Week 6.

AC-1202 AGENDA SETTING AND FRAMING.

AGENDA SETTING

When reading newspapers, for example, different newspaper companies would be showing different issues, stories or headlines on the front page. In the case of Brunei's newspaper 'Borneo Bulletin', they would present news on His Majesty's activities on the front page as the main priorty because he is an important public figure in Brunei Darussalam. Therefore,for the other news such as international celebrities' lifestlye or sports would be in the middle or end part of the newspaper. This method of choosing and prioritising a particular news agenda is what we call 'Agenda-Setting'.

What is Agenda-Setting? Dearing & Rogers (1996, pp. 1-2) defined "The Agenda-Setting is an ongoing competition among issue proponents to gain the attention of media professionals, the public and policy elites. Agenda-Setting offers an explanantion of why information about certain issues, and not other issues, is available to the public in a democracy; how public opinion os shaped; and why certain issues are addressed through policy actions while other issues are not".

There are three purpose of the Agenda-Setting;

First, Prioritisation - it refers to the hierachy of importance. As mentioned in the first paragrapgh before, the main priorty of news in 'Borneo Bulletin' would be His Majesty or any of the Royal family member. Whereas other news on stock market for instance, would be in the middle part of the newspaper.

Second, Prediction - predicting or setting the agendas, for what the public want to read. For example, His Majesty is making a friendly visit to Singapore. The publisher of 'Borneo Bulletin' would predict, that this news might interest the citizen; on His Majesty's purpose of visit.

Third, Organising power - it refers to news construct our view of the world. It organise what we should talk about or what to see.

 An example of discussion scene on setting news agenda 

Original Agenda-Setting Theory.

Making people to be aware of "Not what to think, but what to think about".

According to Dearing & Rogers (1996, p. 8) "Salience is the degree to which an issue on the agenda is perceived as relatively important. The heart of the agenda-setting process is when the salience of an issue changes on the media agenda, the public agenda, or the policy agenda. The task of the scholar of agenda-setting is to measure how the salience of an issue changes, and why this change occurs."

Furthermore, Mc Combs & Shaw believes mass media has the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news agenda to the public agenda. From my understanding, it is the ability to show important information to the readers. For example, the Japanese tsunami event occured early 2011. Newspapers all over the world kept on bombarding the readers on the news event.

There are two levels of 'Agenda-Setting'. Ghanem (1997, p.4) stated "For first level of agenda setting, the independent variable is considered in terms of objects, the topics or issues discussed on the media agenda. In my understanding, it involves in transferring general informations, that the media thinks it is important for the public to be aware of. For example, information about 'Global Warming'. Ghanem further stated that the second-level of agenda setting is noted as the attributes or prespectives involve with the first-level. (Ghanem, 1997, p. 4) In other words, it focuses on specific parts of the general information. For example, from focusing 'Global Warming' as whole, the news would be looking at 'The green house effect'.

Function of Agenda-Setting

First, Media Agenda - Issues the media consider as important.

Second, Public Agenda - Issues discussed in public and considered as important. In other words it focuses on public's view. For example, the news on public opinon of how tax affect the standard living of the citizens.

Third, Policy Agenda - Issues that policy makers like legislators and government officials consider important. It refers to the news of what the government have done for the country. For example, new policy of education tax by the order of policy maker.

Fourth, Corporate Agenda - Issues that business corporations consider important. The news has the tendency to focus on business company's activities. For example, how a local company would like to invest in establishing Brunei's first clothing line business.

Example of news on Public Agenda.

FRAMING

Griffin (2009, p. 364) defined framing as "The selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion on the media agenda when a particular object or issue is dicussed."

Imagine, a sudden break-out of zombie apocalypse occured in a country ZA. Numbers of issues regarding on about the break-out would be listed; such as how the break-out occur, figures of people involve in the incident, waiting to be publish. However, only few number of relevant news would be put in to the newspaper for the public. With that, the newspaper publisher would choose the best order of which news agenda comes first according to the function of agenda-setting,due to different prespective coming from different people on the same news. This is what I understand, how framing works.

The core ideas about framing is that, it always draws on exisiting cultural ideas. It comes hand in hand with Agenda-Setting in organising or arranging the structure of any news published. While Agenda-Setting looks at which topics are important to be presented to the readers, Framing looks at how these topics could be organised to advance a point of view that public would accept.

There are four 'Framing' process;

First, Frame Amplification - clarification of a set of problems or issues.

Second, Frame Extension - Adding the ideas or issues to an argument, talk about the after effect of the news occured.

Third, Frame Bridging - Linking of two or more issues to another frame. This process is quite similar to Frame Extension.

Fourth, Frame Transformation - Changing the content structure into something else while retaining its main idea.

(ASSIGNMENT)

"Country X's Public Shame"

1st level: Bad Image of the Country

2nd level: Public Deviance, Lack of Public Education

In the problem statement, it can be clearly be seen that is focuses on both public and corporate agenda. Few of the reasons are being; the public agenda, it mentions how unhygeince the public area is due to the older citizens unhealthy habits ( 'Public Deviance' ), 'Lack of Public Education' causing children to be involve in the criminal activities; the corporate agenda, reflects on the public current situation which cause low attraction from investors to invest and hence low economy activity in Country X.

Clearly, it can be seen that the main agenda or Prioritisation of the issue here is 'Bad Image of the Country'. This is due to the problems mentioned in the previous paragrapgh. Hence, it comes under the First Level of Agenda-Setting. Whereas for the 'Public Deviance' and 'Lack of Public Education' are categorise as Second Level of Agenda-Setting, for being the attribute to the main agenda. Therefore, the issue has been shift from being general to more specific.

There are three process of Frame can be use;

First, the Frame Amplification - It can be observe that the main problem here is the bad image of country X, which are cause by the roles of 'Public Deviance' and 'Lack of Public Education'.

Second, the Frame Extension - As it was mentioned in the early paragraph, 'the issue has been shift from being general to more specific'. In other words, it extends further into another story while retaining the main idea of the issue. One of the causes of 'Bad Image of the Country' is 'Lack of Public Education', whereby children are working and running amok in the streets when they should be going to school and study. Hence showing that with uneducated citizens, brings down the country reputation on international level.

Third, Frame Bridging - The main issue, 'Bad Image of Country X', is linking together with another set of frame, for example, the declining of Country X's economy.

References List;

Dearing, J. W. & Rogers, E. V. (1996). Communication Concepts 6: Agenda-Setting. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Ghanem, S. (1997). Filling in the Tapestry: The second level of agenda setting. In McCombs, M., Shaw, D. L. & Weaver, D. (Eds.). Communication and Democracy: Exploring the intellectual frontiers in agenda-setting theory. Mahwah,New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Retrieved February 20, 2012 from http://books.google.com.bn/books?id=py3pfMtLoOgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=agenda+setting+theory&hl=en&ei=fMwqTYTcM4KqrAfkvI3JDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. (7th ed.) Glencoe, IL: McGrawHill.

Week 4

AC-1202 SEMIOTICS.

According Inskip,MacFarlane and Rafferty (2008, p.693) "Semiotics involves the study of signs and formalises an attempt to establish the meaning of these signs". It explains how discourses and ideologies are visually constructed and it helps us study about the culture and laws governing social life. In other words, it is concerned with anything that can mean something else.

In this post,7 areas of Semiotics will be covered which will be assist by using examples to explain each area.

First, the SIGNIFIER.

Signifier refers to the 5 senses we have; Sight,Smell,Touch,Sound and Taste. As stated by Griffin (2009, p.324) it is "The physical form of the sign as we precieve it through our senses; an image". For easier understanding, it could be seen as the words we read on pages or the oral voice we hear. Now, look at 'BARNEY'. Example,the letters "B A R N E Y" is the signifier of what we see with our sight sense.

From Signifier,it leads to SIGNIFIED.

Signified is the mental concept image generated from the Signifier. However, one Signifier can have many Signified. For example when we see "BARNEY", our mental conception can develop as the following;

Barney as the children mascot.

Barney as Barney Stinson

Barney as Barneys New York, an American chain of luxury department store.

When both Signifier and Signified are add together,it equals to SIGN.

Signifier + Signified=Sign.

The letters of 'B A R N E Y S T I N S O N', detected by our sight sense (SIGNIFIER) + the mental image formed by looking at the letters of 'B A R N E Y S T I N S O N' (SIGNIFIED) = the word BARNEY STINSON (SIGN).

There are three types of sign;

1. Symbolic (abstract)

2. Indexical (less abstract)

3. Icon (almost life like)

Fourth is the DENOTATION.

" 'Denotation' tends to be described as the defintional, 'literal', 'obvious', or 'commonsense' meaning of a sign." (Chandler, 2002, p. 140). It literally describe the meaning of signifier or sign.

For example, in this image the dennotation would be; 'A man with blonde hair is wearing a black suit and white shirt. He is holding a glass of wine in his right hand while his left hand is holding a mobile phone to his ear'.

Next is CONNOTATION.

Chandler (2002, p.140) defines "The term 'connotation' is used to refer to the socio-cultural and 'personal' associations (ideological, emotional, etc.) of the sign". It basically means, the representation and concept of the sign.

The picture above, Barney Stinson is the sign. Therefore we connotes that he is 'Confused,Surprised or Worried'.

Then there is the CODES.

Martin Irvine (2004-2005) point out that "We know what they mean if we belong to the learned, rule-governed, shared-code group using one of these kinds and styles of language." In other words,it is the set of rules or cultural codes agreed upon by a community. A simple example would be, a famous quote from "How I Met Your Mother" tv series, "It's going to be legendary!". This quote have been used over and over again in today's every normal conversation. Anyone who watch the series would understand what the quote means or where it comes from. While the others who are not familiar with the series would not understand what the quote is about. Therefore without the knowledge of knowing a cultural code, the interpratation of the sign cannot be understood by others.

Finally, we have reach the last area of Semiotics, the ANCHORAGE.

Anchorage or Anchoring is a very powerful semiotic tool that shapes how we view and see things. It holds down a certain or specific meaning of interpretation, because without it, the interpretation of an image can go in any direction. This is especially very important to the advertising companies.

Can you see the different between the two pictures above? The first picture can be interpreted as anything. It could be intreperted as a photo of fashion magazine,where by the male chracter is posing with the suit to attract consumers.

However, in the second picture, we could see a quote saying "When I'm sad I stop being sad and be AWESOME instead". This can be interperted as a motivational quotes to readers to not dwell on their sadness so much and see a brighter side.

References List;

Chandler, D. (2002). Semiotics: The Basics. New York; Routledge.

Griffin, E. (2009) A first look at communication theory. (7th ed,) Glencoe, IL:McGrawHill.

Inskip, C., MacFarlane, A. & Rafferty, P. (2008). Meaning, communication, music: towards a revised communication model. Journal of Documentation, 64(5), 693.

Irvine,M. (2004-2005). Media Theory and Semiotics: Key Terms and Concepts. Retrieved February, 14, 2012, from http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Theory-KeyTerms.html