SITI FATIMAH BINTI GHAZALI (2210921)

Early media studies were concerned with the role of mass media in propaganda and
persuasion. However, journalists and scholars rapidly turned to psychological science to
assist them understand how mass media and communications affect society. Scholars have
created a variety of methodologies and ideas in order to solve this mystery. The widespread
worry that mass-media messages will trump other culturally stabilising elements such as
family and community gave rise to the direct effects paradigm of media studies. This concept
suggested that audiences passively received media messages and would react predictably to
those messages. There are five Media Theories which are Magic Bullet Theory/ Hypodermic
Needle Theory, Two Step Flow Theory, Gatekeeping Theory, Agenda Setting Theory and
Spiral of Silence Theory. In this essay, I will analyse the article about ‘The K-Pop group was
criticized on social media for embracing Malay girls’ and will discuss two theories regarding
this issue.

First theory I will explain in this essay is Gatekeeping Theory. Gatekeeping is the
process through which information is filtered for dissemination, whether for publication,
broadcasting, the Internet, or some other mode of communication. Gatekeeping theory is the
nexus between two inarguable facts: events occur everywhere all of the time and the news
media cannot cover all of them. And so, when an event occurs, someone has to decide
whether and how to pass the information to another person, such as a friend, an official, or
even a journalist. Many decisions are made between the occurrence of an event and its
transmission as news: decision points are referred to as gates and decision makers as
gatekeepers. The decision-making process is the core of gatekeeping. It is possible for anyone
to be a gatekeeper anyone who has information about the event and decides to pass it to
another person or organization. In processing information and conveying it to someone else,
gatekeepers consciously or unconsciously change the information. Some is withheld and the
rest is not unchanged, as if it were merely squeezed from a gatekeeping sponge.
Traditionally, the role of the gatekeeper was seen as that of a journalist or news editor.

Next, Agenda Setting is basically a theory of strong media effects which says that
there are three related agendas as media agenda, public agenda and policy agenda. This
suggests that with the passage of time media agenda becomes the public agenda and they are
linked with one another. Agenda-setting theory describes the “ability of the news media to
influence the salience of topics on the public agenda.” That is, if a news item is covered
frequently, the audience will regard the issue as more important. In reality, mass media only
shows the audience what it comprehends as an important issue. Print or broadcast news will
then take away the audience’s ability to think for themselves. The theory put forward the idea
that news media creates public agenda by making people think things they want to show.

The article about ‘The K-Pop group was criticized on social media for embracing
Malay girls’ was about a three-minute and 22-second video recording of a Korean pop group
(K-Pop) hugging three of its veiled fans while on stage went viral and was discussed on the
social site, Facebook. The video was viewed 1, 160, 751 times until Sunday night, including a
scene of a member of K-Pop group B1A4 hugging a woman from behind, before the woman
turned around and returned to hug the artist. While another scene, featuring the action of a
member of the k-Pop group kissing the forehead of another girl. The three girls looked a bit
nervous when they were on stage. Most of the comments, which were uploaded at 10.55am
on Sunday, criticized the actions of B1A4 fans who were deemed indecent while on stage. “It
is very frustrating to see women wearing hijab but their faith is ‘like’ being stripped naked by
members of a K-Pop group. "We cannot take any action against the organizers or this Korean
artist because it involves individual actions. This is a matter of one's dignity and self -
esteem," Hanish Shuriku Shenzen commented on his Fan page account, Star TV Sports.

Another netizen, Qaseh Dyana also expressed her disappointment with the action
displayed by the three fans of the K-Pop group. “This video made me cry, because the girl
even though they were wearing a hijab they degraded themselves. Just because 'a drop of
indigo, spoiled the milk of an orange'," commented Qaseh, while Yusoff also supported the
statement which described the girl's actions' very embarrassing. Islam '. Another user, Imi
Qaf said the K-Pop artist should not be blamed. "Surprisingly, even though they wear
headscarves, they behave like people who have no religion. They also have no sense of
shame," added Imi. The video also became a topic of conversation on twitter, when the
Minister of Youth and Sports, Khairy Jamaluddin also commented on it. "Many are interested
in K-Pop. I hope Malaysian girls return to choosing tall, sweet and handsome black men
instead of white, skinny and 'pink' men. They are not real men," Khairy tweeted on his twitter
account.

When it comes to the pop culture world, gatekeeping is when fans call other fans,
normally within the same fanbase, “fake fans” because they may not share the same opinion
as someone else. Gatekeeping completely neglects the whole point of fanbases, because
finding groups of people to appreciate the same interests as you should be something that
brings nothing but a positive impact. Being a K-pop fan of something requires none of those
things, but you would think the exact opposite by how fans are treating each other today. We
have gotten to a point where liking or disliking certain pieces of media makes someone a
“fake fan” which is absolutely ridiculous. It is a disguised form of bullying and taking away a
safe space people may really rely on. Twitter was also flooded with the hashtag
#menentangkejahatankpop. Pictures and videos of K-pop group members holding hands,
hugging and even kissing the foreheads of Muslim women fans spread and sparked the anger
of many Muslims in Malaysia. Some also blamed the K-Pop group, B1A4 for not
understanding the culture of the Malay community. Some criticized the actions of the K-pop
artist because he did not respect Malaysia as an Islamic country and Muslim women could
not be touched at will. There’s one comment about the hashtag “#MenentangkejahatanKpop?
K-pop is not evil, they are just looking for food, so the problem is when people are too
obsessed with religion.” Some fans however do not entirely blame the K-pop artist as they
may not understand the teachings of Islam which is the official religion and the majority of
the country’s population. This actually can affect on Malaysian culture by creating a culture
of accusing without clear and solid evidence on social media. This culture is very dangerous
because it can end one's career or life on untrue accusations.

The spread of South Korean popular culture across the globe, known as the Korean
Wave or K-pop, has signalled a significant challenge towards the traditional one-way flow of
media culture. This study applies agenda-setting effect, which has been largely applied to
political communication, to the domain of mass-produced popular culture. ‘Shame! Girl
'Raped' By K-Pop Artist Willingly’ this statement is the main title of the article and it
managed to attract the interest of the public to read it. But the real situation is not so serious
that the girls were raped, the K-pop group also did not commit sexual harassment against the
Muslim girls. The Agenda setting theory put forward the idea that news media creates public
agenda by making people think things they want to show. As the Korean culture is very
popular in Malaysia for a very long time, most of the reporters and journalists are eager to
publish anything about Korean cases to attract a lot of readers to read their articles. They are
just selfish and irresponsible because they did no think of their action that could bring much
trouble to certain people. This agenda setting theory can create a new culture which is a
culture of selfishness as they just concern about their goals and aims without think about the
consequences of their action.
 All in all, mass communication plays an important role in our society. Its purpose is to
inform the public about current and past events. Mass communication is defined as the
process whereby professional communicators use technological devices to share messages
over great distances to influence large audiences. Within this process, the media such as a
newspaper, book, television program, and more, takes control of the information we see or
hear. The media then uses gatekeeping and agenda setting to “control our access to news,
information, and entertainment”. Gatekeeping is a series of checkpoints that the news has to
go through before it gets to the public. Through this process, many people have to decide
whether or not the news is to be seen or heard. Some gatekeepers include reporters, writers
and editors. After gatekeeping comes agenda setting. One of the most critical aspects in the
concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is the time frame for this
phenomenon. In addition, different media have different agenda-setting potential.