Cult of Likability Essay

The world keeps changing on a daily basis, from technological to medical advancements. However, the most crucial advancement taking its toll now is technology and everything that is related to it. Technology has brought the world together and formed a united front, where people from all walks of life get to interact. This is done mainly through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and myspace and the media at large. With the growing use of this platforms, human beings have been made to believe that all things must be done according to a certain and strict manner and this is why the 'court of public opinion' as it is called has gotten most of its power. Therefore, the following essay seeks to explain and analyze the evolving role of the media in shaping public opinion.

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This essay has been referred to as the cult of likability, and just like the meaning of cult, to belong to a certain group and abiding by its rules, people now live their lives based on how much they impress people which reflects on how they are perceived and liked by the society. The debate is what is the cause of all this need to belong and impress other people and most of the times the fingers get pointed right back at the media (Easton, Bret, 12).

The media on a daily basis makes decisions on what to display and what to show on their screens. This, of course, is not an easy task as it evolves a lot of scrutiny and censoring. However, at the end of the day, the media chooses content that would be appealing to the viewers. As a result of this, there has been an emerging trend of displaying certain things and not displaying other things on the media because according to opinions and polls, it does not sink well with the audience.

When a media outlet decides to portray something as bad, the impact will be felt hard and far because they have that type of influence on people, that is shaping the public opinion. For example, it would be very hard for someone to try and recover their name, once the media has tarnished it because they already depicted a bad picture of them and with the amount of influence they hold over the viewers, it is termed as the right and correct news.

Therefore, realizing the amount of weight that the media can hold over public opinion, then it advisable that everything that goes through them is properly scrutinized before it is let into the ears and eyes of people. Nowadays it is no longer about reporting the news, but the media has the power to shape a lot of different opinions, from the clothes that people wear to the food they eat, to the type of drinks they should drink and to how they generally view each other as human beings (McCombs, Maxwell, 33).

First of all, there is this notion that is put out there of how people who do modeling services should look like. Most people according to what they see in the media have been made to believe that this person has to be skinny and look a certain way. Therefore, when someone outside those specification tries out modeling, they are deemed unfit because of what the media has made look as a norm. second of all is the food that people eat, if the media depicts certain foods as being unhealthy most people would stop taking them even without doing further research on them. Vice versa if an advert on the media advocated for people to eat a certain type of food, they would definitely start taking it and seeing it differently.

Realizing that the media has a lot of influence on how everything is perceived, most people nowadays now choose to play everything 'safe'. That ensures that their actions do not paint a negative picture of them in any way. By doing this, people have become robots to the society, doing things according to certain ways and being scared of stepping out of their comfort zone. So, the debate on most people's mouths is the ever-evolving role of the media in shaping these public opinions and the extent to which it has reached. The media needs to realize that they play a huge role in influencing how people, talk, walk, eat and even interact among other things.

How the media decides to depict certain news, for example political, they have a great influence on how the people will react and treat that political point. If a politician stands for certain values and the media decides to show them as bad values then the people will be having a negative attitude to that leader and what he/she stands for, without even waiting for further articulation of the values. Some leaders win elections simply because of how the media showed their stories and how the portrayed them to the public. It has reached an extent where politicians attempt to pay these media outlets in order to showcase news that is in their favor, which just continues to show the influence of the media in shaping opinions (Gil de Zuniga, Homero, Brian Weeks, and Alberto Ardevol-Abreu, 78).

Sometimes what is portrayed by the media is not wholly what they believe for example some shows that they put up or advertisements the display. This is all focused towards making money for this media outlets and sometimes they end up posting very controversial content without even realizing it. Therefore, there should be a way in which the media content is controlled, how their open opinions are regulated are regulated so as not to hurt others and lastly the people viewing their content should be regulated depending on the type of topic that is in question.

Many people have had to change their entire lives simply to conform to the standards of this already set standards that shape the public opinion. It should be known and made clear to the public that what is displayed there is now what they should do always or how they should live their lives but instead encourage people to be unique and be diverse in everything they participate. In the return, the media should also showcase this diversity so that they can sway the public opinion in all directions, therefore, removing biases.

Bibliography

Easton, Bret. "Living in the Cult of Likability." Turning Points. Dec 8th ,2015.

Gil de Zuniga, Homero, Brian Weeks, and Alberto Ardevol-Abreu. "Effects of the news-finds-me perception in communication: Social media use implications for news seeking and learning about politics." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 22.3 (2017): 105-123.

McCombs, Maxwell. "The agenda-setting role of the mass media in the shaping of public opinion." Mass Media Economics 2002 Conference, London School of Economics.