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

JOUR1111 Lecture 9 Reflection - News Values

In week 9’s lecture we looked at ‘News Values’, which can be explained as the degree of importance a media outlet gives to a story, and the attention that is paid by an audience.

Or, as it is explained in my favorite definition that came up in the lecture:

“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”

Arthur Evelyn Waugh (English Author)

 I found this definition to be the truest for me, personally I don’t care what new haircut Justin Beiber got. When something strikes me with interest in the news, it’s generally something big. It could be something that has happened at war in Afghanistan or something that’s happened in parliament that will change the way Australia goes about an issue. Most likely though, it is probably going to have something to do with a criminal case, and that’s simply because that is what interests me.

So what are the News Values? 

Impact

•    Something that evokes a reaction or emotion from the reader.

 Audience Identification

• Anything relatable to what is happening in the world, and in areas of culture that would be interesting to your audience.

Pragmatic 

•   ethics 
• facticity 
•  practice/practical current affairs
• every day (24-7 news) 

 Source Influence

•    Sources influence how, when, where a journalist can get a story.
  •     PR controls and protects their clients at the expense of the truth but it’s a necessary part of journalism 

  What I found particularly interesting in this part of the lecture was when we started to talk about whether News Values are the same for everyone, everywhere, or if they differ. Which they do. It all depends on different news services, cultures and their audiences.

For example the Election is a huge deal in America right now, something that the country wants to stay informed about because it has a lot to do with them and their future. It is something covered all across the USA on all different platforms of media, whether it is TV, newspaper, radio or magazines. In Australia, there has been some coverage, on the most important parts of the Election, but nothing more. This is because we are different. We have different cultures and values and as a country care about different things. We are more concerned for our parliament than their presidential elections because it affects us more.  

Next we discussed News Values at work and newsworthiness.

Aside from the above diagram there are two other views of newsworthiness. “If it bleeds, it leads” with the idea of horror and death stories making great news stories. And, with the hyperlocalisation of news and World Wide Web 3.0, this changes to “It it’s local, I leads”, concerning local stories with nice, happy endings. The issue with this however is the non-transferable news due to differing geographic locations and demographics. 

In 1965, Gultung and Ruge found 12 common factors that could be used to define newsworthiness:

• Negativity – bad news e.g. deaths)
• Closeness to home - people relating better to stories that affect them in some way
• Recency – breaking news
• Currency – news deemed valuable and is popular in the news
• Continuity – events with a continued impact on society
• Uniqueness – something new/unheard of
• Simplicity – stories that are easy to explain and understand
• Personality – stories regarding people of interest
• Expectedness – The archetypal news story (opposite to uniqueness)
• Elite nations of people – stories about nations and powerful organisations
• Exclusivity – Getting the exclusive, being the first one to ‘find’ the story
• Size – the more people it will impact, the more newsworthy it is considered

Gultung and Ruge also came up with 3 hypotheses to newsworthiness:

• Additivity hypothesis – the more factors an event satisfies, the higher the probability that it becomes news
• Complementarity hypothesis - factors will tend to exclude each other
•  Exclusion hypothesis - events that satisfy none or very few factors will usually not become news

In 1979 Golding and Elliot came up with their list of News Values:

• Drama 
• Visual attractiveness 
• Entertainment 
• Importance 
• Size 
• Proximity 
• Negativity 
• Brevity 
• Recency(exclusives, scoops) 
• Elites 
• Personalities

And in 2001, Hurcup and O’neil reviewed Gultung and Ruge’s work, concluding on the following 10 principles of newsworthiness:

• The power of the elite
• Celebrity
• Entertainment
• Surprise
• Bad news
• Good news
• Magnitude
• Relevance
• Follow up
• Newspaper agenda

What’s the point of all these different ideas and principles concerning newsworthiness? Different people come from different backgroaunds and cultures therefore having different opinions on what it really consider news. Despite all this though, and despite who says it, the terminology etc. in essence, newsworthiness principles have remained the same. 

From there exists 3 Tensions of Newsworthiness that threatens newsworthiness:

• Journalism vs. Commercialization of media – ethical wall between the commercial and social functions of commercial media. 
•  Journalism vs. Public relations – journalism needing PR in order to obtain their stories but PR doesn’t always deliver the whole truth.
  (Churnalism –churning out what PR gives)
• Journalism ideals vs. journalism realities – what journalism aims to stand for, compared to what they deliver 

So what does all this mean for us in the future? Gultung and Ruge’s initial priciples from 1965 are still highly relevant, therefore it is unlikely these principles of newsworthiness will change anytime soon. 

-Laura

2/10/2012