JOUR1111: L.Wang's blog: Lecture 11

“Media may be the hot bed of ideology”, Dr Redman revealed as he uncovered the mask of agenda setting that injects ideas into our heads and makes us think ‘what we see on the news are pure facts’. Within this lecture, Dr Redman explores the myth of media’s power of controlling and changing our mind and shapes the world we live in through agenda setting.

l What is agenda setting?

Agenda setting is the process for media to present certain issues frequently and prominently in order to let the public think the certain news being covered in this way is more salient than others; and thus, constructs a specific public perception of reality. Such working is constructed by the interrelation between public agenda (the topics that members of the public perceive as important), policy agenda (issues that decision makers think are salient, ex: legislation), corporate agenda, (issues that big business & corporations consider important), and media agenda (issues discussed in the media).

Through the filtering, shaping and selecting the news, journalists and PR play the role in constructing the ‘reality’ people perceived as they build the media reality (media agenda). Except for people to directly engage with the reality, our knowledge about the world is largely mediated by social life, the way information is delivered to us via communication such as media reality. This working of media agenda involves two levels. The first level of agenda setting theory is to tell the public “what” they should be thinking about, such as the transfer of the salience of issues and other related object such as political figures. The second level of the theory is about the media mediating the attributes of the stories; hence, suggesting public ‘how’ to think about the issues. In addition, this agenda are often set by elite media institutions. Nonetheless, Dr Redman noted that agenda setting is not always diabolically planned to spin the public opinion by journalism; it is sometimes just an “inadvertent by-product of the necessity to focus the news”.

l Agenda setting family

These are the elements that are involved in agenda setting:

Media Gatekeeping-parties controlling the flow of messages through communication channel such as mediating the exposure of an issue to the public by the selecting the releasing news.

(information is blocked)

Media Advocacy-the purposive promotion of messages through media such as shaping the context and the way the message is presented.

(anti-smoking campign presents smoking in a negative and scary way)

Agenda Cutting-issues off public interest may not get represented, even though the message may be truth or salient.

Agenda Surfing-The media follows the crowd and trends; some news or messages that are originally based on opinion-leading media may be transferred fast and widespread (especially in the case of social and new media’s cases). Such way of existing public media influences others’ opinion is called “Bandwagon effects”.

The diffusion of News-the process of constructing when, where and how a news is to be released to structure a certain representation.

Portrayal of an Issue-used of narratives and news outlet to sway public perception.

Media Dependence-the more dependent a person is to media, the more likely he/she is to be influenced by the agenda setting.

l Strength and Weakness of the agenda theory

Strength

•explanatory power- it explains the reason why many people see the same issue as salient.

•predictive power-it predicts people’s behavior of that when exposing to the same media, they may see the same issue as salient.

• organizing power-it organize existing knowledge of media effects.

•It can be proven false-the level of media exposure in relation to people’s feeling towards certain issue can be exam by this theory.

•Its meta-agenda theory is balanced with the scientific side.

•it serve as a base for future research.

Weakness

-media users are not as invariable as the agenda setting theory assumes; each individual may engage in media in different level and in different way. And according to Dr Redman, in reality, people don’t pay so much attention on the media to notice all the details that may serve to influence people’s perception in a particular way.

-for people who hold their own opinions, belief and value firmly, the influence of agenda setting is weakened.

-agenda setting does not solve the issue; it may only alter its audience’ perception on the issue.

-New media is not being thoroughly investigated yet in terms of agenda setting.

l Agenda setting & 24 hours news

With the development of 24 hour news cycle, the accessibility for people to be exposure to news and thus agenda setting contains within it hugely increases. In order to fill in adequate amount of news, the news institution may especially cover on the set to be most salient news in various angles continuously; and this more apparently demonstrates the process of agenda setting.

l Media Agenda & Political Process

People nowadays get their information about politics from the media; hence, the media becomes the main site that set the agenda for political campaigns and influencing the public’s salience of attitudes toward the political issues.

Moreover, many news stories reflects the process of the trading between journalism and sourcer such as politicians, whereas politians intends to use media to spin the public opinion and journalists intends to use the politician which may generates news value of elite people to make the story. According to Dr Redman, such interaction between journalism’s agenda setting and political process may be “dumb-down democracy”.

l My Own Analysis: Media Agenda Setting & London Olympics 2012

A recent case of such agenda setting may be of the coverage on London Olympics 2012. Many media give extensive report on this sporting event frequently and prominently, whereas it is always the front-page news during the period of the game. The agenda setting is letting its audience to think the London Olympics is the most salient news. Nonetheless, during that time Syria is having conflicts whereas large political scandals and death are involved, but it only make smaller news and does not get covered much even though it is so important that it may affect the reformation of a whole country. However, from my memory, no one really notice the news about Syria because all the news are about Olympics game, which is thought to be of public interest. This is a sort of agenda cutting whereas important truth and issue is not effectively conveyed and media agenda sways public attention. As a result, agenda setting may manipulate its audience perception of the world and false or lack of reality understanding may lead them to obtain unaccountable decision or behavior.

(All about Olymics news)

l Extra material

l UQ

l Building consensus: the news media’s agenda-setting roles

http://cf5pm8sz2l.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Building+consensus%3A+the+news+media%27s+agenda-setting+roles&rft.jtitle=Political+Communication&rft.au=McCombs%2C+M&rft.date=1997-10-01&rft.volume=14&rft.issue=4&rft.spage=433&rft.epage=443&rft.externalDBID=n%2Fa&rft.externalDocID=CAX0210030000837