Set the agenda. Control the populace.

 Imagine you’re the leader of a mid-sized fantasy town. It has a central market and church square where most of the town’s gathering takes place. A series of reports have reached your desk about blighted crops in the immediate vicinity. In your daily meeting with the town crier, do you ask that he: 

a) make no mention of blight

b) mention that scattered reports have come in, but that evidence is questionable. Folks should remain calm.

c) confirm blight reports and encourage customers to stock up on food (especially from the stalls who are current on their taxes)

d) direct folks to the band of performers who will take stage later tonight

Congratulations, no matter what you chose, you’re an agenda-setter. Or, at least, you’re attempting to be. Agenda-setting theory concerns itself with the power and manner in which media shape public conversations and sentiments. We can’t possibly be expected to know what’s going on with everything in the whole world, or even our whole town. That would be impossible.  And when you really think about it, your life is probably not dominated by more than (at most) a couple dozen issues. The topics that we truly are about are probably even fewer than that.

Most villagers are going about their lives, with their own concerns. Each one of us, indeed, has our own personal agenda. For me, it’s the topics most salient to me most of the time: my family, my students, my homework, D&D, my household.

If we expand the scope of our concern to the level of a town, region, nation, or multiverse, we have the public agenda. These include the topics of greatest concern to the general citizen. In my campaign world, the public agenda is: police brutality and militarization, political instability, drugs, and dangerous new technology. 

A quick scroll through your social media feed also gives you a version of the media agenda, understood as the relative importance and prominence topics take in the news media. And what makes that feed so unique in human history is its nature as a constructed media agenda, made just for you. It might look like what you see, but it might not. As I write this (12/12/2021), FDA-approved eyedrops promise to alleviate the need for glasses, “Biden promotes democracy”, and a news anchor is leaving Fox News. A check of the Associated Press news headlines, to which I am not signed in, reveals tornado destruction, satellite images of Iran, and the same news about the Fox anchor. The basic assumption of agenda-setting is that as the public consumes media, they consume the media’s agenda, and that becomes what the public talks about, thinks about, and thinks something should be done about.

Exactly as the fictional town crier in your campaign, the media tell us what is news-worthy, merely by speaking of it. In so doing, they shape how we see the world, how we weigh the importance of issues, and how issues go together.

First, the town crier (or perhaps the power behind your fictional world’s printing press), determines the position and length of each topic. Prominence is easily equated with importance. I can infer from the news today that the destruction caused by tornados was serious and that many people died and were injured. I expect that in a conversation with a peer that I’ll be able to talk about the tornados, and they’ll know what I mean.

Next, the media help us make sense of which parts and pieces of a topic are most important. From our example above, if you selected Option b, your crier would make clear that the important part of the message is not that there is a blight, but that people should remain calm.  If you selected Option c, the emphasis is different (even though the topic remains the same). “Stock up! Buy from Hershfield’s Farms!” Town criers, newspapers and all other media do more than merely make topics available for consideration. In sum, media frame stories (and individuals) so that different attributes are selected, emphasized, excluded, and elaborated upon. In practice, of course, this makes sense. It’s impossible to tell a story completely free of bias. Simply the choice of when to begin and when to conclude a story is a form of framing and bias-creation.

Third, let’s continue with our town crier.  Compare these three announcements:

1. “Blight reported at several farms. All are encouraged to pray and attend church at sundown for a repentance service.”

2. “Blight reported at several farms. Elder Barzo has wisely recommended all hold themselves to two meals a day until the source has been found.”

3. “Blight has been reported at several farms. The generous Elder Barzo offers 50 gold for anyone discovering its source.”

The media tell us what topics go together. What is the issue that most naturally goes with the information about the farms’ blight? Religion, food stores, or a job?  By these associations, the media help to organize ideas together for their consumers. 

The media agenda can be fueled by any number of sources (both in-game and out).  Politicians, public relations announcements, scandals, influencers, and viral videos might all serve to spark a media storm. Sometimes the associations media make are partisan and intentionally biased in their presentation. (Did you catch earlier when Biden was framed as “promoting democracy” as opposed to “droning on to a listless audience”?)  

We each have a need to understand the world around us, what social scientists call a need for orientation. We are driven to understand current events, so that we can orient ourselves toward them. This is especially true if we think a given topic is relevant to us or if we feel a lot of uncertainty about it. 

As I reflect on this theory, there is an antiquated notion that repeatedly pops up: we are free to choose our media. I think that in our current digital landscape this fundamental idea is up for debate. If I know that there are multiple media agendas, I should be able to freely choose from them, but those aren’t the news stories that I am delivered. Not all stories are equally accessible to me, or to you, or to your grandparents. Combined with our own personal experiences, we use the media to construct our image of the world (just as Cultivation Theory posits). 

And here you thought that the humble town crier was a mundae NPC. Instead, they might just be the BBEG.