Agenda Setting
Within news values we have looked at models that dictate
what news is in the public interest. Now we look at the model that decides how
the news agenda is set and how this somewhat manages public perception of
topics and events.
Agenda setting is a theory that alludes to how the media
constructs and mediates reality. In other words, our social perception of what
is important and relevant in the world today is likely a perception that has
been moulded according to the agenda mass media has set.
There are four main agendas within the agenda setting
theory, and they are as follows:
1.
Public Agenda - Topics that the public perceive
as important.
2.
Policy Agenda: Issues that the decision makers
think are salient.
3.
Corporate agenda: Issues that big business and
corporations consider important (linked to advertising).
4.
Media Agenda: Issues discussed in the media as
important.
And these agendas are
all interrelated.
This theory in itself is fairly obvious and many of us are
aware of different agendas shown through the news with events that receive more
coverage than others. This is often a characteristic remarked upon when looking
at the difference in coverage on commercial media programs and public media programs;
it shows what each form of media considers important.
Some people often criticise this model suggesting that it narrows
public perception or that it is a powerful tool that can be used the wrong way.
It is true that the mass media not only reflect and report reality, but also
filter and shape it. This can be put down to the necessity that not every event
can be reported, or covered thoroughly at least, therefore the news must be
culled and filtered to fit public interest.
So why can this be a powerful or dangerous tool? The origins
of the Agenda Setting theory stem from the Hypodermic Needle Model, also known
as the magic bullet theory, created by Harold Lasswell in 1920. This model proposes that “the mass media
‘injects’ direct influence into the audience” by way of reporting a topic from
a preconceived standpoint.
This suggests that the notion of free thinking is
not as ‘free’ as assumed by many and when used to its most controlled and conditioned
potential, this model makes for very influential propaganda.
A forward thinker of his time and
theorist Walter Lippmann suggested that the mass media joins us all together in
our thinking through creating pictures in our minds. He theorises that depending
on the news value a story uses, for example terrorism, we have a consequential
picture painted for us, perhaps one of violence and danger, which draws a linear
type of thinking from the public.
To counteract this conditioned
thinking, Lippmann came up with the concept of
regaining
an innocent eye
whereby the
audience keeps an open mind and heart, questions the perceptions we are fed and
critically thinks rather than relying on the pictures and thoughts created for
us.
Media agenda
setting influences almost every kind of interaction society has with elite or
higher powers. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw proved this when interviewing 100
undecided voters during the 1968 Presidential Campaign in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina. McCombs and Shaw questioned voters on the key issues of the campaign
and compared that to what the mass media had been giving prominence to in the news.
The research showed that the issues the news media had considered news worthy
and important, were the issues that the voters considered of high importance,
therefore affecting the policy and campaign of the Presidential candidates.
This shows the direct influence the media can have on the public agenda.
There are
two primary types of agenda setting. The first level of agenda setting dictates
that:
The
media suggests what the public should focus on through coverage. Study of this
level looks at the emphasis of the major issues and the transfer of salience of
those issues.
The second
level of agenda setting theory states that:
The
media suggests HOW a person should think about an issue and looks at how the
media does this by focusing on attributes of an issue.
When looking at what
agenda setting does, we can see it at work within the social realms but also
within media realms as well. On the societal level, agenda setting transfers
issues of salience from the news media to the public. It also transfers issues
of salience of other objects and people, for example political figures. When at
work in the media, particularly in relation to the fall of print media, elite
media organisations set the agenda for issues in other media. An example is the
Media Reporting in action at the New York Times that is documented in the film Page
One: Inside The New York Times (Andrew Rossi 2010).
McCombs acknowledges
in his work that often times agenda setting is not always a “diabolical plan to
control the minds of the public” and rather the by-product of having too much
news to report. Bernard Coen somewhat concurs with McCombs that the media may
not always be successful in telling the public how to think but “they are
stunningly successful at telling the public what to think about.”
However a reoccurring
issue in my learning about how the media interacts with the public is that we
are not victims or even innocent bystanders, rather we play a rather large role
in directing the news ourselves by where our computer mouse chooses to click.
Within this theory
there is an agenda setting family that works to clarify the dynamics of agenda
setting.
The Agenda Setting
Family:
1.
Media Gatekeeping:
Looks at how individuals control the flow of messages through
a communication channel. This involves the way an issues is covered, and what
the media chooses to reveal.
2.
Media Advocacy:
The purposive promotion of an important message, for example
a message about health that is advocated for through the media.
3.
Agenda Cutting:
Looks at how most of the truth or reality that is going on
in the world, is not represented in the daily news, because it doesn’t rate on
the public agenda as important or entertaining.
4.
Agenda Surfing (also known as the Bandwagon effect)
This looks at how the media
follows crowd trends, where opinion on a topic may start in the public
discussion media and then get picked up by other media groups as important.
5.
The diffusion of News:
The diffusion of news is how an important event is
communicated to the public. It looks at how, when and where news is released.
6.
Portrayal of an Issue:
This looks at how an issue is
portrayed in the media and states that the way an issue is portrayed, can
influence how the public thinks about it.
A point to note within the notion
of different portrayals of an issue is that images can be used in a very
powerful way to evoke different responses from the public, according to how
they relate to the image. An example could be the Australian public opinion
towards asylum seekers and, when influenced by media agenda and political
agenda, how a positive or negative perception is spread through the public.
 | ||
| A family who have sought Asylum in Australia |
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| A group of 'boat people' seeking asylum in Australia |
Powers and strengths of the agenda setting theory:
1. Explanatory power
2. Predictive power
3. Organizing power
4. Can be proven false ( like any good theory)
5. Lays the ground work for other research
Weaknesses of agenda setting:
1. People who are well informed cannot be as
easily swayed
2. News cannot create and conceal problems
3. People are not always ideally interested in
what the news Is reporting and take a more casual approach to their perception
of issues
Agenda setting is now changing dramatically because of the
change in how we take in our media and our news. With the implementation of 24
hour news cycles, the media now have to ability to report on more events,
however agenda setting is still in place in relation to what receives the most
coverage. It is also being transformed
with the revolution of new journalists who use a smaller team of people and are
more versatile and able to report news fast.
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