明天是立法會選舉，今日執屋無意發現yr2 sem2 debate的script，題目是"That the mass media does not have an important effect on voter decision-making in elections"，而當時的我是反方，這是個一早夾定而且貌似present的debate，正方是mom和呱呱。
Mass media is all around, e.g. TV, advertising, newspaper and magazine. It has the underlying power of influence. It is undeniable that mass media have influenced our lives. And it is no doubt that mass media can affect voter decision-making in elections. However, the effect is not as important as all we imagine.
Accoding to the theory of voting behavior, there are three dominant school which are Columbia School, Michigan School and rational choice. These schools think that the influence of campaigns commercials has minimal effects. They did not avoid the influence of elections process and commercials. In their concept, the main and important factors to influence voting behavior are the economic and social background of the voters and their predispositions. Predisposition is a very important constraint on media effects. Voter's predisposition included their prior political interest, awarenss and loyalties. As people have their minimal effects on voter attitudes and behavior. Voters received the least effect on the medai. Beside predisposition, personal influence is the main factor to affect the voters' decision-making in elections such as family and friend.
In USA, UK, Australia and even Taiwan, every election will have a lot of media advertising to promote the candidate's policy. These advertising or commercials is aimed to give influence to the voters. In the early media studies, minimun effect school brought up the constraints on media effects. First is the party loyalty. The voters' choice was depended on their party loyalties when they are a memeber or supporter of some party. These kinds of voters will make their decision before the elections and seldom changed. So, mass media cannot change their mind and decision The second one is perceptual screening which can call "selective perception". The voters whose contained selective perception will avoid the news or ads for the other candidate while they will pay more attention to mass media texts supporting their own candidate. And the mass media message will not change their mind, but only reinforce their own decision. Due to this theory, mass media have minimal effects on individuals' political attitudes and behavior which is not an important effect.
Mass media played the role of providing information. They may control which type of information will provide to the voters. But, voters are not passive auidence. They are not received all the messages come from media. According to Mass Society Theory, people have critical thinking. They can be very critical such as they will doubt the credibility of media. They will use the information to make the political judgement. People are not "mass man" who is passive and easily controlled. different classes of voters make decisions due to different reasons such as the policy, past experience and background of the candidate. Mass media is just a tolr of providing information of different candidates, parties and the election.
It cannot deny that some people may be affected by mass media. However, this effect is not very important on thier decision making in elections. The voters with hjgh political interest and party loyalties may watch lots of TV political news and ads and receive different mass media messages. But they just screen out all contrary information. They seek to the "avoid discomfort" of information that runs counter to our deeply-held beliefs and mind. You may think that the voters who with low political interest and political loyalties are potentially the most open to new media messages and be affected by the mass media. It is true. But, at the same time, they are also least likely to pay attention to political news and advertising and it is hard to see the mass media effects on thier decision making in elections. It also proved that the mass media does not have as important effect as we imagined. People are not under total control of mass media.
On the other hand, selction attention theories give a strong evidence of the voters' decision-making in election. It says that voters will ignore the mass media messages that are irrelevant or unattractive to them. They will concentrate on those they needed or gratifying. And the impact of media messages is weakened because of transient influences. Television may become the secondary media where it acts as a 'background' in our daily life. People aware that but are not concentrating on it. For example, we watched it while we have dinner or answering the telephone. So ,through these, we can see that the medium may not express the information effeciently and as people did not aware the media text, it does not have any important effect on voter's decision-making in elections.
爺爺當時讚very gd，幸好當時未有陳方安生同蘋果日報既example出黎。
除左我覺得論壇好好睇，一堆人為左當選，罵來罵去，我真係一封宣傳郵件都無睇過，講真，又不是看一看論壇見到某個被罵就認定佢唔好，people has critical thinking呀嘛，甘多年，邊個真係做到野有眼睇既，其實係個論壇嘈嘈共反而會減分。
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