Competency

Analyze the evolution of social media standards and practices and how it relates to the potential need for regulation of social media, along with ethical concerns.

Instructions

Many people get all or most of their news from social media. For this project, we are going to be analyzing the content of several social media sites from major news sources, paying particular attention to social media standards, practices, and regulation.

Where do you get your news? Start by going to one major news site’s FACEBOOK page (CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc.) Try another different news site’s TWITTER feed, and third choose another social media site such as Reddit, Pinterest, or another (preferably one you use, if there is one).

Analyze the sites in a 3-5 page total paper. In your analysis, be sure to include the following:

• General introduction to your thoughts on the social media you studied
• Several social media practices you observed (e.g., what gets the most interaction?)
• Examples of regulation of social media and discussion of such regulation (Is it good, bad, or indifferent? How could circumstances change the situation?)
• Analysis of ethical concerns (e.g., can you see examples of bias?)
• What is the culture of each site – how do users seem to respond to questionable items? (Is racism or open mocking ignored or pursued?)
• Conclusion of your findings

Agenda-setting theory describes the “ability (of the news media) to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda”.^[1] Agenda-setting theory was formally developed by Max McCombs and Donald Shaw in a study on the 1968 American presidential election. Agenda setting is a social science theory; it also attempts to make predictions. The theory also suggests that media has a great influence to their audience by instilling what they should think instead of what they think. That is, if a news item is covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue as more important.

Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media. As well, agenda-setting describes the way that media attempts to influence viewers, and establish a hierarchy of news prevalence. Two basic assumptions underlie most researches on agenda-setting:

1. the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and shape it;
2. media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.

These core statements were established by measuring the changes in salience through the use of surveys with the presence of more frequent news coverage.^[2][3]

One of the most critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is the time frame for this phenomenon. Different media have different agenda-setting potential. From the perspective of agenda setting, the analysis of the relationship between traditional media and new virtual spaces has witnessed growing momentum.^[4]

In the 1968 “Chapel Hill study”, McCombs and Shaw demonstrated a strong correlation coefficient (r > .9) between what 100 residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina thought was the most important election issue and what the local and national news media reported was the most important issue.^[5] By comparing the salience of issues in news content with the public’s perceptions of the most important election issue, McCombs and Shaw were able to determine the degree to which the media determines public opinion. Since the 1968 study, published in a 1972 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly, more than 400 s