Setting the Media’s Agenda: A Power Balance Perspective

This chapter reviews the burgeoning number of studies seeking to explain what sets the media’s agenda, and integrates them within a power balance framework. The concept of power is used in a critical evaluation of the agenda-setting metaphor and its limitations when expanded to include influences on media content. The organizational perspective, taken by much “media sociology” research, has examined power relations within organizations. This approach restricts the power of journalists, who are viewed as constrained by bureaucratic structures. Alternatively, journalists may be viewed as agents of the organization’s power in their dealings with other institutions. These power relations between the media and sources can be examined at individual, organizational, and institutional levels and are discussed in terms of interdependency and symbiosis. A media organization may manifest its power through its ability to define a reality through reporting and structuring of information, in spite of efforts by involved sources to dictate a different reality. Other indicators of both source and media power are specified, and the implications of different balances of media-source power are discussed. Treating power as a series of changing relationships helps avoid the tendency to regard media or sources as inherently and statically powerful. The powerful can manipulate the media, but under some conditions media assert their own power and agenda.