How influential is the media in determining how people vote?
The role of the media is often over stated. Not so long ago, the UK’s leading newspapers were often crucial in determining support for political parties. Most famously, following the Conservative Party’s victory in the 1992 election, the Sun Newspaper claimed that ‘It’s the Sun Wot Won It’ after they ran a campaign against the Labour Party and their leader Neil Kinnock.
Given that more newspaper support the Conservative Party and certainly those with the largest circulations (The Sun and the Daily Mail) support the Conservative Party we might conclude that the traditional news media is influential given that the Conservative Party have been in power for 31 of the last 44 years. However, as the way people get their news has changed we might be able to conclude that the influence of the media is changing also.
Firstly, let’s consider how people in Britain consume the news.
A survey by Find Out Now in 2023 indicated that 47% of people got their news from the website of a news publisher (this might be the BBC, Mail Online ect), 33% of people got their news from social media and just 15% got their news from newspapers. This is vastly different from just 25 years ago when the majority of people would have said that they got the news from the print media.
The rise of social media as a source of news is worth considering here. It might be argued that the rise of social media demonstrates that the media is now less influential in determining how people vote. Most people will use social media to read and interact with content that already aligns with their views and this suggests that the our use of social media is now merely solidifying how we choose to vote, rather then changing perceptions and voting intentions.
Moreover, if you look at who uses social media to get their news we get further evidence to suggest that social media is less important than we might otherwise have been led to believe. You will notice that the % of people who get their news from social media works on a sliding scale, with 58% of 18-24 year olds getting most of their news from social media whilst just 29% of 45-54 year olds doing likewise. A perceptive point to make here would be that social media has little influence because whilst 18-24 year olds cite it as their main source of news, we know that this same age group has the lowest voter turnout and therefore the impact would be negligible.
If we dig deeper we can find out more about the influence of the media. Most people say they get their news from websites and of these people, 59% said that their main source of news was the BBC. In fact for almost every age group, over half of people said that they got their news from the BBC.
Given that the BBC has a commitment towards impartiality and ensure that it provides both sides of any debate can it really have that significant an impact of the way people vote? Again, it could be argued that the media is less influential than many people might imagine.
The following are some points that it would be worth making in any essay on the influence of the media on the ways in which people vote in the UK:
- The print media used to be influential but its impact has declined as fewer and fewer people buy newspapers.
- The impact of social media is over-rated. Social media simply confirms rather then helps to change peoples views.
- The BBC is still the most used source of news in the UK. Given that the BBC has a commitment towards impartiality and no political agenda its influence on how people vote would be limited.
