# Is it the media that imposes people's likes?



## luis masci

Hi all,
This question popped up in my mind while reading the now closed post 
entitled: What's the most popular sport in your country? (Quote of 
TimeHP: In Italy Football seems to be the most popular sport, but in a 
sense we are obliged to like it: newspapers and TV are speaking non-stop of 
football teams and players, so nearly everybody knows the names of the 
most famous football players, etc.)
This question leads to another interesting one: What came first, the 
chicken or the egg?
In other words: Is the media imposing which sports, music, singers, 
brands, and even politicians should people like, or is it the opposite, does 
the will of the people determine what the media reflects?

P.S. Thank you very much to Valica who interpreted fairly well my thought and edited this post


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## cuchuflete

Hi Luis,

Very good question!  I would prefer to say that people use their free will (libre albedrío) to choose what they like...but I'm afraid that's not the case.  Most people like to go along with the group that surrounds them.  They media tells people what other people (supposedly?) like.  At a minimum that draws attention to what is in fashion.  All too often it dictates what is in fashion.

I haven't had a television in years, and thus am spared having to look at things I wouldn't normally have any interest in.  That is not true of most people I know, who, for better or worse, feel the influence exerted by popular media.  Some resist it, some ignore it, but many accept what they see as a yardstick for what is "normal", and if they don't care for it, they have to make a conscious decision to swim against the tide.

There is a down side to ignoring popular media and the associated popular culture, even in these discussion forums. I've seen many threads here that try to explain something by way of an analogy to a popular television program or film. Names of actors and actresses are tossed about with the assumption that everyone knows these people.   Luckily I can use the internet to get a quick idea what the references mean, without having to spend hours staring at a Hollywood or Bollywood screen.

Here is the counter argument:  Some products, including politicians, fail, despite extensive media exposure.  That's true, but usually it is because the product/politician is badly flawed, or the marketing techniques are sloppy.  Some awful products and awful politicians are effectively promoted--"sold"--through clever media promotion.


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## Tsoman

People have always been influenced by other people. It's how ideas spread; it's how culture evolves, etc etc

The media is not some abstract nebulous entity... It is people communicating, just like people have always done. Everytime you see an image on TV, someone had to put it there. Who writes TV shows and commercials? People like you and me.

Does the media influence us? Definitely.

Is it unnatural? Not at all


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## Layzie

Unfortunately, the media influences political beliefs too often in a negative way.


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## snila

Not just the media, in the past there were other 'institutional' ways to 'build' accepted preferences, thoughts or beliefs... I am thinking about the impact of some churches, like the Catholic one. Once I read an interesting idea about there are hegemonical ideologies competing with other non hegemoinical ones. Therefore, one group or some of them usually have direct access to important social institutions (considering their coverage in terms of population, i.e., school, family) in order to widespread their ideological practices, beliefs, etc.   Also I would said is not the media as an homogeneus 'actor' but people and their ideologies using the media and confronting each other.


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## Valica

Tsoman said:


> Everytime you see an image on TV, someone had to put it there. Who writes TV shows and commercials? People like you and me.


 
The commercials and TV shows may be written by ordinary people, but the key point is not who writes them, but rather who is paying for them. Ads, commercials, political campaigns are requested and paid for by companies and people who would like to influence people’s minds one way or another. 
Media is an enormous and significant source of influence that is not acting on its own, but on the demand of influential powers of the society. 
Do I want to see Cheerios commercial every ten minutes? Of course not. It’s not my choice or yours what’s showing on TV. 
We have only the choice of turning it off if we don’t like it.


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## luis masci

I agree with you folks in the sense that the media has strong influence. But I think this influence also depends on the item.
I think it could impose a brand, even might decide an election. However I doubt it can impose a singer if he/she has not feeling with the people; and definitely I don’t believe any sport could be imposed. I can’t imagine baseball becoming popular in Argentina or soccer becoming popular in USA either. Despite the best media of the world would be involved in it.


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## Valica

If soccer were a game that allows a lot of commercial breaks, no doubt that media would've made it popular in USA in no time!!!


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## cerci

Valica said:


> If soccer were a game that allows a lot of commercial breaks, no doubt that media would've made it popular in USA in no time!!!


LOL, good point. I think that is the main stumbling block of football (soccer) in the USA.
A famous American beer company (begins with a "B") made a commercial here (later a series of commercials) playing on that very point.
It still didn't influence me to buy their beer, though.


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## .   1

Valica said:


> If soccer were a game that allows a lot of commercial breaks, no doubt that media would've made it popular in USA in no time!!!


A perfect answer to the question and a rather insightful way of looking at culture.

.,,


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## maxiogee

I would tend to go along with cuchuflete.
A good 'product' will make it - almost no matter what, and a truly bad one will die a death, despite the best efforts of its cheerleaders.

What we are left with is the vast majoiry of 'products' which need to be sold to us, they really need it and they need it regularly and repeatedly. We humans are social animals and we like to fit in with our herds. If that means that we need to shift and find a new herd, then that's something we can, and do, manage to achieve. The fact that cuchuflete doesn't have a television may not be common where he lives, but were he to live in many other places it would be exceedingly uncommon and he would be looked on as strange.

Then we need to bear in mind that we can be incredibly fickle in our "tastes" - look at the move towards colder and colder beers and lagers on sale in bars. Is that consumers leading, or are they being driven? I believe that in this case the manufacvturers are masking the fact that there is so little taste in what they sell, by requiring it to be served so cold that our taste-buds can't be as discriminating as they usually are.

So, products get pushed at us - either by the manufacturers (understandably) or by the media (less understandably). The 'products' the media push tend to be personalities. I can't speak for any media as well as I can for the ones I consume here, those from the British Isles. The press here (and not just the tabloids) seem to delight in 'adopting' new and allegedly rising 'stars' in many fields of endeavour, they hang on their every word, they print endless photographs of them and then, when the unfortunate 'chosen one' lets this adulation affect them, the media turn on them and denounce their 'bad behaviour' - often being complicit in establishing the 'bad behaviour' anyway. And more photographs get published alongside finger-wagging headlines. 

Of course politicians are included in this cycle of praise and condemn - but policies aren't. The media here tends to be either pro- or anti- any given major political issue. This can be, with difficulty, pursued without reference to which politico is flavour-of-the-month at the time. So I'm not sure that we really get our political judgements imposed on us - if we are discriminating in our media consumption. We can pick 'n' mix which media-selection suits us and our views.
But there are those who don't - for whatever reason - and who do absorb their political opinions straight from some press baron's fish & chips wrapper. That's sad - but, obviously - people are free to choose how much mental independence they wish to exercise. Bear in mind that no medium is interested in selling me one issue, they want my repeat custom, and so they tend to regurgitate what I fell for yesterday.

Fora like these are a good bulwark against taking to any political stance too wholeheartedly - but of the millions who are using the internet right now, how many are using discussion groups and how many are gambling or looking at 'dirty pictures'?


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## LV4-26

Layzie said:


> Unfortunately, the media influences political beliefs too often in a negative way.


...or do they simply* kill *them, reducing them to "signs", the same way as owning an SUV rather than, say, a saloon car is a sign?
We're living in a world where everyone watches everyone. Either to act like them or to act _unlike_ them. Without the media, we'd all be in a dark room, anxiously trying to perceive others' moves in order to "position" ourselves. The function of the media is to light the room. Of course, at the same time, the media develop that "anxiety".

Seeing the matter from this perspective seems to bring us back to the problem of the chicken and the egg. But it doesn't matter because the issue is not there. Because, to me, the influence of the media is not so much in the way they lead us in this direction rather than that other direction. Their (detrimental, in my opinion) influence is in the way they make all directions more or less equal and interchangeable, as signs are.


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## luis masci

cuchuflete said:


> I haven't had a television in years, and thus am spared having to look at things I wouldn't normally have any interest in.


Would be worth haven’t television at all; however I have one.
I was shocked when some years ago, the first program dedicated openly and totally to gossiping appeared. I couldn’t believe it.
Nevertheless today, several programs of this kind proliferate throughout our television.
Comes up the question again: what came first the chicken or the egg?
Are these programs existing due to T.V. producers want them or because people like them?


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## ireney

TV programs don't spring out of nothing. It just overblows things and makes things we always did (like gossiping or following the herd) which we were slightly ashamed of accepting more than just acceptable.

So, what came first was the humans then their tool and then the adoration of their tool and its manipulation by few humans who know how their fellow humans usually react.

Oh and products of no worth willsink eventually; if however this product is a rather worthless song it'll sell a lot before it does and then everyone's going to be "happy" with the product


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## Valica

The main purpose of the media in general and TV in particular, is to inform and entertain. In the entertainment area, I would agree that producers analyze people’s likes and dislikes before producing the show because, obviously, their profits depend on people watching the show. 
The information area, however, it’s much more complicated, and depends on the country where you live, and, in particular, on the country’s type of government. 
I lived for a long time in a country where the “big brother” was controlling the media, and everything was censored before it was allowed on TV screens, theater scenes, and the libraries. I can say that the voice of people wasn’t very well heard under that government.
In the democracy things are different, but media is still used sometimes for promoting ideas that not always come from “we the people”. 

So, I guess, my answer to the original question is “it depends”.


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## .   1

The only purpose of the media is to sell toothpaste and hair extensions and the lastest and best washing powder that is 20% whiter and brighter than the washing powder of last year that was 20% whiter and brighter than the washing powder of the year before.
The media imposes the agenda of the advertisers who pay for the production and transmission of the various mediums.
Entertainment and information are ancillary to the attempt to convince viewers that they desperatly need something that they obviously do not need and to pay far more than the product is really worth.

.,,


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## maxiogee

Valica said:


> The main purpose of the media in general and TV in particular, is to inform and entertain.



I think you are mistaking the use the consumer makes of something with the purpose which its producers have in producing it.

I may well use a toothbrush to clean small and intricate jewellry,
Others may well put them to even stranger uses.
Most purchasers will use them to clean their teeth.

The main purpose of the toothbrush is to make money for its producer.

The main purpose of "the media" is to sell, whether what they sell is commerical advertising or political opinions, they are there to make somebody money.


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## Etcetera

There are two TV sets in our family, but I prefer the Internet - amd honestly, mostly because here I am more or less free to read and see what interests _me_, not editors of TV programs. 
But I can't say that I'm totally free from the influence of the media.  It was after seeing the_ Stars on Ice_ show that I've decided to buy a pair of skates and go skating.


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## Valica

maxiogee said:


> I think you are mistaking the use the consumer makes of something with the purpose which its producers have in producing it.
> 
> I may well use a toothbrush to clean small and intricate jewellry,
> Others may well put them to even stranger uses.
> Most purchasers will use them to clean their teeth.
> 
> The main purpose of the toothbrush is to make money for its producer.
> 
> The main purpose of "the media" is to sell, whether what they sell is commerical advertising or political opinions, they are there to make somebody money.


 
Do you think companies pushing ads to our cell phones will change the initial purpose of the cell phone as well?
 
By definition media is one of the means or channels of general communication, information, or entertainment in society, as newspapers, radio, or television. 
To diminish its role in the society to being just another department store means reducing the jobs of actors, composers, producers, etc. to the role of store clerks.
 
I don’t think people involved in creating TV shows, are doing it with the sole purpose of selling us more toothpaste.


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## maxiogee

Valica said:


> Do you think companies pushing ads to our cell phones will change the initial purpose of the cell phone as well?


Do you not think they already have?
What do you use your cell-phone for? I use mine to make and receive phone calls and text messages. I don't use it to download music, receive email, surf the web, listen to the radio, take photographs - oh yeah, it's a telephone, I almost forgot there for a minute or two. 




> By definition media is one of the means or channels of general communication, information, or entertainment in society, as newspapers, radio, or television.
> To diminish its role in the society to being just another department store means reducing the jobs of actors, composers, producers, etc. to the role of store clerks.


Do you think the 'best' actor always gets the best rôle, or does it depend on who the accountants in Hollywood feel will bring in the most money? They are already clerks.
Look at what your media do, they sell advertising by making or buying progammes which quantities of people will watch and then they sell this audience to the advertisers. Your newspaper headline tomorrow morning will have been carefully designed to sell copies of the paper. Your purchase is counted, and your 'type' is noted and you are sold. The selling is what allows the paper to be sold to you for less than 1/4 of what it costs to produce.




> I don’t think people involved in creating TV shows, are doing it with the sole purpose of selling us more toothpaste.


I didn't say they were, I was saying that the media-owner is into selling toothpaste. And any show which doesn't generate the expected ratings will die a rapid death - despite the creative and artistic intentions of those who make and appear in them.


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## Tsoman

I've never really liked watching TV and I used to think that all TV shows were stupid.

But lately, I've seen a few series on DVD and they were really good! Not having to sit throught the commercials is definitely nice. I've had a lot of fun with "Lost."


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## lsp

The media is not just advertisers, and the medium is not just TV. Cuchuflete, you are probably still bombarded by much of the same stimui as I am, but not as much in your living room or bedroom. With billboards, taxitops, bus and subway signs, magazine and newspaper advertising in print and online, it is fairly inescapable, even if you aren't hooked on Desperate Housewives!

I've wondered for the longest time, maybe since O.J., about the news media and the same chickon-egg question of influence. When criticized for the 24 hour ad nauseum coverage of every small uneventful clip about the story of the moment, the news media reps said they were only showing the public what it wanted to see. I thought to myself, what choice do I have if I am tuned in at all... I watch the news to see if there is anything _new_, even if it turns out - according to the available local sources - there isn't. Then there was nothing else to talk about at the water cooler, so they showed more of it... and so on.


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## LV4-26

Valica said:


> I don’t think people involved in creating TV shows, are doing it with the sole purpose of selling us more toothpaste.


If you haven't heard of it yet, I can't resist sharing this with you.
From *Patrick Le Lay* (general director of TF1, a private funded TV channel in France - I think it was in 2004) :
What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time.
To read the entire quote

Well, he's the director, I guess he knows what he's talking about.


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