Agenda Setting Theory in Applications

By Michelle Maraffio

Comm 4350

Facebook

This social media app is intended to be a way to build communities. It is supposed to

help friends and family stay connected and interact with people all over the world from within

groups or pages. It also allows users to share what they believe is important. It could be

anything from sharing a news article, creating an event, photos, or sharing their talents or art

with other users. This app is also popular for marketing purposes for business, politicians and

celebrities. Facebook uses paid advertising to profit from this service, thus it is free for the

average user.

Agenda Setting Theory

began as a method of explaining

how editors, journalists and

broadcasters played a role in

shaping politics. They did this by

curating what was newsworthy

and then what they shared with

the populace. Because they

control what the audience learns

about and how important it is in

regards to the issues, traditional

media set the “agenda.”

With the rise of the internet and subsequently social media, Agenda Setting Theory has

changed from the original intentions, though is still quite applicable. In the instance of Facebook,

a complex algorithm curates an agenda for the user. While passively using the application, the
algorithm quietly mines information about its users and uses it to formulate the types of things it

thinks the user wants to see. Over time as the user scrolls through their newsfeed, the

information that they receive is catered to them personally.

This relates to Agenda Setting Theory in an unusual way. Facebook has become a main

news source for many of its users. While the agenda setter is untraditional, people are still

susceptible to agenda setting tactics. Traditional news sources do have a presence on social

media, however they are only partly responsible for setting the agenda. The main agenda

setters on Facebook are the people who work at Facebook and those that write the algorithms.

So in a sense, a computer program and people are the agenda setters in this medium.

Salt Lake Tribune App

The Salt Lake Tribune app offers users a traditional localized newspaper in Salt Lake

City, in a convenient digital format. As such, it has an impact on agenda setting in a more

traditional way. This newspaper is known for being a fairly moderate to left leaning paper, in a

primarily Republican state. It was owned by the Huntsman family for a time, but in 2019 it

became a nonprofit to attempt to save the newspaper and continue to be a moderate voice in

the state. It also has a reputation for reporting factual information and appears to be a generally

credible source of news. The app is free for select news stories and costs $7.95 a month for full

features.
 In this case, the journalists and editors are the agenda setters. They control what stories

to share, set the importance of these stories and give the readers the pertinent information to

think about. In this sense, they are leading their readers to think about issues in a certain way.

Because this app primarily costs money, it is attempting to defragmatize the reader’s media

consumption. The logic appears to be that the user will feel obligated to use the app they are

paying for, which implies worth and they will be invested in the stories that are curated by the

app editors.

The app appears to improve salience by offering an “alert” feature. The user can set up

their settings to receive a notification

when there is “breaking news” in the

category they most care about. The

app features eye catching images

and attention grabbing article

headings, to draw the reader in. The

agenda setter frames the “most

important” stories on the front pages,

enhancing the chances that the user

will interact with the story. Just as

agenda setting theory predicts, the

user will believe that these are the

most important stories of the day. As McCombs and Shaw state in the “Agenda Setting Theory,"

the agenda setter may not be able to tell the reader what to think, but they can guide them what

to think about.

Conservative News App

 The “Conservative News” App is advertised as a central and comprehensive place to get

all of the news that Conservatives want to know about. It claims to have politics, entertainment

and current events featured among the options. It imports stories from common conservative

news sites like, “Breitbart, National Review and The Federalist” rather than creating their own

stories. The app appears to be free, but has advertisements.

Agenda Setting Theory in politically biased applications like this creates a type of echo

chamber that curates stories that align with their primary audience’s political stance. Generally it

aids in confirming already held beliefs for the user. Nevertheless, the app’s editor does set the

agenda in regards to what they want their users to see as most important.

For instance, the app

may highlight stories that

discredits specific Democrats

or makes Republican

politicians appear to be

heroic in some way. Opinion

articles may carry a lot of

weight in this style of Agenda

Setting environment. If there

is no good news to share,

they may focus on negative

news to share about their

political enemies or squash

news with fluff stories.

When considering the disturbing long term ramifications of news sources like this, it is

not difficult to understand how Agenda Setting in this context has been harmful to our country.

Users are able to insulate themselves from opposing opinions, by limiting their exposure to
other sources of information. The agenda setters are framing the information they want the user

to think about and how they want them to think about it.

Sources:

● Facebook. (2020, June 27). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

● The Salt Lake Tribune. (2020, May 27). Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Salt_Lake_Tribune