EOTO 2

 Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting, two very hand- in-hand theories. Firstly, Agenda Setting can be taking quiet literally. It is when the media attempts to direct viewers to thinking or believing a certain narrative, unbeknownst to them. There two levels of Agenda Setting, the first level is when the media attempts to grab your attention. This is done by playing towards emotions and personal feelings, where they will provide material in a way that draws you in. Then, the second level is once they have your attention, they will tell you, or guide you, on how this impacts you and how you should feel about. We can see this in the headline used in politics. Rarely is the headline a simple explanation of what is happening, but rather it plays at the drama associated with politics. This may come off as clearly biased, but that is the point. If they draw you in with bias, you will begin to agree and believe whatever narrative is being pushed. This is explained for the two ways that agenda setting works. The first is that the media controls reality. Meaning that whatever a news group chooses to show to its viewers is how the viewers will view the world. The second is that the media directly affect a topics importance; more coverage equals more thought which means more care from viewers. This can be seen when looking at Ukraine and Russia. When the media was heavily focused on the invasion and growing scene, social media began to focus on war, and it felt like war was coming. But barely weeks later, with the invasion raging on into a nasty and heinous state, the news has died down and the big talks are many other things. Like Johnny Deep and Amber Heard, or Elon Musk buying twitter. These are our front pages. Another quick example is how it might seem that covid is gone, as it is rarely in the news now, but covid is still a threat if you look hard enough.

                Gatekeeping goes right with this. It is when an individual or group controls access to goods and services but particularly to information and people with power. Like Agenda Setting, this takes a lot of forms in the media, and often in the same places. A lot of news sources have been accused and targeting certain media to one side of politics or denying certain information to be shared on their network. This means that their viewers may never see two sides of a story. Gatekeeping is especially dangerous when it comes to false information, or a heavily biased narrative. This means that a news group give a significant amount of its viewers a skewed and biased mindset as well.