Media Influence – ownership and control

It's All About Agendas

Two main notions can explain why the media has such an ability to set both the public and politico-economic agendas and why it has become such a prestigious and effective social change and social control agent in any given  society. The first notion relates to the advantages and disadvantages the media has in its relationship with the  public, and the second relates to the advantages and disadvantages the public has in its relation with the media.  Since the media is an enterprise, an economic analogy is best to illustrate these advantages and disadvantages. In simple economic terms, this prestigious status of national media is that where the media (the enterprise)  distributes the news (products) to the public (the consumers). Accordingly, the advantages national media has are  its ability to select, package, focus on certain products, create demand for its products, encourage consumption of  certain products over others because it is more profitable, and to massively distribute these products. The  disadvantages for the media in such a relationship is its own need to satisfy its public (consumers) and increase its  market share of them, and the need to readjust its news (products) to constantly follow and respond to public tendencies and expectations. On the other hand, the disadvantage of the public in its relationship to the media is its growing need and dependence on these media products just as it depends on other products for almost every  aspect of its daily life. The advantage the public has, in democratic societies, is that it can always have the  possibility of sanctioning the media (the enterprise) and turning for its needs to another.

To set an agenda, issues have to be chosen and given priority. Since the public depends on the media to be  informed of almost every aspect of the world around it, from international news to domestic traffic jams passing by  national policies and events, then it is the media that presents the issues that this public depends on to set its  agenda. In other words, the public, due to its dependence and need for orientation, sees the importance of issues  through the importance given to these issues by the media. This is the effect of the media’s advantage of being  able to select what it presents to the public. But selection of issues to be presented alone is usually not enough to  be effective in setting the public’s agenda. To be more effective, the media has to choose also the adequate packaging of each issue presented. This is what is known as the media’s framing function. Some believe framing to  be the “conceptual tools, which the media and the public rely on to convey, interpret and evaluate information”.  Some consider framing to be that tool which helps audiences locate, perceive, identify, and label the information  they receive.  Roughly speaking, framing can be understood as the window frame through which the information is  perceived. As far as types of frames used in media coverage are concerned, five main news frames have been  identified in various studies. These frames are the Conflict Frame, the Human Interest Frame, the Economic  Consequences Frame, the Morality Frame and the Responsibility Frame. The frame used in the presentation of a  particular news usually governs the public’s reaction to this news. If the Morality Frame is used, for instance, for a  news item, then the result is that this news item would draw on the public’s sense of morality and so on. Knowing  what frame to use is also knowing what button to push in order to create the desired effect in the audience. In this  respect, certain basic human emotions such as fear and empathy are more effective for the media to draw upon  than others in order to capture and maintain the audience’s attention and, most importantly, in order to manipulate  public opinion towards issues. In a society, the definer and designator of what is dangerous or of what is to be feared is one that has a higher status as in the hierarchy of this society. Similarly, the media’s ability to designate  danger and deviance in a society gives it a high status in the hierarchy of this society as a prestigious social actor.  What adds to the this ability of the media to set the public agenda, in addition to the ability to select and frame  information, is the ability to focus on certain information or aspects of these information while ignoring others.

Salience of issues has been proven to be quite effective in increasing the priority of these issues on the agenda  of the public. Indeed, it has been seen that on many occasions what the media focused upon and repeated the  most was also what the public considered to be important. Similarly, salience of attributes of issues at the expense  of other attributes can have an enormous effect on public opinion orientations. The media can concentrate on a negative attribute of a political candidate, for instance, while ignoring other positive attributes and, consequently, define the place of this candidate in the public mind in terms of these negative attributes. Finally, the ability of the  media to massively distribute this selected, framed, and salient information is another advantage that adds to this  media’s ability to set and manipulate the public agenda. These advantages or functions are the various steps in a  mechanism through which the media is able to be a prestigious social actor in any society. Yet, the core reason  behind this ability is not simply these advantages, which the media is endowed with. The core reason behind this  influence the media has on its audience is this audience’s own dependences on the media and its own need for  orientation. The need for media orientation, however, is not the same for all individuals. In fact, it largely depends on the relevance an individual would attach to the information received and to this individuals confidence in his or her  own knowledge about this information. This difference in individual need for media orientation is probably the only  factor that limits the media’s impact on public opinion. Additionally, satisfying the public’s needs is one of the  advantages the public has in its relationship with the media. Indeed, the media only exists because there is a  public or an audience. Consequently, the media is conscience that not satisfying this audience means that it will  alienate its own audience and loose market shares. To satisfy its public, the media has to be competitive. In order  to be competitive, it has to be able not only to capture but also to maintain the attention of its audience and to increase it when possible. In order to capture, maintain, and increase its audience, and consequently, be able to  stay in business and be more competitive than others, the media has to first sense what its own audience wants. In  this respect, there are basically, three tasks the public expects the media to perform: Inform, Entertain, and Criticize.

REFERENCES: The Bewildered Herd: Media Coverage of International Conflicts & Public Opinion (0nline) http://www.thebewilderedherd.com/ Accessed: 12-08-2005