Media Industry Hype

Nowadays, people constantly receive information from various sources such as social media, newspapers, films, TV shows, news, and many others. All they refer to the mass media, a common name for all means designed to reach the general public.

One could think that mass media covers all the issues that naturally come to the agenda and transmits unchanged information to the audience, but the reality is quite different.

Some essential processes and technologies shape the content outlets disseminate and what they want to receive from the target groups. Information very often comes deliberately formed in a way that helps to highlight its fundamental message.

Here is where public relations practitioner comes as they operate within mass media to cultivate a good relationship between the organization and its clients with the help of prepared activities and campaigns.

It is essential to understand how mass communication works to be a successful professional. That is why such theories as agenda-setting, framing, and agenda building, which explain how mass media are arranged, provide essential insights to enhance the PR activity of practitioners.

To begin with, the term "agenda-setting" denotes a summary of the news that is relevant at a given time. From a scientific point of view, agenda-setting is a combination of media products, convincing people to consider events or phenomena they met through the mass media channels to be more significant than others.

According to McCombs and Shaw (1972), who conducted one of the first research related to the theory about the 1968 presidential elections, the mass media apply a strong influence on what people consider to be an essential issue. The authors reveal that media outlets used the public agenda to make some issues more notable for readers.

They all strive to follow their goals, which could be fulfilled only by maintaining relationships with the public and target groups such as customers, shareholders, communities, and others.

Media is not so powerful because the media agenda is shaped by so-called "early recognizers" who usually spot raised issues and disperse them to the public (Protess & McCombs, 2016). Of course, public relations practitioners are among those early recognizers who operate in media relations.

Agenda-building, together with framing theory, are essential tools the practitioner can use. According to Cobb and Elder (1971), social processes can influence which issue is necessary for public policymakers.

PR practitioners can exploit agenda-building to reach out to the policymaker during such activities as lobbying or in times of crisis.

When the problem occurs, or the company's CSR is under scrutiny, the practitioner does not have to find the public's attention and media as the coverage is already high. In that case, the work of a PR agent is to deliver the perspective of the organization to the journalists to shape the angle of view a little bit.

During such times, journalists are keener to use the information subsidies prepared by practitioners, and the importance of the issue becomes a part of the agenda-building process.

Moreover, a practitioner should make needed responses on behalf of an organization that helps define some issues of the event. In that case, the role of PR becomes more than basic agenda-setting requires.

The manager must be involved in the agenda-building process and use attribute agenda-setting (Sweetser & Brown, 2008). It is so because practitioners have many tools to influence the plan, such as press conferences and press releases that become the freshest and reliable sources for outlets to put something on the agenda (Zoch & Molleda, 2006).

The truth is that even the most popular and influential media outlets such as the New York Times write half of their content based only on press conferences and press releases, despite having investigative personnel. It seems that practitioners, in that case, have a chance to become gatekeepers, someone who decides what to put on the agenda.

PR professionals have to maintain warm relations with journalists and editors to fulfill this chance, while they are usually interested in cooperating to receive needed information.

Such ties give a possibility for practitioners to propel their organizations on the agenda when it is required.

The main difference between the theories is that framing deals with second-level agenda-setting what means that frames help shape how the public thinks about the particular issue.

Frames are abstract concepts that serve to organize or structure social meanings. It implies that framing can persuade the reader to join a specific side of the issue and determines how people process the information.

People look at the information through their frameworks what are natural and social ones. Those frames define how public process, interpret and communicate the received data.