Lecture on Agenda Setting

Agenda setting is concerned with constructing reality to serve an ulterior motive - a motive that can be either altruistic or self-serving. The way that audiences perceive reality and interact with it is mediated through social life through everyday communication and shared language. The main forms of agenda are:

Public Agenda - a set of topics that members of the public consider important

Policy Agenda - issues that decision makers think are salient

Corporate Agenda - issues that are valued by conglomerates and businesses

Media Agenda - issues found within everyday media

The forms of agenda are not mutually exclusive and are often interconnected and interrelated.

Agenda setting theory acts upon the premise that the news media has a large influence over the public with respect to what stories they deem newsworthy and how much prominence they give them. The main objective of agenda setting is salience transfer, imparting issues of importance from their news media agendas to public agendas. Mccombs describes the process of agenda setting as the following:

"Through their day-by-day selection and display of the news, editors and news directors focus our attention and influence our perceptions of what are the most important issues of the day. This ability to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda has come to be called the agenda setting role of the news media"

Agenda setting is a process of building and cutting - there is so much information out there that it is virtually impossible to include everything, therefore it is best to choose issues that serve a wider purpose. A great deal of filtering is required which is not inherently sinister or corrupt, it is just necessary. However, a consequence of the media featuring certain issues more prominently and frequently than others is that the public comes to perceive these issues as more important than others. Unfortunately, this can lead to a uniform way of thinking as audiences fail to seek out wider issues.

Another form of agenda setting that could be regarded as sinister is propaganda, which is often used to promote a certain way of thinking through means akin to brainwashing. One definition describes propaganda as a tool used "to help shape images in the minds of human beings in support of an enterprise, idea or group. Propaganda can be used to substitute one social pattern for another."

The Agenda Setting Family comprises of:

1. Media Gatekeeping - controls the flow of messages through a communication channel (the internet is is a problematic medium when it comes to gatekeeping.
2. Media Advocacy - purposive promotion of a message which is often sponged to the public (such as health and safety messages)
3. Agenda Cutting - deciding what is and is not newsworthy ( unfortunately issues like AIDS are often shunted to the background)
4. Agenda Surfing - the media will jump on the bandwagon when trends arise, following and reporting on issues that audiences are currently interested in or obsessed with
5. The Diffusion of News - how, when and where news is released and those who are responsible for deciding
6. Portrayal of an Issue - the way an issue is portrayed will often influence how it is perceived by the public
7. Media Dependence - the more depend a person is on the media for information