Author Question: Explain the concept of agenda setting. How do we know that agenda setting has real effects on the ... (Read 115 times)

WWatsford · **on:** Jul 10, 2018

Explain the concept of agenda setting. How do we know that agenda setting has real effects on the American public? How else do the media affect public opinion and policymaking?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Your book indicates that media managers favor stories that have dramatic visuals to accompany them over stories that do not have such visuals or cannot be visualized.

Think of a news story you have recently seen or read, and examine how its use of visuals contributes to the story being told. Do the visuals help or hinder the audience's understanding of the story? How so?

What will be an ideal response?

Kedrick2014 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 10, 2018

Answer to Question 1

An ideal response will:
1, Explain that agenda setting is the ability of the media to influence people's opinions about what is important through their decisions about what they cover as news.
2, Discuss the controlled experiments that show how the public can be manipulated and how news media polling in itself stirs public debate about issues the public was not aware of prior to the polling.
3, Incorporate the concept of framing into the discussion of agenda setting, and discuss how it provides the context for interpretation of an issue.

Answer to Question 2

An ideal response will:
1, Explain why dramatic visuals represent the larger trend of the massive invasion of entertainment values into political reporting.
2, Explain how the visuals from the story either helped or hindered the audience in understanding the story, e.g., oversimplification, clarification, and distraction.