Posts Tagged: agenda setting

Communication majors may remember studying a case involving the “Pentagon Papers” in a media history class. Basically, back in 1971, the New York Times got their hands on the aforementioned papers that detail classified information about the war effort in Vietnam. They wanted to publish the info, the President objected, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court in The New York Times v. United States. The Court found 6-3 that the government failed to demonstrate burden of proof required for a prior restraint injunction. First Amendment win. The papers remain classified to this day.

Hmmm… Sounds familiar right? Does the American public have a right to know so-called “government secrets”? Does the American press have a right to access such information? The Pentagon Papers are an interesting pre-digital precedent to the recent WikiLeaks scandals. It was this historical background that made the story regarding the New York Times and Wikileaks so fascinating to me.

In their coverage of WikiLeaks, BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Politico all explored how the the United States apparently ignored detainee abuse. The New York Times basically said “but these Iraqi guys were worse!” In forty years, the Times seemingly went from trail-blazer to truth-spinner.

Obviously, editors change over the years, so the philosophy behind a newspaper can change drastically as well. But something clearly changed regarding the culture of the paper, and their interpretation of the first amendment. When the issue involves such a clear reprehensible morality of the American government, citizens deserve to know the facts. While they can find these facts in the aforementioned papers, none of those papers carry the same homegrown credibility that the Times uniquely posesses.

To understand this discrepancy, maybe the American culture offers some insight. In 1971, citizens had no global digital network through which to share information. In attempting to publish the Pentagon Papers, the Times would have broken the story and offered citizens information they could find nowhere else. Sales would go through the roof.

In 2010, the document itself can be downloaded through a clicks. Everyone has the same access and the flow of information is more flat. All of this at a time when traditional newspapers are facing a slow demise. The Times are probably hold on to what over goodwill with government sources they have left. Instead of breaking the story, the Times attempted to not let the story break them.

As Greenwald explains: “serving the Government’s interests, siding with government and military officials, and attacking government critics is what they do. That’s their role. That’s what makes them the ‘establishment media’.” What new media like Wikilinks offer is a system of media not tied to any traditional form of reputation or connection. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. But in our political culture, don’t media outlets need some type of consistent source? These torture memos are a big find, but how likely will Wikilinks get another source like that again, especially after this scandal? At least the Times still gets invited to the White House press conferences.

My mental tug-of-war over The Agenda-Setting Theory was materialized in class this week. Glad to know it’s still very unclear which came first… the viewer or the agenda.

What was especially interesting is the prospect that this question may be irrelevant in the future. An avid “tweeter” myself, I can definitely see how news is becoming more interactive and less “agenda set”. Though there is still a “big brother” aspect to trending topics on Twitter in that they are not usually user-generated through popular hash tagged phrases, the new medium definitely presents new opportunities to fight agenda-setting.

As we discussed, different media outlets have particular reasoning for selecting certain stories, framing them a certain way and priming their audiences. Though our conversation revolved around the negative aspects of this cycle, I found myself plucking at the positive. As I stated, the media is a business, and as such, each outlet works hard to get to know their target audience and to please them. Psychological studies point to the fact that people generally like to confirm what they already know or think as opposed to being proven wrong. That being said, the subtle or grand differences between media outlets factor into their “brand” and the particular aspects that please their audience. I generally gravitate toward CNN over FOX news because of the political bias on both sides. Though an agenda is in place, part of that agenda is pleasing the viewer. With a burgeoning media market, it’s important that outlets distinguish themselves to help us make decisions about where we go for news.

Just briefly, I always find comedy in discussions about “propaganda” as it has become such a central part of the way we communicate daily and yet still, has such a “terrifying” connotation. Abiding by the loosest definition, virtually every conversation I engage in includes some type of propaganda.

Another week, another response post. This week, we looked at comm theory from psychological and sociological views, basically paralleling our two theory classes: Interactive Media Strategies, and Theory and Audience Analysis, respectively. My first question looked at the early days of theory, and how much is still relevant? Well, the bottom line is, human nature doesn’t change all that much. However, collective thought does. There was a time when humanity was sure that the world was flat, the universe orbited the Earth, and the insanity was called by demons in your head. Although science has made tremendous strides in all of these areas, we still possess the same psychology and human nature. For instance, its not as if everyone conducted these experiments and all concluded that the world was flat, etc. There was an authority that told them it was so. Unable to see any curve on the Earth, would we not also logically agree?

Today, we learn about these communication theories, yet they come from the authority of a textbook, not from our own study. Yet, we can still identify why these theories seem true – we find truth in our own experience. Like those who did not see a curve in the Earth, today we understand the Uses and Grats theory because we too can identify uses and gratifications in our own lives. So when we look at mass communication theories, our knowledge is informed by a broader sociological and authoritative source, and then confirmed by our own psychological thought process. Even when this information is scientifically wrong, our minds are influenced by society to have a natural leaning towards the collective thought.

Let’s consider Agenda-Setting Theory. Agenda-Setting Theory tells us that the mass–news media have a large influence on audiences by their choice of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them (thanks Wikipedia). For example, since I titled this article “Is the World Flat?” I brought your mind to reevaluate this assumption. Of course it isn’t, but there mere fact that I made that the title directs our thought process. This is closely integrated with what I was just discussing. The idea that the mass media can direct the collective thought over a particular subject means that our minds will be inorganically led to placing importance on that subject.

But really, with out the influence of mass media, how do we ever determine what is important? We do this by measuring how much this subject will affect us. Yet, what if there is an invisible, scentless, poison gas seeping into our home? We can not identify it, so does this make the subject unimportant? Sometimes our minds need to be nudged towards something for us to realize its importance. So obviously, there is a balance that we, as media-savvy students, need to find. On one hand, we have all the information the media gives us. On the other, all the information that we gather ourselves. Neither are sufficient enough for us to live fully-realized lives, but we need to be able to discern all the information that is thrown at us.

Overall, be careful where you get your information. Some sources may have an agenda, and some (like ourselves) may just be blissfully ignorant.

I found the topics we covered this week to be very interesting. Earlier this week, I posted a question regarding paradigm shifts and asked whether or not we were on the cusp of another groundbreaking shift. Our current paradigm focuses on individual effects, critical/cultural theories, and social level effects.

However, I feel that these ideas will be reevaluated as we develop into a Web 2.0 society driven by collaboration, globalization, and social networks. Now, we need to think less about how the media is affecting society and more about how society is affecting the media.

As some of my classmates have already mentioned, social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter are quickly becoming go-to sources for people to find and report breaking news. Blogs are also serving as an outlet for the growing phenomenon of citizen journalism. Although major news corporations, such as CNN, also have blogs and Twitter feeds, they still have a slower reaction time compared to citizen journalists. Instead of trying to compete, these traditional news sources are slowly beginning to realize that they need to embrace these changes. They even have their own outlets, such as iReport, that allow people to report stories on their official site. This shift away from traditional news sources changes the way we think of such things as agenda-setting. It opens up a whole new set of questions as to the reliability of these new sources of news and who is influencing who. This is a key aspect of what may be a whole new paradigm in communication theory.

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My other question concerned the idea of propaganda and the techniques that are used to influence others. Even in this age of information, where consumers are more wary of marketing tricks than ever before, we still have these propaganda techniques being used effectively.

For example, the book mentions how the bandwagon technique is still heavily used to market movies and books. Before the internet, when people saw “America’s #1 Movie!” they would just have to take the commercial’s word for it. Yes, they could go and read different publications and try to find reviews but, more often than not, people were compelled to see something that everyone else was seeing. Now, we can easily Google a movie and find thousands of reviews to decide if we want to see it. Yet even if the reviews have been bad, we still have to urge to see for ourselves what people are talking about.

I think, to answer my own question, even with increasing amounts of information at our fingertips, there are still those sociological forces that drive us. We still have that unquenchable need to belong and effective advertising uses propaganda techniques to tap into those innermost desires. Whether or not we feel that this is ethical, is a whole different issue. However, it is safe to say that although we may be more aware of the fact than we have been in the past, the media still has a very powerful influence on our lives.

After our in class discussions about the readings this week I decided to respond to my questions but add a little more of a class discussion comment section at the end of the question responses.

1 . The author states that “persuasion lies at the heart of mass media” and though this may be true for most, my question is: are there any media outlets that strive to broadcast or project their content/information in a manner of helping an audience without persuasion or will there always be persuasion in any type of media driven message?

I believe persuasion is always going to be prominent whether it is intentional or accidental because even news websites disclose certain news stories through the process of media screening. Another question could be is media screening ethical? Is it ok for media producers to play “god” but that is a whole new day and conversation. As discussed in the agenda setting section, the media sets the public agenda and even news sites frame what news/information is made public. The five mechanisms of agenda setting occur almost in every way for information delivery and persuasion will always be at the heart of the media, I think.

2. Without the media in a time of crisis, would the delivery of messages be compromised in a way that a lot of false information would flare from lack of media consistency? Is this dependency on the media in a way an addiction or just because mass media is so large people have no choice but to depend on the media?

I believe since our country is so dependent on the media that without it at this point it would hurt our economy and society more than it would help it to take it away. Once again this goes back to the agenda setting theory because the media sets the stage as to what people see as imperative or news period which means the media frames what is considered disastrous and detrimental society knows about. Nonetheless, the author says ” that because of its role in agenda setting, the press does not exert a major influence on public opinion but at the same time the public has a role in the interpretation of messages,” which in turn contributes to societies need and reliance on the media, especially in a time of need or crisis.

3. In today’s society, would you agree that television is the medium of choice or has our current society shifted to the Internet and website use? In addition to this, is social media an effective tool to gather credible information or is it just another medium that contributes to the media dependency theory?

After reviewing this question I realized I don’t really like it because it makes sense but it is a situation dependent question because some people may use the internet non-stop but still pick the television for imperative information and some may use the TV for noise and other use the internet for imperative information because it is easily accessible on many different devices. The media systems dependency theory is termed as “a systems theory because it examines the relationship among social systems, media systems and audiences and how each of these interact and affects one another. Although social media is a part of this theory it is not necessarily a contribution to it. Also, I do not believe social media is a credible source for information because it is highly opinionated and difficult to map for credible information.

As far as the class discussion, I really enjoyed the talk about the diffusion theory because as I was reading, it was hard for me to understand how the innovators and early adapters, etc played a role in the bell curve. It was also great because I am able to use this theory in helping with my research. Diffusion’s innovation process, I believe is a great way to explain the process of adopting new media’s and the five discrete stages are great for understanding the reason behind the theory in general. At first these chapters seemed like just another theory reading but after I realized these theories have a major impact on our society.

Today’s discussion regarding journalism, biases and the idea of commodity was fascinating to me – and it also answered two of my three framing questions posted earlier this week (imagine that).

As a former journalist, it’s funny to think back about how these same ideas affected the way I wrote my own stories. It’s no secret that news organizations are owned by large media conglomerates that are driven by economical, political and social agendas. The news is no longer the “fourth estate” we might have once believed it to be. Now, it’s about advertisers, the bottom line and being the first to break a story (quantity over quality). However, when one is consuming the media (or even acting as part of it) this isn’t necessary our first reaction when reading or writing a story. Everyday I take in media that is biased and at times, I don’t even question it. Sure, if I turn on Fox News I’ve been programmed to know that it’s going to have a conservative slant or that Rush Limbaugh isn’t going to best friends with President Obama. There are certainly news symbols that I recognize or even play into to help frame my view of the outside world (hello Colbert Report), but, what about all the other times when I’m not necessary paying attention to the behind-the-scenes agenda setting that is going on? What about Twitter and Facebook, or even bloggers/iReporters that post news as if they don’t carry biases?

It’s as if we always need to be on guard and question everything that is handed to us, because the news has become a commodity, something that large media organizations are selling to us based on what fits their needs and agendas versus what is best for the public good. Of course, not all media organizations create their entire content based on the bottom dollar, but it is something we should all be aware of.

An example from my own experience is when I was an intern at a local entertainment magazine. I was compiling a story about hot fall hair fashions and was asked to find a handful of salons in the area and speak to their resident “expert.” After I had made my list and my phone calls my editor came back to me and gave me an entirely new list. There was nothing wrong with the list I had originally made – they were all great salons – but none of them were our advertisers who expected editorial space and coverage. While this may seem petty and in the grand scheme of things not a huge deal, it shows that agenda-setting and biases do play roles in our everyday lives – even in the smallest of ways.

While it may seem a bit cold-hearted, the news is a business after all, and while many stories are legitimate and news-worthy, we as viewers should recognize biases and understand the symbols we are letting shape our perspective of the world.

The idea of what should be considered “mass communication” seems vague. While scale, direction, impersonality/anonymity, simultaneity, transience, and audience aim to restrict the definition, with new technologies emerging it seems to be task much like “nailing Jell-o to the wall”. With software that encourages 2-way communication, helps to better familiarize companies with their target audience and preserve messages for a long period of time to reference, how will we really define “mass communication”?

Agenda-setting… is this not a circular concept? If the media primarily functions as a business, they would need to show news that the majority of their viewers want to see. But, do the stories and material they show affect what the viewers than want to see? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

In reference to the catharsis hypothesis: ” … it was later discovered that those who weren’t allowed to watch their favorite programs were angry and acted out because of this…” I found this to be incredibly interesting and similar to what some may refer to as the “brat hypothesis” ha. I am interested in investigating this study further.

Week 3: Perspectives on Theory
Applied Mass Communication Theory: A Guide for Media Practitioners
Chapters 5-8
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1. The book states, “the thing that makes human beings unique is our ability to engage in symbolic communication.”  What is symbolic communication and what are some early examples from human history?  Do we still use some of these ancient techniques?

2. When did mass communication begin?  Does the term “mass communication” only apply to the decades in which modern technologies have aided in human communication?

3.  Chapter 5 lists the main characteristics of the mass communication process as: scale, direction, impersonality/anonymity, simultaneity, transience, and audience.  How does new media blur the lines in regards to these six traditions?

4. What is the main difference between early theories of mass communication and today’s more modern approaches?  Why did prominent figures of ancient times view messages in this way?

5. Chapter 6 lists the factors that account for perceptual processes of mass media as: biological differences, cultural differences, different social environments, different education levels, and different religious backgrounds.  How can this list be condensed into one overall individual influence factor?

6.  In modern times do people learn more from direct contact with each other or from mass media?  Which is more influential?

7.  Who is responsible for public agenda setting and who is responsible for setting the agenda of the press?  Describe some factors that lead to agenda setting.

8.  What is the main difference between positivist and interpretive theories.  Do you agree more with the positivist philosophy or the interpretive theorists?

9. Chapter 8 states, “Critical, cultural, and interpretive traditions have been described as a single entity, and there are some common goals regarding ‘communication in the exercise of social power’.”  Discuss critical theory and cultural studies and which level of analysis you believe carries the biggest punch in terms of research.