Бұқаралық ақпарат құралдарының қоғамдық санаға әсері

Ability of the mass media to influence the public agenda of a society
Agenda setting theory suggests that the communications media, through their ability to identify and publicize issues, play a pivotal role in shaping the problems that attract attention from governments and international organizations, and direct public opinion towards specific issues. The theory suggests that the media can shape public opinion by determining what issues are given the most attention, and has been widely studied and applied to various forms of media. The way news stories and topics that impact public opinion are presented is influenced by the media. It is predicated on the idea that most individuals only have access to one source of information on most issues: the news media. Since they establish the agenda, they may affect how important some things are seen to be. The theory has two core assumptions; the first is that it is the media that controls the reality. The media does not report the reality but instead filters and shapes it. The second assumption is quite akin to the description or definition of agenda setting theory which states that it is the media that gives importance or saliency to its topics as the more likely the media focuses on certain issues, the more likely the public perceive such issue as important and therefore demands action. The agenda setting theory can be reflected in the awareness model, priorities model, and salience model. Media's agenda setting influences public agenda which in turn influences policy agenda building.

Agenda setting occurs through a cognitive process known as "accessibility". Accessibility implies that the frequency and prominence of news media coverage significantly influences the accessibility of specific issues within the audience's memory. When respondents are asked what the most important problem facing the country is, they answer with the most accessible news issue in memory, which is typically the issue the news media focused on the most. The agenda setting effect does not stem from just one or a few messages but instead is due to the collective impact of a very large number of messages, each of which has a different content but all of which target with the same general issue.

Agenda setting theory was formally developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Lewis Shaw in a study on the 1968 presidential election deemed "the Chapel Hill study". McCombs and Shaw demonstrated a strong correlation between one hundred Chapel Hill residents' thought on what was the most important election issue and what the local news media reported was the most important issue. By comparing the salience of issues in news content with the public's perceptions, McCombs and Shaw determines the degree to which the media sways public opinion. 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.

The awareness model proposes that an issue is on an individual’s agenda because they have seen it in the media. If the media does not report on an issue or topic, then it will most likely not be thought about by an individual. Countries that tend to have more political power are more likely to receive media exposure. Financial resources, technologies, foreign trade and money spent on the military can be some of the main factors that explain coverage inequality. Mass communication research, Rogers and Dearing argue, has focused a great deal on "public agenda setting" (e. g. McCombs and Shaw, 1972) and "media agenda setting", but has largely ignored "policy agenda setting", which is studied primarily by political scientists. As such, the authors suggest mass communication scholars pay more attention to how the media and public agendas might influence elite policy maker's agendas (i. e. scholars should ask where the President or members of the U. S. Congress get their news from and how this affects their policies). Writing in 2006, Walgrave and Van Aelst took up Rogers and Dearing's suggestions, creating a preliminary theory of political agenda setting, which examines factors that might influence elite policy makers' agendas. Three steps of the agenda setting theory influence how the media presents information to the public and how the media tells the public what to think about. Once the media tells the public what to think about, the more policy is enacted.

The media agenda refers to the most important consideration of discussed issues in negotiated sources. The result of this agenda directly influences the public agenda, which also influences the policy agenda. However, the power of the media agenda depends on certain factors to include media credibility, conflicting evidence, the extent of shared values between the people and the media, and the publics need for guidance. Rogers and Dearing highlighted the distinction between agenda setting and agenda building, emphasizing the dominant role of either media or the public. "Setting" an agenda refers to the effect of the media agenda on society, noted that the agenda setting research on the Internet differs from traditional agenda setting research with respect that the Internet is in competition with traditional media and has enormous capacity for contents' and users' interactivity. According to Kim and Lee, found evidence that journalists discuss the issues that bloggers are blogging about. There are also anecdotal pieces of evidence suggesting bloggers exert an influence on the political agenda. For instance, in 2005 Eason Jordan, the chief news executive at CNN, abruptly resigned after being besieged by the online community after saying, according to various witnesses, that he believed the United States military had aimed at journalists in Iraq and killed 12 of them. Similarly, in 2002, Trent Lott had to resign as Senate majority leader due to his inappropriate racist remarks that were widely discussed in the blogosphere.

Some groups have a greater ease of access than others and are thus more likely to get their demands placed on agenda than others. For instance, policymakers have been found to be more influential than the overall group of news sources because they often better understand journalists' needs for reliable and predictable information and their definition of newsworthiness. The relationship of media and policymakers is symbiotic and is controlled by the shared culture of unofficial set of ground rules as journalists need access to official information and policymakers need media coverage; nevertheless the needs of journalists and policymakers are often incompatible because of their different time orientation as powerful sources are at their best in routine situations and react more slowly when crisis or disaster occur.

In an attempt to overcome mirror image effects of agenda setting that implied direct influence of media agenda on the audience, several scholars proposed that the model of agenda setting should include individual/collective audience characteristics or real world conditions that are likely to affect issue importance. According to the audience effects model, media coverage interacts with the audience's pre existing sensitivities to produce changes in issue concerns. Thus, media effects are contingent on issue specific audience characteristics. Obtrusive, or issues with low threshold, are generally the ones that affect nearly everyone and with which we can have some kind of personal experience (e. g. citywide crime or increases in gasoline prices). This type of issues the problem would be of general concern even without attention from the news media. In regard to unobtrusive issues, this means that the less direct experience people have with an issue, the greater is the news media's influence on public opinion on that issue.

Over time, agenda setting theory evolved to include additional dimensions outside of the initial object salience level (specific issues, public figures, etc.). Balmas and Sheafer (2010) argued that the focus at the first level agenda setting which emphasizes media's role in telling us "what to think about" is shifted to media's function of telling us "how to think about" at the second level agenda setting. The second level of agenda setting considers how the agenda of attributes affects public opinion (McCombs & Evatt, 1995). Furthermore, Ghanem(1997) demonstrated that the certain attributes agendas in the news with low psychological distance, drove compelling arguments for the salience of public agenda. For example, media coverage of a political candidate's experience would be included in the substantive dimension of second level agenda setting, whereas the attitude toward the candidate's experience (positive, negative, or neutral) would be included in the affective dimension.

McCombs and Shaw originally established agenda setting within the context of a presidential election and there have been numerous studies regarding agenda setting and politics. However, more recently scholars have been studying agenda setting in the context of brands. The theory can also be applied to commercial advertising, business news and corporate reputation, business influence on federal policy, legal systems, trials, roles of social groups, audience control, public opinion, and public relations. Agenda setting in business communication: Corporate ranking systems have an agenda setting effect; when a business is highly ranked in these systems they are often displayed in the news media, which in turn keeps them in the minds of the public. Agenda setting in advertising: Ghorpade demonstrated media's agenda setting can "go beyond the transfer of silence to the effect of intended behavior" and is thus relevant to advertising. Agenda setting in interpersonal communication: Those who rely on mass media for news influence those who mostly rely on interpersonal communication in regards to agendas. One study found that even those who rely on interpersonal communication for their news still share the same agenda that is prolific in the news media due to peers disseminating that agenda. Additional research shows that effectively using social media platforms encourages health promotion and intervention as opposed to the traditional communicative strategies. Agenda setting and non profit organizations: A study done in 2013 on the correlation between media coverage of natural disasters, the public’s attention to the disaster, and donations to non profit organizations for disaster relief showed a strong positive correlation between media coverage and public response to the disaster.

In Europe, agenda setting theory has been applied in a similar way to research in the United States. McCombs and Maxwell also investigated agenda setting theory in the context of the 1995 regional and municipal elections in Spain. Another study found that in modern China, internet public opinion has emerged as a rival agenda setting power to traditional media.

In an analysis of the policy making process concerning temporary labor migration to Japan, researchers observed how migrant advocacy organizations influence public opinion through agenda setting, priming and framing, which had a limiting effect on the impact of other interest groups.

A 2015 study found that social media is influential in the setting of the public agenda due to widespread dissemination and facilitation of the agendas of individuals.

The advent of the Internet and social networks give rise to a variety of opinions concerning agenda setting effects online. Some have claimed that the power of traditional media has been weakened. Others think that the agenda setting process and its role have continued on the Internet, specifically in electronic bulletin boards. Popular handles on social media sites such as Twitter can choose what they want their followers to see. Users can also choose which accounts they want to follow and news they want to see on any social media platform. While some theorize that the rise of social media will bring a downfall to journalists' ability to set the agenda, there is considerable scholarship to counterbalance this form of thinking. Traditional media such as newspapers and broadcast television are "vertical media" in which authority, power and influence come from the "top" and flow "down" to the public. Nowadays vertical media is undergoing rapid decline with the growing of "horizontal media" – new media enables everyone to become a source of information and influence, which means the media is "distributed horizontally instead of top down".

Agenda melding focuses on how individuals join groups and blend their agendas with the agendas of the group. Groups and communities represent a "collected agenda of issues" and "one joins a group by adopting an agenda". Now with the ease of access to media, people form their own agendas and then find groups that have similar agendas that they agree with. The advances in technology have made agenda melding accessible for people to develop because there is a wide range of groups and individual agendas. The Internet makes it possible for people all around the globe to find others with similar agendas and collaborate with them. In the past agenda setting was limited to general topics and it was geographically bound because travel was limited. Agenda cutting is mainly seen to occur to news issues that are significant and controversial. Agenda cutting needs to be motivated by the deliberate intention to drop a news issue from the agenda; a case of news omission does not qualify for agenda cutting but rather constitutes a result of news selection (which tries to differentiate between the relevant and the irrelevant). Despite being first mentioned in the 1980s by Mallory Wober and Barrie Gunter, agenda cutting has only been sporadically taken up in scholarly research. One reason for the academic neglect of this concept is seen in the fact that there have been only few empirical investigations on the one hand, while no sufficient theoretical basis has been established on the other. First steps towards conceptualizing and operationalizing agenda cutting have been put forward by Buchmeier. Other studies shed light on the editorial processes in the newsroom which potentially lead to agenda cutting. There are two non profit media watchdog organizations whose mission is to draw attention to neglected and censored issues in the news: Project Censored in the US and INA (Initiative News Enlightenment) in Germany.