Blog Post #9

Agenda Setting Theory 

 

    Agenda Setting Theory is the ability of News Media to influence specific/preferred topics on the public agenda. It is driven by the media’s bias on things such as. Politics economy, culture, etc. While it is used

so much today almost none of the population realize how much their opinion is actually effected by it.

    A few past examples from News Media is “Whatever Trump does is urgent, Breaking News!” And “We all know Bernie Sanders can’t win!” 

    Agenda Setting Theory can be traced back into the 1920s when it first popped up as an idea in Walter Lippmann’s book, Public Opinion. In 1922 when Lippmann’s book was published, Agenda Setting Theory was not quite a thing yet. Simply in his book he mentioned the idea of the process occurring and how he believed that it worked. However, at the time there was no studies or name for the process he was talking about.

    In 1963 Bernard Cohen was studying the process of Agenda Setting Theory, but it would not become a real Theory until 1968. 

    In 1968 Dr. Max McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw developed the theory after “The Chapel Hill Study”. The Chapel Hill Study was preformed by them based off of the 1968 presidential election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. The study took 100 Chapel Hill, North Carolina residents and what they thought the most important election issue was and then compared it with what the local News Media was reporting the most important issue with the election was. 

    The positives and negatives of Agenda Setting Theory are very generalized to the topic itself. The only positive is that it gets general topics and agreements of news to certain areas/groups. However, with social and news media today it is not as needed for this positive as it could have been in the past.

    The negatives are that it can influence the general public’s opinion on said topic and it can push a news story as more important than it actually is. 

    The effects of Agenda Setting Theory is that it can influence the public’s opinion in a certain direction, typically in the direction that is being mentioned. When a topic is mentioned enough it has the ability to push the public to store the information so that it is more easily recalled. Even if the individual does not relate to the subject or information given. Also it is often done with local news stations with local matters to make them more apparent than they actually are and then leaning news stations use it to push certain opinions or aspects of a political story. This allows them to keep viewers with similar morals and views. 

    Personally, Agenda Setting Theory needs to go. It should be a thing of the past as with the news and social media we have in todays world. People should be able to form their own opinions in todays age, however, we know how the government and world is, they would never want that. 

https://online.alvernia.edu/articles/agenda-setting-theory/

https://study.com/learn/lesson/agenda-setting-theory-politics-examples.html

https://media-studies.com/agenda-setting-theory/