Agenda-setting theory

[Porfirii]

I was wandering around the Politics & Society subforum and I found this thread: Do not trust everything you see in the internet

In the first moment I wanted to add a new point of view to the conversation there, talking about the Agenda-setting theory I learnt about not long ago, but then I realised that it might be a bit off topic, and taking into account the importance of such matter and considering how little is discussed about it, I have decided to open this new thread.

Basically, agenda-setting theory talks about the importance of the news that are not told: in the ability to make you believe what is important and, therefore, what is not. When we talk about manipulation in mass media we usually focus on the rhetorics (repetition, keywords, NLP...) but not about this, more strategic and subtle maneuver. Even if this theory was initially meant for press, tv and radio, it could be perfectly applied to the Internet nowadays, e.g. to search engines.

If you didn't know about the agenda-setting theory, I recommend you reading about it on Wikipedia. If you did know, feel free to share your thoughts on this topic below.

[Gyfts]

The MSM is cancerous to the general person's psyche, they begin to worry about things that aren't actually real problems. It's not better to live in ignorance, but I can't figure out the usefulness of staring at a tv box or an online commentator informing you about non-issues, or whatever agenda they think is important.

Wiki link had the origins of agenda setting theory.

Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in a study on the 1968 American presidential election. Agenda setting is a social science theory; it also attempts to make predictions. The theory also suggests that media has a great influence to their audience by instilling what they should think about, instead of what they actually think. That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.

...

In the 1968 "Chapel Hill study", McCombs and Shaw demonstrated a strong correlation coefficient (r > .9) between what 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina thought was the most important election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue.[10] By comparing the salience of issues in news content with the public's perceptions of the most important election issue, McCombs and Shaw were able to determine the degree to which the media determines public opinion. Since the 1968 study, published in a 1972 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly, more than 400 studies have been published on the agenda-setting function of the mass media, and the theory continues to be regarded as relevant.

Makes sense, but also, do we expect the average political voter to have any idea of the complexity of issues? Even the above average informed voter isn't too well informed about all issues. Who do they turn to? The news.

[Cnut237]

manipulation in mass media

Historically, TV channels and newspapers were the primary sources of news... and because their owners were ultra-rich, the news that reached the general public was communicated in such a way to promote the interests of the ultra-rich, using various tried-and-tested strategies.

What we have now with the rise of the web, and particularly with social media, is the democratisation of news, in that in theory anyone can be a source of news, and there is no filtering through a biased gatekeeper. But this has some unfortunate consequences, too. One is a lack of accountability, so that things may be presented as factual even with no supporting evidence (or, often, in complete opposition to available evidence). Another is that nothing that is important remains truly democratic for long... the rich and powerful now use social media to promote their own agendas, as they already do with TV and newspapers. And they can now be more insidious in their approach.

The basic issue I think can be distilled into two points:
1) The rich and powerful will always try to influence what is available to the public, and try to present it in such a way as to direct public opinion, and
2) Any mechanism of communication that starts off free and democratic will, if it becomes sufficiently important, fall under the control of the rich and powerful.

[Shamm]

   Nowadays our generation deal's a high technology to that agenda will try to focus on issues that the public wants to hear about. Unlike before the media they said it is just a letter and radio but the had the same aspect that can help the readers to know the news or important news .