. Since the audience deems the cover story as more newsworthy than the missing cat on page 12, the audience will believe that gun violence in schools is a crucial, contemporary issue. This causes the public to set gun violence in schools as a current public agenda (Baran 302). The theory of agenda setting has its positives and negatives. The theory itself is relevant to the way our society perceives critical social issues. Every time there is an airplane crash, the media jump to reveal the story. They describe all of the details surrounding the crash. The focus might be on that one particular airplane crash, but the media associate other airplane crashes with the one they are already focusing on. This causes the majority of the newscast to be devoted to airplane crashes. This particular agenda that the media has set has now become the main concern for the public. The public literally feels as though there is an epidemic of plane crashes. However, there are also negative aspects to the agenda-setting theory. Critics dissent that the theory is too situational specific. It seems to only be rooted in news and political campaigns (Baran 303). I disagree. I feel that agenda setting is relevant in all forms of mass media to a certain degree. In radio, although it is not relevant in setting certain tastes in music format, it does set standards for what the public deem as popular. When a radio station plays a certain song, it is very well received by the listener. In conclusion, this can be thought of as a form of agenda setting because the radio station is setting public opinion through their choice of music. The one problem that I see with agenda-setting theory is the problem of the chicken and the egg. Which comes first. Do the media set agendas that the public incorporate into their scheme of public agenda or do the public establish their own agenda only to have the media reinforce their beliefs through agenda setting? ...
