Listening To: 'Turn My Swag On' - Alexa Goddard (Cover)
My Mood:
This week’s lecture focused on Agenda Setting: How
the Media Constructs Reality. Our reality is ‘socially constructed through a
process of communication using shared language’. In laymen’s terms this means
that our perception of the world is dependent upon the representation of things
that surround us. As upcoming journalists, we will share a role in constructing
public perception, which is a fear inducing thought.
We also looked into the Agenda Setting ‘Family’,
which consists of seven ‘members’:
1.
Media Gatekeeping: what the media chooses to reveal to the public. A great
example of this is the United States media censorship of the atomic attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Mostly
statistics of infrastructure damage was widely released, and any personal media
(pictures, stories) was kept quiet.
2.
Media Advocacy: the purposive promotion of a message through the media. A prime
example of this is advertising, whose aim is to manipulate people into
consuming a product. Another good example could be political campaigns.
3.
Agenda Cutting: most of the truth and/or reality that is going on in the world
isn’t represented. For example, celebrity news may take prime time precedence
over the outbreak of war in a third world country.
4.
Agenda Surfing: the media follows the crowd and trends. A great example of this
is the STOP KONY 2012 campaign, which was repeatedly circulated through the
media at the beginning of the year.
5.
The diffusion of News: the process through which an important event is
communicated to the media. This applies to all mass media news.
6.
Portrayal of an Issue: the way an issue is portrayed will often influence how
it is perceived by the public. This applies to any news stories that are
tainted with political or personal bias. Visual components play a major role in
the perception of an issue.
7.
Media Dependence: the more dependant a person is on the media for information,
the more susceptible that person is to media agenda setting. A good example of
this is ‘fake’ news, such as celebrity deaths, that circulate around social
media sites.
Bruce also shared with us the four types of Agenda
Setting;
Public Agenda: topics that the public think are
important
Policy Agenda: issues that decision makers think
are important
Corporate Agenda: issues that big business and
corporations think are important
Media Agenda: issues discussed in the media
“The pictures in our heads – the mass media creates
images of events in our minds”
Walter
Lippmann
A way to understand the full impact of visual media
on the general public, yourselves included, is to play a word and image
association game. By sharing the first visual material that comes to mind, it
represents a true reflection of how you perceive a certain issue.
The elite medias have taken it upon themselves to
set an agenda for what we see, read and hear – it’s scary how much they control
us.
Emily
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