The thing that defines the agenda setting theory the best is the quote by Bernard Cohen: “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” (379). The media has the ability to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda and people respond. The public agenda is known as the most important issues determined by public opinion surveys. The media agenda also suggests that media affects people’s behavior, similar to how the cultivation theory suggests tv shows affect people’s beliefs and feelings. The agenda setting theory makes me think of the recent news about the lost plane in Malaysia. Nobody necessarily had answers, but it was talked about so much on the news that the media definitely had the whole world thinking about it constantly. Viewers could not escape the question, what happened to this plane? The media did not just give the audience what to think about, but also how to think about it in their multitude of news coverage.
Gerbner, the founder of the Cultivation Theory, was concerned that violence in TV and movies “affects viewers beliefs about the world around them and the feelings connected to those beliefs” (366). Within the cultivation theory there are three said prongs: Institutional process analysis, message system analysis, and cultivation analysis. Although they are all very important, the cultivation analysis is especially important because it deals with how TV’s content might affect viewers. The pre-requisite to cultivation anaylsis, though, is the message system analysis. Within this prong, is the idea of dramatic violence, “the overt expression or serious threat of physical force as part of the plot” (368). This made me think of the show, NCIS. The show is great, but every episode is centered around this dramatic violence. Some danger happens to someone, or almost happens to someone, and special agents spend the rest of the episode up against this danger, trying to figure out who caused it. The whole plot is centered around physical force that has happened.
The Agenda-Setting Theory of Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw states that “the mass media [has] the ability to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda” (378). Further, the theory explains that Media Agenda influences the Public’s Agenda, which in turn influences the way they vote. Sometimes, however, such Media Agenda can, when not be used appropriately, distortedly influence Voters’ Agenda by focusing on certain issues. Recently, such was the case during the news coverage of the flight that disappeared out of Malaysia. The Media Agenda in maximizing profits lead to many false-reports and speculations that proved to be far from true. Jon Stewart, on his comedy news show, mocked such reporting and exposed how absurd it has become. When using the Agenda-Setting Theory to analyze Stewart’s comments, we see that The Media was abusing people’s high Index of Curiosity in regarding airplanes because a large amount of people are afraid to fly. Stewart’s satire also reveals how CNN and Fox News made the missing flight an extremely “salient” (381) issue due to their around-the-clock coverage of the flight. Thereby, the coverage of the missing flight provided a “frame” in regards to the dangers of flying that likely caused an unnecessary amount of salience in people’s fear of flying. I have attached the link to Stewart’s commentary below, and highly recommend watching it as it is both funny and poignant in its commentary of the Media’s hype-speculative nature within today’s society.
Agenda-setting is a function of mass media. McCombs and Shaw believe that the “mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to the public agenda.” They also state that “we judge as important what the media judge as important.” The agenda-setting hypothesis is that the mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda. This theory represents a back to the basics approach to mass communication research. To establish position and length of a story as the two main criteria of prominence, we need to distinguish media from public agenda. While media agenda patterns news covered across print and broadcast media and public agenda deals with issues brought through public opinion surveys. It is important to note that the media aren’t very successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about. News doesn’t select itself, so there is a power of agenda setting. An example that comes to mind is from the movie Anchorman 2. Given the graveyard shift of the prime news network, Will Ferrell’s news team makes up stories and strictly shows events that attracts American viewers with a surrounding theme of ‘Murica. Here, instead of showing real news, they choose “news” that allows them to get the highest ratings.
A part of the agenda setting theory is the idea of framing. Framing is “the selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion on the media agenda when a particular object or issue is discussed”. For example, during the months leading up to presidential elections, news channels frame the presidential debates and voting as an extremely important issue. Most channels do poor jobs of covering other stories during this time. They use select the election as the primary topic, they emphasize its importance through frequency, they highlight it by excluding other stories, and they elaborate excessively on the topic. This type of framing makes the debates and election and topic in the fore-front of people’s minds and also stimulates high amounts of conversation between people after viewing the program.News cast
The Agenda-Setting Theory of Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw focuses on the ability of the mass media to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda. The theory focuses on the connection of the media agenda and public agenda. The media agenda is the pattern of news coverage across major print and broadcast media as measured by the prominence and length of stories. The public agenda is the most important public issues as measured by public opinion surveys. The theory also focuses on the idea of framing or how to think about certain topics, people, events, etc. in the media. This made me think more about their example of the exposure of Michael Jordan. Widely regarded as the best NBA player ever, Jordan is constantly exposed in the media as such and as a role model that all should look up to be “Like Mike,” even a Hollywood movie was created about the topic and the good aspiration to be “Like Mike.” What the media ignores is the fact that Jordan is known to be a very big gambler and drinker and is known to be mean and disrespect fans when they see him in public. I believe this plays into the way that the media agenda works to get the public to think about certain topics in the light they paint it in
Agenda Setting Theory talks about the ability of mass mediato transfer the salience of items on their news agendas to the public agenda and the book mentions thatWatergate is a perfect example of the agenda-setting function of the mass media. Since the public agenda has the ability to present what they think is important to the public agenda, public agenda may suffer from information manipulation. The book talks about what kind of people are mostaffected by the media agenda: those susceptible have a high need for orientation or index of curiosity and people who need for orientation arises from high relevance and uncertainty.On 18 March 2014, protesters occupied the Legislative Yuan to raise their concern about the trade accord, which was forced to the legislative floor without proper due process. The protest, peaking at more than 100,000 people, is the largest student-led protest in Taiwan’s history. What they are fighting for is the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement. Thisis a treaty betweenmainland China andTaiwan, signed in June 2013 but currently unratified by the Taiwanese legislature, aimed at liberalizing trade in services between the two economies. Under the terms of the treaty service industries such as banking, healthcare, tourism, film, telecommunications, and publishing would be opened to investment and businessmen would be able to obtain indefinitely renewable visas for the other territory. So we see groups of college students get on the street to protest this agreement, however, when the reporter asks about them why they are protesting this agreement, all they can say is that the agreement will exploit Taiwaness and only benefit mainland China, which is not true. The thing behind this is that mass media only talks about the side-effect of the agreement and they exaggerate the side effect a lot. Because students fall into the category of people who are most affteced by the media agenda, they react much more strong than normal people.
According to professors Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, the agenda-setting theory is a hypothesis in which the mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of issues on their news agenda to the public agenda. In other words, the media has the power to dictate how much attention a news story receives in the eyes of the public. First, they determine the media agenda, a pattern of news coverage across major print and broadcast media as measured by the prominence and length of stories. McCombs and Shaw then measure public agenda, or the most important public issues as measured by public opinion surveys. They conclude that those who allow the media shape their thinking have a high index of curiosity, or a measure of the extent to which individuals’ need for orientation motivates them to let the media shape their views. An example of the agenda-setting theory can be found in newspapers the day after the Super Bowl. Front pages everywhere will show who won the championship, as well as a full recap of what happened during the game. Readers are much more interested in what is on the front pages rather than an article in a section, such as foreign affairs or business. The media publicizes stories that they know will be more popular in the eyes of the public.
The Cultivation Theory of George Gerbner states that “people who spend the most time in front of the [television’ develop an exaggerated belief in a mean and scary world” and therefore are more violent and have a social paranoia for the world around them (366). Gerbner breaks down his theory into three prongs: Institutional Process Analysis, Message System Analysis, and Cultivation Analysis. Institutional Process Analysis focuses on “behind the scenes of media organizations in an effort to understand what policies or practices might be lurking there” (367). Message System Analysis refers to a “systematic study of TV content” that attempts to “uncover exactly how violence in depicted on TV” (368). Finally, Cultivation Analysis refers to the belief that “those who spend more time watching TV are more likely to see the ‘real world’ through TV’s lens” (378). Thereby, when applying these principles to the hit TV-show “Homeland,” Institutional Process Analysis would argue that the frequency of violence within the show is a result of the producers attempt to maximize profits through cheap violent-scenes, as Gerber suggests. Message System Analysis, however, would focus on the content of the show itself, which in this case involves a corrupt marine sent to kill the President. Such content analysis would also reveal the high degree to which Homeland contains dramatic violence. Finally, Message System Analysis would focus on how Homeland has influenced its viewers to distrust the Marine’s and view the government and namely CIA as corrupt. Such mainstreaming and resonance of these beliefs within Homeland would likely cause viewers to adopt the shows ideologies, which would not be good for The Country’s trust level in it’s government.
One aspect of the Cultivation Theory is dramatic violence. Dramatic violence is defined as the “overt expression or serious threat of physical force as part of the plot”. In the TV show Law and Order SVU, the main characters are driven to stop the excessive violence. Every episode there is a new case of someone who has been raped or murdered. This is an example of dramatic violence because it shows the never-ending physical threat. It also presents cases where excessive violence was used, dramatizing the reality of crime in our world. This is congruent with the cultivation theory because it shows how common violence is in TV. People who watch this show or the like on a regular basis are constantly exposed to violence, potentially allowing that violence to become someone’s reality.
