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Agenda Setting EssayAgenda Setting Patricia Wigington Grand Canyon University COM 126 macrocosm The mass media today, no longer reports public opinion, it drives it. This paper discusses how mass media sets the agenda, and what impact this had on the issues that emerged during the 2008 presidential election. According to Donald Shaw and Maxwell Combs, agenda is a theory to expose now the news media can ca-ca a considerable impact on shaping the publics opinion of a social reality, on influencing what spate be hypocrisyve are important issues. (ShawMcCombs, 1977) Agenda SettingMedia consolidation is angiotensin-converting enzyme thing that contributes to agenda-setting. As the number of newspapers dwindles and radio and TV stations are sold to one or two conglomerates, the news is in effect world censored because it reflect only the viewpoint of a single organization. If conflicting views are neer even mentioned, the public is never aware that there is an entirely differ ent side to the issue than the one being presented. It requires persistence to find out the incidents of an issue, and people may not make the effort. Then too, the media itself has changed dramatically in recent years.Many people now get their news from digital media including the Internet, but the flood lamp of electronic information may not make them more knowledgeable, just more informed about issues they may not consider important. Marshall McLuhan at one time famously argued that the medium is the message David Considine twists it slightly, to the sentiment that the medium is the massage, and that we are all being worked all over by the media, in ingredienticular younger people (Considine, 2009, p. 65). straightaways technology, people using several electronic devices simultaneously, practice widely known as multitasking (Considine, 2009). Time Magazine wondered, however, if people are too outfit for their own good, and whether modern media were contributing to studen ts reduced attention spans, making it harder for educators to reach and teach them (Considine, 2009, p. 65). There is a legitimate question as to whether this environment of electronic noise and constant communication makes them active and informed citizens or merely spectators moving from one distraction to another (Considine, 2009, p. 65).The answer seems clear when Considine reveals that despite the fact that in 2006, the number of young people ages 18-29 in the U. S. was 50 million, only seven million voted in the mid-term election (Considine, 2009). In other words, they have approaching to information but dont transform that information into knowledge or political action. Younger people are a volatile state when it comes to voting. They become wildly enthusiastic for a particular candidate such(prenominal) as Ron Paul or Howard Dean, but fail to show up at the polls (Considine, 2009).Barack Obama was able to energize this group on his own behalf and that of other Democratic c andidates Exit polling from the January 2008 Iowa caucus for the Democratic candidates showed a record turnout among eighteen-to twenty-nine year olds, who heavily supported the theme of change promoted by Senator Barack Obama (Considine, 2009, p. 66). Now of course they seem to have disengaged again and organizations such as Democracy for the States and Moveon. org are actively working to re-energize them and get them to the polls in November.Part of Barack Obamas success in the 2008 election was due to his savvy use of electronic media (Considine, 2009). He was able to use new technology to reach and energize voters his campaign built a substantial database and achieved record-breaking fundraising (Considine, 2009, p. 66). It also seems logical that part of his appeal is that he does know how to use Twitter and FaceBook, and that he tweets personal messages his electronic presence immediately makes his opponent look old and out of touch.He further endeared himself to young voters and reaffirmed his commitment to communication technology when he insisted on keeping his personal Blackberry (Considine, 2009,p. 66) The tendency of the media to set agendas was clearly shown in the summer of 2009, when electronic forums such as YouTube and Twitter, along with traditional outlets such as newspaper columns, took up the health-care debate and buzzed about such ludicrous and inaccurate items as death panels, socialism, Hitler and fascism (Jones McBeth, 2010, p. 29). These scare tactics, which are all completely false, were used to try and discredit both the reform effort and the President, and are a clear fount of the way the media sets an agenda. Picking up on the hysteria of the far right, the media repeated the lies without doing any fact checking, leading commentators to wonder how these ideas rationally relate to the debate over reform (Jones McBeth, 2010, p. 329).The fact that these crazy notions were not only given credence but reported widely, and continue to appear in the media, show how powerful such things can be in shaping public opinion and ultimately in shaping governmental action (Jones McBeth, 2010, p. 329). The misleading claims about death panels, the idea of Obama being Hitler and leading the country into a Socialist government are all elements of larger policy tall-tales that were intentionally used by opponents of health-care reform attempting to climb up President Obamas reform.Obamas supporters countered these lies with stories of their own personal accounts from Americans who, for various reasons, were priced out of the heath care system or even denied care (Jones McBeth, 2010). The use of narratives is a powerful tool in setting the political agenda in the United States. One study found that although TV and internet users had a third estate agenda (the use of electronic media), their ranked agendas differed greatly from the ranked agendas of the media themselves (Brubaker, 2008).That is, the TV watchers and inter net users were not interest in the programming or information that was being presented to them The overall general media audience ranked 10 or the 11 public affairs issues significantly different than presented by the media (Brubaker, 2008). TV watchers and internet users were interested in important public affairs issues, but the agenda they were following significantly differed from the agenda that medium was showing them (Brubaker, 2008). This implies that the media are not powerful in setting the agenda of important public affairs or political issues.People have particular issues they feel are important, regardless of what the media present (Brubaker, 2008). This seems to be at odds with the idea that the media sets the agenda. and people simply put up with it. With regard to the 2008 Presidential election, the agenda presented by the media was that of the war in Iraq, but it was promptly displaced by concern about the economy an agenda driven by consumers interests, not those of the media (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). But this source claims that the media set another agenda, a exceedingly visible but totally unnecessary one, that of race.Barack Obama is black, and that became a major issue in the election The measurement of Obamas potential success didnt lie in whether or not voters were willing to vote for a black candidate, but whether or not voters, more specifically white voters, could view Obama, or blacks in general, as leaders (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). Had the media been more concerned about Obamas positions and qualifications and less about the color of his skin, the entire election would have been conducted on a much higher level.This source also notes that the racial issues was studied in swing states like Ohio, where it was deemed to be extremely important (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). In one study, Ohio was measured for favorability between candidates in the areas of republicans, democr ats, independents, men, women, whites and blacks it was found that a vast majority of black voters, as many as 90%, favored Obama, no matter what their previous voting record or party affiliation was (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010).The question raised by this result is whether our society is the way it is because of the media, or is the media a direct reflection of the way society is In the case of Obama for President, the media clearly allowed race to chase to the top of the list of exaggerated issues that never should have been a part of the presidential election in the first place (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010).In response to the popularity of Obama, the Republicans assay to set the media agenda to focus on issues such as Iraq and health care, arguing that race should not be consuming the attention focused on it (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010). But Republicans also tried to set an agenda favorable to them by introducing Sarah Palin as their vice presidential candidate to appeal to women voters setting the agenda worked in Ohio, where pollsters noted a hammock among women of all races who were not previously affiliated with a particular party (Agenda setting and the Obama election, 2010).