Perhaps one of the most outrageous influences the modern media holds over people is its highly active role in shaping the morality of the populace at large. The human prefrontal complex can, through a series of targeted and focused campaigns, be manipulated to shape its ability to think in a particular direction. That effectively means that morality itself can be shaped and redirected.

At its core, the issue lies not in the naivety of human morality, nor with the brevity of modern media, but rather in something more discerning. The set of rules which govern a system, confer rights and duties, and maintain obedience through a system of coercion, i.e., the law, as jurists would agree, is susceptible to change and must be reconciled with the general morality of the populace it is supposed to govern.

The relationship between law and morality has long occupied the centre of jurisprudential inquiry, precisely whether law merely reflects social morality or actively constructs it. Yet what distinguishes the contemporary moment is the unprecedented role of modern media in mediating this relationship. Media no longer simply transmit moral discourse; it shapes, amplifies, and increasingly engineers it.

At its core, law is not an autonomous system. It derives legitimacy from its alignment with the moral convictions of the society it governs. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, legal systems often presuppose that conduct deemed immoral provides a prima facie justification for legal prohibition. This reflects the enduring influence of legal moralism, most notably articulated by Patrick Devlin, who argued that society has the right to enforce its moral judgements through law. Yet, if morality itself is susceptible to external influence, the foundation upon which law rests becomes far less stable than traditionally assumed.

Modern media ecosystems have fundamentally altered how moral judgements are formed. Social media platforms, in particular, function as accelerators of moral sentiment. Research published in the Annual Review of Psychology demonstrates that moral content spreads disproportionately faster than non-moral content, effectively amplifying moral outrage and consensus formation. This phenomenon is not incidental. Platform algorithms are designed to prioritise engagement, and moralised content, especially that which provokes indignation or empathy, generates precisely that.

The speed, scale, and personalisation of modern media create conditions in which moral consensus can be manufactured rather than organically developed

The speed, scale, and personalisation of modern media create conditions in which moral consensus can be manufactured rather than organically developed

The implications extend beyond sociology into cognitive science. Moral judgement is closely associated with activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain region crucial for moral judgement, which can be tweaked to shift how people feel about right and wrong. One study found that non-invasive stimulation of the mPFC actually increased subjects’ sense of morality and emotional arousal. If direct brain stimulation can heighten moral judgement, it is therefore rather clear that targeted messaging (with its emotional cues and repetition) can bias the same neural circuits in everyday life.

This is precisely where modern media exerts its rather concerning influence. Digital platforms employ sophisticated psychological profiling techniques to tailor content to individual users, which one can simply term as algorithmic targeting. A large-scale study involving over 3.7 million participants demonstrated that messages aligned with users’ personality traits significantly increased persuasive effectiveness, in some cases by up to 50 per cent. This form of “psychological targeting” allows for the micro-engineering of moral perspectives, subtly guiding individuals towards particular ethical conclusions.

The transition from moral persuasion to legal transformation is neither abstract nor speculative, but empirically observable. One of the clearest examples is the proliferation of sex offender registration laws in the United States during the 1990s. Intense media coverage of isolated but highly emotive crimes created a climate of fear and moral panic. Within a span of five years, thirty-eight states enacted stringent registration laws. Such concocted moral panics thus effectively serve as catalysts for legislative change, often outpacing empirical evidence or rational policy analysis.

The media does not merely inform public opinion; rather, it shapes the agenda upon which lawmaking operates. Political science literature has consistently demonstrated that media coverage influences both the issues legislators prioritise and the urgency with which they address them. Viewed in this axis, the media acts as an intermediary between public morality and legal codification, effectively determining which moral concerns are translated into law.

The jurisprudential implications are far more profound. If law must align with societal morality to maintain legitimacy, and if societal morality is increasingly mediated by algorithmic and targeted media systems, then law itself becomes indirectly shaped by these systems, challenging traditional assumptions within both positivist and interpretivist frameworks. For Ronald Dworkin, law is an interpretive practice grounded in moral reasoning; yet, if the moral substrate is externally engineered, the integrity of that interpretive process is called into question.

None of this suggests that media influence is inherently pernicious. The media has played a crucial role in advancing progressive legal reforms. However, the same mechanisms that enable moral progress can also facilitate distortion. The speed, scale, and personalisation of modern media create conditions in which moral consensus can be manufactured rather than organically developed.

The central issue, therefore, is media-prompted influence and its opacity and asymmetry, and not the existence of media influence itself. Individuals are rarely aware of the extent to which their moral intuitions are being shaped. Meanwhile, those who control media infrastructures possess unprecedented power to influence collective ethical frameworks.

It is thus that the relationship between law, morality, and media must be reconceptualised for the digital age. Law remains dependent on societal morality, but morality itself is no longer an independent variable. It is increasingly the product of complex informational systems, raising a fundamental question: can law claim legitimacy if the moral will it reflects is itself engineered?

© The Friday Times