![]() ![]() What has changed is who is setting the agenda and the difference between everyone’s agendas. And we are still as susceptible to our agenda being ‘set’ as we ever were. ![]() Well, Facebook serves as many people’s news source. What insights does agenda setting cast on this new reality? ![]() Facebook can and does alter the algorithms that control what items appear in a users’ news feed without informing users. Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t only predict whether you’ll actually hit the like button on a post based on your past behavior, it also predicts whether you’ll click, comment, share, or hide it, or even mark it as spam. For the relevancy score, Facebook uses a different kind of algorithm, called a prediction algorithm, so that content is uniquely tailored to each individual user. To do this, the news feed ranking team at Facebook devises a system capable of assigning any given Facebook post a “relevancy score” specific to any given Facebook user. Facebook deploys complex, proprietary algorithms that select what will appear in each user’s news feed. Yet Facebook’s news feed does not show a chronological list of a user’s friends’ posts. The news feed is a constantly updating list of stories. When passively seeking content on Facebook, people (probably you) will scroll through their (or your) news feed. It has a community of 2 billion users, making Facebook the largest social app in terms of logged-in users. Clinically speaking, Facebook is a free social networking site and service where users can post comments, share photographs and links to news or other interesting content on the Web, play games, chat live and stream video. Today, however, this theory is turned on its head – but not quite in the way you might think. Large swaths of people shared the same ‘agenda.’ For better or for worse, they had a commonality with one another in terms of what they deemed important in terms of issues. They were reading the same local paper as their neighbors. The mass media determines the important issues, that is, the media sets the “agenda” of the campaign.īack in 1968, people were consuming mostly the same media. They control not only what we learn about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. How do journalists influence the public? What role do they play?Īt that time, this theory emerged to explain how editors, newsroom staff and broadcasters play a role in shaping political reality by how they choose and display news. The theory was developed with the intention of solving at least a part of the mystery surrounding the precise effects of the media upon the public. One such theory that yields interesting insights into today’s media environment is “agenda setting.” The term was born out of a study of the US Presidential Election of 1968. While early mass media researchers could little predict the invention of such a disruptive influence as the Internet, let alone the ensuing phenomenon of social media, some of these scholars were able to supersede the technical constraints of their time in order to tap into lasting insights about society. While topics surrounding mass communication are en vogue today (think fake news, debates over social media, etc.), the study of mass communication has been ongoing for decades. ![]()
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