Photo by Matthew Guay on Unsplash
“I bought this dress I really liked at the mall. Within the same week, I started seeing ads for this exact dress everywhere I went online. I felt like the ad had been following me.” This was a story my older sister told me over Christmas this past month. It sounds chilling but it is true, and it is not very uncommon to see. The media can influence you in many ways by changing what you see online and how you view certain topics. It has the power to affect your emotions, thoughts, and in this case, even purchases.
Mind Control
I recently read an article titled “Mind Control: It’s Happening To You Right Now“. To summarize, the article gives multiple statistics and scenarios where the media such as Facebook and Google have persuaded people to think or do a certain thing. My favorite example was where in the 2010 US election, Facebook sent out a reminder to 60 million users which prompted 340,000 people to vote who wouldn’t normally do so. As the article states, this is enough to completely change the outcome of an election. This is the power that the media has.
Photo by LoboStudioHamburg via Pixabay
Persuasion In The Marketplace
This leads me to another topic, persuasion in the marketplace. As I touched on in at the beginning of this post, it’s not uncommon to see ads that seem to specifically catered to you that you find it odd. Search engines like Google and Bing as well as social media sights like Facebook and Instagram use this tactic all the time to persuade users to buy something. It’s not uncommon for these engines and social sights to keep tabs on you in a way by keeping track of recently searched items or frequently watched YouTube videos in order to narrow down which ads are most relevant to you.
Problem or Opportunity?
If this is new information to you, this may be pretty shocking. It makes you wonder if the media does this for the better or for worse. In my opinion, it might be both. It is helpful having ads catered to you, rather than see pointless ads for FarmersOnly.com when you’re clearly not interested in only farmers. However, you may also not like these large companies to have the ability to track what you’re viewing and what sites you visit. In the case of the “Get out and vote” campaign from Facebook, it’s scary to think that one site like that could have so much influence. It’s important for us, the people, to be careful and skeptical of what you view or see online.
wetrustinspeed 