Assignment #13: What to think about is different from What to think about for the Departments of English & Media Studies by Prof Dr Sohail Ansari

Agenda-Setting: A theory of media influence. Here are some thoughts on this theory of media influence and how public relations practitioners can deal with this influence.

Source: Agenda-setting theory is associated with Maxwell McCombs & Donald Shaw (1972).

Premise: Media do not tell us what to think, but rather what to think about.

Evidence: Mass media have not been proven effective in determining how audiences will accept opinions and point of view in media reports. But mass media are effective in determining what audiences see as newsworthy. By the issues they cover, media can legitimize a story or marginalize either the entire story.

Example: In political campaigns, the media may not be effective in swaying public support toward or against a particular issue or candidate. But by continually raising particular questions and issues, or simply by showing an interest in a particular political candidate or issue, the media can lead the discussion toward or away from issues important to the candidate and even to the public (as identified through polls).

Questions for Discussion:
- In a given situation, how have media placed issues X, Y, & Z on their audiences' agenda?

- How can a public relations practitioner use to advantage an issue of relevance to the organization that is already on the media agenda?

- What can a public relations practitioner do to place an issue on the media agenda?

What to think about is different from What to think about.

Agenda setting: focuses on how media represents a specific topic by drawing attention to specific issues at the expense of others.

Agenda setting, hence, is concerned with what to think about.  

We focus on how media draw attention to the specific aspect of an issue at the expense of others.

We, hence, are concerned with What to think about an issue.

We believe: by the aspects of issues they cover, media can legitimize or marginalize certain aspects of an issue.

There are two Thinkings: one for the selection of topics and other for the selection of thoughts about topics; therefore, What to think about is different from What to think about as former deals with issues to think about and latter with aspects of issues to think about.

Exercise

In his youth, Washington put pen to paper to capture 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation. He proclaims in his “Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation’’:

 “Let your conversation be without malice or envy, for it is a sign of a tractable and commendable nature: and in all causes of passion admit reason to govern,”,” written sometime before the age of 16. In the heated, often rancorous season of political contest, we Americans often forget that our fellow citizens are more similar to each other than dissimilar, our goals and ambitions more analogous than antagonistic. As a consequence, our public and private discourse has become intensely personal, focused on differences rather than consonance, so that friend, family, and work relationships are frequently in peril.

As a consequence, our public and private discourse has become intensely personal, focused on differences rather than consonance, so that friend, family, and work relationships are frequently in peril.

Differences and antagonism; consonance and analogousness are the inevitable outcome of human interaction.

Media in Pakistan has, however, legitimized differences and antagonism and has marginalizes consonance and analogousness.

Exercise

Pick any writing and admit reason to govern in all causes of passion and bring sanity to bring back discourse that is fast vanishing because of perpetual focus on differences rather than consonance and as a consequence our public and private discourse has become intensely personal so that friend, family, and work relationships are frequently in peril.

Richard Brookhiser, in his book on Washington wrote, "All modern manners in the western world were originally aristocratic. Courtesy meant behavior appropriate to a court; chivalry comes from chevalier - a knight. Yet Washington was to dedicate himself to freeing America from a court's control.

Exercise

Haves of Pakistan shape the country in their own image and thus.

Pick any discourse that is the tokens of absorbing a system of courtesy appropriate to Haves and rewrite it to make it appropriate to equals and near equals.

Trivialization of an issue by directing a focus to its insignificant aspects.

Exercise

There are the issues media cannot snub because of their magnitude. Think about the important facets of an issue media do not focus because media do not want you to grasp its magnitude despite thinking about it.

Exercise

What refrains you hear thought out transmissions or in print media; and does the repetition of those aspects of social, cultural and economic activities make those aspects important.  

What refrains you hear thought out transmission or in print media and does the repetition of those aspects of social, cultural and economic activities renders you oblivious to more significant aspects of these activities.