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What the public knows about the state of social and political affairs at any
given time is largely a product of media gatekeeping wherein mass media outlets
make the deliberate decision on what issues and events to report, how to report it,
and to what extent should it be covered and dissected. That is why the media is
type of information they let the public access. This practice of filtering of events,
stories and aspects to publish is quite unavoidable given the limited print space and
The media have an indirect, yet powerful and pervasive, effect on public
tested by McCombs and Shaw (1972) in order to figure out what factors or
circumstances affect media agenda and how does the media influence the public
and the policy-makers. Having satisfied themselves with the knowledge that media
focused inward with the origins, components, and nature of media agenda.
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Media outlets now have the ability to present news in more creative ways
because of the advent of the internet and therefore social media and online
journalism. This has greatly affected how people consume information sparking an
unprecedented conversion from offline to online editions of news. What makes the
are seen as an open market where everyone is enjoined to discuss ideas and
opinions. Moreover, the web offers people an accessible and inexpensive means of
of modern society via the television, radio, print and online media. The emergence
simultaneously. People depend and rely more and more on information gathered by
individuals whom they have never met (Carter 2013). This increased reliance on
general information in order to scrutinize the people running the country. Their
personal stories can be used as different lenses in news coverage. Framing a public
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official allows news stories to focus on a specific angle that can be used by the
public as a reference point to which all subsequent information is judged upon. This
media practice operates by making certain aspects of stories more salient than
revealed that the media focused on candidates image and viability than on their
stance on political issues. The same study also found out that gender still mattered
as a point of discussion affecting a female candidate more than her male counterpart
(OGara 2009). In this sense, the media breaks one big issue into chunks of
manageable pieces of information, and selects a few pieces to feed the public. As a
which the public accepts as truth, it is increasingly important to account for how
both Philippine-based online news portals, and how they utilized framing in
to objectively label the issues covered by the select media outlets that defined the
first 15 days in office of the top public official. It also maps any patterns, trends or
The research uses Agenda Setting Theory (AST) as the foundation for the
overall research design of the study. It explains how the media functions in
effort to provide theoretical insight on the relationship between the media and the
public. More specifically, it attempts to explain the correlation between the amount
of media coverage towards a particular story and the level of importance (salience)
that is attached by the public to such a story. AST provides a clear route towards
understanding the nature of media contents that appeal to the public by calling their
attention towards issues and events through its recurring coverage in different
media platforms.
book The Press and Foreign Policy, the press may not be successful much of the
time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its
readers what to think about. What Cohen wrote was later referenced in the research
of McCombs and Shaw. That is, the information that the media distributes become
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the basis for public discussion, decisions, and attitudes. If they release abnormally
large amounts of material regarding one subject, that subject tends to dominate
Rogers and Dearing (1988) proposed a linear approach towards media and
its effects. The media agenda affects the public agenda and in turn affects the policy
agenda. Assuming that public opinion directly affects public policy makes setting
the public agenda an important media effect (Reese 1990). The focus of this study,
however, is towards the nature and content of agenda creation within the media
itself. Effects on public opinion remain important but in different aspects. Reese
(1990) assumes that the shift away from the public is attuned to an elite-centred
view of political influence which basically means that the public is not a substantial
coverage is one factor that have lead scholars to examine the organizational and
selection of specific stories and television networks are predictably the most
topical, proportions of news (McCombs & Shaw 1972). Similarities on stories may
dependent in the source selection, whether quoted directly or not. The analysis of
news sources goes beyond the strictly topical description of content and begs the
question of whose agenda is being promoted. Molotch and Lester (1974) argued
that events in and of themselves are occurrences which sources promote into the
news. The notion that the media adheres to objective reality is rather obsolete given
how reality is already subjectively filtered even before it reaches the media and
Valkenburg (2000) in their analysis of national print and television news covering
the European Union summit of the heads of the member states. They identified five
economic consequences.
The first level focuses on the issues, events, or political figures of the news
content and the amount of news coverage they receive. These are generally termed
as objects and are the unit of analysis in the first level. It is used in the same sense
as the psychological term attribute object or the thing toward which our attention
Objects can either be in the form of public issues such as drugs, human rights,
(valence). Visibility can be further broken down into attention frequency of news
stories of an object and prominence location and length of stories in print media,
The second level focuses on the frames and framing devices found in the
news content. Ghanem (1997) argues that framing has several dimensions: the
attributes pertain to what is included in the frame while affective attributes concern
the tone of the frame, may it be positive, negative, or neutral. The cognitive
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attributes are used to identify the dominant frame of the story. This research adopted
issues to uncover the dominant frame used in the news articles: conflict, human
1. What are the issues that can be drawn out from the news content?
4. How are frames exhibited in language use and its implications to the
portrayal of Duterte?
Inquirer and Rappler. The corpus of this study is particularly limited to news articles
published online by the two media outlets. Specifically, the corpus dealt with the
President. The news articles used in this study were the ones which appeared within
a three-week time frame, which started from June 25, 2016 to July 15, 2016.
In addition, only articles that mention Duterte in the body of the text are
included in the analysis. All the articles were accessed through the public online
archives of the two news websites. A total of two hundred eighty-two (282) articles
were analysed in this study. The analysis was limited only to the textual contents
of the news articles. Images were not included in the analysis of this study.
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the conclusion that media does affect public attitudes and behaviors, minimally in
some situations and strongly in others. This study will, therefore, be a significant
endeavour in guaranteeing that the media is made responsible with what and how
In politics, the media has an important role of levelling the playing field and
keeping it balance across platforms with equal amounts of coverage for all parties
and issues. Studying the production of media agenda provides insight on how
consumer because they are the ones who are affected by media outlets strategic
audience to have a fuller grasp of how the media industry works because they form
their opinions based on what they absorb. If they are informed of the dynamics of
reporting, they can be more critical with their perceptions and choices.
The following terms are defined as they are used in the material to facilitate
Agenda. List of issues and events that are viewed in a point in time ranked
Bias. This happens when the media favors one side rather than providing
president.
included.
Internal Politics. Political conflicts between and among parties and the
also included.
Issues. Also known as Objects. These include but are not limited to ideas,
Other Social Issues. Issues other than the ones previously listed. Includes
about the acquisition of new military equipment, the Abu Sayyaf and