[Music] welcome to media in minutes where I talk you through important Concepts in media and communication today we're looking at the agenda setting function Theory which suggests that the media can't tell you what to think but it can tell you what to think about the agenda setting function theory was developed by Maxwell momes and Donald Shaw in 1972 as a result of their study of North Carolina of Voters during the 1968 presidential election campaign this study found a correlation between issues that voters believed were important and issues that the media gave prominence to momes and Shaw argued that the media use a number of cues to indicate the importance of an issue on the front page of a newspaper for example the importance of a story is indicated by the size of its heading likewise a story that appears on the front page is more important than a story that appears on page five according to this Theory the media has the power to focus public discussion on particular issues again it can't tell us what to think but it can tell us what to think about in 1998 mcon increased the scope of this Theory to include a phenomenon called framing he argued that in addition to telling us what to think about the media can also tell us how to think about a story news reports might focus on one particular aspect of an issue or report about something in a particular way in Australia we see this happening with news reports about Asylum Seekers The Daily Telegraph and their H son which are both owned by news corporation seem to frame the issue in a particular way with headlines like 35 Asylum sneakers costing us a packet and boat people in our suburbs here the refugee story is framed as a social and economic burden on the Australian people these stories could be framed to focus on humanitarian issues or whether Australia is meeting its International obligations a number of Studies have been done that make the agenda setting function Theory seem pretty plausible typically they show a correlation between the number of news stories on an issue and how important people think the issue is although the agenda setting function theory has been around since the 1970s it's still a great way to think about communication and media influence [Music]