Read the following passages carefully and answer the questions  given at the end of each passage:

The mass media have been recognized as politically significant since the advent of mass literacy  and the popular press in the late nineteenth century. However, it is widely accepted that, through  a combination of social and technological changes, the media have become increasingly more  powerful political actors and, in some respects, more deeply enmeshed in the political process.  Three developments are particularly noteworthy. First, the impact of the so-called ‘primary’  agents of political socialization, such as the family and social class, has declined. Whereas once  people acquired, in late childhood and adolescence in particular, a framework of political  sympathies and leanings that adult experience tended to modify or deepen, but seldom radically  transformed, this has been weakened in modern society by values. Abiding political allegiances  and habitual voting patterns have thus given way to a more instrumental approach to politics, in  which people make political choices according to a calculations of personal self-interest based on  the issues and policy positions on offer. This, in turn, widens the scope for the media’s political influence, as they are the principal mechanism through which information about issues and  policies, and therefore political choices, is presented to the public. 

Second, the development of mass television audience from the 1950s onwards, and more  recently the proliferation of channels and media output associated with the ‘new’ media, has  massively increased the mass media’s penetration into people’s everyday lives. This means that  the public now relies on the mass media more heavily than ever before: for instance, television is  a much more important source of news and current affairs information than political meetings;  many more people watch televised sport than participate in it; and even shopping in increasingly  being carried out through shopping channels and the internet. 

Third, the media have become more powerful economic actors. Not only have major media  corporations become more powerful global players, but also a series of mergers has tended to  incorporate the formerly discrete domains of publishing, television, film, music, computers and  telecommunications into a single massive ‘infotainment’ industry. Media businesses such as  Microsoft, AOL-Time Warner, Disney and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation have accumulated  so much economic and market power that no government can afford to ignore them.  Few commentators doubt the media’s ability to shape political attitudes and values or, at least, to structure political and electoral choice by influencing public perceptions about the nature and  importance of issues and problems, thereby. However, there is considerable debate about the political significance of this influence. A series of rival theories offer contrasting views of the  media’s political impact.

The pluralist model of the mass media portrays the media as an ideological marketplace in which  wide range of political views are debated and discussed. While not rejecting the idea that the  media can affect political views and sympathies, this nevertheless suggests that their impact is  essentially neutral in that they reflect the balance of forces within the society at large. The  pluralist view nevertheless portrays the media in strongly positive terms. In ensuring the  ‘informed citizenry’, the mass media both enhance the quality of democracy and guarantee that  government power is checked. This ‘watchdog’ role was classically demonstrated in the 1974  Washington Post investigation into the Watergate scandal, which led to the resignation of  Richard Nixon as US President. Some, moreover, argue that the advent of the ‘new’ media, and  particularly the Internet, has strengthened pluralism and political competition by giving protest  groups a relatively cheap and highly effective means of disseminating information and  organizing campaigns. 

The dominant ideology model portrays media as a politically conservative force that is aligned to  the interests of economic and social elites, and serves to promote compliance or passivity  amongst the masses. The ownership ultimately determines the political and other views that the  mass media disseminate, and ownerships are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small  number of global media corporations. 

The elite-values model shifts attention away from the ownership of media corporations to the  mechanism through which media output is controlled. This view suggests that editors,  journalists and broadcasters enjoy significant professional independence, and that even the most  interventionist of media moguls is able only to set a broad political agenda but not the day-to-day  editorial decision-making. The media’s political bias therefore reflects the values of groups that are disproportionally represented amongst its senior professionals. 

The market model of the mass media differs from the other models in that it dispenses with the idea of media bias: it holds that newspaper and television reflect, rather than shape, the views of  general public. This occurs because, regardless of the personal views of media owners and senior  professionals, private media outlets are first and foremost businesses concerned with profit maximization and thus with extending market share. The media therefore give people ‘what they  want’, and cannot afford to alienate existing or potential viewers and readers by presenting  political viewpoints with which they may disagree