Communicating through mass media

Transmitting information and entertainment through TV, radio, films, newspapers, magazines and books; and the resulting popular pool of world knowledge and experience derived from these media.

The Overton Window concept — named for researcher Joseph Overton, who worked at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy — puts a premium on effectiveness and metrics as a means of institutional funding. Overton found that it was useless in his work to advocate for positions that he could not recruit politicians to say from the legislative floor or on the campaign trail. Instead, Overton found greater success when crafting policy ideas that fit within the prevailing media and political culture.  Other scholars later further developed Overton’s concept to included five stages that ideas pass through before becoming policy, moving from “unthinkable” to “radical” to “acceptable” to “sensible” to “popular.” The range of acceptable ideas within the Overton Window can change over time, as it can both shift and expand, either increasing or shrinking the number of ideas politicians can support without unduly risking their electoral support. Because the theory of the Overton window presumes a smooth connection between public opinion and political outcomes, some claim that this assumption is gravely in question today.  This is because politicians do things daily and hourly that are opposed by their constituents — fund foreign aid and wars, make masks, school closures, lockdowns, vaccination compulsory, for example — but they do it anyway due to well-organized pressure groups that operate outside public awareness.