CRITICISMS OF THE AGENDA SETTING THEORY OF MEDIA EFFECTS

      The Agenda Setting Theory is a mass communication effects theory which states that the mass media has a huge influence on their audience by selecting the issues or stories they consider newsworthy or  important to be discussed. This implies that the mass media transfer salient issues that sets the agenda of public discussions.  This theory assumes that the issues the mass media lays emphasis on are the ones that the audience would consider as important and therefore pay attention to.
      One criticism against this theory is that the mass media is that people are not the same as the theorists assumes. However some individuals may not pay attention to what is being covered by the media and therefore miss important details. Such a person may discuss issues but they might not be the ones that are propounded by the media. People who are conservative or partial to a particular issue may not be moved by the effect of the media agenda setting. This is due to the fact that such people have already made up their mind about a particular issue and may not be swayed by the agendas set by the media.
        Also, the environment in which the media sets this agenda can be a factor that makes it ineffective. If there is unrest, strife and other factors that weakens the media's ability to set agenda, this theory becomes baseless. For example in a conservative Islamic society, the media in an attempt to promote a Christian value would fail drastically as the environment is not condusive enough.
     The Agenda Setting theory is a great theory which is am improvement of the stereotyped Magic Bullet theory but like anything else it doesn't come without its weaknesses.

THE HYPODERMIC NEEDLE THEORY OF MEDIA EFFECTS LAID BARE!!!!!

The hypodermic needle or magic Bullet theory of the media assumed that the mass media had a powerful, lineal and instant effect on their audience. The theorists argued that all mass media messages had a direct effect on the listeners and said the relationship between the mass media and the audience was like the hypodermic needle. This implies that behaviours and attitudes were injected into the people by the media. The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages designed to trigger a desired response.

Both images used to express this theory (a bullet and a needle) suggest a powerful and direct flow of information from the sender to the receiver. The bullet theory graphically suggests that the message is a bullet, fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's "head". With similarly emotive imagery the hypodermic needle model suggests that media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately influenced by the message. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means of communicating an idea because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the impact of the message.

This model or theory however has a lot of flaws and gaps in its assumptions. It sees the society as composed of fragmented individuals who are subject to powerful and effective propaganda messages which they receive from the media and then reproduce them. However Audiences are not blank sheets of paper on which media messages can be written; members of an audience will have prior attitudes and beliefs, which will determine how effective media messages are. This means that the beliefs and attitudes of individual would determine the effects media messages would have on him/her. For example a child brought up in the strict traditional settings and cultures of Ghana who sees a child talking back to his parents on a TV program would not dare reproduce that action for fear of the consequences of that behaviour.

According to this theory, there is no escape from the effect of the media messages. The people are seen as a sitting duck: passive and waiting for media materials to be shot at them. It assumes that people end up thinking what they are told because the media is the only source of information. This is however far-fetched because school, religion and the society are compelling sources of information and attitude shapers. Most individuals’ attitudes and behaviours are based on the messages or propagandas from their culture, parents, and religious figures. So the mass media is not all powerful and therefore it can be escaped.

It is wrong to assume that just because an audience sees acts of violence in media, they would actually commit them. Of the millions of people who watch violent films, only a small number have carried out acts of violence as a direct result. People regularly exposed to violent media usually grow up to be completely normal people. If there are any effects from media, they only affect a very small number of people. Moreover humans are not copycats and can realize what is wrong and what is right. There are other social and cultural factors in behaviour in which the media are not the basic. People who are influenced by and reproduce violent images on the media usually are not mentally stable.


References
Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (1981). A History of Our Understanding of Mass Communication. In: Davis, D.K. & Baron, S.J. (Eds.). Mass Communication and Everyday Life: A Perspective on Theory and Effects (19-52). Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing.

DeFleur, Melvin L. Theories of Mass Communication New York: Longman Inc., 1989

Severin, Werner J. and James W. Tankard, Jr. Communication Theories -- Origins, Methods and Uses New York: Hastings House, 1979.

Abercrombie 1996, 140

Barker, Martin, & Petley, Julian, eds (2001), Ill Effects: The media/violence debate - Second edition, London: Routledge