Agenda Setting

By Krassimir Tzvetanov, FORCES junior fellow
April 1, 2021

There used to be a time when one would wake up in the morning, pick up the newspaper from the lawn and start their breakfast while reading through the pages. Of course, the most important news was on the first page, followed by less important ones, and then by the ones one would not usually get to.

While different newspapers would not necessarily assign the same order of the topics or have the same sentiment about each topic, they would roughly cover the same material. So, when people go to work, everyone would have a similar set of topics to discuss, and those would become the most important topics of conversation for the day. This had nothing to do with the actual importance of the topics or even their content; it only had to do with it being “accessible” in their memory and having a common ground for discussion with others.

In a perfect world, all newspapers would accurately gauge and represent what is important for society. There may be a slight variance based on the specific locality and audience, but they would pretty much have the similar converge. This is where the opportunity for influence arises. If all papers agreed that a particular non-important topic is essential, it would become important in people’s minds just because they are constantly reminded about it by their peers. There is also the added social pressure to discuss the topic in order to fit in society.

In a newspaper, the editor decides the ordering and priority of articles, which means the work and product of a large group of people can be steered through one single point of control, which needs to be influenced efficiently. Moreover, the methods can widely vary from over and threatening to subtle and appealing.

Agenda Setting may occur on many different levels. In the example about the editor may decide which of the written stories to promote higher. At the same time, they prioritize the journalist’s workload and which stories to cover with higher priority. Then there is the media owner, who can guide the editor-in-chief’s work, and there are also the advertisers who can apply pressure through add revenue.

The online siblings of those paper editions closely mirror that process, and thus the results are the same. Things are not different from other media modes like cable television and broadcast radio.

Agenda Setting plays an essential role in Influence Operations. On the one hand, it introduces a topic for further discussion, which cascades down to discussions in the cafés, offices, and other social settings. And on the other, the frequency with which it is introduced determines the public’s perception of its importance (Scheufele, 2009).

While Agenda Setting is about what content is actively pushed and prioritized higher for the audience, Gatekeeping is about the stories that are never told. More in our next post.

Agenda Setting

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