William Guevara
Professor Sara Jacobson
FIWQIS 10108
Friday 24 November
Research essay
The internet, ads, newspapers, television, magazines, radio are all forms of media, they can be manipulated, they can all be altered by the audience or by the publisher. It is no wonder that the media played such a significant role in the way humans depict and interpret their surroundings. How was the media able to achieve this? It takes a quick google search to find out that we caused this. We altered what was shown, we chose to believe certain things, we chose to think like this. There were several articles that go more in depth. Articles such as the “Elon musk figured out media biggest weakness” published in Politico, the daisy Ad Campaign, the Benetton ads of the 1960s, “How trumped Shaped the media”. “Social media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media” from the CCNY (City College of New York) Library, and lastly “How the news changes the way we think and behave” from BBC. All these articles have a common topic but have their different viewpoints on how the media affected society and how it affected the world.

“Elon Musk Figured out social media biggest weakness “by Jack Shafar Talks about how Elon Musk the multi billionaire philanthropist was able to figure out how to use social media as an advantage point, using it to states his complaints, what his company is planning to do, and what HE was going to do. He announced that he was planning on Sueing Microsoft for talking to BBC, but this was part of his strategy, to manipulate the media and baiting them into writing complete nonsense about him. It just comes to show how the media wants to portray someone; how hungry they are for something to happen to gain publicity. Sometimes it is about the media, and those journalists ae willing to write fake news to gain it. Like the article said “And given his status as one of the world’s richest men, he probably deserves at least some of the outsize attention he draws from the press. But factoring all of that in, why do reporters and editors continue to treat his every gesture from the grandstand as worthy of paper and ink, airtime and Internet pixels? Why has the press become such a willing accomplice in his narcissism? (Jack Shafar “Elon Musk Figured out social media biggest weakness”) some would say that the publisher, the journalist are social media biggest weakness, they have the power to manipulate the audience, they can write anything down and the people will believe because that’s what they’ve been doing ever since the invention of the printing press.

The Daisy ad campaign originally started in 1964 in the United States presidential election of President Lydon B. Johnson, who was a Democrat and was going up against a Republican, which was Barry Goldwater. This ad featured a little girl who was plucking out petal from a daisy, where all of a sudden a countdown appeared and an explosion followed, with President Johnson’s voice being able to be heard and emphasizing that this could happen if Goldwater was elected, signifying that Goldwater was not fit to be president of the United States and that Johnson was a better fit. The ad targeted the fears and anxieties of people who knew what happened during the Cold War era and were afraid a vote for Goldwater could lead to nuclear fallout. The ad did an excellent job of appealing to other people’s emotions and conveying a powerful message at the same time. This is what led Lyndon B. Johnson to win the 1964 election.

The Benetton ads of the 1960s were well known but not in a good way, since a lot of these ads created controversy and thought-provoking advertisements. The 1960s Benetton ads had some advertising characteristics; for example, Benetton showed diverse backgrounds and emphasized the idea of diversity in his ads, which also aimed to have people celebrate their differences that they have with one another and show that even if they were different, they were still humans. But this wasn’t the only ad campaign he created; he also had imagery of social issues that polluted humankind, like racism, war, and human rights being violated. These images were used to convey a message and get people’s attention because, without this controversy, no one would bat an eye at it. Both the Benetton ads and the daisy ad campaign targeted human emotion, tapping into the audience’s fear and anger. It was a game changed for the years to come, the Benetton ads were again “manipulated” in way so that people would pay attention to it, and it comes to show that people would indeed pay attention to certain things but not at other things and this marks the question, why? What makes us the reader more attracted to a certain topic? Is it because we are afraid of what the consequences are? Are we afraid of knowing too much and knowing the possible dangers of the world that we so much sheltered ourselves from it, and that’s what the Benetton ad campaign tries to show us, the reality of what we live in and it works it made people protest against companies that were doing the wrong thing and they even protested against the government who were corrupt.

The 45th president of the United States Donald trump had a big impact on how social media was used when he was running for elections. He used twitter for example to connect with his audience and to bypass the media who may or may not try to alter what he would say. He used twitter to talk about his thoughts on certain issues. He would also question the mainstream media and call them out on several occasions calling them fake news, and sometimes his supports would indeed believe that the media outlet was just casting fake news, this had a big impact on the media channels while Donald trump was running for president, this meant that some media outlet wouldn’t be trusted causing them to lose an audience all because trump called them out for being “fake news”. Donald Trump worked to discredit journalists throughout his presidency, labeling the mainstream media biased. “His claims of “fake news” have caused large swaths of the public to lose trust in mainstream media. What are the consequences of his actions? The right has always complained the media is biased against them, even before Trump got into office. At their best, journalists imagine themselves as the fourth state, supplying checks and balances for those in power. It is the journalist’s responsibility to inform the public so they can go into a voting booth and make decisions as a nation. Trump and his encouragement of retributive violence towards perceived opponents has made it more difficult for reporters to do their jobs and show up at events out of fear for their safety. (Lisa Intrabartolo, How trump shaped social media”) This also comes to show the way trump manipulated the media into winning the president election, and with this action that was made it altered the united states of America because it allowed Donald trump to become president, it allowed for hundreds if not millions of families to lose their loved ones, it allowed for covid to spread the way it did and affect millions of American causing jobs, lives, lifestyle to change all because trump was able to fiddle with the media and calling them out and being to the pull the string and causing the media to not accurately report to the American people how trump really is, it just comes to show the power the media has and easily manipulated it is and the advantages it has on being on the good side of media.

“Social media? It’s serious! Understanding the dark side of social media” by Christian V. Baccarella a, *, Timm F. Wagner b, Jan H. Kietzmann c, Ian P. McCarthy d, has an interesting topic which is the dark side of social media. They start off with the multiple Oppurtunites social media gives but it also had its dark side which was said in the article “This quote vividly illustrates how the qualities that underlie the enormous presence of social media platforms are now also undermining the freedoms and the well-being of the individuals and communities they serve. For example, there have been an increasing number of reports and research attention into concerns such as cyberbullying (O’Keeffe & Clarke- Pearson, 2011), trolling (Buckels, Trapnell, & Paulhus, 2014; Hardaker, 2010), privacy invasions (Pai & Arnott, 2013), fake news (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017; European Commission, 2018), online * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (C.V. Baccarella). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect European Management Journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/emj https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2018.07.002 0263- 2373/© 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. European Management Journal 36 (2018) 431e438 firestorms (Pfeffer, Zorbach, & Carley, 2014), and addictive use (Blackwell, Leaman, Tramposch, Osborne, & Liss, 2017). F” this comes to show that social media is having a large impact on our lives and the way we want to do things. We are so afraid of being recorded; we are so afraid of being judged by someone on the other side of the screen that we forget what’s most important. But there’s more “Furthermore, a 2017 survey found that Britons aged 14e24 believe that social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, exacerbated self-consciousness and “fear of missing out” (Przybylski, Murayama, Dehaan, & Gladwell, 2013), which can result in increased levels of anxiety, sleep loss, and depression (e.g., Levenson, Shensa, Sidani, Colditz, & Primack, 2016)” this just proves my point, which is that media is affecting society as a whole and is drastically changing our lives for the worst.

“How the news changes the way we think and behave” By Zaria Gorvett, this article brings up interesting details about the Boston marathon explosion that happened on April 15 2013, it states that Another group had been even more badly shaken: those who had not seen the explosion in person, but had consumed six or more hours of news coverage per day in the week afterwards. Bizarrely, knowing someone who had been injured or died, or having been in the vicinity as the bombs went off, were not as predictive of high acute stress.” This tells that those who have consumed multiple hours of media have the same level of fear are those who were present during the bombing. It just shows the impact that the media has over us and people just underestimate it.

Media has played such a huge role in the way society has function and how it was able to portray itself. People still underestimate the impact it has on us, and we still don’t know how we can deal with this problem. From the daisy ad campaign to the present-day media was able to alter our view of our surrounding and causing widespread panic and fear among the American people

Cited page
Shafer, Jack. “Elon Musk Figured Out the Media’s Biggest Weakness.” POLITICO, 22 Apr. 2023, www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/22/elon-musk-the-barking- mad-publicity-hound-00093293.
Intrabartola, Lisa. “How Trump Shaped the Media.” Rutgers University, 20 Jan. 2021, www.rutgers.edu/news/how-trump-shaped- media.
Baccarella, Christian V., et al. “Social Media? It’s Serious! Understanding the Dark Side of Social Media.” European Management Journal, 1 Aug. 2018,doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2018.07.002.https://www.sciencedirect.co m/science/article/abs/pii/S0263237318300781
Gorvett, Zaria. “How the News Changes the Way We Think and Behave.” BBC Future, 24 Feb. 2022, www.bbc.com/future/article/20200512-how-the-news-changes-the- way-we-think-and-behave.