Politics & Media: United in Existence & Affecting Each Other - Essay Sample

Introduction

Politics and media are two and close allies that are united in existence or occurrence. In this study, it would be essential to learn if politics in any way influences media information, and consequently, how media to affects politics. Until the new 21st century, most nations, countries, and states have reported their involvement in the acts of democracy (Effing et al., 2011). Freedom would mean that, for a person to take power as a president or prime minister, the citizens must go through, democratic polls to determine the right leader.

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Similarly, in many guidelines of most newspapers and headlines, political news usually makes it to the front pages because it has also become one of the people's favorites. Typically, how communication is conveyed starting in the media houses, how the information is filtered and come up with the final report that the public can read, have seriously been influenced by the political environment which has risen and taken tempo beyond what most could imagine.

Hypothesis

To understand the media concept clearly, there is much need for understanding the nature of political environments they are operating in. Nonetheless, it has recently become an inarguable story when considering the radical variances of media in the two major parties democratic society and dictatorial countries or states. Politics thus plays a significant role in the determination of how media transmits news in some nations, where democratic rights have not fully been implemented (Zhang et al., 2010). However, instable and democratic countries, it is the media, that should dictate the accurate picture of all the activities ongoing in the political sectors to the member of the public who may not have time or the ability to follow up accordingly.

Research Question

To complete the study in the effects of politics on social media, a guiding research question was formulated. At the end of the research, it would be essential to check if the findings and discussion of the study have answered this particular research question. For this piece of research, the RQ(s) would be;

To what level of extent have the media activities influences either negatively or positively on the global politics and democratic rights of citizens and anyone else.

Discussion: The Effect of Social Media on Politics and Democracy

In practical life, media have had a significant impact, especially on how politics is practiced continentally. The effect is majorly triggered by the fact that, politics today controls the democratic rights of individuals in the country, and what is portrayed by the media houses to the rest of citizens must have gone through several processes before, government confirmations and approval being inclusive.

Additionally, most media houses are currently owned by individuals who are rich and have the potentials or buying the assets. In a coincidence, the wealthiest individuals in the world are presently politicians, according to the latest reports on rankings (Weeks et al., 2017). For this reason, most politicians end up controlling the entire activities in the media, depending on their interest. To fulfill their requirements, they usually manipulate most of the news to ensure that their names are not painted in whatsoever the circumstances.

Another role that politics has played on social media is by politicians acting as sponsors for the journalists. As journalism also needs its own equipment's to successfully manage their processes in the media, for collection, analysis, and presentation of data. If a politician sponsors one of the communication houses, there are higher chances that the media will also favor the person and fail to reveal the real secrets of him/her on a given issue of concern.

Moreover, some politicians use this opportunity to bribe the media houses, when they need some information to be altered so that people can get it in the way they want the information to be. In most nations, this has been experienced during election periods, in the countries who claim to have democracy while in the real sense, they are not (Stieglitz, & Dang-Xuan, 2013). Nevertheless, sponsorship may not only harmful but also positive in some instances.

Media houses may decide to boost their stability in terms of resources that they need, for better broadcasting. In some countries, some percentage from the yearly generated gross domestic product is usually meant for financing social media services. This is because, for the most democratic countries, they do consider social media as the eyes of the people; thus its outstanding functionality and freedom make the citizens develop trust and high hopes for achievements in their prospective countries.

Data manipulation is the most form of corruption and the influence that politics have resulted in the field of communication. Media houses end up changing the election results in some occasions to benefit their shareholders whose majority are also politicians. Some who engage in activities that are against the law, usually bribe media people or cartels to keep off the information from the public to ensure that they do not lose the public interest and votes

Finally, politicians have impacted social media in terms of law enactment. Legislators are usually fond of making laws in any particular state or country. These laws may have either a positive or negative impact on the social media agencies. For instance, a rule may be established such that, a media house cannot pass any form of information to the public before the approval of the government agencies.

This will negatively influence the rights of the people, and as a matter of fact, it will be undermining the democracy of the citizens indirectly. When people get killed in some area, the rules may not allow the media to all the essential pieces of information as fast as they occur. On the other hand, the ruling may be favorable, such that, it promotes the democratic rights of individuals. In such cases, the citizens are usually favored since they are always capable of getting

Significance of the Research on Politics' Influence on Social Media

The primary importance of this study is that it develops the minds of learners to understand the concepts and roles, and the current politics have played in the social media sector. Most importantly, promotion of unfairness, corruption and the widened gap between the rich and the poor are among the problems that poor governance in some countries have created, through deprivation of people's rights of freedom for democracy (Loader et al. 2014). The study also helps learners to understand that politics do not only have negative influences on social media and justice as well but might boost the activities of the social media to ensure that they deliver the best of the information to the citizens at the most appropriate times that they need to get them.

References

Effing, R., Van Hillegersberg, J., & Huibers, T. (2011, August). Social media and political participation: are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube democratizing our political systems?. In International conference on electronic cooperation (pp. 25-35). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-23333-3_3

Loader, B. D., Vromen, A., & Xenos, M. A. (2014). The networked young citizen: social media, political participation, and civic engagement. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.871571

Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2013). Social media and political communication: a social media analytics framework. Social network analysis and mining, 3(4), 1277-1291. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13278-012-0079-3

Weeks, B. E., Ardevol-Abreu, A., & Gil de Zuniga, H. (2017). Online influence? Social media use, opinion leadership, and political persuasion. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 29(2), 214-239. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/ijpor/article-abstract/29/2/214/2981869

Zhang, W., Johnson, T. J., Seltzer, T., & Bichard, S. L. (2010). The revolution will be networked: The influence of social networking sites on political attitudes and behavior. Social Science Computer Review, 28(1), 75-92. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0894439309335162