I studied Communication Theory in college, way back in the day, which I wrote about here and here and elsewhere.
Today, I thought I'd do a little "practical application" exercise, to show some examples of these Media Theories, busy at work in a News-editorial-room near you ...
Agenda-Setting, Priming & Framing
by Prof. Ron Smith, buffalostate.edu
Agenda-Setting
Premise: Media do not tell us what to think, but rather what to think about.
Evidence: [...]
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).
[...]
Examples of
Agenda-Setting from Current Events:
'Whatever Trump does is urgent, breaking news.'
'The Iran Nuclear Agreement is very problematic, because Iran is allowed to keep its Nuclear Power.'
Priming
Premise: Media provide a context for public discussion of an issue, setting the stage for audience understanding.
Evidence: [...]
Example: Media reporting may be very strong leading up to an event such as the Olympics, Super Bowl, or World Cup, making it almost impossible for audiences to ignore the event. Such aggressive reporting thus creates an audience of people at least temporarily interested in the sport, even though prior to the reporting many (perhaps most) members of the audience were not sports fans. Rather, they are people who get caught up in the moment.
[...]
Examples of
Priming from Current Events:
'Whatever Clinton says about her Email Server is evasive.'
'What if Joe Biden is serious about running for President?'
'We all know Bernie Sanders can't win.'
Framing
Premise: Media provide a focus and environment for reporting a story, influencing how audiences will understand or evaluate it.
Evidence: [...]
Example: Through initial reporting, the media may present the facts of a story in such as way that the audience is given a particular point of view or frame of reference and interpretation. The media may report that a political candidate has extreme views on an issue, that a budget proposal is harmful to a particular group, that a new medicine is of questionable safety, and so on. By such reporting, the media thus have presented a frame through which the story is interpreted by audiences. It also sets the baseline for future reporting on the issue.
[...]
Examples of
Framing from Current Events:
'We must not allow Plan Parenthood to profit from Abortions.'
'We must do something about Entitlements, because Medicare is about to go broke.'
Feel free to re-categorize my Current Events examples, as to what Media Theory they really represent.
Also add your own Examples in the comments, if you can think of other Media Themes that are better examples of Agenda-Setting, Priming, & Framing techniques in action.
Thanks.
Extra Credit: Take a more in-depth look at these Media Techniques, and their inter-relationships, by reading this short, but often-cited scholarly article.
Here are a few of its more "salient" points:
Thoughts on Agenda Setting, Framing, and Priming
by David H. Weaver
School of Journalism, University of Indiana, Bloomington, IN 47405; unc.edu
Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916 -- Journal of Communication 57 (2007) 142–147
[...]
Framing and agenda setting Tankard, Hendrickson, Silberman, Bliss, and Ghanem (1991, p. 3) have described a media frame as "the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration." Entman (1993, p. 52) argues that "to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described." (italics in original). McCombs (1997, p. 37) has suggested that in the language of the second level of agenda setting, "framing is the selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion on the media agenda when a particular object is discussed." He argues that there are many other agendas of attributes besides aspects of issues and traits of political candidates, and a good theoretical map is needed to bring some order to the vastly different kinds of frames discussed in various studies.
[...]
It is not clear why framing has become so much more popular with communication scholars than either agenda setting or priming in the past 10 years, but it may have something to do with the ambiguity or the comprehensive nature of the term. "Frame" can be applied to many different aspects of messages and to many different types of messages. [...]
Priming and agenda setting
A number of scholars have become interested in the effects of media agenda setting
on public opinion and government policy. The focus on the consequences of agenda
setting for public opinion (sometimes labeled priming") can be traced back at least to Weaver, McCombs, and Spellman (1975, p. 471), who speculated in their study of the effects of Watergate news coverage that the media may suggest which issues to use in evaluating political actors, but who did not use the term priming to describe this process. [...]
Exercise: Complete this thought:
"If the Corporate Media look at people like "children" [alternately "sheep"] -- then the Media organization itself would be ___ ___ ."
Thanks again, for playing along at home.