Television and movies are the most common and well distributed information delivery channels and have many ways to influence people’s behavior. Among many methods, I believe following two are the main ways. One is manipulating unconsciousness of people and the other is setting intended agendas.
First, television and movies were commonly used during the war time to promote propaganda. A strategies, based on it is that people unconsciously believe and mimic what they see and listen from TV and movies. According to result of research, conducted by Harvard University, it is commonly observed that people have higher tendency to purchase products that are exposed on TV than those are not. Also there are a lot of reported crime cases that criminals confess they just followed impressive scenes from movies. All of those phenomena have one thing in common that they are results of manipulating people’s mind. Therefore it can be said that television and movies affect behavior of people by controlling mind.
Second, people desire to catch up current trends and express their opinions about them. Most common way to lead those trends is to show it through TV and movies. That is why a number of companies sponsor TV shows and films and gains chances to place their products. Once products are exposed to audience, they spread out by so called ‘word of mouth’. This strategy is called setting agendas, one of the most powerful way to influence people. For example, I have a friend who is a huge fan of Conan show. One day he continuously talked about chinese foods and Dr.Pepper. I was curious why he has such a high fever on them and asked the reason. In fact, the day before we met he watched an episode of Conan show, which showed many kinds of chinese foods and Dr.Pepper drinking scenes. After hearing it, I could understand why he repeatedly talk about them.
On the whole, I believe I accurately demonstrated my point of view on this matter with two concrete reasons and evidences. People are vulnerable to be affected by what they are exposed to, and agendas are very effectively set by information channels. Those are the ways how television and movies influence on people’s behavior.