''Agenda-setting is the magical tool by which public opinion is enchanted and bewitched nowadays.''
Components:
P 1: Introduction
P 2: The media marginalisation of information.
P 3: Media's news coverage manner.
P 4: Media's zone of highlighting.
P 5: How to immune ourselves from agenda-setting.
P 6: Conclusion.
Bibliography.
Agenda-setting is the magical tool by which public opinion is enchanted and bewitched. Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw have coined the agenda-setting term to include various techniques followed by media to manipulate the mass or draw their attention to a specific angle. That leads people to replace the neutral objective evaluation of reality with that of media. It is, therefore, obvious that individuals will live in a simulated reality in which the media shape what is essential to be looked at and what should be far in the margin. This essay is to cover the media's marginalisation of information, the manner of its coverage, the media's zone of highlighting, and how the audiences can protect themselves from those.
Marginalisation is an essential process in agenda setting. This process is like a filter that says which news should be allowed to get into the public and the ones that are to be kept out. Technological development has brought about the immediate transfer of various information at once. It is highly beneficial. However, it poses an issue with what news to be shown and what not. Thus, stories and news get classified as worthy of broadcasting and unworthy, not with objective standards but following the ideas and beliefs of the media and their financers as well as a set of news values. This process ends up with people being denied access to a heavy amount of stories which might be of high value. Accordingly, people are drawn into an ocean of events and stories that might not be as important as the media promote. And, since many people are basing their political views and analysis on the media, they will own very limited political knowledge. A clear example of that is how a large variety of western media broadcast only news about the distractions caused by some Palestinian brigades, while news about the deeds of the Israelian military is usually marginalised.
Media do not stop only at the extent of filtering what to cover, they also choose the manner of coverage. After the process of gatekeeping, the news and information that find their way to the audience are not always represented as they are. Media choose how to cover them, and in which manner the stories and news are going to be represented. In other words, the press produces news in accordance with its templates and thereafter they are published to the audience with its lances. For example, during the war in Iraq, various media platforms after choosing what news to broadcast, chosen news themselves are not represented objectively. They are rather shown in a context and form of coverage that often promotes American policies as peace protectives. This media manner of coverage impacts people negatively indeed. It drives them to create events plots and context based on media lances.
Finally, the media chooses what part of the news to highlight and what part to be aside. That is to say that the media might give less importance to one side of the story in favour of another. The full story then is more likely to be incomplete when getting it from media, as the story highlights submit to the process of agenda sitting. As a result, people go misled in their judgements, because if they have only one side of the story highlighted, how can they make a righteous rating of the situation? It is far from possible. Additionally, folk attempt to believe that the highlighted part of the story is the most important. This matter makes them set a fallacious evaluation of the events as a whole. A clear example of this is the study conducted on the 1968's presidential campaign. This study has interviewed voters on the issues that they prioritise with no regard to their political beliefs. The study was analysed by Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw. It has shown that the issues highlighted by the media as the main issues of each political party were the ones considered by each voter as the main ones following the party for which he voted. For more information, the full study is attached to this article's footer.
People, however, can still protect themselves from agenda-setting. This can be accomplished through media literacy. The latter involves sources diversity. Media can highlight and cover what they want, though not all media have the same preferences. A puzzle of an event might be in medium A, the other in medium B, and so on we keep gathering until we get a general understanding of the complete story. Media literacy is also based on the use of critical thinking. That is because the latter can immune one from basing a judgement on uncompleted news and stories, as he will analyse them rationally.
In conclusion, media can shape the way one prioritises and analyses reality. McCombs and Shaw say, ''Mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about''. But the matter can go further, especially during the lack of media literacy to the extent of media telling us what to think, as long as they have the ability to invade individuals' priorities list. Thus, folk must sharpen their critical thinking skills and diversify their sources for a wider view of the events.
Bibliography:
McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176. https://doi.org/10.1086/267990
McCombs, M., & Valenzuela, S. (2021). Setting the Agenda: Mass Media and Public Opinion (3rd ed.). Polity.
Potter, J. W. (2019). Media Literacy (9th ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.
Zahariadis, N. (2016). Handbook of Public Policy Agenda Setting (Handbooks of Research on Public Policy series). Edward Elgar Publishing.
McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L.'s article: download pdf.