Earlier today, Gwyneth Paltrow was trending with her seven day $29.00 food stamp challenge. Her web hype covered the internet from sources ranging from Times Magazine to The Guardian. At the same time that Paltrow is gaining this attention, War heroes are returning from Afghanistan, and the 2016 presidential nominees are well underway. So what makes Paltrow's news equal to the next potential United States president's news or returning military units?
The 1976 film the "Network" is one of the most vivid depictions of media's power over the public, not to mention a ten Academy Award nod. The film's story line is centered on the growing demise and wasteland of television and journalism. The film's main concept is that short-term ratings were more crucial than the production content or quality, which is a disheartening current image of today's programming. The relevance to this 39-nine-year old throwback film is the notion of agenda setting.
In the 1970's Maxwell McCoombs and Donald Shaw (1972) proposed the idea that popular perception was formulated and created at the hands of the media. Their conclusion stemmed from their 1968 presidential campaign research on the relationship between mass media and the public's perception of important voting issues. They found that there was a significantly strong relationship between the voter's perceptions of important issues and those issues covered and discussed most in the media (McCoombs & Shaw, 1972). McCoombs and Shaw's (1972) agenda setting theory started the conversation on media's influence on public's perception. Following their research, Scholar Erving Goffman(1974) developed the successor theory to Agenda Setting, regarded as Framing. Goffman's (1974) theory of framing narrowed the scope of the Medias influence on certain topics and its placement of those topics in a field of meaning. Framing is simply defined as the media's act of shaping and defining the mass opinions of consumers.
The media shapes the information we consume daily and frames stories in consumers' minds continually. John Swinton, former Chief of Staff for the New York Times stated to the New York Press club :
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes" (Hatonn, 1993).
The media dictates our news daily, tells consumers how to digest the news, and finally tells consumers how they should feel about the news. The media has complete control over all aspects of our intake of information. So the relevance of Paltrow's $29.00 food stamp stance because the media deemed it as relevant, thus consumers of media deem it as relevant.
When one reads the news, they should always take a skeptical approach in digesting the content supplied. Media literacy is a widely used approach used when trying to decipher data. Media literacy touches on investigative points of consumers ability to access, evaluate, and analyze information that is given to them. Consumers must play a more active role in how they receive and digest information, information must critically analyzed and vetted for truth, accuracy, and bias. Below are helpful questions to ask one's self when consuming news or media given by the media:
• Who is supplying the information? • What are their motives/intent? • Who are there sponsors? • Who are the target consumers of this information? • How credible are they? • What techniques are used to attract my attention? • What is left out of this message?
Dunham, W. R. (2013). Framing the right suspects: Measuring media bias. Journal of Media Economics, 26(3), 122–147.
Hatonn, G. (1993). Programming, Pitfall, And Puppy Dog Tales (pp. 146–244). N.p.: Phoenix Source.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Harvard University Press.
McCoombs, M., & Shaw, D. (1972). The Agenda-Setting role of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 1(36), 176–187.