challenges to the media that affect the nature of the information that the audience gets and how this information is relayed.
One contemporary issue in the digital audience today is the challenges from the political economy of media. Since the rise of private media houses, the media shifted from surveillance to profit making. This means that media institutions have to generate revenues to remain relevant in the society. To achieve this, they rely on paid marketing, advertising and airing of events or products to the public (Biagi 2004, p. 15). According to the political economy approach, the media today focuses on power relationships that exist between economics, politics, and mediation. This is due to the rise of new media forms that allow political economists to use the digital media and their new technologies to meet their interests. According to Schirato, Buettner, Jutel, & Stahl (2010, p. 98) the media uses propaganda and framing to shape the views of the public and make them reason the way the political economy expects them. This makes it easy to meet the needs since the masses are ignorant and rely on the media to be fed on every piece of information in the society. This means that the audience have also been framed and designed in a way that meets the needs of the political economy.
Mirani (2014, pp. 3) argues that the web tells people what to do and forces them to fall in particular groups denying outside voices the opportunity to come in. Thus people are forced to read, comment and follow things they would not read if they had a choice. The lapdog theory states that the media has crawled into the arms of the sponsor rather than being the watchdog (Greenslade 2007, pp. 5). It is relevant to understand that the media shapes our reception by preparing messages according to how the political and economic class want the information to be heard. Meehan & Wasko (2013, p. 265) add that media’s role converges to meet the needs of the political economy, it is reduced to perceptions and rhetoric created by the message that is communicated to the masses. This has changed the way the media operates due to marketization which changed the communication industry.
Another contemporary issue affecting the digital audience today is sensationalism due to the ability of the media to play up well and focus on sensational stories like sex, murder, kidnappings, and scandals. Today, most media institutions have been criticized for failing to adequately cover non-sensational stories more as compared to other stories (Gabriele, 2016; De-Ridder, Vesnic-Alujevic, & Romic). For example, in an American Society of Newspaper Editors, it was discovered that 80% of Americans view journalists as chasing sensational stories more since they sell better (Bednar 2012, p. 6; McAllister 2015, p. 537). Further, some of the stories are over-dramatized to make them more appealing to the public. This is because the media has shifted from a surveillance entity to a profit making that has to ensure the information they present sales. In addition to that social media users only see a small network of the part that the network sees as relevant thus sensationalizing the information to meet the needs of the corporate world. These stories are told in a way that seeks to increase the proximity of the story in a sensory way that lures the audience. This means that the media packages the news today by emphasizing elements that provoke reactions from the audience. Such stories appear more in the media are often circulated more as compared to what the society views as important news.
In addition to that, poor coverage of important issues in the society. The increased coverage of sensational news makes the media to inadequately cover issues that relate to governance, the environment, education, and easily preventable diseases. According to research, the media covers more news that sells as compared to the news that is informative or educates the public (Stephens 2007, p. 19). This is seen in the amount of airtime that important news receives and the difference in the way sensational news is presented. In most cases, the sensational news is presented first while important news that matter to the public comes. This is seen in highlights of television news and cover pages of newspapers.
Further, the media today suffers from high level of inaccuracies that are misinforming the public. In most countries the freedom of the media allows them to publish any information that they have acquired regardless of the sources they use. Such information reduces the public confidence in the media especially when the truth comes out as what was published nit being the facts or if the public has a different opinion over the same story (Mathur 2012, p. p. 13). In most cases, mistakes arise from the rush to meet the deadline which makes it difficult for them to verify the authenticity of the information. In most cases, such information can be misleading and misinforming to the public and can even divide the audience into different groups based on their view of reality.
Lastly, another contemporary issue affecting the media is the control of the state through regulation. The political economy of the media allows the state to gag any information and control it to the interest of the state. The monitors digital audiences and controls every activity that people engage in thus limiting the information that they access. As much as the media enjoys freedom in most countries, there are laws that have been put in place to curb the powers of the media thus limiting the way they can report (Greenslade 2007, pp. 4). Some information is deemed confidential or relating to national security thus making it difficult for the public to hear such news even if when they take place. This has led to the rise of activist groups like WikiLeaks which have ensured that organizational and government secrets that affect the society are released to the public thus allowing them to understand challenges that exist.
Therefore, despite the advancements in digital audiences, contemporary issues are still affecting the way digital audiences operate since some of the issues raise eyebrows on the role of that the media plays in the society. Further, the converging nature of the media has shifted the role of the media to a profit-making firm seeking to benefits from the political-economy in the society. With this, the operations and independence of the media are compromised making it difficult to meet its traditional role of gatekeeping.
The society we live in today is controlled by algorithms that trace every step that people make in their lives. The rise of algorithms has led to an era of data mining where data about people is collected by algorithms from social media sites that people interact with. From the words of Steven Lukes, one way of power is controlling the people think which influences the things that they do (Naughton 2012, pp. 7). Algorithms are computer programs for analyzing all kinds of data and predicting meaningful patterns for decisions making. According to Amoore & Piotukh (2016, p. 21) every program that exists is designed with a set of computer programs that interact together to generate the content that they want. For example, the government uses such information to predict patterns of crime and create strategies for addressing them before they occur.
In the social media world, people spend most of their time on interactive social media sites where they post their status, react to what others post and even follow certain proceedings that take place on the platform. To make it more interactive, algorithms are used to display less information that is only relevant to what people will want to see or like. For example, Spotify uses Algorithms based on user patterns of the individual to display the songs that relate to their tastes which makes the user listen to such songs since there are connecting dots between the user and different songs done by artists (Pasick 2015, pp. 3).As algorithms penetrate the society and play a role in everything that people do, like suggesting new friends on social media, detecting of diseases like skin cancer, deciding who gets a job and even predicting the future of things like stock markets among other things (Beer 2017, p. 5; Scharfer & Van 2016, p. 139). For example, Donald Trump campaign was assisted by social media algorithms that determined the highest concentration areas for persuading voters. This means that these algorithms have the ability inject a measure of objectivity in the life of people thus influencing the choices that they make.
Bilic (2016, p. 7) adds that social media networks work through a unique set of elements used to deliver content to the user. Through a team of software engineers and data scientists, the algorithms ensure that users only see what the program wants them to see rather than what they want to see. For example, dating sites are used to help people find their mates through digital platforms that compare people’s profiles to create an algorithm that fits their needs. For example, Facebook prioritizes meaningful interactions that people have at the top of their news feeds thus increasing reactions, sharing and comments that people make. Further, Spotify uses the same technique through fingerprinting and artificial intelligence to suggest to people the songs that they like and even others that are similar to them. This means that such technologies push people to certain things through data examination and synthesizing the information into intelligence for services user. These services thus serve the needs of people by making suggestions on the things that relate to them without the users knowing that this is the work of algorithms.
According to Pasquale (2015, p. 15), most social media algorithms use the predictive model, where information about users is analyzed to predict patterns that they use to influence people. These sites use branding through keeping an account of historical information that people have and use an algorithm to predict the needs of such people. For example, Pasick (2015, pp.7), suggests that the ingredient for discovering what the tastes and sensibilities of users are and then groups them inform of recommendations to determine what the user will listen to. When people visit social media sites and post comments, or what is on their mind, the algorithm uses such information to predict patterns in the communication of the user and ensures that the pages are branded based on the needs of the user (Bucher 2012, p. 1169). This makes the user follow certain suggestions that the social media site makes without even knowing what they are doing. For example, people can be linked together based on a set of variables that define their likes, interaction patterns and response to any issue that they face in society. By shaping their future, such people can be suggestively guided to react and act in a way that the algorithm wants. Therefore, all social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Myspace and LinkedIn work on an algorithm that analyses the way people relate and react.
Further, social media sites control people’s lives by ensuring that they always come back. This means that their users have to be engaged using content from a large pool of posts that exist online. The information used to create content on users pages comes from friends selected through a candidate selection principle using the users follow graph (Ogaard, Roy, Kase, Sambhoos, & Sudit 2013, p. 345). The posts are analyzed and ranked through different methods depending on the social media platform being used by the individual. This means that past behavior is used to predict patterns. These patterns are analyzed by the algorithm which in turn ensures that users get stories that they like.
However, social media algorithms are black boxed thus enabling them to evade the mass understanding to keep the secrets of the corporate entities that they represent. In the real sense, algorithmic data mining is specifically designed to meet certain corporate needs (Crawford 2016, p. 81). As social media algorithms become common and the number of social media users increases, organizations are relying on the data that they collect to make decisions on marketing and advertising strategies that they take. Since algorithms can be used to influence reactions and predict the way masses are moved, marketers and advertisers are relying on this information for corporate survival (Kitchin 2014, p. 15). In the modern world social media world that we live in, information is being collected about us on every click that we make sense even the clicks that we make are carefully designed to fit in our world.
Therefore, algorithms control the world we live in and are doing secret spying for corporate organizations that they serve. They exist in our world like invisible robots that infiltrate our private lives and hidden decisions for us. On the other hand, since people do not understand how social media platforms work, they get attracted and later addicted to such sites to the extent that their whole life depends on them (Morris 2015, p. 449). Through the use of followership, people have switched to social media to post their excitement, frustration, shock, disbelief, and anything that takes place in their lives. This has even been made worse by the rise of selfie phones which are driving social media with posts of everything that they do. With all this, users make it easy for algorithms to collect information and use it to influence their online decisions thus increasing traffic to their sites which create more profits for the corporate world.
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