Agenda-setting, gatekeeping, norm-setting✅

Agenda-setting

• People can only discuss and form opinions about things they think they know about, and in most cases it is the media which provide this information.

• This gives those who own, control and work in the media a great deal of power in society, for what they choose to include or leave out of their newspapers, television programmes or websites will influence the main topics that people discuss or are concerned about. This may mean that the public never discuss some subjects because they are not informed about them.

• The media’s influence in laying down the list of subjects, or agenda, for public discussion is known as agenda-setting, and is particularly associated with the work of the GMG.

• The agenda-setting process was summed up by Cohen’s comment that, while the news media may not necessarily be successful in telling people what to think, they are stunningly successful in telling audiences what to think about.

• McCombs suggests that the news media now increasingly not only tell us what to think about, but also how to think about certain subjects - for example, the images of politicians, or the perception of rioters or welfare benefit claimants.

• The GMG, suggests the main media organisations, and the journalists within them, work within a framework of the dominant ideology which helps to form the list of subjects that the public are encouraged to think about, and so audiences have little real choice of the news they receive.

• Philo noted that, during the global financial crisis, the media were very effective in channelling public anger towards the greed of bakers but focused public attention on suctions within the existing system (which had caused the problems in the first place).

• The media actively discouraged the public from thinking about solutions that challenged the existing financial system, by simply avoiding discussion of such alternative. The role of the mainstream media was largely to act as a forum for public grumbles and discontent, but not to explore serious alternatives.

• The media even went so far as to shift public attention away from the ‘scumbag millionnaires’ by suggesting ‘workshy welfare scroungers’ were the reason for the crisis rather than the actions of the bankers.

• Through setting the agenda, and giving more prominence to some issues than others, the media are socially constructing the news, and encouraging audiences to think about what the most important issues are and what they should, and should not, be interested in or concerned about.

Gatekeeping

• The media’s power to refuse to cover some issues and to let others through is called gatekeeping.

• The GMG suggested owners, editors and journalists construct the news by acting as gatekeepers, influencing what knowledge the public gains access to.

• As Philo’s analysis of the media and the banking crisis above showed, the issues that are not aired - such as alternatives to the existing banking and financial system - are frequently those most damaging to the values and interests of the dominant social class.

• Sometimes the media do not cover issues either because journalists and editors think they lack interest to readers and viewers, or because they regard them as too offensive, controversial or threatening to existing society.

• For example, strikes are widely reported (nearly always unfavourably), while industrial injuries and diseases, which lead to a much greater loss of working hours and life, hardly ever get reported.

• This means that there is more public concern with stopping strikes than there is with improving health and safely laws.

• Similarly, welfare benefit fraud by the poor is widely reported, but not tax evasion by the rich, with the result that there are calls for tightening up benefit claims procedures, rather than strengthening those agencies concerned with chasing tax evaders.

Norm-setting

• Norm-setting describes the way the media emphasise and reinforce conformity to social norms, and seek to isolate those who do not conform by making them the victims of unfavourable media reports.

• Norm-setting is achieved in two main ways:

1. Encouraging conformist behaviour. Such as not going on strike, obeying the law, being brave, helping people and so on. Advertising, for example, often reinforces the gender role stereotypes of men and women

2. Discouraging non-conformist behaviour. The media often give extensive and sensational treatment to stories about murder and other crimes of violence, riots, benefit fraud, football hooliganism, illegal immigrants, and so on. Such stories, by emphasising the serious consequences which follow for those who break social norms, are giving ‘lessons’ in how people are expected not to behave

• This norm-setting is also achieved through media representations.

The process of agenda-setting, gatekeeping and norm-setting act as forms of social control as they mean some events are simply not reported and brought to public attention, and some of those that are reported may be singled out for particularly unfavourable treatment. In these ways, the media can define what the important issues are, what ‘news’ is, what the public should and should not be think about, and what should or should not be regarded as ‘normal’ behaviour in society.