Agenda setting, at its core, is defined as the action taken, consciously or subconsciously, by a person or group that has the power to influence the public agenda and the topics that are considered important at a certain period in time. "Media Now" details this concept, stating that in the political sphere, for example, well-covered candidates and other figures may push to the forefront topics that they find important, or in some cases useful to their cause, prompting more on the subject to appear in both the media and everyday life. The converse is also possible, due to the inevitable fact that the media, as a body with a finite number of stories that can be covered on a day-to-day basis, has the power to select which concepts and events take prominence for that day, week, season and beyond.
This concept of the media selecting what stories will be featured and, in turn, talked about and regarded with importance, brings to mind a week in early August where a media member — or, truly, a group — initiated what seemed to be a chain reaction of stories covering a singular event and topic for discussion. While this certainly cannot be regarded as the only instance of the media bringing an instance that would've otherwise been overlooked into the spotlight, it was one that struck me as somewhat odd: the short fascination with something of a dispute between Bill O'Reilly and actress Jennifer Aniston.
It began as O'Reilly showed a clip on his FOX News show of a recent interview with Aniston over her upcoming movie in which she plays a single woman who chooses to have a child on her own using artificial insemination. In the interview, she states that times are changing and that there is no reason why a woman wishing to have a child should have to have a man in her life. He responded to this clip by declaring, among other things, that her message is "destructive to our society." This brought much more attention to both himself and the promotional interview Aniston was featured in, and as a result, things snowballed further as pop culture news sources among other news channels began focusing in on this with the angle that a feud was occurring between them, with headlines often featuring how his comments "slam" hers, and, when she was later asked about his words, hers as "shooting" back at him.
What began as a single, small interview as a promotion for a film suddenly became a story that was covered on dozens of celebrity blogs and news channels, one of which is shown below as a still from CNN's take on the incident, courtesy of the HLN channel on YouTube:
While this has no political ties, the concept of agenda setting does seem to help explain what exactly happened in this case. The main focus of many stations covering the argument appeared to be about Aniston and O'Reilly disagreeing, and less about what they were actually disagreeing about. However, further into these stories it comes to light that the coverage of the argument between them drew a lot of attention to the role of men in modern families, as well as on pregnancy and childrearing in single women and teenaged girls.
It began as O'Reilly showed a clip on his FOX News show of a recent interview with Aniston over her upcoming movie in which she plays a single woman who chooses to have a child on her own using artificial insemination. In the interview, she states that times are changing and that there is no reason why a woman wishing to have a child should have to have a man in her life. He responded to this clip by declaring, among other things, that her message is "destructive to our society." This brought much more attention to both himself and the promotional interview Aniston was featured in, and as a result, things snowballed further as pop culture news sources among other news channels began focusing in on this with the angle that a feud was occurring between them, with headlines often featuring how his comments "slam" hers, and, when she was later asked about his words, hers as "shooting" back at him.
What began as a single, small interview as a promotion for a film suddenly became a story that was covered on dozens of celebrity blogs and news channels, one of which is shown below as a still from CNN's take on the incident, courtesy of the HLN channel on YouTube:
While this has no political ties, the concept of agenda setting does seem to help explain what exactly happened in this case. The main focus of many stations covering the argument appeared to be about Aniston and O'Reilly disagreeing, and less about what they were actually disagreeing about. However, further into these stories it comes to light that the coverage of the argument between them drew a lot of attention to the role of men in modern families, as well as on pregnancy and childrearing in single women and teenaged girls.
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