Chapter 28: Agenda-Setting Theory

Agenda-Setting Theory deals with the media and its effects on the public agenda and public discourse. There are two levels to this theory. The first level states that although the media may not tell us what to think, it does tell us what to think about. The media's decisions on what to cover can influence the public agenda; if people see a particular issue getting a lot of exposure in the media, they may view it as being more important than other issues. The second level of the theory revises the original theory and states that the media can have an effect on how people think. This can be done through "framing" - by presenting the story in a certain way, the media can affect how and what people think about an issue.

I saw an example of this while watching "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" one time. Jon Stewart was discussing Fox News and their possible political bias, and was showing clips from the channel's reports. In the clips, the topic being discussed was written near the bottom of the screen, in a box directly above the "ticker". The topics that Jon Stewart was discussing were those that used a question mark; one in particular said "George Bush: The Greatest President Ever?" Jon Stewart's point was that by framing statements as questions, Fox News could say anything it wanted (and therefore set whatever agenda it wanted) while maintaining a kind of deniability by being able to say "We were just asking a question!" I thought this was an excellent example of how framing can be used to influence how people think about something.