The agenda setting theory, as proposed Maxwell McCombs, concludes that the media can directly affect how important we find a situation in the news. This can be achieved by the amount of coverage that a news station gives, the views that they give, and how severe they make the news seem. Every day we see or hear about “the biggest news story,” or “breaking news,” but is it true as the name implies, or are these stories the product of too much media hype?
Here is an example from the beginning of February:
Now I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of a guy hitting another girl, but at the same time, there are thousands of people being murdered, tortured, etc., everyday. Just because Chris Brown and Rihanna are both famous celebrities in the music industry, doesn’t make their story “breaking news,” in my opinion. Sometimes, I just think that the media likes to get into people’s personal lives, and exposing them to the public.
There is so much more coverage that could be made, that is way more important than the events that went on between these two celebrities. Too much of what the media and news teams present is all negative and downplays the general good qualities of society. What makes the fight between these two celebrities more important than the economic crisis right now, or the genocides across the world. It is these little petty things that we hear about, that give me less respect for the news.
Just look at how the agenda setting theory gets put into play here. The title on youtube goes, “Chris Brown slaps Rihanna !!!!Breaking News!!!!.” Notice the exclamation points and its claim to be breaking news. The fact that it even got over 2 minutes on the news says something about what we are interested in and how the media wants us to react to this type of material.
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5 comments:
I agree that the news definitely focuses way too much on celebrity news, and has even begun to reflect these types of stories, and for longer amounts of times, on some of the main channels such as ABC, NBC, and so on. I will admit that I am a fan of celebrity gossip, but I think that there is a time and a place for it, and such places as E television or celebrity-based magazines are much better places to have such news, seeing as they really are not as important issues, as perhaps the crisis of our country’s economy right now. I feel that even though the issue here was an assault, it is still not important enough to have 2 minutes of coverage on ABC news, and the only reason it was covered was because it involved two celebrities. As Andy said, so many of these kinds of stories happen every day, and yet only the ones that are in the public eye are recognized and talked about, as though the others are not as significant, which is wrong. I think that too many people nowadays take the bigger and more important issues of society less seriously, because they would much rather focus on the smaller and pettier issues that surround our society, and this is half the reason why our country fails to fix the big issues at times. I think the TV companies need to stop focusing their stories on such insignificant issues, because they are only doing so for the entertainment and rating factors, and it is not helping our society to improve in any way.
“The media aren’t very successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunning successful in telling us what to think about.” This news program is making Chris Brown’s assault on Rhianna more salient. The !!!!Breaking News!!!! exclamation marks relates to framing through emphasis. They elaborate on the story by showing the TMZ clips and list sources of information they have. I honestly do not mind the media focusing attention on this story. Agenda-setting theory original agenda was not what to think, but what to think about. This story could cause viewers to think about certain issues. One issue is many women are assaulted each year, maybe it takes two celebrities build awareness of this issue to the American public. In one theory, I believe (unless I misread this) media agenda is based off viewer’s agenda so this news as unimportant as it is, is what the viewer’s want to see.
the reason that this story has generated so much intersts ove the last couple of days is because violence sells, and becuse of the people involved in the violence. Because this storie is about Chris Brown and Rihanna i have been hearing about it none stop for the past week. the media wants us to think about this story because this story is what gets peoples attention and boosts the ratings for the show. even though there are murders and assaults and really bad things that happen every day, the thing that we are most concerned with are these two celebritys and what happend between them on the night of the grammys.i think that people need to start paying more attention to the importnat issues like the war we have been fighting or the economy crash that is going on.
I agree with Andy in that the news clip is a good example of McCombs & Shaw's Agenda-Setting Theory. I agree with Andy, in that there are other stories that the news could have chosen that are more serious than the Rihanna and Chris Brown one. However, I understand why the news editors placed so much importance on this one. Firstly, news media is a business and they greatly focus on ratings. Second, Rihanna and Chris Brown are popular celebrities, which attract many viewers. In order to gain viewers and increase the news show's ratings, they used this story.
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