Mass Media Influence: Gatekeeping, Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing

How Powerful are Mass Media?

• Mass media influences how we perceive the world, what we think about, and how we think about what’s going on.

Media Effects

• To what extent do media:
  • Influence the way we perceive our world?
  • Influence what we think about in the world?
  • Influence how we think about what’s going on in the world?

Needles & Bullets

• Hypodermic Needle
  • Harold Laswell & WW I Propaganda
  • Orson Wells & The War of the Worlds broadcast (1938)
• Magic Bullet/Silver Bullet

The Hypodermic Needle Theory

• Developed in the 1920s and 1930s.
• Linear communication theory.
• Passive audience.
• No individual difference.

Gatekeeping Function

• Gatekeepers
  • "gate" + one who "keeps" (opens/closes) it
• Gatekeeping
  • Opening & closing "the gate"
  • Process of media outlets deciding what to report.
  • Controlling the flow and types of information.

Agenda-Setting Function Theory

• Agenda-Setting
  • Media in Minutes: Agenda-Setting Function Theory
  • Influence WHAT to think about? YES!
  • Influence HOW to think about it? YES!

Agenda Setting Function Theory

• Developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw.
• Study published in 1972.
• McCombs and Shaw found a correlation between issues voters believed were important and issues reported prominently in the media.

Priming

• Offer a prior context.
• Within that context interpret a subsequent story.
• Gate-keeping = choosing topics/issues.
• Agenda-setting = importance of an issue.
• Priming = predisposes view as good or bad.
• Framing = tells the story from a particular perspective.

Framing

• "To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described."
  • Robert Entman, “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication, 43 (4), 1993: 52

Verbal Framing Examples (Charlotte Ryan, Prime Time Activism (1999))

• FRAME 1: “An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother went to cash her welfare check.”
• FRAME 2: “An eight-month-old South End boy was treated yesterday after being bitten by rats while sleeping in his crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for extermination had been ignored by the landlord. He claimed that the tenants did not properly dispose of their garbage.”
• FRAME 3: “Rats bit eight-month old Michael Burns five times yesterday as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods. A Public Health Department spokesperson explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs.”

Visual Framing

• ABC News staged crime-scene shot, photograph shows: CNNMoney.

Framing Examples

• MSNBC: A Man & His Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle at President Obama’s Speech
• ABC15 – Phoenix, AZ: A Demonstrator & His "Machine Gun”
• Buddy's Bunker Broadcast #24

Gatekeepers, Agenda-Setters, Primers & Framers

• Influencing WHAT We Think About & HOW We Think About It