Lecture 11: Agenda Setting

Agenda setting in journalism is reality constructed, or mediated, by social life. The four areas are public, policy, corporate and media. Public refers to topics the public place importance on, policy is the issues decision makers think are important, issues big businesses and corporations believe are important come under corporate and media relates to the issues discussed in the media. These four areas are all integrated.

The mass media not only report events, but also filters and shapes it to fit a particular mould. Through media concentration on a few issues, the public perceives these issues as having a higher importance than they possibly do. For example, the media frenzy over Alan Jones’ comments, instead of perhaps focusing on the more important issues that are happening in the Middle East. The idea of agenda setting has been around for a while; in the 1920s, there was the concept of a ‘Magic Bullet’ that injected direct influence into the audience. Adolf Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl successfully used images to manipulate German perception of Hitler as a great leader and in 1968 during the US presidential campaign it was researched that an undecided voter could be persuaded by the mass medias emphasis on certain topics.

The agenda setting family has seven parts, these are media gate keeping, media advocacy, agenda cutting, agenda setting ‘bandwagon’, the diffusion of news, portray of an issue and media dependence.

1)      Media gate keeping: “How individuals control the flow of messages through a communication channel.” For example in the US Fox is more of a right wing station and thus is more likely to promote Mitt Romney in this years presidential campaign

2)      Media advocacy: the purposeful promotion of a message through the media, e.g. health issues like smoking, obesity, binge drinking

3)      Agenda cutting: a lot of the truth of reality that is going on th the world isn’t represented, for example, AIDS is on the increase but this huge issues has taken a backseat to other news events as it is not desirable to the public and not as enticing to the majority of society than Justin Beiber’s haircut

4)      Agenda setting ‘bandwagon’: when the media follows the current trend or ‘surfs’ the wave of topics bought up in different media spheres. Two such events this year are the Kony 2012 campaign and more recently the PSY ‘Gangnam Style’ song and dance

5)      Diffusion of news: the process through which an important event is communicated to the public i.e., how, where and when news is released

6)      Portray of an issue: the way an issue is portrayed is often how the public, or the uneducated part of the public, perceives it

7)      Media dependence: the more dependant a person is on media for information the more susceptible that person becomes.

 

One example of agenda setting is the prevalence of climate change in the news over the past 25 years. Referred to as the “Greenhouse Effect” in 1988 by The Age the same concept is now know as climate change, and is still an issue that is often raised in the media.