Agenda Setting

The concept of agenda setting helps me make sense of what exactly the media wants us to pay attention to, such as the popular website perezhiltion.com which is constantly spitting out "news" about everyones favorite celebrity's ups and downs.

Agenda setting is a process in which news and public figures are the ones who ultimately shape the current media. However,  how the media chooses to spend most of their time on one particular story or individual is based on the audience. So in other words the audience is one of the factors as to why many of these news pieces continue to circulate for long periods of time.

For example, Perez Hilton has made an entire career on reporting celebrity mishaps and the drama that follows it on his website perezhilton.com. His readers, however, are the ones who keep certain stories going as they frequently provide feedback on his comments section. In turn Perez continues to dig for new dirt on subjects his viewers find particularly interesting as well as bring up new topics he believes his viewers would appreciate.