How does mass media shape the public’s agenda of issues?

Media is a main form of communication especially for public issues. Because of this, newspapers, news stations, radio and other forms on media, have the chance to choose what stories are brought to the audience’s attention. Agenda setting is when media tells people what to think, not what to think about. This is used during status conferral, when the media attention enhances attention given to people, subjects, and issues. The media choose which topics to emphasize. By amplifying certain topics, the audience sees them as more important or urgent and they remember more about it after seeing it. They do not tell them to think these things, but through status conferral, they set the public’s agenda.

The CNN effect is the ability of television, through emotion-raising video, to elevate distant issues on domestic public agenda. This can cause the viewers to think more critically or some situations. It is proven that the media can provoke emotion in the audience. The news and newspapers are such prominent forms of communication about public issues. They are sometimes the only resources we have to base our opinions on. This makes it easy to create framing, the selecting of a perceived reality for emphasis in a mass media message, thereby shaping how the audience sees the reality. Because we get most of our information from the news and the paper, they control how we see certain issues.