The Not So Hidden Agenda?

The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point Claude Shannon

I’m not going to question the influence media has on our lives. It’s everywhere; from our TV to out laptops and even our mobile phones. It’s no longer even about going onto to look at specific news stations or sites, we see it on our news streams on Facebook and Twitter. But, of course, from the millions of stories which happen every day, only a certain amount makes it to the news. While news values plays a large role in what stories we see and how much significance is placed on them, there is no question that the public, policy, corporate and media’s agendas play a role in what society sees and hears.

Before we look into agenda setting, let’s first look at what we mean by it. What we perceive as reality has been constructed through communication using shared language. We see, hear, read, type, say and even enact information which we’ve come across, and this shapes what we understand society to be. Basically an individual’s reality exists in the social relationships they engage in. The media play a large role in ‘constructing’ or ‘mediating’ the social world as we understand it. However, every person, company or group has a vested interest or preferred outcome they wish to see achieved, and this is where agendas come out to play.

When discussing mass media and agenda setting, there are two basic assumptions. Firstly that the mass media does not merely reflect and report reality, but also filters and shapes it, and secondly, that media concentrates on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

As Katherine Miller states in Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes and Contexts, there are four interrelated agendas in society:

1.       Public – Topics that members of the public perceive as important

2.       Policy – Issues that decision makers are salient, that is, the legislators

3.       Corporate – Issues that big business and corporations consider important

4.       Media – Issues discussed in the media

In relation to Rogers and Dearing’s 1988 agenda setting theory, in which they only proposed three types of agenda setting and did not incorporate the corporate agenda, they argued that the policy agenda was primary a result of the public and media’s agenda. They argued that policy makers base their decisions on what society deems important and what issues are discussed in the media. I believe this to be a simplistic view. As Coleman, McCombs, Shaw and Weaver put it

“Agenda setting is 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.”

When it comes down to it, the media has to meet public interests, but the media can manipulate and bring importance to issues to get public response. Also, when we look to the policy makers, while they have to get public votes, by bringing their views and opinions to the media they can create a fiasco of public interest and debate. Of course, as Miller adds in, corporations and business have the power and money to alter public perceptions and even government policy. For Rogers and Dearing to say that it’s a one way influence is a very short sighted and doesn’t scrape the surface of the agendas which influence society.

In the 1920s Harold Lasswell introduced the “Magic Bullet” model of agenda setting. Despite having limitations of not considering free thought the differences we as individuals have in cognitive thinking (that is, thinking we would all just swallow the information the same way) this hypodermic needle idea illustrates the idea well.

“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”(Bernard Cohen,1963)

“Propaganda is used as a tool 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.”

Walter Lippman, 1922, argued that visual images play an important role in agenda settings. Just look at Hitler, while he used his propaganda for evil, you have to commend the man and Leni Riefenstahl for gaining so much public support through their use of images and propaganda.  

There are two types of agenda setting. The first is in relation to what the public should focus on in relation to coverage, the media outlets decide this based on news values and the agenda they have behind them. The second type is about the media forming how people should think about the issues in the first level, by manipulating information and the way it’s presented.

So after all that discussion, what does agenda setting actually do?

It transfers issues of salience from the news media to the public

It transfers issues of salience for both issues and other objects, such as political figures

Elite media can often set the agenda for issues in the media through other outlets

This leads us onto the agenda setting family:

Media Gatekeeper – the media outlet which choose the issues and stories the public get to hear; how individuals control the flow of messages

Media Advocacy – the purposive promotion of a message through the media (e.g. health and smoking)

Agenda Cutting – The cutting of news stories which result in them getting less attention and being cared less about, such as AIDS in relation to Bieber and Gomez’s latest date

Agenda Surfing – This is the bandwagon effect, where everyone jumps on board to continue promoting stories which get attention

The Diffusion of News – The process through which an important event is communicated and released to the public, for example when it’s released (after it happened or is there a gap it’s held back from the media), where is it filmed or reported from and how it is released (all out press conference or just a PR statement)

Portrayal of the Issue – How the issue is shown and presented effects the public perception; the pictures, tone, language, exclusion and manipulation of the released information

Media Dependence – the more an individual uses it, the more susceptible that person is to the media’s agenda; with mobile access, we are becoming more dependant and on news and information despite the agenda behind it

There are of course, like any other theory, strengths and weaknesses to agenda setting theory. However, what interests me most is the emergence of the 24 hour news cycle as well as the online new media – it puts agenda setting into a whole new world!

With online news it’s all about getting the stories out there fast, why publish it after it’s already been read and discussed by the audiences – be the first to post it and you’re off to a good start. With the fast news cycles you have to wonder how news organisations can still engage in the high levels of agenda as with the traditional news, which consisted of an evening news broadcast and a daily newspaper (plenty of time to discuss daily agenda!). Nowadays, the news hot times online are first thing in the morning, lunch time and in the mid-afternoon slump.

Yet, agenda setting still has a huge impact on social perspectives. In the lecture we examined politics and agendas. The media has the ability (perhaps only the elite media and the resulting agenda surfing affect) to put different political issues on the agenda, even if the politicians don’t think it is! This was viewed in relation to the carbon tax/global warming. It seems to be one of the hot topics every week in the news, especially in relation to the struggle of passing the carbon tax. In comparison to the UK, which passed the a carbon tax, the run up to it had very little media coverage, and even on the day it was passed, it wasn’t anywhere near the top story. Evidently the agenda of UK media outlets does not extend to the semantics of a carbon tax like Australia.

With the continued commercialisation of media, it will be interesting to see how the news stories we see in the future are affected by the public, policy, corporate and media’s agenda.

“Agenda setting is not always the diabolical plan by journalists to control the minds of the public but an inadvertent by-product of the necessity to focus’ the news”(McCombs 2004)