JOUR1111 Lecture 11 - Agenda Setting.

Humans are susceptible beings. Easily influenced by emotions, environment and different circumstances. The idea that society is a human product stems from the social constructionism of reality theory, that is; 

•  An individual’s conception of reality is socially constructed through a process of communication using shared language. 
• Reality exists, but the way we come to know it, talk about it, understand it, is mediated through social life. 
• The media play a large role in ‘constructing’ or ‘mediating’ the social world, as we understand it. 

It is without a doubt that the media can be very influential and impact on the decisions, beliefs and ideas of a person. The ability to influence ones formation of reality and the way in which the media constructs reality is known as agenda setting.

Agenda setting can be defined as; "the process of the mass media presenting certain issues frequently and prominently with the result that large segments of the public come to perceive those issues as more important than others. Simply put, the more coverage an issue receives, the more important it is to people.”(Coleman, McCombs, Shaw, Weaver, 2008)

Quite simple agenda setting can be categorised into three groups, that is;

1. Public Agenda: The set of topics that members of the public perceive as important.

2. Policy Agenda: Issues that decision makers think are salient (i.e. legislators)

3. Corporate Agenda: Issues that big businesses and corporations consider important.

The way in which reality is firstly created by the media and then portrayed to the public can alter the public’s perception of a certain matter and even reality.

This diagram illustrates this and the way in which the media warps the public perception of reality.

 

In order to accept and understand the theory of agenda setting, one must understand the two basic assumptions that come with agenda setting, that is; 
1. The mass media do not merely reflect and report reality, they filter and shape it. 
2. Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important that other issues. 
So one might now ask did all this agenda setting come from? 
The mass communication theory of ‘Agenda setting’roots can be found in the book Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann. Public Opinion was publish in 1922 and presented a new insight into the role of the media. Lippman exposed the way in which the media paints “pictures in our heads”. A good example of this is the way in which the terrorist attack of September 11 was portrayed and the media ‘painted a picture’, so to speak, of the terrorist attack in our head. 

 

Pictures of the pentagon were very rarely shown; the media instead chose to show the pictures of the plane crashing into one of the Twin Tower and therefore create a new reality. 

More than Half a century later, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw lead the major research dedicated to agenda setting. Setting The Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion (McCombs, Shaw 1972) exposes a very important point about the theory of agenda setting. “Agenda setting is not the result of any diabolical plan by journalists to control the minds of the public, but an inadvertent by-product of the necessity to focus the news. Newspapers, magazines, radio and television have a limited amount of space and time, so only a fraction of the day’s news cam be included.” 

McCombs and Shaw conducted an experiment, to study the effect of agenda setting in the media. This experiment occurred over the 1968 Presidential Campaign in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Over this time 100 undecided voters were surveyed on the key issues and measured that against media content. Their hypothesis was that the mass media set the agenda by emphasising specific topics. 
The study conducted was set under two theories of the agenda setting theory. 
First Level Agenda Setting Theory – Emphasizes the major issues and “the transfer of the salience of those issues.” At this level the media suggest what the public should focus on through coverage. To speak through the voice of Walter Lippmann this theory is simply concerned with ‘what the pictures are about’, 
Second Level Agenda Setting Theory - This is essentially how the media focuses on the attributes of the issues. The media suggest how people should think about an issue and this theory is focused on how people understand the things that have captured their attention. 
The conclusion that McCombs and Shaw came to was that “In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues – that is, the media may set the ‘agenda’ of the campaign.” 

The agenda setting ‘Family’.

Through the process of agenda setting, the media can also perform a number of different tasks, including:

· Media Gatekeeping – how individuals control the flow of messages through a communication channel; the exposure of an issue.

· Media Advocacy – purposive promotion of an issue, i.e. smoking, organ donation.

· Agenda Cutting – the reality that most news isn’t represented, i.e. AIDS/HIV in Australia.

· Agenda Surfing or the ‘Bandwagon’ effect– crowds and trends i.e. Kony. The media "surfs" on the wave of topics originally mentioned in the opinion-leading media.

· The diffusion of News - the process through which an important event is communicated to the public. How, where, when news is released. Who decides?

· Portrayal of an Issue - The way an issue is portrayed will often influence how it is perceived by the public.

· Media Dependence – the more we become dependent on the media, the greater ability we grant it to set the agenda.