#5

  For the last blog, I will be analyzing an election and how media can influence people’s opinions on politicians. Because the media likes to expose every part of a politician’s life, politicians have to be careful of their actions, and it doesn’t hurt to be as transparent as possible. As for my election, someone didn’t know they were being followed and his actions.

    Politics make the people running for positions very popular, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways. Propaganda can make or break someone’s chances of getting elected, because the people voting are very impressionable. This is shown in the 17th congressional district of California’s 2016 election between Mike Honda and Ro Khanna. News and propaganda were used to further their efforts to be elected, but they were also used against them, sometimes to embarrass them. For example, there was live TV broadcast of a congressional meeting where Mike Honda fell asleep on camera. This was exploited by his opponents that ran, and won, against him in 2016. This shows how much media can influence people’s opinions about people and how correct their opinions are on politics. Now, correlation does not equal causation, but that doesn’t mean that this shouldn’t be ignored.

Both of the video sources that I used were meant to paint a bad picture for the other side.

    The first video is sponsored by Mike Honda, the former congressional representative, was about Ro Khanna and how he has a whole bunch of rich people supporting him. The video states that Khanna has conservative points of views, which , I am assuming, Californians don’t like. This is an effort to paint him as the enemy, but Mike Honda also has some flaws that he couldn’t fix in time. The second video is about Mike Honda and how he fell asleep in a congressional committee meeting. He has done this once before in his home town’s town hall meeting. This video paints Mike as lazy and disregardful of his own town’s problems. Mike has been reported being lazy and fatigued, so this probably swayed people’s opinions. This video was not sponsored by Ro Khanna, so it makes this video more convincing.