The Agenda-Setting Theory

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.