To play off of my last post I would like to incorporate the “spiral of silence” theory which is the belief that people holding opinions that they perceive as of minority tend not to voice those opinions due to fear of isolation. This withholding then influences others to refrain from expressing their views, creating this spiral. The brutal cycle continues to grow until one day when anger and awareness meet, mutiny happens. This is shown in the movie “V for Vendetta”. Some of the people in society see what is happening but they are to scared to voice their opinions. This may not be a fair comparison because the government is killing people who don’t go along with their movement but either way people stay silent and withstand this punishment instead of standing up and being heard. Much of the punishment could have been avoided if someone had stood up sooner. Instead Vendetta has to kill tons of political leaders who are corrupt and in the end peace is restored. This fear of being ridiculed for sharing an opinion restricts our society from liberated growth. Media framing allows the media to pick and choose/ manipulate any story information to present it in which ever way fits their interests. In V for Vendetta, the media is regulated by the government and no one dares to go against the grain, when one of the talk show hosts does, he is killed. In this example the framing is controlled by the government where as in our society, the media is controlled by profits. This allows people who are outspoken with one sided beliefs to take power. These people are usually the ones who are too arrogant to hear the other side of the argument. The winners get to make the rules while the loser’s follow. This was proven about a year and a half ago when the government was debating between giving a tax cut to middle/ lower income people or giving it to the higher income people. Well, guess who got the tax break, that’s weird; it was the higher income class. The media and governments claim was that if you give a break to the wealthy/ big business owners, then they will increase pay raise and create more jobs which in the long run if done correctly would definitely work. However, this is not human nature, and hasn’t been for the longest time. God punished Adam and Eve with one thing after they ate the apple, Desire, so it is human nature to desire things, especially the evil upper class (I don’t mean all but a good percentage of them). This has been proven many times in the near past. Communism is probably the best example. The idea is plainly beautiful, everyone works to benefit the whole, and everyone’s role is valued equally. This however is not realistic in our nature because we strive for incentives. Some people would work their heart out as others did half the amount. The way the media presented this was in a mainstreaming technique. The media presented a solution that would benefit all of the classes and heavy users of this media believed that this would work. However, the tax cut to the upper class did not work as they said it would but by the time anyone would have realized this, the whole idea was forgotten and became a ghost of a topic because the media had let it go. This could be taken as a priming tactic. The media had put a mask on this topic at the beginning to make people except it even though they most likely new it would not be executed the way they had said. This way they could get away with making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The wealthy get to make the decisions. If they would have taken the other option and gave the tax break to the middle or lower class, people would have instantly spent this money on necessary goods and instantly boosted the economy. This would have been the logical choice. I am not an expert in this field but I was able to discuss this with 2 different economic teachers here at Hamline University who have their masters. The knowledge these two sources have give some pretty good credibility to my conclusion. I would love to be able to claim that I am one person who is not affected by the media around me. However, this can not be true in the life I lead as a college student. The devices I use on a daily bases and the ideas I come up with are undoubtedly damp with media affects. However, I once was much more affected by advertisements, trends, pop culture, ect. I used to always have to have name brand clothing, new technology, and be caught up on the latest popular shows on television. Now I haven’t bought a new piece of clothing since junior year in high school, I don’t watch much television (I use it mostly as a diversion), I try to be active in things I believe in that can change the world for the better no matter how small.
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