Week 6: Agenda Setting Theory

Agenda setting theory is about how the same mass media can affect people by giving them different exposure towards certain issues that they considered to be important. Agenda, according to Everett M. Rogers and James W. Dearing, “… is a list of issues and events that are viewed at a point in time as ranked in a hierarchy of importance.” (p85)

For the following analysis of text, I will be using the levels of the agenda setting theory, which comprises of First Level, Second Level and Framing.

The above magazine cover was taken from the August 2010 issue of Vogue Hommes Japan, which shows Lady Gaga posing in a raw meat dress. This cover sparks a lot of controversies including criticisms from animal rights campaigns such as PETA and from fashion institutions.

As rephrased by Griffin (2012), media tells us “not just what to think about, but how to think about it” (p383). The First Level agenda setting gives us what to think about, where the media focus on the object salience. In this text the media uses the image of Lady Gaga wearing the meat dress with little coverage as a mean to influence the public on what they should think about the meat dress. The second level agenda setting focuses on one part of the issue and how we should think about it. What the media has pointed out to us is the additional title located below the cover: Lady Gaga ‘The Naked Truth’. This second level agenda-setting focuses on the attribute salience, and as Takeshita (2006) explains, “salience is a word with two meanings.” (p277); where the two meanings are correlated but not identical. The media attempted to focus on Lady Gaga’s interpretation on her meat dress in relation to the meaning of ‘The Naked Truth’.

The Vogue cover is considered to function as a media agenda – the issue that media consider to be important. The meat dress is certainly not an everyday wear you would see on the street. Meat has been, up until now, considered to be a source of food. The media consider the out-of-norm fashion to be important, and notably to spark a debate on the similarity between wearing leather or animal-skinned clothing and wearing a raw meat.

Since the priority is the media agenda, the key ideas of framing are ‘Naked Truth’ and wearing meat dress. The framing strategy used here is metaphor, where Lady Gaga is not entirely ‘naked’, but the media frame the entire image as the ‘naked’ truth.

Many people think that framing is a bad structure to use, but it does not necessary mean that framing is applied to deceive the public. Framing can be used as a tool to reduce the complexity of the issue and present to the public in an efficient way.

Reference:
Everett, M. R. & James, W. D. (2007). Agenda-Setting Research: Where Has It Been, Where Is It Going? in Doris G. (Eds), Media Power in Politics 5th Edition (pp. 80-97). Washington: CQ Press.

Denis, W. & Jon, K. (2010, September 14). Five interpretations of Lady Gaga's meat dress. BBC News Magazine. Retrieved March 22, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11297832

Griffin, E. (2012) A First Look At Communication Theory (8th Edition). New York. McGraw Hill.

Takeshita, T. (2006). Curren critical problems in agenda-setting research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18, 275-296.