Setting the Agenda

Agenda Setting is the last theory I will get to blog about. It’s all about the media influencing what we talk about, what we think about, and what we like to discuss. What plays on our TV and radio stations puts issues and events at the forefront of our minds. Agenda Setting can also be related to the concept of ‘framing’ or choosing specific details of a story to include in order to spin the story a certain way. The media has an element of control when it comes to this theory- they can choose what they want to show or more importantly, what they think is important enough to share with the rest of us.

What’s been on our minds recently? I know for me the Japanese earthquake and subsequent radiation scares have been hard not to think about. The media has placed stories about Japan on their front pages, in news coverage on TV, and spread out all over the Internet. It’s a natural disaster, and people tend to want to hear about disasters. Any bad news is more appealing for some reason then the happy news. You see and hear more about abductions and shootings then successful meetings or peaceful resolutions. So, the disaster for the earthquake that hit Japan has been all over the news. The media is choosing to share these stories about the effects of the quake and relief efforts because they deem it important. They are effectively setting our agenda.

In this way they act as gatekeepers between us and the world around us.

Another example of this happening is the coverage of Libya’s revolution overshadowing similar events in other countries. Even though Syria is experiencing comparable trouble, the word has not spread about the unrest of that nation. Majority of us are focused on Libya, because a majority of the news stories are about Libya.

Discussions that I’ve been hearing are centered on events such as the ones that happened in Japan and Libya. My friends discuss these events because they have heard about them, and enjoy talking about something they know about. They also use facebook to spread information, so I’ve seen more then enough status updates about the situation in Japan. The media shares information with us, and we absorb that information, talking and sharing with other people around us.

My thinking is that anyone who wants to be unbiased and well informed about the world should want to overcome this theory. Why would we allow ourselves to be controlled by the media? Do we ultimately trust their judgment of what is important? Do their tastes align with ours? The only way I can think of to avoid the media setting the agenda for us is to find unbiased sources of information, from varied and diverse places.





References

Gate picture: http://bradwhitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/gate.jpg