Manipulative Technologies On Television

By Author: Noah Gardon
Total Articles: 21
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Television and all of mass media definitely play a great role in today people's life. Despite all of their advantages and power mass media is still the main tool of manipulating public opinion and public mind, and it copes with its task perfectly. The amount of received and assimilated information depends on the number of senses we use while receiving it. Television deals with not only hearing but also sight which is extremely important for a person. Together they have extraordinary influence on the viewer's consciousness. Information is received in the most simple and effective way, which makes it really powerful.

There is a great number of technologies to manipulate public opinion with the help of television. They are mostly held in commercials, news and in politicians' and journalists' speeches. First of all, the speaker has to convince the audience of his competence and make it trust him. It becomes much easier to present needed facts as true ones. In order to remove psychological barriers of distrust TV speakers can tell objectively true but neutral facts, after which people would readily believe any other information ...
... told by this person. One of the widely spread technologies is generalization, when such expressions as usually, often, commonly, always and others are used. In this way particular facts are given as common. Rumors and speculations can also be presented as real facts. Such constructions as they say, some think, there is an opinion have an excellent effect on people, even if the facts are absolutely fictional.

The influence on people is often made by showing something emotional or terrifying on television like blood, violence, murders and so on. When being under the control of feelings people become less rational and less attentive. Moreover, sometimes people are to choose the lesser of two evils, but after one of them is presented as absolute evil, the other one starts to seem almost good.
Most of the commercials on television are based on a simple method of repeating. When lie is repeated plenty of times little by little you start believing it. As to the lies, it is not actually necessary to lie on TV; the same effect can be reached by just concealing one fact and distinguishing another. Commercials also use famous people, cinema and music stars for their ideas to seem more persuasive and their goods to seem really qualitative.

To seem truly objective a TV speaker has to keep to one simple rule: for the compliments to seem more convincible add a little bit of criticism, and vice versa, for criticism to seem more convincible add a little bit of compliments to it. One more manipulative technology spread on television can be called illusive choice, when people are told several different opinions about one point, but one of them is carefully presented as the right one. People choose it thinking that it is their own decision.

Everything told above comes to the conclusion that common public opinion may both be true or false, it depends on the kind of information from TV and mass media that influenced a person. It can be said that the higher man's level of culture is, the more he is protected from the external impact and manipulation.

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