The Media can Influence our Conversations

The media can affect our opinions and beliefs. The way the media presents things to us can impact the way we understand and comprehend the information. Sometimes the media will take issues and frame them a specific way and decide what information they should include or not include and what details get the most emphasis. Because of this, the media can dictate what we talk about and care about in our society. This is called the agenda-setting Theory.

The agenda-setting theory happens at the national and local levels. I try to watch my local news, WFTV, at least once a day, and it is easy to point out the times the media has used the agenda-setting theory. The first example of this is how WFTV and many other local and national news cover the Covid-19 pandemic. Every newscast, there is an update on how Covid-19 is affecting Central Florida. Just this afternoon, WFTV did a weekly update that talked about the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Another example of this is how much my local news talked about the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this past week. WFTV covered the conference daily, probably to do with it being located in Orlando this year. If I were to have gone to another state, the amount of coverage of this event would not have been the same. The way that my news also introduced the segment about the CPAC was also apart of the agenda-setting theory. One anchor called CPAC the “biggest political convention in the country.”

Lastly, the coverage of the Kennedy Space Center and the SpaceX launches are covered more on my local news is an example of agenda-setting. It is very typical for our local news to even interrupt pre-recorded programming to show the launch events. Even when launches are scrubbed, my local news covers the events. This happened today, February 28; a SpaceX launch was scrubbed only minutes before the expected takeoff. Because of the media coverage around launches, the locals are very interested in it and talk about it regularly.

The media may influence what we find important, but we also give it that power. This is one reason I try to take in media from all different sources and sides to try to counterbalance any possible biases and try to stay informed about all issues.