Monday, 11 June 2012

Laughter is my Agenda

The title refers to a previous blog post. I'm actually ridiculously unfunny. I'm a sarcastic bitch, which people do sometimes find funny but I really shouldn't encourage that...

I loved Bruce's opening about agenda setting for this lecture:
Agenda setting is a theory, but like all good, solid theories is all a bit obvious!

As interesting as I find agenda setting, it is pretty self explanatory. It's how the media shape public opinion.

Borrowing from the lecture slides...


So this kind of reminds me of 1984... as cynical as that seems. It just makes me think that there is stuff being hidden from us. Maybe I've gone insane from all this studying and what have you.

Essentially what agenda setting comes down to is news values. The Elders of the Newsroom decide what is newsworthy and give it extensive coverage which makes people perceive that it is important.

Again, returning to my 1984 analogy, this shows that some of our news providers have a vested interest in some issues and the public are being misinformed.

That's enough of my mad left-wing ideas for one blog post.

In the media there are four agendas:
Public Agenda
Policy Agenda
Corporate Agenda
Media Agenda

And somehow they are interrelated... Which just demonstrates the convergent and globalised world that we live in.

All forms of agenda setting work under two assumptions:
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.

This goes to show that news providers have a message to get across. What that message is varies from source to source. Some may be good, some may be a bit more... selfish (for a lack of a better term).

I'll let you make of that what you want

Agenda setting is usually symbolised as a hypodermic needle injecting information and news into society. I find this quite apt, as media is quite omnipresent in our modern society. It also shows how agenda setting can go wrong with the use of propaganda...


Agenda setting is a bit obvious isn't it?

I mean, there is a fair bit to it but the name does say it all.

The thing that troubles me about agenda setting is that news is meant to be objective and truthful. If the people who provide us with news have an agenda, what does that say about their representation of an issue? 

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