Agenda-Setting

AGENDA-SETTING: A few years ago now, Michael Jackson died the day before I wrote this. As I wrote, every medium I consulted was devoting huge amounts of space and/or time to this particular story. It was the lead story on network television news broadcasts, of course, as well as on their partner websites. Oddly, it was also the lead story on the local television news broadcasts as well, even though Michael Jackson’s local connections were almost laughably tenuous (the ...Experience Music Project dusted off the sequined coat he wore the first time he moonwalked, and that got video.) The remaining daily print newspaper devoted a huge headline and front-page photo to the story, as did its online edition and the online Post-Intelligencer as well. Local radio stations dedicated their full playlists to Michael Jackson songs. A Facebook friend posted the “Thriller” video from YouTube, and, of course, there was a day-long discussion thread going on the subject. Jackson’s CDs immediately moved into the 15 best-selling CDs on Amazon.com.

What happened to the protests in Iran, which had been dominating the news?

This is a classic example of one of the media’s most powerful effects: agenda-setting.
Many people worry about the ability of mass media to manipulate our thoughts, our values, or our behavior. An entire industry, advertising, is built upon the assumption that media can make us do certain things. Yet, as you’ll see, this assumption is questionable. Media has influences on our thinking, to be sure, but so do many other factors—and other people, as it turns out, are probably the most important influence.

But, as a saying goes, while the media aren’t really very good at telling us what to think, they are exceptionally good at telling us what to think about. Our daily lives are full of stimuli; we’re overwhelmed by input. Just to maintain sanity, we need to filter out much of what clamors for our attention. And modern media help us to do that, by turning a narrow lens on a few events or personalities and directing our attention toward them and away from other things. 

But who directs this lens? Editors and producers will tell you that they respond to audience demand—they give the public what the public wants to hear. But how does that public choose what it wants to hear in the first place? Can you be interested in something you haven’t heard about?
This is a useful starting point for media studies: what else is out there that we could, or maybe even should, be paying attention to? If we find ourselves discussing a particular celebrity, ask why we’ve chosen to pay that person the honor of our attention and not some other. What values does this person exemplify? What story does their life tell us? What, in short, makes them important? 

Who sets the agenda?