Agenda Setting

New values and agenda setting are two very similar notions; agenda setting is how news becomes news. It is split into two levels, the first being when the media decides exactly what should be deemed important by the public through deciding what is published and what is not. The second level of agenda setting is the manipulation of news values in order to influence the way that the audience perceives the issues presented. These levels of agenda setting are present throughout the four different forms of agenda setting: public, policy, corporate and media.

Public agenda occurs when mass media dictates to their audience exactly what news should be deemed important and tells their audience exactly how to think and feel towards these news stories; this is done commonly throughout commercial media. Policy agenda is when people in power, such as governments and legislators, push for issues that are deemed important by them into the public eye via media use. Similarly, corporate agenda is the prioritising of information regarded as important by large businesses and corporations. Media agenda wraps all of these up, by taking all of these ‘important’ issues and presenting them in the media, bringing them to the public’s attention. Furthermore , some forms of elite media set the agenda for lesser media, which exemplifies media agenda setting. 

These four forms of agenda setting allow for the public to formulate pictures in their minds of the news, which go on to shift their judgement on an issue, rather than through critical evaluation of a topic. Through the public doing this, they are intensifying the power of the four forms of agenda setting, and ensuring that these agendas continue to be put in place in the future.