The mass media, including television, radio and newspapers, have great influence in shaping people's ideas. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

In the era of omnipresent infiltration of mass media, public opinion is facing the challenge of remaining independent. People's perceptions and ideas are constantly subjected to the influences of commercials blaring from TVs and radios, sensational headlines in the newspaper jockeying for attention and pop-up advertisements on the Internet.

Therefore

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, public opinion nowadays is entirely shaped by mass media,

instead

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of the other way around. An individual, even when he or she may live in a society characterized by

individualism

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individual

, cannot stay impervious to the penetrating impact of media’s ubiquitous coverage. A case in point is the U.S.'

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S

public opinion during the presidential campaigning season. People's stances, on the one hand, can be highly divisive;

on the other hand

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, the divisiveness is not the result of

free-thinking

change one's mind

rethinking

. It is the extremely partisan media coverage that has come to shape the American’s way of thinking.

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, a voter who rooted for Donald Trump did not necessarily understand or subscribe to his every single policy. One might have happened to like Trump as a person because of his charisma or his male chauvinism.

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of

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random affinity, he may have tuned in to a live report of one of Trump’s campaign speeches. Yet after being bombarded by the campaign messages day in and day out, before he knew what really had happened in his own mind, chances are that he might have already become a staunch supporter of Trumpism.

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, Hillary Clinton employed the same strategy to influence, if not to brainwash, voters.

Such

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is the invasive power of mass media, which messes up your brain through relentless repetition and insidious implication. You may think you are the master of your own mind. But truth be told, you are not. You are merely one of a myriad who is in thrall to the sway of their own TV.