Agenda-Setting & Framing: What and How Media Communicate with Us (original) (raw)
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This was a paper submitted to the University of South Africa to highlight media bias in their reporting by using the Agenda-setting Theory as well as Framing.
Political Communication A Failure to Communicate: Agenda Setting in Media and Policy Studies
In this article, we review two research programs that could benefit from a more extensive dialogue: media and policy studies of agenda setting. We focus on three key distinctions that divide these two robust research programs: the agenda(s) under investigation (public versus policymaking), the typical level of analysis (individual versus systemic), and framing effects (individual versus macro level). We map out these differences and their impacts on understanding the policy process. There is often a policy disconnect in the agenda-setting studies that emanate from the media tradition. Though interested in the effects of political communication, scholars from this tradition often fail to link the media to policy outcomes, policy change, or agenda change. Policy process scholars have increasingly rejected simple linear models in favor of models emphasizing complex feedback effects. This suggests a different role for the media-one of highlighting attributes in a multifaceted political reality and involvement in positive feedback cycles. Yet, political communication scholars have for the most part been insensitive to these potentials. We advocate a shared agenda centering on the role of the media in the political system from an information processing framework, emphasizing the reciprocal effects of each on the other.
2010
ABSTRACT-In the research field of media and politics the agenda-setting approach is one of the main accounts. It theorizes about the impact of mass media coverage on political priorities. Yet, agenda-setting offers a one-sided perspective. It only takes into account the impact of media on politics and not the other way around and it only deals with positive power and neglects negative power-that is the power to prevent other actors from devoting attention to specific issues.
Agenda‐Setting, Priming, and Framing
The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, 2016
As the fourth estate, the news media serve a normatively significant role in contemporary society. They are the conduits through which individuals learn of issues outside their immediate life space. In addition, they introduce information and viewpoints that foster disagreement, discussion, and democracy. Not surprisingly, then, the news media are central influences on individuals' attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors. Such influences occur across a broad swath of issues, impact a host of demographic and social groups, and span countries and cultures around the globe. Over the past half-century, political communication and public opinion researchers have focused considerably on some related but conceptually distinct theories that have gained intellectual purchase: agenda-setting, priming, and framing. These theories have deeply shaped collective understanding of how individuals perceive and respond to their political and social worlds. Understanding these theories requires keeping in mind how they are situated in the wider arc of communication research and how assumptions about the nature of media influences have fluctuated over the years. In the early 20th century, the media-then comprising newspapers, books, film, and radio-were viewed as omnipotent. By the mid-20th century scholars were pronouncing that the media were not really omnipotent but had very limited effects. In the 1970s another pendulum swing occurred, and the field returned to the notion of an all-powerful media. This intellectual turn derived in large part from the rise of a mass society, in which individuals were living atomistically and, as scholars assumed, actively turning to the media to craft an image of social reality. Today scholars generally believe strong media effects can emerge for some individuals some of the time. The original formulation and refinements of the concepts discussed in this article-agenda-setting, priming, and framing-reflect the field's gravitation toward this view of contingent effects, particularly in light of an increasingly complex political and media landscape.
Dialectics of Mass Media Agenda Setting Theory in an Era of Confluence
International Journal of Media, Security and Development, 2015
The agenda setting theory of the mass media has transcended almost all spheres of media influence studies. Scholars agreed that the theory has served as a foundation for understanding some other theories of media influence/effect. However, the boundaries of the tenets of the agenda setting theory which initially gives ‘absolute’ power to the mass media to set an agenda on what the public thinks about is presently been pushed by some extraneous factors that hitherto were of lesser considerations. Adopting a qualitative approach and using existing literature, this paper reviews the concept of the agenda setting theory of the media vis-à-vis factors that are shaping and possibly revamping the frontiers of the age long media theory. The paper establishes that although the mass media to a large extent still set the agenda, the activities leading to the agenda they set is not totally the original idea of the mass media as expected with their surveillance function. Individuals’ perception and background, typical media routine, economic considerations, public relations activities and lately, the activities of the social media have continuously shaped how and what the media set as the agenda for the public to discuss. It thus identifies an inter-media agenda-setting or a possible convergence-agenda setting because, at some point, a confluence exist in the ideologies of the parties leading to what the mass media eventually set as an agenda for the public. Thus, the paper makes a recommendation for studies and an expansion on the concept of media agenda setting in recognition of the contemporary developments which are modifying the assumptions of the theory. Keywords: .Mass media .Agenda setting .Inter-media/convergence-agenda setting .Confluence, Extraneous factors.
In the research field of media and politics the agenda-setting approach is one of the main accounts. It theorizes about the impact of mass media coverage on political priorities. Yet, agenda-setting offers a one-sided perspective. It only takes into account the impact of media on politics and not the other way around and it only deals with positive power and neglects negative power -that is the power to prevent other actors from devoting attention to specific issues. In this paper we develop a broader typology of media-politics interactions dealing with both direction of influence and with positive and negative impact. Depending on the context, we expect political actors or the media to dominate the interaction process. We test this theory relying on comparative data in five small European countries and drawing on a survey among MPs.
Comparative Framing: Media Strategy in Public Communication Policy
KnE Social Sciences, 2022
Framing is one of the most misunderstood concepts in political communication studies. It roots from epistemological problems, framing appropriately as a ”method” to framing’s concept itself. Framing is the process of construction and negotiation of public policy issues influenced by discourse contestation, where one view on a particular issue will be offered, negotiated, and then accepted or rejected as a dominant discourse that becomes the background of a policy. This study employed comparative framing to investigate the dimension of media framing as a media strategy. We examined how media strategies are applied to frame the same issue. This research concluded that at the level of event-driven news, the media has a similar frame strategy. Furthermore, contrast frames occur in micro-issues due to the influence of media characteristics, historical-ideological factors, and media organizational structures. Keywords: framing, governance, political communication, policy