By Prof.Innocent Okoye

Imperatives of Agenda Setting For The Building and Sustenance Of Democracy

The basic reason for engaging in mass communication is the expectation that there will be effects. Accordingly, scientific research into the discipline started with attempts to ascertain if the mass media had the direct, immediate and powerful effects which they were deemed to have a priori.

The ensuing media effects research tradition of classical Mass Communication could not support the initial notions of almighty media, but rather found that the media had only limited effects. The Agenda-Setting hypothesis, as an offshoot of the limited effects model, came at a time researchers were dissatisfied with the dominant theoretical position in mass communication research during the 1950s and 1960s.

The core idea of Agenda-Setting is that the media indicate to the public what the main issues of the day are and this is reflected in what the public perceives as the main issues. The original researchers, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, who coined the term agenda setting in 1972, conducted a series of studies which showed that the news media may not be successful at telling us what to thing, but they are quite successful at telling us what to think about. The evidence, according to Trenamen and McQuail, strongly suggests that people think about what they are told but at no level do they think what they are told.

But the first credit for the concept of Agenda-Setting rightfully goes to Walter Lipmann who, in 1922, published his book, Public Opinion, in which he argued that the mass media create images of events on peoples minds and that policy makers should be aware of those pictures in peoples heads. He argued that what the media actually project are mere reflections of actual reality of the world. But it is this pseudo-environment created by the media that people react to. He considered the real environment too big, too complex, and too fleeting for a direct acquaintance. Concurring with Lipmann, Norton Lang (1958) suggested that newspapers are the Prime movers in setting the territorial agenda, and Kurt and Lang (1959) wrote that the mass media force attention to certain issues. Lang summed up the role of the media as follows:
First the news media highlight some events, activities groups, personalities and so forth, to make them stand out. Different kinds of issues require different amounts and kinds of coverage to gain attention. This common focus affects what people will think or talk about.

After this, the focus of attention still has to be framed, as it were. Framing entails playing up or down the more serious aspects of a situation. The third step is to link up the objects or events to secondary symbols, so that they become part of the recognized political landscape. Then, vocal elements in the society articulate their positions, capitalizing on their ability tom command media attention.

It was against this backdrop that McCombs and Shaw conducted their empirical studies on agenda setting. The hypothesis is important because it explains why people with similar media exposure place importance on the same issues. Even though different people may feel differently about the issue at hand, most people feel the same issues are important. Using Chaffee and Bergers (1997) criteria for scientific theories, agenda setting points to a good theory since it has the following attributes.

It has explanatory power because it explains why most people prioritize the same issues as important;

It has predictive power because it predicts that if people are exposed to the media, they will feel the same issues are important;

It is parsimonious because it is not complex, and it is easy to understand.

It can be proven false; if people are not exposed to the same media, they will not feel that the same issues are important.

Its meta-theoretical assumptions are balanced on the scientific side.

It is a springboard for further research.

It has organizing power because it helps organise existing knowledge of media effects.

To be continued...