1. COMM 112: Communication Theory
Week 10  Chapter 7: The Construction of News
COMM 112: Communication Theory

2. What is it? Is it possible?
Objectivity
What is it?
Is it possible?

3. Manufactured representations
What we read, view, or listen to is not a neutral account of the world, but one or more particular versions, or representations

4. News representations of selected events
News Filtering
Event 1
Event 3
Event 2
Selection
Construction
News representations of selected events
Agenda Setting Theory
Framing
Theory

5. News makers, gatekeepers
Who makes decisions about what issues are important to you? Journalists and others must select which events to cover and which to exclude- a process that is largely invisible to the public. By making such decision, news organizations act as gatekeepers.

6. Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw
Agenda Setting Theory
The mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of issues on other news agenda to the public agenda.
Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw

7. Agenda Setting Theory 1968 study, 1972 published “Chapel Hill Study”
Found a correlation between the amount of coverage devoted to an issue in the media and the level of importance attributed to it by the public

8. Media Agenda
The pattern of news coverage across major print and broadcast media as measured by the prominence and length of stories.

9. News Values
Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1973) identified eight criteria by which we determine
what events to cover:
Frequency (aka, timeliness)
Amplitude (aka, significance)
Clarity (easy to understand)
Cultural proximity (ethnocentrism)
Predictability (fits our expectations)
Unexpectedness (aka, novelty)
Continuity (aka, recurrence)
Composition (“fits” with other news)

10. What is considered “most important?”
Must be one of the first three stories in 30 minute newscast
Must be “headlined” at the top of the hour on 24-hr. news
Any story that runs longer than 45 seconds is considered “important”
TELEVISION NEWS

11. What is considered “most important?”
NEWSPAPERS
Headlines ‘above the fold’
If significant art accompanies
Three or more columns (or over 15 column inches)
Corresponding attention on op-ed page

12. What is considered “most important?”
ONLINE
Top of page
Multiple links
Imagery
Section header

13. Limitations of Agenda Setting?
Who sets the agenda?
Business interests?
Lobbyists interest?
Public relations people?
Awareness of audience?
informational needs?

14. Erving Goffman: Frame Analysis Journalists construct news by deciding:
Framing Theory
Erving Goffman: Frame Analysis
Journalists construct news by deciding:
what facts to include or emphasize
what sources to interview/include
what words and images to use
These choices combine to create a frame.
Frames:
supports the story
determines what belongs inside
tells the audience what is important

15. Framing Theory

16. Framing Theory

17. Framing

18. What was the media’s agenda today?
Class Exercise
What was the media’s agenda today?

19. Next Time:
Teach-a-Theory workshop!