Strengths and Weaknesses of the Agenda SettingTheory

            The Agenda Setting Theory discusses how the mass media gives prominence to issues in our society. That is; how  the media manufactures information (by gathering, processing, andpackaging it), and presenting it to the mass audience in a way that they will such iformation as more important than others. Under this theory, the mass audience have a choice in picking between many salient stories provided by the media. It was propounded by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw. One of the strengths of this theory is that, the media helps the audience to know what is going on at places which, the audience do not know. It is also fair to know that, the media have personnels (journalists), who are trained in all fields of work and life.This anable them to be able to access and assess information well (from all walks of life), and to present accurate accounts of issues, regardless of where they are coming from. Therefore, issues  that are sailient to the media, are mostly of higher importance when looked at from actualities.
            Under this thoery, there are the media's agenda, the public agenda, and the government agenda. This is where the weakness of the theory lies. The media may not publish a public agenda because it is not salient to them. Thus the mass audience may have an important issue at hand but the media will not publish it because it may lack the values of personality and prominence (where no popular figure is involved). At this point, the media continues to propagates their agenda and that of the government (probably because it sells and has important personalities. The mass audience, having been exposed to the media's agenda, will turn to disciss it and thier own agenda soon fades out. The media, by the use of their tools such as priming and framing, make unpopular, the public agenda. Thus the media have that power to choose for the audience, what they should think and discuss about.