Agenda Setting

Update: Since I posted the spiel on my unfortunate living circumstances, Marine has moved out, and everyone has decided to leave in the next few weeks. In the days following, I did what any mature, 18 year old would do, I told on Steve, to my Dad, and it was more like sobbing. However, thanks to his excellent 'being scary' skills, I get to stay, and I can't decide if I should be relieved/ disgruntled. 


Journalism Stuff:

Agenda setting is all about constructing the public's opinion through mediated means. This entails that, while reality ( social life outside the media) exists, media has in some way constructed this understanding of the social world. It's a scary thought.


Essentially, the media follows this motto: The more coverage, the more important to the people. It is in this way they shape what we perceive to be important. I mean, if it's being reported on, it's just GOT to be newsworthy right?


An important concept in terms of Agenda Setting is the 4 agenda's themselves:


1. Public Agenda: Topics we think are important as media consumers.
2. Policy Agenda: The issues/policies/legislation top decision makers think matter.
3. Corporate Agenda: What big business thinks is important.
4. Media Agenda:  Issues discussed in the media.


These all work together to, I guess, determine what we watch and how and when we watch it. 


But the thing with the mass media is that, obviously, they don't just report 'reality' they filter and shape it.
An early theory was that humans are like robots, and to that all I can say is, we wish. However, Harold Lasswell's Hypodermic Needle Model, literally suggests  that the media "injects" direct influence into us, the viewer. Which, for all intents and purposes, makes sense, but look at the bloody picture that was used to represent it:

This 'robot' theory is essentially suggesting that audiences can't critically think, that we are moldable, and it does nothing for the media's god-complex. 


It has also been said, by a Walter Lippmann, that the media creates images in our minds, like propaganda. This concept, but also the concept of agenda setting, is up by social theorist, Michel Foucalt, who suggested that not only do social norms and expectations restrict and limit an individual, but the way we act is also determined by our institutions. He talks about how we, the public, have no power, (against media in this case) because we are under surveillance - much like being targeted as an audience. 


As an optimist, and because I refuse to accept the fact that we are mindless dopes, I prefer what Michel de Certeau says about 'social control.' His theory is about how people negotiate in everyday life, how those with more power (media) control us, and the strategies tactics we employ to stop it. 


However, there are two main types of agenda setting theory, that while don't go into as much communicative detail, provide a strong foundation about how it works.

1st level:  Is about the transfer of the importance of the issues. Media suggest WHAT should be focused on.
2nd level: The media suggests HOW people should think about the issue.


While agenda setting does alot of things to us, it also affects itself in terms of elite media sources, so think BBC and ABC News, setting the agenda for lesser media. 


In saying this, this 'lesser media' is much more filtered in terms of appealing to all audiences, so they don't get as much 'real news' as the 'big-guys.' Media seems to be not only choosing what people/media outlets should care about, but who should care about what. As Noam Chomsky cheekily put it,

"Mass Media are trying to divert people from the real news, getting them out of the way by distracting them with celebrities and sex scandals... The serious stuff is for the big guys, don't you worry about that." It's all a bit patronising really, and I am having none of it.


Now, if agenda setting didn't seem mean enough, there is a whole agenda setting gang to not only narrow down what agenda setting is, but it outline how it works. 


1. Media Gate Keeping-
How individuals control the flow of messages through a communication channel.
2. Media Advocacy -The purposeful promotion of a message.
3. Agenda Cutting -
The truth/reality in the world isn't represented and thus forgotten. (Bieber's New haircut vs. AIDS)
4. Agenda Surfing -"Bandwagon Effect." Media follows or rides on the wave of what the media elite make news.
5. The Diffusion of News -
How news is communicated to the public - who, when, why, how.
6. Portrayal of an Issue - Different angels to take on a story/group of people. Alters public perception.
7.  Media Dependence -The more dependent on media, the more susceptible to agenda setting.

Agenda setting might seem a bit diabolical, but I will admit that it does have some strengths.
1. Explains why people think certain things as important. (Important social information.)
2. Predicts that if exposed to the same media, people may regard the same issues as important.
3. Organises existing knowledge of the affects of the media.
4. Can be proven false. (See #2)

The 24 Hour News Cycle.

New media provides an outlet for faster production, and therefore more news gets deemed newsworthy. It is because of this fact, the fact that we just have so much news that we want to take in, that mass media just can't help themselves. 




Sorry this is such a drawn out lecture guys, but agenda setting is REALLY interesting and SUPER important.

-Shannen

Now and then, when I'm watching the news, I often catch myself wondering how I'm being positioned.