This lecture covered agenda setting, and what its effects can be upon society. "The Mass Media" (if treated as a comglomerate unified concept) cannot control what is discussed in a society, but they can prefer certain events over others, and therefore ascribe them more salience then others. This article, for instance, was considered a joke by most, pre Z day, and was therefore effaced completely from the public intelligence.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-13713798
As media is a commodity thats needs its viewers to justify its existence, (both commercial and public models) inevitably some issues will be silenced to play to what an audience wants to hear. "Agenda setting is not always the diabolical plan by journalists to control the minds of the public but an inadvertent by-product of the nesessity to focus the news" (McCoombs 04) Regardless of intent, as an institution that projects itself as accurate, media bodies have a duty to their viewers to observe that this doesn't happen (too much). Otherwise they lose legitimacy as sources of information (if they get found out). Within day 5 of the apocalypse, people stopped relying on the media's reports of " aggrieved rioting mobs" as they themselves knew by this stage that their adversaries were no longer human. In an attempt to quell rising fears of the supernatural nature of an undead uprising, most media's were portraying this phenomenon as an essentially human disturbance. This concept of media control is explained well by Noam Chomsky "The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don't bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in...anything, so long as it isnt serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that." What most likely started as a policy to limit panic and therefore crimes like looting (which distracts the "big guys" from doing their jobs) eventually ended up spreading misinformation and more panic as people weren't aware of the limitations of an undead horde.
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| The Media largely avoided spreading "alarmist" information |
Of course,suggesting that everyone was impinged upon by this lack of information is inaccurate, as it suggests that people are homogenous automatrons that believe everything they hear. This is the "magic bullet" concept, that the media directly "injects" the misinformation into an unquestioning audience. It's limited because it fails to encompass the phenomenon of free will and independent thought, or the influence of other sources of information. Some people were familiar with Max Brooks "The Zombie Survival Guide" which indicates (as mentioned in this lecture) that people are only suceptable to an imbalanced version of events if they only consult one source.
Agenda setting can often be caused by a cyclical process where media outlets choose to discontinue unpopular content, due to a lack of audience engagement. Then this audience apathy (which is a direct result of the information available to them) drives more adjustments by the media, and so on. Information about diseases like AIDS and developing country's famines (argueably) passed into obscurity in this manner. It is the reason why preparedness for a zombie apocalypse fell far behind in the medias agenda, as compared to politicians gaffes, or the latest celebrity scandal. We are living in a world impacted by the repercussions of media that chose to broadcast what was financially viable over what was morally mandatory.
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