The Influence of Mass Media

Yesterday in class we talked about Marshall McLuhan and his "Global Village" which looks at mass media and society – how mass media is able to reshape society. This reminded me of a pretty funny, and interesting segment I saw on ABC's Nightline the day after election day, November 5. The title of the segment is "The Oprah Effect."

This five minute segment describes what the "The Oprah Effect" is and the host talks to a couple of guys who have tried to quantify what Oprah meant to Obama, in terms of votes during the primary election. They've estimated that Oprah is responsible for 1,015,559 votes for Obama. The video is entertaining, and worth spending five minutes on, regardless of which candidate you voted for. Nightline, in turn, developed this simple equation to sum it up.

















Resources:
http://abcnews.go.com/nightline
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Mcluhan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Village_(term)