Political Socialization Under Media Influence
Things are always promoted in response to people's needs. In modern society, citizens are usually attracted by the strong impression in the mainstream culture, and take corresponding actions according to the personal needs generated by the impression, which is a kind of propulsion; it is not hard to imagine how powerful this propulsion is, and how wide its potential impact would be. Politicians are hungry for power from the people, seeking support from them to realize their ambitions; and the development of technology and society provides the possibility of controlling power for those who want to achieve their ambitions, the media. Political circles use all kinds of media to spread ideas, including newspapers, personal works, online news, and election debates on TV. Media is an important channel for political communication because of its universality, visualization, and democratization.
The rudiment of the election debate has been produced as early as the Lincoln era in the United States. In 1858, a subversive political debate took place in the Illinois Senate. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas held seven debates in seven constituencies of the state. In this process, the core of the issue always revolved around two themes, the Federation and slavery. Although the political activities of the two politicians are closer to public speaking in terms of actual form, the ideological exchange between them has sprouted the general election debate. The amount of information in the seven debates is quite large, and the live broadcast process is also very exciting; in order to record the full version of the scene, the debate content has been recorded as a video disc for sale, which is not hard to see that the media has been applied to the display of political activities in this period. However, it is half a century later that social media is really given practical significance by the expectation from the public. On May 17, 1948, in Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the United States, radio kex-abc organized a radio debate on the primary of the Republican presidential candidates in Oregon. As the two protagonists of this debate, New York governor Thomas Dewey and former Minnesota governor Harold stasheng held a debate about the issue of Communist activities in the United States for about an hour; from the consistent political position of the two governors (both of them are anti Communists), the issue does not have too complex controversy, which can also be seen as One of the reasons why the scale and scope of the debate have been limited. Nevertheless, this debate is still of great significance in the history of the development of political media; as the first election debate broadcast live through the mass media, it has created a part of short history of practice, which proves that the media provides the public with a new, common channel for real-time access to political information, and obviously promotes the development of political activities.
On September 26, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon held a series of TV debates on wbbm-tv, an affiliated TV station in Chicago.There were four real TV debates between them; the two candidates answered their personal opinions on different topics and the debate process was broadcasted to the public continuously by radio and reporters who followed the report. These four debates are believed to change the interactive relationship between politicians and the public in essence, and at the same time reconstruct a new form of political election. After announcing the results of the debate, Kennedy narrowly beat Nixon by 17000 votes; his personal image on television at that time was younger than that of his opponent Nixon, and his speech was also good at communication. The dramatic result was intriguing, and the researchers have found new signs of germination between political elections and the media from this. Politicians appear in public on TV, expound their political views with all the voters watching the debate, and try their best to show themselves, so as to create an attractive public image; the spectators judge whether each politician meets their own standards by watching the debate, and comment on all the things displayed on TV. From the perspective of communication, this is a very classic role assignment, that is, the relationship between the speaker and the audience; the speaker outputs information to the audience, while the audience's acceptance of information and the effect of the speech depend on the speaker's own personal characteristics and abilities. The four debates between Kennedy and Nixon had a profound impact on political history because of this principle of communication based on TV media. Compared with newspapers and books, TV is obviously more in line with the needs of modern society; it simplifies the complicated political information to a certain extent, and makes the personal image of politicians clearly reflected. The voting public is more likely to accept visual and judgmental results than to analyze political opinions in detail, that they are glad to see something which is a clear image of a person and judge whether he or she is trustworthy, rather than to deal with massive information that is neither visible nor readable. This is why the competition between Kennedy and Nixon in the debate relied more on their personal image drawing, because they understand that the audience's focus is often not on political ideas, but on the people who promote the ideas.
It can be seen from the above examples that the fundamental reason why TV media used to be the main means of political propaganda lies in that it transmits these information to the audience more intuitively through information visualization. In the social process of information updating and output, newspapers and books, a kind of paper-based media, can only use flat pictures and words to express things, which gradually can't meet the needs of most people; the emergence of TV media greatly makes up for this life defect, and its popularity and visualization also provide the main for the development of political elections in the future train of thought. All kinds of brilliant images created to become political figures are broadcast on TV every day like slides, stimulating people's nerves and emotions with too clear images; while TV media makes political activities start to be new and active, it also brings a fundamental problem. Personal image and political opinions have little practical connection, but it is frequently used as the main gimmick to attract voters. In a sense, it contradicts the original concept of media. The role of media is to narrow the distance between politicians and voters, and to provide as much information and details as possible to help voters to judge; but the characteristics of visualization and popularization make the role of TV Media Limited, which is difficult for it to carry too much rational reflection and criticism. The broadcast of TV media has expanded the public's access to information, which not only affects most people's attention to different political issues, but also has a potential impact on their political attitude and cognition. If the focus of the relationship between the media and politics is only on the issue of 'whether a few TV debates have changed the voting behavior of the public', the long-term political socialization ability and the shaping effect on the political concept of the audience will be obviously ignored; this is the same as how personal image could affect voting results, which means that the political significance has been artificially simplified. This is not good for voters, because making political personal choices should not be affected by other factors.
To sum up, the media can confirm two characteristics of universality and demonstration, as the basis for it to be fully utilized in political activities and the process of political socialization. Therefore, media propaganda can be said to be the transmission of social information, and the politics as the source of information transfers the information it wants voters to see through the media. Political figures of different positions are actually competing to transmit information when debating; the result of the debate is often whose victory depends on which side of the message is more acceptable to the people watching the debate. At the same time, the personal choices made by the people will also be the key factors to determine the results. The democracy of media lies in this; it is a popular platform to accommodate dissent and differences and provide the possibility of communication. Take the TV media for example. Politicians are dedicated to creating images on TV in order to win favor and support; they are so careful to show themselves to the voters in front of TV because they know the public have decisive votes in hands, which may turns a kind of power the politicans need for sure. This is also the reason of a mutual relationship of turning rights into power is especially reflected in the TV media.
With the development of new media technology, the influence of television is declining day by day, and the political participation of young voters is declining, the ratings of American election TV debates have become very unstable. TV is no longer the most attractive device nowadays, but has been replaced by new digital media and portable terminals; people are no longer simply obsessed with the sensory impact of television visualization, but to a certain extent, they return to the highly simplified information. News and entertainment works change like fast-food producing, that information flow change rapidly every minute and every second, and then constantly refresh people's social media. Because of the long time and various program setting steps, the process of TV election debate is gradually ignored by the vision of modern people. It has gradually dropped out of the media world, like people willing to use a computer or mobile phone to get information, rather than watching a TV which is fixed on a wall or table. Attention to politics has been diluted or even stripped from the lives of a new generation of young people. Politicians are starting to hunt for fans on social networks like Twitter and Facebook; every of their word is a hot spot and being tagged as highlighted options for search. Whether on Twitter or Google, a single name alone can provide tens of thousands of edited entries and news headlines to searchers. The three changing points of media, the public and politics are always interacting on one wheel, and affect each other because of people's need.
According to John Keene, a British political scholar, who reflected on the relationship between contemporary social media and democracy, he pointed out a very clear concept, that is, in a complex modern society, the freedom of information dissemination is composed of several conflicting parts; on this basis, pluralism which can accommodate different opinions and public opinions is the origin of democratic politics. For this reason, the election TV debate is just one of the platforms. Its role cannot be overlooked, but it is not the only channel for dialogue. If we look at the line of world development, we can see that although the TV debate has gone through many years in the United States, its development has just started in some countries and regions. Democratic politics and civil society construction need to go through a very slow process to show substantial changes; it usually spans the era. However, it is undeniable that new technology will bring new possibilities, and the final political socialization of the public also depends on whether the citizens take positive practical actions.
The information output of modern society is like an unstoppable torrent, scouring every corner of the city every moment, being slightly delayed by social media sometimes. As a transit station, media is responsible for disseminating the latest information and changes to the public; it is the channel through which information is released to the public. This position is especially obvious that the relationship between media and politics has always been a hot academic issue in the field of political communication. Most of the discussions about this relationship are basically from a specific theoretical point of view, trying to summarize the general role of the media in politics, as well as its actual impact. However, the result of this discussion is always affected by the change of the media itself, that is to say, what can be generally summarized in the real society is not the notion of media itself, but the specific trend of its change.
