Week 11 Lecture

This week's lecture was about agenda setting, which sounded all dark and mysterious. I was intrigued. Agenda setting is sort of like the media's secret power that the public has no idea about. Agenda setting is defined as basically how much attention and life span the media gives a certain story in order to make it seem of more or less importance. 

The two basic assumptions of agenda setting are:

• The mass media do not merely reflect and report reality, they filter and shape it.
• Media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

These two assumptions are what lead me to believe hat agenda setting the media's 'secret power'. The fact the media can decide to focus on what they deem to be important is a little unsettling.

Also discussed by Dr Redman in the lecture were the two levels of agenda setting:

• First Level Media Agenda Setting Theory - where the media can suggest what they think the public should focus on in media coverage
• Second Level Media Agenda Setting Theory - where the media suggests how people should think about an issue.

There is also the Agenda Setting "Family":

1. Media Gatekeeping - the exposure of an issue
2. Media Advocacy - promotion of a message through the media
3. Agenda Cutting - where truth or reality is not represented
4. Agenda Surfing - the media follows the crowds and trends
5. The Diffusion of News - the process through which an important event is communicated to the public
6. Portrayal of an Issue - the way an issue is portrayed to influence it's public perception
7. Media Dependence - people who are more dependent on the media are more susceptible to agenda setting

The Agenda Setting theory has both it's strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include explanatory power, predictive power and organising power. Weaknesses are people may be skeptical and not ideal for the theory, strong minded people weaken the effects of agenda setting, and news cannot always be concealed.

Dr Redman used the Climate Change as an example of agenda setting. The media plays climate change and global warming up to be a huge issue. Therefore people are more conscious of the problem and are worried about it. Although, it has been speculated that global warming and climate change are natural.

This lecture made me more conscious of agenda setting, and in future I will try to be more aware of bias when viewing news.