JOUR1111 Lecture 11 Reflection - Agenda Setting

In this week’s lecture we looked at ‘Agenda Setting’ which is basically the social construction of reality. It is how a person sees reality as a constructed world that is presented by society, then people interpret this reality through our actions and interactions with others. Media plays a huge part in our society, therefore influencing the construction. Journalisms role in this involves 4 agendas: 

• Public agenda – what society (as a whole) cares about
•   Policy agenda – the issues that policy creators think are important
• Corporate agenda – issues corporations feel are important
• Media agenda – the issues the media discusses and prefers

 However, all four of these agendas are interrelated.

Agenda Setting is…

“mass media presenting certain issues frequently and prominently…the more coverage an issue receives, the more important it is to people” (Coleman, McCombs, Shaw, Weaver, 2008)

To understand this in a more simple way, sorting out the differences between reality, ‘media reality’ and the public perception of reality, we looked at the diagram below:

There are two basic assumptions of agenda setting. Firstly, the Mass media do not merely reflect and report reality, they filter and shape it. Secondly, media concentration on a few issues/subjects leads the public believe those issues are more important than anything else.

So where did Agenda Setting come from?

In the 1920’s Harold Lasswell came up with the “Magic Bullet” model – mass media “injects” influence into an audience. However, with this model there are some limitations, it is of one-way occurrence, that the audience does not process what they are told and everybody views the information in the same way.

In 1922, Walter Lippman, a newspaper columnist, came up with his theory “Public Opinion” – mass media creates images of events in our minds. The audience draws on the images created while making decisions/judgments rather than making them logically. 

In 1968, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw surveyed 100 undecided voters at a presidential campaign in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; they asked the voters about key issues and measured them against media content. They hypothesised that mass media set the agenda by emphasizing specific topics to their audiences. They found that mass media has a large influence on audiences, through their choice of what is newsworthy in considering stories and the prominence and space given to them.  

What is Agenda Setting?

There are two main types of Agenda Setting Theory:

• First Level Agenda Setting theory – most studied by researchers, emphaisises major issues and “the transfer of the salience of those issues.” Media suggests what the public focus on through coverage.

• Second Level Agenda Setting Theory – how media focuses on the attributes of issues. Media suggests how people should think about an issue. 

What does Agenda Setting do?

•  Transfer of issue salience from media to public
• Transfer of issue salience for both issues and other objects such as political figures
• Elite media often set the agenda for issues in other media

The Agenda Setting “family:

 

·         Media Gatekeeping

-          What the media chooses to revel to the public

-          The exposure of an issue

·         Media Advocacy

-          The purposive promotion of a message through the media

·         Agenda Cutting

-          Most of the truth/reality that is going on in the world isn’t represented

-          E.g. AIDS taking the backseat to something like Justin Beiber’s new haricut

-          Issues that have less time in the media, e.g. AIDS, are less cared about

·         Agenda Surfing/’Bandwagon’ Effect 

-          Media follows the crowd and trends

-          Media "surfs" on the wave of topics originally mentioned in the opinion-leading media

-          Bandwagon effects: how existing public opinion influences others towards that opinion

·         Diffusion of News

-          Process through which an important event is communicated to the public

-          How, where, when news is released

-          Who decides?

·         Portrayal of an Issue

-          Way an issue is portrayed will often influence how it is perceived by the public

-          Different media outlets with different portrayals à can cause public to form their own perception

·         Media Dependence

-          The more dependent people are on the media the more inclined they are to believe whatever agenda its presenting

Strengths of Agenda Setting

• Explanatory power – explains why most people prioritize the same issues as important
•  Predictive power – predicts if people are exposed to the same media, they will feel the same issues are important
•  Organising power – helps organize existing knowledge of media effects
• Can be proven false – if people aren’ exposed to same media, they won’t feel the same issues are important
•  Meta-theoretical assumptions are balanced on scientific side
• Lays groundwork for further research

Weaknesses of Agenda Setting

• People are independent thinkers – media can’t tell someone what they must think about an issue 
• Changing media landscape – WEB MEDIA àagenda setting isn’t the same in all media landscapes

 24 Hour News media has changed the way that agenda setting takes place. The morning newspapers no longer set the agenda for news stories that night or what is discussed that day. Instead, the agenda is constantly being reshaped by all types of media. Especially through web media feeds such as Twitter where journalists can share information through posts as the issue/situation is taking place, giving audiences live feeds. 

To sum all this up, media has an agenda. It is constantly changing and a variety of factors influence it, what audiences’ see/hear, how they see/hear it, why they see/hear it and when they see/hear it.

-Laura

11/10/12