Fiction to Reality?!

Is there ever any link?
Many very good books are written based on reality, and so the question here is:
Could the other way around be true? can a story really influence life as we see it?
Many films are based on books and so it is in a way ''shaping realtiy'' because real people are acting out stories for a real audience to watch.
How much of television/media and films do actually affect our psychological thinking and utlitmately our behaviour on a daily basis?
A good example I can think is The Lord of the Flies concept.
A TV company who set out to put this book to the test so they gathered a number of children that they put togetherto be left on their own devices in a house to fend for themselves without the supervision of parents/adults. The TV crew filmed these children day and night, non stop to see if the book theory had any credibility.
It was an awful programme because lots of those children suffered trauma being left to fend for themselves for a period of time whilst adults and parents sat and watched then it went on TV.

That's not a good example, but a few years ago a group tried to patent a mehod for extracting minerals from the ocean. Someone sent them a copy of "The Man Who Ploughed tha Sea" by Arthur C. Clarke, and they withdrew the patent application. Umberto Eco wrote some novels in tandem with his scholarly works: The Name of the Rose and Theory of Semiotics as one example. The Name of the Rose is about symbols and their interpretation, so it fit perfectly with the theory.

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Originally Posted by PeterL

That's not a good example, but a few years ago a group tried to patent a mehod for extracting minerals from the ocean. Someone sent them a copy of "The Man Who Ploughed tha Sea" by Arthur C. Clarke, and they withdrew the patent application. Umberto Eco wrote some novels in tandem with his scholarly works: The Name of the Rose and Theory of Semiotics as one example. The Name of the Rose is about symbols and their interpretation, so it fit perfectly with the theory.

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Thank you for your post.
I did not realise you need a patent to set out to dig under the sea bed.
I have not seen it or heard of it.
I am not following however what you mean about 'The Name of The Rose'.
What symbols are these? Do you mean the extractions of minerals as a theory?