Agenda Setting: The Power of the Media

In a time when the media has begun to play an increasingly significant role in our daily lives, it is important to understand the ways in which the media attempts to influence our opinions. One of these ways is through the process of agenda setting, which the media uses to directly influence the news we hear or see. Agenda setting theory is a concept that allows for the media to affect public opinion by essentially picking and choosing which news stories to give the most coverage to. By giving certain issues or stories more coverage than others, the media causes the public to focus on these issues. Agenda setting plays an especially important role when it comes to political news, and certain media outlets use agenda setting to push certain political opinions on the public. Examples of agenda setting can be seen everyday in major news sources, such as Fox News. With one visit to the Fox News website (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/index.html), viewers can immediately see a number of articles with titles like "U.S. Poverty on Track to Post Record Gain Under Obama's Watch." As a notoriously conservative news source, many of Fox News's articles focus on the downfalls of the Democratic party, which is their way of setting people's focus on certain issues to push their own political agenda. The title of this article alone is an example of agenda setting, because rather than just mentioning that the poverty rate is high, they add in the phrase "Under Obama's Watch" to place blame on Obama, focusing people's attention on the idea that Obama is the reason for this problem.