The Power of the Mass Media to Shape our Understanding of Major Events

What is it about?

This study is about how the mass media play a major role in shaping public understandins of major events, an how this in turn shapes political responses to those events. In this case the event is the Global Financial Crisis as it played out in Ireland.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

The mass media are not neutral reporters of facts. Instead, they are for-profit business entities that are owned or run by powerful business groups, or even single individuals. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume mass media, even non-tabloid quality publications, have political and economic biases that relate to their position as a profit-seeking business. The problem is that mass media are not usually transparent about these political and economic objectives. One way to examine whether political objectives are impacting news production is to assess invitation articles. These are articles in which people are invited by a news medium to discuss a major event. One might think that a neutral news organization would invite people that represent a broad cross-section of groups affected by the event in question. In this study I highlight that invitation articles about Ireland's financial crisis within the Irish Times, a general broadsheet news media, were dominated by people from business, leading to a one-sided acount dominating the coverage.

Perspectives