This week in Comm, we talked about two theories; The Cultivation Analysis Theory and Agenda Setting. After a brief overview of the two theories in my notebook, I realized that the two are actually interrelated in a way but before that, let's look at the two concepts individually.

Cultivation Analysis is basically about how the media, television in particular, cultivates concepts of social reality. It creates and magnifies certain realities that were never real in the first place. The source of the artificial reality is unknown, it could be from the media itself or a mere mirror of the viewer's and their tastes (what I talked about in my last blog). The point is television brings about a whole new reality. It's most probably because television is so visual and auditory that people could almost relate to what's happening. You know what they say about seeing is believing? That's very true. From the very prime of our lives when we were on Thomas the Train, Blues Clues and all that kindergarten stuff when we thought Santa Clause was real to the peak of our perceptive ability where when we see certain stuff happening on the news,we instantly become prejudiced about the social context that news was involved in. We see the war on terror and we think all Muslims are bad. And just recently, we see incompetent policemen fail to save the lives of a dozen Chinese tourists and the Chinese instantly socially stigmatize us as a people. Let's face it, we can all be judgmental and prejudiced especially when we gaze upon something so picturesque, emotionally unstable and critical.

The other theory, the Agenda-Setting Theory, is about how the media imposes itself upon the viewers. It selects topics and material, inserts arguments and opinions whether unknowingly or intently and allows that biased look on certain topics to spread and circulate among its viewers. How it's a three step cycle is very appalling. Who knew that the media, which reflects current events, changed the public and public sectors whose motions it reports to the people. It's confusing, but basically, blame it on the Media. How it effects change is because of the injection of opinions, points and arguments that shift the public perception of the material in one way or the other. And 'people' is a very powerful thing. When I heard about the politics in the media in class, I instantly though of Jambi Madrigal. In the presidential race, everyone counted on Noynoy, ERAP, Manny or Gibo. Why? Because they had the most publicity. Everyone was advocating them. I know it isn't clear, but their advocacy actually strengthened the bias. Let's not look at it as a 'candidate vs candidate' thing but as a 'well-publicized candidate vs the nobody candidates' thing. All the other presidential candidates were thought of as jokes. Even for me and my friends who were in fact Ateneans. When someone would ask who we would vote for and someone let out a 'Jamby', we'd all laugh. It's bad, I know. But that's all thanks to media exposure. Or lack of it on Jamby's part. Moreover, you ever see the presidential candidates' commercials? Let's face it, the top four contenders had the best commercials. They were very clean cut, inspiring and cutting edge. I think this theory still holds true up to today even with the user-generated content of media. Why? There was no change in the effects of the media or what it did to the viewers. Only a change in the 'who'. I mean, users may not be big media corporations, but they are still made of minds set to kill. So there is not much change in effect. Only the partition of who controls content and arguments. After all, media corporations and small time users are all people made of body and a super massive, capable mind.

How the two theories come together is very simple. The media controls content and inserts opinions and instantly, the people perceive these as 'real' or worse, their own. Take for example the presidential race. The media controlled who had the most air time and who had the prettiest infomercials and best interviews and the people perceived the character on screen as the 'real' presidential candidates. It's pretty simple really. MEDIA IS A POWERFUL THING; maybe even more powerful than the people. Or just as with the continually growing user-generated media culture. Or the media and the people could be becoming one. Media or people or both, whoever puts the stuff on the newspapers, on the radios and on the internet are very powerful people that change minds, policies, societies, governments, international relations and so on and so forth. (Allow me to swear, because I love this line from the movie, 'Fight Club') The people we're after are the people we depend on. So do not f*** with them.