Media And Agenda Setting : Effects On The Public, Interest Group Leaders, And Public Policy

“Since media are part of the political class and talk mostly to the political class, the myth of popular polarization took root and grew.” (Fiorina, Abrams, Pope, 2005, p. 167). Recently media has played a huge role in the country’s politic; they share information, report events, and frame opinions.

Policymaking is a political process which is affected by various social and economic factors (Hofferbert, 1974) and media systems play an integral role in shaping the social context in which policies are developed. Through the media, citizens learn how government policies will affect them, and governments gain feedback on their policies and programs. Media systems act as the primary channels between those who might want to influence policy and the policymakers '' controlling the scope of political discourse and regulating the flow of information. Textbook policymaking follows an orderly sequence where problems are identified, solutions devised, policies adopted, implemented, and lastly evaluated (Mazamanian & Sabatier, 1989). In reality,

The media is important for us the people to inform us about our government. In this paper I will show the relationship between the media and Congress. There are many forms of traditional media newspapers and magazines and TV news programs. Until recently people got most of their information and news from traditional sources. I would agree with scholars who argue that the media plays a major role as an agenda setter by focusing the public’s attention on a few issues. Public opinion is shaped in large part by people’s exposure to the media. There are two main areas of media agenda setting the first is reporting the news the second is telling us how to view the news.

Broadcasting is media programming that focuses on many genres of television. For instance, on a broadcasting channel, you can watch a drama, comedy, and news all in the same day. The three broadcasting networks, known as “The Big 3”, are ABC, NBC, and CBS. When these broadcasting channels present news, they want to stay as close to the middle of the political spectrum as possible. The goal of a broadcasting channel is to appeal to everyone and the more neutral, fact-based information released, the more views “The Big 3” will get, resulting in more money. However, narrowcasting is media programming that is focused on a particular audience. Examples of narrowcasting networks include C-SPAN, ESPN, Fox News, and CNN. ESPN stands for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network so they specialize in sports news and cater to the sports audience. Unlike broadcasting, narrowcasting will not try to appeal to the majority of Americans, so it can lean left or right on political issues and interject slightly more opinions.

McCombs, M. (2013). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. John Wiley & Sons.

On the contrary, a biased media has increased its effects on American citizens from a voting stand point. It is no surprise that the media plays a major and powerful role in the lives of millions of American citizens every day. These same Americans sit before the television and computer screens and partake in ongoing debates as it relates to political values, parties, and various other pieces of data. It was seen in most recent election experiences that the media can be biased towards both liberals and conservatives. Frontline reported that by comparison, only 11 percent of the primary coverage

The results of this research should indicate the across the board a majority of the participants would prefer the negatively presented news, rather than the positive; as demonstrated in What's Good for the Goose is Bad for the Gander: Negative Political Advertising,Partisanship, and Turnout and Editorial Cartoons 2.0: The Effects of Digital Political Satire on Presidential Candidate Evaluations. Regarding the control groups; Group 1 (those who viewed CNN regularly) would likely prefer CNN, however since CNN is a centrist news outlet, individuals in this group might lean towards MSNBC or Fox News, as well. Group 2 (those who viewed MSNBC regularly) would prefer MSNBC across the board and group 3 participants (those who viewed Fox News regularly) would prefer Fox in all the categories. However, it is a little more difficult to predict which news outlet will be most preferred by those in group 4 (individuals who never or rarely watch CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News). It is likely that they will prefer either Fox News or CNN, since those are both more popular than MSNBC (Partisanship and Cable News Audiences, 2008).

Using a “common understanding” of what liberal and conservatism means, National Review and the Progressive were chosen to be the standard of conservative and liberal media. Time and Newsweek were considered to be largely more neutral in their coverage. So, by comparing the two neutral magazines to the two partisan magazines the amount of bias could be measured (Adkins). The results found that Time and Newsweek proved to be largely centrist; however, there was a slight bias to the center-left. This finding, however, was not statistically significant and the two publications remain in the “center” range (Adkins). Other studies have shown that there is little evidence to support the notion that the media as a whole is significantly biased in one direction or the other. However, there is evidence that there is a slight liberal bias in television network news (D’Alessio). Despite these findings, 70% of Americans believe that the media as a whole are biased compared to just 55% in 2014. However, earlier findings and studies show that on a large scale there is roughly a balance between conservative and liberal media sources which refutes the idea that as a whole the media are “biased”. Instead, it is more akin to a “tug-of-war” in which each side balances each other out. So this leads to the question as to why a greater number of

The media is a source of information that all U.S. citizens have access to. Either they have a cell phone, a computer, or a television, everyone can get information from the media. Mass media have been considered a powerful agent of political socialization, affecting political attitudes and behaviors of voters and non-voters. Newspaper and television news use significantly predicted internal

The media, interest groups, and political standard is a fascinating marriage in our mechanically exceptional social order. It is better comprehended when differentiated into their singular commitment to our social order to positively feel their effect on our day by day lives. Broad communications is characterized as a method for correspondence that achieves a huge volume of individuals in a short measure of time (broad communications). Interest groups could be better seen as an aggregation that is resolved to forestall or help change open arrangement without the need of being chosen (Twyman & Whitney, 2009). Furthermore, popular conclusion is characterized as the whole of all unique convictions in a given populace. By understanding what these parts of the current political ideal model should speak to we can better see how this marriage has been tainted and the electorate is, no doubt deceived.

Today's media has displayed countless ways they show media bias. Many channels have depicted a different side to one story and base information on a political party in which the channel supports. Each news source has one goal, and that is to state what will make the chosen party to have a good platform for the public to see. In the series of events that have occurred recently one can see how different news sources have pushed for what each channel believes is the main point needed to be crossed and have shared beliefs in either a liberal or conservative way.

For the average American there is no escape from mass media. It can be found within our news papers, movies, television and internet, which account for most of our news and entertainment source. In Michael Parenti's book, Make Believe Media, the Politics of Entertainment, Parenti attests that this mass media clouds our society's perception of reality by propagating prefabricated images that create and validate a superficial ideological world. Unfortunately, people are denied the opportunity to obtain and interpret information, which impacts our society, by media conglomerates that wish to keep their industry profitable and on the rise. Effectively, the American public's information and entertainment sources are controlled by some ten

A factor that influenced policymaking and implementation is the media from how many people can get informed of information as fast as a second. Notably, medias such as TV, radio, internet, and newspapers that are read and watched by millions of people across the world expressing their opinion. For instance, many news broadcasters such as CNN, FOX, MSNBC and others are being watched and judged and the same thing with newspapers online being commented and expressing their opinion on it. As it connects back on how it influences is through the people’s impression and opinions on public policy assuming what should and shouldn’t be done to bring attention to their crisis. As how the issues form the beliefs of many people which affect policymaking

In our democratic society, mass media is the driving force of public opinion. Media sources such as Internet, newspaper, news-broadcasts, etc, play significant roles in shaping a person’s understanding and perception about the events occurred in our daily lives. As long as the newspapers, internet, network television, etc, continued to be easily accessible to the public, the media will continue to have an influence in shaping its opinions. Factors such as agenda-setting, framing and priming help shape the public opinions. Agenda-setting is when the media focuses their attention on selected issues on which the public will form opinion on, whereas framing allows the media to select certain aspects about the problem and then

The media also influences how the public perceives issues. The placement of political issues during news coverage influences the importance of political issues on society. The ranking of media issues and society’s ranking suggest that the media influence the public (Weaver, 1996). The importance of an issue may rests on its time slot, sequence in the news story, or in the advertisement for the news.