For this survey, I once again spoke to ten different college students in the student center of Texas A&M University. This survey was multiple choice rather than open-ended like the last one, and its purpose was to ascertain how strongly my peers believe that TV and movies influence themselves and others. I asked each one of them eight questions:
1) If you could only pick one, which of the following best describes how you receive television news about current events?
- Comedic talk shows (ex. Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert) [3]
- Comedy shows (ex. Saturday Night Live) [1]
- News channels (ex. CNN or Fox) [5]
- Other television source (please explain) [1]
–> As indicated by the numbers in brackets to the right of each question, three students answered (a), one student answered (b), five students answered (c), and one student answered (d), indicating that he got his news from the Internet, on sites such as Reddit.
2) How often do you think that TV shows attempt to persuade you politically?
- Always [2]
- Very often [3]
- Somewhat often [3]
- Every once in a while [1]
Never [1]
–> Two students answered (a), three students answered (b), three students answered (c), one student answered (d), and one student answered (e).
3) How successful do you think that TV shows are at affecting your personal political views?
- Extremely successful [0]
- Somewhat successful [4]
- Mostly unsuccessful [5]
- Completely unsuccessful [1]
–> Four students answered (b), five students answered (c), and one student answered (d).
4) How often do you think that movies attempt to persuade you politically?
- Always [0]
- Very often [3]
- Somewhat often [5]
- Every once in a while [2]
- Never [0]
–> Three students answered (b), five students answered (c), and two students answered (d).
5) How successful do you think that movies are at affecting your personal political views?
- Extremely successful [0]
- Somewhat successful [3]
- Mostly unsuccessful [4]
- Completely unsuccessful [3]
–> Three students answered (b), four students answered (c), and three students answered (d).
6) In your opinion, do the majority of news channels (such as CNN and MSNBC) have a liberal bias?
- Yes [5]
- No [2]
- Undecided [3]
–> Five students selected (a), two students selected (b), and three students were undecided.
7) In your opinion, does Fox news have a conservative bias?
- Yes [9]
- No [0]
- Undecided [1]
–> Nine students selected (a), and one student was undecided. It is interesting to note that even the students who said that news channels were not their main source of news had an opinion on this question. The one student who was undecided had actually selected news channels as his main source of news.
8) How often do you think that TV shows and movies affect the political beliefs of other people (besides yourself)?
- Always [0]
- Very often [8]
- Somewhat often [1]
- Every once in a while [0]
- Never [1]
–> Eight students chose (b), one student chose (c), and one student chose (e). Interestingly, eighty percent of the students surveyed believed that media affects other people’s political views, but the majority of them also claimed that television and movies are either mostly unsuccessful or completely unsuccessful at affecting their own political views. This demonstrates a theory called the Third-person Effect, which posits that people believe that they themselves are more resistant to media influence than other people are.
Overall, I found that the majority of students I surveyed believe that TV and movies do attempt to persuade us politically, but they believe themselves to be more resistant to media influence than other people are. Next, I conducted several interviews in which I asked a different group of students to elaborate on their perceptions of media influence on their political views. I will relay my results in my next post.
Hollywood, D.C. 
