Setting Agendas for Mass Media

Communication is obviously an important function for museums. Engagement with mass media is one of the indispensable ways for museums to communicate with their publics. The concept of mass media arose in the early twentieth century and refers to information dissemination accessible to all in principle, including newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the Internet, and others (McQuail and Deuze 2020: 16–19). In this article, mass media mainly includes the traditional mainstream media, while social media on the Internet will not be discussed. For many people, mass media is still an essential channel for up-to-date information nowadays. In recent years, the national and global mass media has paid increasing attention to museums in China, and their reports on traditional festivals, special events, museum development and International Museum Day have achieved great prominence. However, inaccuracies and negligence in mainstream media reports about museums still occur from time to time, as seen in the case of CCTV News where an author of tomb-raiding novels was invited to a live show to discuss the archaeological excavation of the Sanxingdui Site, Sichuan (The Paper 2021). While this incident invites criticism of the professional standards of journalists, it also raises skepticism about the absence of archaeologists and museum professionals in mass communication. Are museums absent from the communication process? Are museums acting as gatekeepers when reporting on relevant content? What is the relationship between museums and mass media? In this article, I argue that “agenda-setting theory” helps to address these issues.