Lecture 10
has come upon us, and confusingly it’s Week 11 due to that pesky holiday last
Monday…darn! But we delved straight on in to this week’s topic, Agenda Setting!
Before today’s lecture I had my own conception of what agenda setting was; it
was when news companies had a certain ideology they wanted to portray and their
news followed that ‘agenda’. I guess I was wrong. Haha. Luckily I learnt
differently today and this blog post will summarise the enlightenment that I now
feel!
To begin
with, agenda setting is a theory. It is all about the idea of mass media having
an influence on what and how the public feel about news stories and current affairs.
Have a think about reality. The way people look at certain events is unique to
each individual due to past experiences and the way they’ve been raised, right?
Well the media is just an extra ‘mediator’ of reality. They (the media) have to
make a decision into what goes into the day’s news and what doesn’t and how they portray it. Even if
the public don’t realise, this affects the way citizens perceive reality.
There are
four different types of agendas:
1)
Public
agenda
2)
Policy
agenda
3)
Corporate
agenda
4)
Media
Agenda
The names
relate to who it is that thinks the news is important. For example, if someone
was following a corporate agenda it would include news that big businesses
and corporate companies find important. Of course, these four different types
of agendas are not exclusive and overlap within each other. This topic is actually
in extremely close ties with last week's topic of news values; news that is
important to a certain target will only be deemed to be so using news values.
Seeing topics tie together like this really gives a better overall feel for the
journalism industry, and makes it much easier to understand as a whole.
There are
two assumptions made by the theory and these are that:
- Mass media do not merely reflect and report
reality, they filter and shape it.
My thoughts: It would
be pretty much impossible for the media to simply reflect and report, which I
believe a large section of the public actually thinks the media does. I mean A
LOT of people generally just use one source as their daily shot of news and
they would have it subconsciously in their mind that, that is the be all and
end all of the day’s news. The truth is though, that every single media
organisation is leaving out a certain news story/is telling a story with a
different angle.
- Media concentration on a few issues causes the
public to perceive those issues as more important.
My thoughts: I think I’ve
seen evidence of this one occurring also. Consider the issue of refugees and
boat people. All of a sudden this issue sky-rocketed in the amount of press it
received and suddenly it seemed like this massive, scary situation that sent
many Australians into a moral panic. In reality though there was really no
giant increase between the day before the issue was reported and the first day
the story hit the headlines.
There are
two levels of agenda setting theory:
First level
– Suggests what the public should
focus on.
Second
level – Suggests how the public
should think about a certain issue.
So the
second level is pretty much just narrowing down, and ‘framing’ the issue for
the audience. It is up to the audience to critically think about what they are
viewing and this being done by a viewer is rarely the case.
Time for
the big topic that was covered in the leccy! The ‘family’ of agenda setting.
- Gatekeeping
-
This
is how much, if anything, of an issue is exposed to the public. When you think
about it, the media are actually, liiiiike, totally in control of what we get to
hear and see. Pretty scary!
- Advocacy
-This
is the promotion of a message that has a purpose. This includes stuff like
anti-smoking and other health topics! This actually sounds like a pretty decent
family member if you ask me. J
- Cutting
-This
is where most of the truth or reality isn’t represented. This happens EVERY
day. Because really, all the news stations in the world could not report
everything that happened in a day. And the sad thing is that, some of the most
obscure and unimportant topics like…oh, the Kardashians, get more press time
than issues that could actually have a massive impact on people’s lives!
- Surfing or the ‘bandwagon’
-A
news item is mentioned in an opinion leading media and BAM, hello everybody. It’s
just when the wider media follows others and certain trends to fill up their
news time. And it isn’t just when major media organisations comment on a story,
the same goes for something that has gone viral on the internet. Take our good
pal, Kony, for example…
- Diffusion
-This
is the process through which an event is communicated to the public. This
includes how, where and when news is released. To sneakily snatch Dr Redman’s
example from class:
Sensitive topics such as this must have a carefully timed release
date to confirm that the risk of backlash in minimised and/or that the safety
of those involved in the story is
ensured.
- Portrayal of an Issue
-Alrighty,
say there is a certain group of people or there is an issue at hand. There will
be MANY different ways to approach the topic or even many different sub-topics
within it. How the issue is portrayed will greatly influence how it is
perceived by the public. This could be considered a bad thing, but the upside
is that if people are exposed to many different portrayals by a variety of
outlets they will begin to think for themselves and form their own
perspectives.
And
I can actually use my own example here! Here is a report about Anh Do and his
book the Happiest Refugee in contrast with a report shedding bad light on
asylum seekers:
Well, I can’t actually find the contrasting video, but click here to see Media Watch’s
analysis of it.
- Media Dependence
-This one is pretty simple, it’s just that the more dependent you
are on the media, the more susceptible you are to their agenda setting!
Coming
to a wind down now and getting near the end of the lecture, Bruce
discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the Agenda Setting Theory and as always
I will outline them below. J
Pros
- Explanatory
power
- Predictive
power
- Organising
power
- Can be
proven false (not everyone is under the complete control of the media, we have
our own minds you know!)
Cons
- People
may not be well informed, engaged, thoughtful and sceptical (apparently some of
us don’t have our own minds…Awks).
- The
effect weakens when people have made up their mind previous to watching the
news (sorry, but I don’t get how this is a weakness if a strength to Agenda
Setting Theory is that it can be proven wrong?).
- Cannot
create or conceal, only alter (agenda setting doesn’t mean you can make stuff
up just that you adjust the way you present or don’t present DA NEWZ, yo).
Oh dear,
you can see my mind slipping away. But hold up, I’m going to pull it all back
together for the final mini topic!
The 24 hour
news cycle. Da da dum! Okay, I promise I’ll write normal again.
This is all
caused by convergence of media. The internet, mobile devices and digital channels
with 24 hour news is putting massive pressure on news companies to constantly
pump out the new content. How is this related to agenda setting you may ask?
Well, in the past, newspapers would set the ‘agenda’ for the day and TV and
radio stations would follow suit. Now though, who is the first to break a
story? Who is setting the agenda for the day? It’s all very mysterious and
confusing when it’s muddled up into a constant turnover, isn’t it. Decisions
for stories have to be made quick smart and whether this has an effect on the
type of agendas we’ll see in the future, will only be told by the test of time.
Bye! J
x
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