Mass Media and Policymaking

2010

At the risk of being accused of gross oversimplification, we suggest that the role of the media in the public policy process can be characterized by four distinct theories. All of the theories fundamentally focus on the interactions between 'the media' collectively characterized, and 'the politicians', again collectively characterized. We can summarize them as follows: Influence Theory: The media tell the politicians what to think. Agenda Setting Theory: The media tell the politicians what to think about. Indexing Theory: The politicians tell the media what to write about. In this paper, we propose a fourth characterization: Detection Theory: Politicians and the media struggle to identify, characterize, and prioritize complex multiple information streams.

you will have to see whether media have a given role in making policies or not

Media is Sometimes called the "fourth branch of government," the mass media serve a number of functions within the context of government policy making. Through media, people are able to get informed and be updated about what is happening around them and the world and make judgments regarding various issues.

Contemporary media and political studies have produced a huge amount of books, articles and analyses about the influence media have upon politics, but there are still very few works devoted to these specific issues: which way, to what extent, and with what result can media coverage influence particular policies and political decision making. There are also very few studies that analyze these questions using empirical data. The proposed study combines the theoretical basis of agenda-setting theory, i.e. the interrelationships between media and policy agendas, with empirical detail using statistical and qualitative content analysis. The main assumption is grounded on the opinion that the previous model, in which media agenda generally follows policy agenda, is changing to reflect the growing role of media in making politics.

2013

The media have a unique power in any political system. This power stems both from their role as key sources of information about cultures, people, and events on a regular basis and their multiple functions in politics. As studies of media effects have demonstrated, the media wield an enormous influence on the audiences' attitudes, opinions, and behaviours. With the complexity of societies, speed of events, and enormous diversity of information and news, as well as the limited ability of audiences to follow up on information, the media have the power to formulate our understanding of the world and affect our behaviours. The media help correlate our response to the challenges and opportunities in society to reach consensus on actions and to transmit the culture of our society to new members. Also, the media's power relies on the relationship between media and policymakers.

Public Opinion Quarterly, 1972

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In this article, we review two research programs that could benefit from a more extensive dialogue: media and policy studies of agenda setting. We focus on three key distinctions that divide these two robust research programs: the agenda(s) under investigation (public versus policymaking), the typical level of analysis (individual versus systemic), and framing effects (individual versus macro level). We map out these differences and their impacts on understanding the policy process. There is often a policy disconnect in the agenda-setting studies that emanate from the media tradition. Though interested in the effects of political communication, scholars from this tradition often fail to link the media to policy outcomes, policy change, or agenda change. Policy process scholars have increasingly rejected simple linear models in favor of models emphasizing complex feedback effects. This suggests a different role for the media-one of highlighting attributes in a multifaceted political reality and involvement in positive feedback cycles. Yet, political communication scholars have for the most part been insensitive to these potentials. We advocate a shared agenda centering on the role of the media in the political system from an information processing framework, emphasizing the reciprocal effects of each on the other.

Journalism, 2020

In this study, the researcher examines some of the key arguments in the scholarship on media-government relations by analyzing press reporting of four different events in the securitized context of Pakistan. For this purpose, framing analysis of one elite English newspaper Dawn and one popular Urdu newspaper daily Jang was conducted. Overall, the results are mixed. The tragic event of Salala check post did not result in critical coverage. On the other hand, policy uncertainty on participation in the Yemeni conflict produced critical coverage. In case of Kashmir conflict, the broader political consensus was responsible for supportive coverage. Similarly, the unpopular step of giving extension to army chief was mainly reported in neutral fashion with some procedural criticism.

Comparative Political Studies, 2007

Do mass media determine or codetermine the political agenda? Available answers on this question are mixed and contradictory. Results vary in terms of the type of political agenda under scrutiny, the kind of media taken into account, and the type of issues covered. This article enhances knowledge of the media's political agenda-setting power by addressing each of these topics, drawing on extensive longitudinal measures of issue attentiveness in media, Parliament, and government in Belgium in the 1990s. Relying on time-series, cross-section analyses, the authors ascertain that although Belgium is characterized by a closed political system, the media do to some extent determine the agenda of Parliament and government. There is systematic variation in media effects, however. Newspapers exert more influence than does television, Parliament is somewhat more likely to follow media than government, and media effects are larger for certain issues (law and order, environment) than for oth...