Impact of media on world opinion

During his recent visit to Sri Lanka, MTI’s Bahrain-based CEO Hilmy Cader, as part of MTI’s ‘Think Tank’ initiative, shared  their learnings on the impact of media on world opinion and what governments around the world can learn from businesses.

The cold war and the ensuing threat of nuclear warfare has always preoccupied the world with the fear of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ – in the cause of which billions of dollars are spent on the defence industry. The mindset of governments around the world has been to build more powerful attacking and defending capabilities. The unfolding of socio-political problems around in almost all parts of the world means this emphasis will continue.

However, as Governments around the world are fast realising, ‘Weapons of Mass Media’ is proving to be more lethal than ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Think of Kosovo, Egypt, Syria, Rwanda (and the list goes on!) and one realises how ‘battles’ are fought over mass media (including social media) and how world opinions are formed on what such media portrays.

Governments around the world are now responding by better appreciating how world opinions are formed, how public perception (mindset) works and what stimuli are needed to influence the perception in favour of a particular cause.

This is where governments can learn from businesses, as business success depends on not just how good your product or service is, but how well you understand the consumer mindset and then work backwards to ‘craft’ your message.

Governments around the world can also learn from businesses on crisis management, for instance the classic case study of how Tylenol accepted its mistake, did a product recall and in fact came out much stronger. In more recent times, how Coke handled the crisis in Belgium and how Nestle handled the Perrier crisis should serve as good learnings.

Otherwise, it could be like winking in the dark, we know what we are doing, but not the world!