POWERK新世界

先說好...對英文反感的人就請別進來了。不過想看看自己英文程度到哪裡的...可以來試看看


●○Mass communication research has long been concerned with the influence of mass media on public opinion,especially as they affect politics and policymaking.Early writers such as Walter Lippmann(1922) saw media's behavior as a "restless searchlight" panning from one issue to the next while seldom lingering long on any single issue.
Later,researchers such as Berelson(1948) noted that although the media influence public opinion, the reverse is also true : public opinion influences what the media report.Paul Lazarsfeld and colleagues(1948) also noted that media attention itself confers status on issues and raises their importance.These insights coalesced in the 1970s as a focus on the mass media's role and influence in setting the public agenda of important issues and problems.Agenda setting has received much scholarly attention in part because of the reemergence of media models that predict powerful media effects ( McCombs and Shaw,1972). An axiom underlying this area of study is that mass media are not very successful in telling us what to think, but they are surprisingly successful in telling us what to think about. The key here is that mass media are powerful in setting the public agenda of important issues and problems.Studies have shown hight correlations between media coverage of issues and the public's opinion of the importance of those issues. This implies a strong if not direct link between the media's agenda of important issues (reflected in news coverage) and the public's agenda of important issues(the causal direction flowing from the media to the public).Agenda setting also presents a number of opportunities for applications of media in public health interventions(table16.3)
table 16.3
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concept&definition
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●media agenda setting&institutional roles, factors, and processesthat influence the definition,selection, and emphasis of issues in the media


●public agenda setting&The link between issues portrayed in the media and the public's priorities


●policy agenda setting&The link between issues developed in policymaking institutions and issue portrayed by the media


●problem identification, definition&Factors and process leading to the identification of an issue as a "problem" by social institutions


●framing&Organized public discourse about an issue leading to the selection and emphasis of features and the exclusion of others

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applications


1. work with media professionals to understand their needs and routines in gathering and reporting news

2. work with media via advocacy or partnerships to build the public agenda for important health issues

3. work with community leaders and policymakers to increse importance of health issues on the media's and solutions

4. community leaders, advocacy groups, organizations define an issue and solutions

5. advocacy groups"package" an important health issue for the media and the public

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Kosicki(1993) has identified three types of agenda setting research :(1) public agenda setting that examines the links between media portrayal of issues and their impact on issue priorities assigned by the public,(2) policy agenda setting that examines the connection between media coverage and the legislative agenda of policymaking bodies, and (3) media agenda setting that focuses on factors influencing the media to cover certain issues.Recent research has proposed refining agenda-setting theory (Kosicki,1993).Initial simple studies have given way to more empirically sophisticated designs with clearer causal links (Iyengar and Kinder,1987; Demers,Craff,Choi, and Pessin,1989).This approach also is being further refined through several changes in the agenda-setting perspective.According to this changing view, the media not only tell us what is important in a general way, they also provide ways of thinking about specific issues by the signs, symbols,terms, and sources they use to define the issue in the first place. In this view, public problems are social constructions.That is, groups, institutions, and advocates compete to identify problems, to move them onto the public agenda, and to define the issues symbolically (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987; Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988; Entman, 1993).This refinement is important because it suggests that the media's agenda-setting function is not completely independent but is built by various community groups, institutions, and advocates.It also has a basis in the sociology of knowledge that emphasizes processes involved in the social constructions of reality(Berger and Luckman, 1996). This has implications and applications for those in public health who seek to use the mass media to raise the salience and awareness of specific health problems.