My view

Politics has been dependent on media ever since media influence started its rise. With newspapers describing political events before the invention of the television, with television continuing the legacy before the internet, and with the internet providing us with millions of different points of view, media has become an integral part of political development.

The freedom of speech and thought is the base for democracy. For media, it is even more important, because media cannot exist without the freedom of speech. My question is, does the variety of media create democracy? 

Today, media shapes our political views every day. In a day, our opinion on a politician can change due to the media. Vast amount of media sources available at our fingerprints, always showing us a multitude of different perspectives allows us not only to educate ourselves on matters of politics, but also to choose our point of view.

Media does not confine on stereotypical images of newspaper and television. Nowadays, main source of the media that we all are familiar with is the social media. Many scholars have proved that education is the key factor for participation in political life, and considering that most of the people gain their political knowledge from social media, seeing official media sources as biased, social media is the main origin of the political activity now. Social media is now being actively used to highlight political news, promote election campaigns, and to even help determine whether vote or not to vote (Fountain, 2017). 

Basic news media now has a widespread influence as well, however, the difference between social media and news media is the audience age group. Social media is mostly used (and mostly influences) younger audiences, whereas news media mostly influences older generation. However, news media is mostly considered to be biased. Despite its bias, news media shapes candidate evaluations and vote choice for the elections, although it does not influence people as much as the social media does (Druckman & Parkin, 2005). 

There have been numerous examples of media shaping society’s political views. One of them even got a name of Al Jazeera Effect. Al Jazeera is now one of the most widespread media sources with an unmeasurable influence over politics. Al Jazeera alone has educated us on the issues of Middle East more than any other media source did. Al Jazeera has an influence to shape community’s views on such issues as democratization and terrorism, and even has the power to create so-called “virtual states”. Kurdistan is one of the most vivid examples of the virtual state, a nonexistent country that has gained recognition of its existence by the people all over the world, thanks to Al Jazeera (Seib, 2008).

To answer the question whether media creates democracy, I would like to say that it does not. Democracy is created by societies, and media is a mere instrument to help develop it further. However, media undoubtedly has a huge influence over the political views of the people, shaping their positions and helping them determine their choices, which is an important distinction.

References

Druckman, J. N., & Parkin, M. (2005). The Impact of Media Bias: How Editorial Slant Affects Voters. The Journal of Politics,67(4), 1030-1049. Retrieved April 26, 2019, from https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2005.00349.x.

Fountain, M. (2017). Social Media and its Effects in Politics: The Factors that Influence Social Media use for Political News and Social Media use Influencing Political Participation(Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 2017). Columbus, OH. Retrieved April 26, 2019, from https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/81616/Thesis_Megan_Fountain.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Seib, P. M. (2008). The Al Jazeera effect: How the new global media are reshaping world politics(1st ed.). Washington: Potomac Books.