Week 11: Agenda Setting

Agenda Setting

The four agendas (all interrelated):
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.
3) Corporate agenda - issues that big businesses & corporations think are important.
4) Media agenda - issues discussed in the media.

Two very important points were raised in this lecture:
a) the mass media do not merely reflect and report reality, they filter and shape it.
b) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

I think this is very important for myself and my peers in JOUR1111 to keep in mind because evidently we cannot allow ourselves to be spoon fed by the media and manipulated into conforming with their views of what is important (because they have their own agendas that they are trying to push). And also, it promotes the idea that we should try to get our news from a variety of different sources because we don't want to know about just one view on a particular story. This is also related to Media Dependence - since we are all so media dependent, it would suggest that we would be more susceptible to media agenda setting (according to the lecture) so we must be aware of it.

To look at this point I looked at 4 news sources online and focused on one story: George Zimmerman's (man who killed Trayvon Martin) bail being revoked. 

The Australian - in the breaking news section, 6 sentences, no photo (just bare minimum facts)
The Courier Mail - exactly the same as 'The Australian' story (must have shared the story)
Aljazeera - headliner article, big photo, much longer story (around 20 sentences) with a lot more information
CNN - under the 'more news' section, video of the court scene as well as extensive information

From looking at this, I saw that the different news sites (for whatever reasons, perhaps proximity, or other perceived values contributing to news worthiness) had given the story different levels of prominence on their site and had written to different lengths on the story. Therefore, I could see how agenda setting affected the presentation of the story by different sites.

I definitely think things are definitely on the agenda at the moment such as climate change, etc. It will be interesting now to watch the news because, now that I am aware of agenda setting, I will be on the watch to see what current issues the media are prioritizing and trying to push into the spotlight. Personally, this lecture was not exactly about learning something new but rather becoming aware of something that is and has been going on for as long as the media has been around. Everyone has an agenda but as budding journalists, it is of the upmost importance for us to recognize what agendas people are following and be more informed as a result and know not to take everything that we are told as truth and reality.