The whole well-established and rather large field of marketing is preoccupied with predicting and manipulating the preferences of people.
There doesn’t seem to be much difference between persuading people to buy a particular brand of shampoo and persuading people to support a particular political issue (or vote for a particular candidate).
Depressing but plausible :(
I suspect “the way they are presented in the popular media” is crafted with that in mind.
The whole well-established and rather large field of marketing is preoccupied with predicting and manipulating the preferences of people.
There doesn’t seem to be much difference between persuading people to buy a particular brand of shampoo and persuading people to support a particular political issue (or vote for a particular candidate).