Agenda Setting And Gatekeeping

 

There are theories in the world that are in place that explain how society views things. Agenda Setting is a communication theory that states that the media has the power to influence people and what they think/believe by picking and choosing what topics to receive attention. This theory actually goes hand in hand with another theory called Gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is also a communication theory concerning the selection and filtering of media. 

The theory of Agenda Setting was initially researched and developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Lewis Shaw. Their study, "The Chappel Hill Study" showed the connection between Chapel Hill resident's thoughts on the election versus what the local news reported to be the most important. Through this study, McCombs came up with three models of agenda setting. The first is awareness, which states that if the media doesn't report on a topic, an individual is more likely to not think of it. The second is priorities, and it describes how topics that are prioritized in media are probably going to be prioritized by individuals as well. The final model is salience, which accounts for an individual's own agendas and how they won't always match with the media's. This model basically just says that if a topic is repeatedly in the media, an individual would be more inclined to think about it, but it may not always be their priority. All the models are similar in the way that they enforce the base definition of agenda setting.

There are also types of agenda setting. They are Public, Media, and Policy agenda-setting. Public agenda-setting is when the general public determines the importance of a certain topic, this can impact the news. Media agenda-setting is the media determining the importance of topics or stories. Finally policy agenda setting which a combination of the two and usually ends up influencing policymakers. 

Gatekeeping also plays a big part in media in general. The idea was first explored by Robert Park in his book, "The Immigrant Press" where he explained that events are recorded every day by different reporters and new agencies, but then editors choose certain things to actually publish while the rest of the story is usually discarded. The term "gatekeeping" was eventually coined by Kurt Lewis. Gatekeeping often has influence over policies and is often associated with fake news. The filtering of content can create stories that can cover one or more sides, this effectively helps lead to confirmation bias.  

Both of these theories have to do with media in one way or another. The influence or censoring of certain subjects affects society as a whole, as well as individuals. Agenda Setting and Gatekeeping have the power to shape the public agenda by either enhancing or lessening certain stories. This means that they can manipulate the public to an extent. For example, there could be articles or broadcasts stating that someone physically assaulted another person - but they leave out that the "victim" initially verbally abused and threatened the other person. Thus creating a skewed image of what was the actual reality. These stories can and have created a bias against people of different races, sexualities, and statuses.