• Agenda setting –
• Framing – How big conglomerates companies show their interpretation or their preferred consumption of certain
• Myth making – Averts the societies attention in order to distract them from their agenda setting, which may not be collectively agreed with
• Conditions of consumption –

• Structures of ownership – this is when there are different companies in charge. In the industry there are parent companies which own everything. Conglomerates and Monopolies come under this.

• The role of advertising – advertising is used to influence

• Links with ‘The Establishment’

• Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’

• Uniting against a ‘common enemy’

Audience Reception Theory

• Agenda Setting – the creation of public awareness to the big issues by the news media.
• Media attempts to influence audiences.
• The press and media do not reflect reality; they just filter it to make people see things the same way as them.
• Media also focuses on specific issues more than others and make some issues larger and seem more important than others.

1. Structures of ownership: The dominant media companies are large corporations and conglomerates.
2. The role of advertising: The majority of profit media companies make is from advertising, so advertisers are given much of the influence in media.
3. Links with the establishment:
4. Diversionary tactics and flak:
5. A “Common enemy”:

1. Agenda Setting:
2. Framing: The sun is pro-brexit, and so represents the brexit vote as triumphant and a good thing. The Mirror, on the other hand, paints brexit more in a negative light. Newspapers will frame an issue as good or bad depending on their stance on the issue to not only pander to those who agree, but to also push their agendas.
3. Myth Making: Newspapers will exaggerate a story to push their political agenda. This is used like the “common enemy” to divert the people’s attention away from the problems inside the country and the media hierarchies.
4. Conditions of Consumption:

Agenda Setting: Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media

Framing: Framing compromises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organize, perceive, and communicate about reality

Myth Making:

Agenda setting is a theory which states the ‘ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of public agenda’. it creates public awareness and concern of major issues published by the media. Different media companies will frame the stories in particular ways to attempt to influence viewers, one of the main ideas in this theory is that media does not reflect reality, it filters and shapes it. For example the sun, a right wing newspaper, article on brexit showed it in a positive light whereas the mirror, a left wing newspaper, showed brexit in a more negative light. Another main idea of this theory is that the media concentrates on a few issues/subjects that lead the public to view the selected issues as more important than other issues. As media is biased, they may partake in ‘myth making’ to try and persuade the public what that specific media organisation wants others to believe 

AGENDA SETTING – Agenda-setting theory describes the “ability to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda”. Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in a study on the 1968 American presidential election.

FRAMING – Framing involves social construction of a social phenomenon – by mass media sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other actors and organizations. … This is done through the media’s choice of certain words and images to cover a story (i.e. using the word fetus vs. the word baby).

Structures of ownership

• conglomerates own many businesses within the main company so they have lots of control over the population

The role of advertising

• advertisers are paid for the audience

Links with ‘The Establishment’

Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’

Uniting against a ‘common enemy’

• the media manipulates audiences into doing something by using the influence of a common enemy eg terrorists

AGENDA SETTING

• Creation of public awareness and concern of big issues

FRAMING

• Media companies frame a product in a certain way that consumers believe what they believe apposed to believing a different company

MYTH MAKING

• The media creates myths to scare/manipulate people to believe something is going to happen when it isn’t true

CONDITIONS OF CONSUMPTION

The propaganda model is a model by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in the political economy that explains how populations are manipulated and how consent for economic, social and political policies is manufactured. The model states that there are five factors which aid the media in doing this, these include: Structures of ownership, The role of advertising, Links with ‘The Establishment’, Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’ and Uniting against a ‘common enemy’. 

• Structures of ownership – includes who owns which companies, eg 71% of UK newspapers are owned by 4 companies 
• The role of advertising – selected advertisements shaped specifically to  individuals to persuade them  
• Links with ‘The Establishment’ 
• Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’
• Uniting against a ‘common enemy’ – by finding a common enemy between the media and the consumer, they can bond over something possibly leading to the consumer believing more of what the media is say

-1988 book by Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman

-The authors propose that the mass communication of the media of the US are effective and powerful and ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function. This is said to be by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions and and self-censorship.

-The book was revised 20 years after is first publication to take account of developments such as the fall of the Soviet Union. There has been debate about how the internet has changed the public’s access to information since 1988.

1. Ownership: The first has to do with ownership. The endgame of mass media firms is profit. Critical journalism must take second place to the needs and interests of the corporation.
2. Advertising: The second filter exposes the real role of advertising. Media costs a lot more than consumers will ever pay. So who fills the gap? Advertisers. And what are the advertisers paying for? Audiences. And so it isn’t so much that the media are selling you a product — their output. They are also selling advertisers a product — YOU.
3. The media elite: Governments, corporations, big institutions know how to play the media game. They know how to influence the news narrative. They feed media scoops, official accounts, interviews with the ‘experts’. Journalism cannot be a check on power because the very system encourages complicity, and it is said that those in power and those who report on them are in bed with each other.
4. Flak:  When the media – journalists, whistleblowers, sources – stray away from the consensus, they get ‘flak’. This is the fourth filter. When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flak machine in action discrediting sources, trashing stories and diverting the conversation.
5. The common enemy: To manufacture consent, you need an enemy — a target. That common enemy is the fifth filter. Communism. Terrorists. Immigrants. A common enemy, a bogeyman to fear, helps corral public opinion.

Agenda setting: Noam Chomsky defined agenda-setting as the “the tacit alliance between the government of a country (usually Western and especially U.S.) and the media to communicate to viewers, listeners or readers of a medium only what matters, and hide the most of what can be dangerous or detrimental to the stability they think right for their country.”

Framing: Framing involves social construction of a social phenomenon – by mass media sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other actors and organizations.