In 2011 I chose to begin my career in marketing primarily based on my fascination with the control that the media has over the masses. Every single day we see the media say “jump” and the people say “well everyone else is jumping”. While a lot of people assume that marketing and media is just about selling cans of coke during ad breaks for X Factor, in reality it is much much more than that. The basic psychological techniques used to put Coca Cola at the forefront of people’s minds when they want a sweet, fizzy drink, are also used in many other areas of media – not least in the reporting of news stories around the world.
The techniques used by the mainstream media to manipulate the people are actually very basic psychology. The problem is that most people do not realise that they are actively being manipulated, because they have forgotten that these techniques exist, or simply have not had the inclination that they could be used in the reporting of the news.
True mass media began around 1440-1450, with the invention of the printing press – an invention that allowed the quick and easy distribution of information to the masses. For the first time in human history we were able to share information on an industrial scale. An argument could be made that the much earlier existence of religion highlights that we were adept at mass communication long before the printing press came along, but that is a conversation for another day.
As time has gone on more and more media channels have been created and the control the media has over the people has become more and more obvious. News channels today don’t even attempt to hide their agendas, cherry-picking the stories to publish and the “facts” to highlight, in order to elicit the desired response from the people – be it happiness, sadness, sympathy, outrage, conformity, intolerance etc. I see unashamedly provocative stories published day in, day out and the people fall in line; becoming outraged, sympathetic, sad, happy; whatever they are told to feel.
Some may think “But the news can’t lie, so I’m hearing facts.” and while it is somewhat true that news stories have to be based on an element of truth, there are so many ways of telling the same true story to differently shape our response.
Let’s take a basic example. A group of children are playing football on a patch of grass, surrounded by houses. At one point the ball smashes a window of one of the houses. The owner, obviously not happy, demands to know what happened. Here are some of the possible explanations…
- We were playing football and the ball hit the window and it smashed. – This explanation is given in the passive voice, to avoid blaming the smashed window on any one person. The window didn’t just spontaneously smash, someone smashed it; but by using a passive tone it avoids putting the blame on whoever was ultimately responsible.
- We were playing football and Jack kicked the ball and it hit the window and smashed it. – In this active explanation Jack is pretty much thrown under the bus. The blame for the window is put solely on Jack as the person who kicked the ball.
- Jack kicked the ball really hard and it hit the window and it smashed. – In another active explanation, more emphasis is put on Jack’s actions and how a choice he made (kicking the ball hard) makes it even more his fault.
- Jack kicked the ball to Mark and Mark didn’t catch it, so it bounced and hit the window. – In this example the blame is shared between Jack and Mark. Jack kicked the ball, but Mark had the opportunity to save it and didn’t.
- The ball was kicked to Mark, but he didn’t catch it in time and it hit the window. – In this variation of events the blame is put solely on Mark. We’re not even told that Jack kicked the ball, but we are told that Mark could have (potentially) stopped the window from smashing and he didn’t.
- We were just playing some football here, because the school field we usually play on was closed, and the ball hit the window. – In another passive example, none of the kids playing football are blamed for their actions and, instead, it is portrayed as an unfortunate result of circumstance. If any blame is to attributed in this example, it is on the school for closing the usual playing field and forcing the kids to play football on the field surrounded by houses.
These are just a few of the potential explanations the kids could give for the incident, while the media has the power to blame all kinds of people. They could blame the manufacturers of the ball for making it too hard, or Jack’s mum for buying him a ball that’s too hard, or the council for allowing ball games on that particular field, or even the homeowner for buying their house next to a field. Some of these may sound ridiculous, but with a few tentatively relevant statistics a relatively convincing argument can be created.
You see, from a very young age, as kids playing football, we instinctively know how changing the focus of a story can alter people’s responses. We decide whether we want the person dealing with their smashed window to blame Jack or Mark, or none of the kids, or even the school. This is a very basic manipulation of psychology that we all understand as children, yet as we grow up it seems that many of us are oblivious to the same techniques being used by the media to shape how we are told about current events.
Just like the kids playing football, the channel reporting the news story is able to shift the focus of whatever they report in order to illicit whatever response they see fit. They can indirectly place blame on anyone they want, they can make people feel sorry for whoever they want and pretty much anything else you can think of. The thing is the techniques are (usually) so subtle that the people watching do not realise that their response was planted in their mind by how the story was told.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be watching mainstream media – they should. As I mentioned before, there are facts in every story; you just have to dig a little deeper than what is presented right in front of you. The media is a useful tool to know what is going on in the world, but people need to get better at taking the “facts” and forming their own points of view – asking “what are they telling me?” but more importantly “why are they telling me?” and “what aren’t they telling me?”.
In the UK, where I am from, it is sometimes considered rude to talk about controversial topics. The problem is that by not talking about it all we do is limit our understanding to what we see in the media, never hearing or understanding any perspective other than the one that we’ve been force-fed. Don’t let the media tell you what to be happy, or sad, or outraged about. Form your own opinion. Take the “facts” from the report, read other reports, do your own research, debate with people and form your own opinion (while obviously also respecting theirs). Don’t just fall in line with everyone else.
Use the media, but don’t be used by the media.
Also read – Has the power and influence of social media platforms gone too far?