Lecture Ten

Lecture Ten was about agenda setting. The idea of agenda setting basically means that the media outlets don't just report the news, they also shape it - or at least our idea of it.

It began with us being shown a clip of Charlie Brooker's "How to Report News". I have actually posted this on my blog a while ago because I thought it was both accurate and pretty funny. I'll post it again here:

"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." 

(Coleman, McCombs, Shaw, Weaver, 2008)

Harold Lasswell first wrote about agenda setting in the 1920s. In 1922 Walter Lippman also wrote about how the mass media creates pictures of events in our heads. Just think about important events and what you picture them as. You may not has been there yourself, but the media has given you an idea of what it was like. For example, think of the September 11 attacks in America - when mentioned, most people (myself included) will see footage or photos of the towers that were shown on the news.

Lippman argued that instead of critically thinking, people will often rely on the images the media gives them to formulate their judgements. Thus, the media can engaged in agenda setting almost as a form of propaganda.

Compare the difference in the way the O.J. Simpson case was treated in these two different magazines below:

Elite media outlets can set the issues on the news agenda for other outlets, for example, after the ABC ran their story about live cattle exports it became a major story in all outlets as well as a point of national debate. Think about how much influence this has, because the media informs the public and sets the national agenda. This in turn effects which issues policy-makers will decide to pursue.

"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)

The media can influence public opinion in regards to various issues. Using the example below, we can see the different portrayals of Indigenous people. There is the idyllic traditional lifestyle, the achievements of young Indigenous people in modern Australia and drug/alcohol/violence issues.

"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)

The media may also take up a particular area of advocacy or a message they want to promote for a good cause. An example is the Daily Telegraph's 'I Promise' campaign for safe driving. Here are some links relating to it:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/specials/ipromise
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/sydney-news/the-wiggles-to-join-drive-for-safety/story-e6freuzi-1226287771470

On the other hand, often important issues like AIDS are not given enough attention anymore and instead there will be more focus on a piece of celebrity news. There can also be a bandwagon effect with media, where things such as Kony 2012 are picked up by major media outlets because their popularity is noticed.

There's a lot of focus on keeping up with the new twenty-four hour news cycle and may mean less deep analysis of news stories. It needs to be new, instant, snappy, simple and attention-grabbing.

My lecturer said the people at http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/ said there are three prime times for online news:

1. Stories put up at 5am so that people read them when they wake

2. Between 12pm and 2pm when people have their lunch

3. 3pm in the afternoon when people are having an afternoon tea and check the news

Here is a link about Lindsay Tanner's book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy, which is related to the twenty-four hour news cycle:
http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9781921844065/sideshow-dumbing-down-democracy

This lecture helped me to gain a deeper understanding of something which I notice in daily life through my exposure to different media outlets. Sometimes I will read about a story in one news source and see an entirely different take on it in another news source. This comes down to the agenda setting of the media outlets, which are targeted at different audiences and have varying focuses or biases. It was interesting to explore this concept further in this lecture.