One of the more subtle techniques of exercising power is the agenda-setting power. It is the determination of focal points, which can be applied to many different scenarios, such as political discussions, educational curricula, news coverage and public contracting. Simultaneously, it constitutes a limitation of potential options in each scenario. When there are only a few selected points on any agenda, the potential outcomes from those agendas are naturally limited, as well. Moreover, the way agenda points are presented is another aspect of agenda-setting power. By doing so, the direction of the conversation or the solution-finding process is even more narrowed. Naturally, agenda-setting power can be highly harmful for the creation of new ideas and solutions. In non-devletist politics, agenda-setting power is deliberately applied in various policy fields to steer political dynamics. Especially in contemporary democratic systems, applying agenda-setting, next to other tactics, has become an integral part of influencing populations; this is perceived to be necessary to realise individual interests while upholding the popular perception of societal sovereignty. In other words, non-devletist democracies assume that people must be influenced in ways that retain a popular illusion of self-determination. Among other strategies, agenda-setting techniques help to engage in such primitive political practices. In this article, we analyse the functioning of agenda-setting power, examine some examples, and ultimately provide you with methods to overcome the detrimental effects of agenda-setting in politics.
Cognitive Biases as a Cornerstone of Agenda-Setting
Non-devletist political systems and dynamics as inferior ways to organise societies, are manipulative at their core. Their structure is directed towards individual and material purposes, and not towards the ultimate purpose that societies must pursue as collective entities. Non-devletist politics treats the citizen not as a capable partner but as an uninformed consumer. As non-devletist political systems aim to extract maximum material value from their citizens, we could argue that they are rather economic entities than political ones. Whenever an entity aims to extract material or financial value from its counterpart, it needs to convince this very counterpart that there is a fair exchange between the two parties. To reproducibly extract even more financial means, the customer ideally believes that he himself is in need of the offered service at the offered price. Accordingly, non-devletist political systems utilise communicative tools to create this belief in citizens, who are treated as consumist economic individuals, or simply: customers. Like any other economic entity, the non-devletist system focuses the application of such tools at the most efficient points of its targets: their cognitive weaknesses. Among the many weaknesses we have as a species are several cognitive biases. Our minds have tendencies to automatically do certain things because those automatisms helped us secure our biological survival in natural circumstances. When confronted with various non-devletist states and other economic entities, those cognitive biases open possibilities for manipulation.
Availability bias
Agenda-setting power relies on the cognitive fallacies of the availability bias and prominence bias. The first bias (availability bias) is the reduction of thought processes when confronted with available content and/or solutions. The human mind tends to circumvent critical and creative thinking processes when information and solutions are already available. Moreover, development and innovation are often limited to the related scope of the available solutions, approaches and perspectives, seamlessly playing into the results of agenda-setting power. As mentioned above, agenda-setting power is exercised by limiting the topics within a field and framing those topics in ways that point towards the desired direction. The availability bias is a tendency to accept the points on the set agenda as important and true, simply because someone else already made a plan. It is a convenient shortcut for humans to avoid the work of understanding the range of topics across knowledge fields, pursuing depth within a certain field, filtering out the most important elements in accordance with a sound measurement and, finally, mobilising others to expand the ideational scope and produce true and productive outcomes.
Prominence Bias
This is then reinforced by the prominence bias, which is the overvaluation of ideas, things and people based on how many people are perceived to know about the respective idea, thing or person. Many products or services are financially very successful because of this cognitive fallacy. The perceived popularity and/or prominence of something serves as a form of social proof of the value of that very something. Accordingly, those products and services can be priced at much higher profit rates as the discrepancy between production value and perceived value increases with growing prominence. Similar to the availability bias, the prominence bias is a cognitive shortcut. Instead of spending time and effort to determine the value of something and justifying it in the context of their own consumption preferences, those steps are outsourced to an unknown mass. By simply using the degree of prominence of something, humans tend to circumvent the process of making a normative assessment of the value of something. In non-devletist democracies, this is the most commonly utilised bias there is, as such flawed political systems include the process “voting campaigns”. When political parties and politicians campaign for votes, they essentially rely on the prominence bias by trying to be more present within the public domain and political discourse. Before convincing anyone, their primary goal is to be present, visible and prominent. Agenda-setting power is reinforced through the application of this bias. Since the points on the agenda are limited, there is a natural concentration of focus on a pre-selected range of topics, things and people – an increased prominence. While the availability bias prevents additional input and legitimises the selection, the prominence bias shifts the focus towards a particular element on the agenda. By deliberately putting those elements in the spotlight, they become the believed preference of the citizen. If the goal is to create aversion towards one of the available options within a specific context, the prominence bias helps to do this, too.
Agenda-Setting Power in Action
Deliberately applied agenda-setting is designed to intensify developments in the desired direction, and, therefore, the outcomes and solutions are often quite specific and within an anticipated range. Even large changes within societies can be achieved by applying this technique. It is difficult to detect or attach malevolence to it, which makes it difficult to counteract. Further, continuous application of this technique leads to a decrease in innovative capacity within a society. In the following, we outline a few examples from different fields of societal life. It is important to remember that these are just examples and there are many more cases of manipulation through agenda-setting. By outlining the following examples, we are, too, engaging in agenda-setting. There are reasons why we selected the cases below and not others; some of them are consciously reflected reasons, while we are unaware of some other of our internal forces that led us to select the examples we ultimately selected. Agenda-setting is sometimes unavoidable.
Politics
As already touched upon earlier, non-devletist democratic voting systems are nearly completely built on agenda-setting. First of all, they are built around the idea of the political party. This in itself is a limitation of all the nuanced perspectives, approaches, interests and preferences within a nation, as there are naturally fewer political parties than individual voices within any society. People then have to choose among a few simplified voices to make a decision on their sovereign representatives – the agenda is set. Second, the exercise of political power is accepted to be simplified and flawed because of the availability bias. There are available ideational options which make further attempts to create more nuanced and granular perspectives unfeasible in terms of time invested against the societal return received. Third, the prominence bias limits the number of “voteable” parties even further. Aided by the relative orientation of non-devletist political systems, which are designed towards reinforcing material, political parties with more financial means improve their prominence in political discourse. The prominence bias then leads to the perception of authority, competence or, at least, popularity. Of course, the functioning of agenda-setting can also be applied to more granular cases within the political systems realm. Political parties internally select their figures by applying the same logic. Ministries and committees present their recommendations with the same rationale. Policies are adopted by also limiting the options first, then by preventing the addition of further options and then by highlighting the preferred option.
Education
The most detrimental and dangerous form of agenda-setting is applied in education. Educational material, curricula and teaching methods are all decided on in untransparent policymaking processes. Neither the decision-makers nor the methodological approach to craft education policies on the operational level are subject to scrutiny, let alone popular intervention or participation. Whether there are checks-and-balances systems depends heavily on the respective national context. Usually, there are also no systems in place to counterbalance ideologies and biases of those decision-makers. This means that everything we learn in school is subject to agenda-setting – even if there is no malevolence involved. Our national curricula determine what we get to learn. The variety of methods and perceptions determine what we perceive to be true and important (availability bias).
Media
Agenda-setting power is most blatantly applied in media. News programmes are not limited to a certain screen time because there is nothing more to report but because a selected range of topics needs to be presented to manipulate the consumer – the watching citizen. News programmes tap into both cognitive biases simultaneously to exercise power through their selected agenda. Because the implied opinions and facts on the already limited selection of topics is readily available and presented in a digestible format, they are readily accepted. In addition to that, the perceived popularity of news programmes evokes the feeling that the information presented there is important and right. It might be that only five people watch news programmes but because we assume that many people watch the programme, the conveyed information is valued more than its degree of truth and fair communication should allow.
Social media is similar. Every information and interaction with it on a platform are influenced by the owning company’s goals and policies. Ultimately, the platform decides what is watched, shared, commented, what is popular or what is disliked. Platform owners promote, restrict or ban content and information as they please. Social media platforms have ultimate agenda-setting power. The reason why it manipulates us so much is that if content is available on the platform, it automatically passes a certain legitimisation threshold. Imagine not finding a very specific piece of information on social media or a search engine – if it is not (easily) available, then it loses credibility. However, just because something is not widely available, it does not follow that something loses value, truth or authoritativeness. Likewise, nothing gains true value, truth or authoritativeness with growing popularity (prominence bias). Social media also heavily relies on the prominence bias to further intensify its influence through agenda-setting. Much shown, commented, shared or liked content is more likely perceived to be true. This implicit acceptance of truth of those bits of information is one of the most effective ways to achieve manipulation through agenda-set prominence – once something is perceived to be true, it is difficult for a human being to overcome that belief.
Arts and Aesthetics
Manipulation, as a cornerstone of detrimental policymaking, is applied in various ways. Even light and sound are utilised to further individual interests. By shaping city landscapes, fashion, fine arts and music, ideologies can be steered through creative streams. Although this is a topic on its own, we can connect the use of such methods to the supporting tool of agenda-setting. Music streaming platforms are untransparent and biased entities that recommend and promote songs in accordance with broader goals. There is a visible shift in lyrical and normative depth of songs beginning with the 1990s. The rate of diverse use of language has declined constantly over the past 30 years across nearly all cultures; however, only for the most popular songs within a culture. While the musical landscape has not changed it itself so much, it is more the attention and popularity shift towards simple musical and lyrical compositions. Such music has shorter life cycles and is consumerist in its message – both factors that aim to maintain high demand for new songs to listen to intensively. By selected what can be listened to on the platform (agenda-setting), positioning songs on allegedly individualised recommendations lists (prominence/availability bias) and publishing illicit popularity lists (prominence bias), music stream platforms (or music providing entities in the broader sense) reinforcingly manipulate its consumers.
Detecting and Overcoming Agenda-Setting Power
Three-Question/Reverse-Answer Approach
As we have seen from the few examples above, many things that we are confronted with are carefully selected and deliberately placed and framed elements of societal life. Even in this article, the selected examples are subject to agenda-setting. When used consciously, like we do, its has an empowering effect since the information can be processed in a fair manner and creates the possibility to add to the examples and cases through your own thought processes. However, not every actor in the political sphere acts in the collective interest. Therefore, it is important to detect and overcome agenda-setting power. In order to detect the application of this manipulation method, we need to always start with the question: Why am I seeing or hearing this particular piece of information right now? Regardless of whether we are dealing with a news programme, a policy report or a business presentation. To answer this question, it is important to understand the benefit of the presenter because he is the one who made a careful decision on what to present in what way. To answer this question, in turn, we would need to understand what we believe the other person wants us to think, feel or do. Let us suppose a news programme is presenting ten negative current events, we would ask the questions above in the order outlined above but start answering them in reverse. By presenting only negative news, the programme wants the viewer to feel negative emotions. The benefit of this for the presenter is that the emotional imbalance cause by strong emotions – in this case, negative emotions – hampers our ability to make independent judgements on the presented pieces of information. With these aspects uncovered, we can quickly understand that we are seeing those presented news because the presenter wants us to have his opinion on those events – otherwise, he would not have aimed for emotional imbalance.
Summarising, the Three-Question/Reverse-Answer Approach contains the following steps:
- Ask: “Why am I seeing or hearing this particular piece of information right now?”
- Ask: “What is the benefit of the presenter of me receiving this particular information?”
- Ask: “What does the presenter want me to think, feel or do?”
- Answer those questions in reverse.
Applying this three-question technique and answering them in reverse order, it becomes easier to retain emotional balance because we first build a logical chain to remind us of potentially applied agenda-setting and then trace the functioning back from the most tangible effect on ourselves. With that emotional balance, cognitive assessment of the applied technique is possible.
Proactive Options Approach
The second approach to apply when being subject to manipulation through agenda-setting relies on an implicit logic. Whenever agenda-setting is applied, there is also always a deliberate choice on what not to put on the agenda. The Proactive Options Approach aims to find out what those things are. To use this approach, we need to be aware of some core dynamics of human psychology. First, someone who uses agenda-setting malevolently, is always a reactive and relational person. As there is a deliberate choice of what to show and what not to show, we must assume that there is an implicit, or often also explicit, belief of good or bad. Since no person would position itself on the bad side, users of agenda-setting belief that the pieces of information withheld from the agenda belong into the belief system of bad people. Second, agenda-setting relies on the perceived need to influence others. Therefore, it follows that the assessment of belief systems is not based on objective criteria but on subjective perceptions, meaning that the own belief system can only exist with the existence of the counterpart. Even though agenda-setters want to influence people in their personal interest, they only feel the need to do so because the existence of other belief systems and interests. Such goals are of lesser value because they are dependent on the existence of counter-goals. As we know from the devletist school of political science, independently strong goals, such as genuine knowledge production, do not need to have counterparts to exist and remain relevant. Hence, there is no need to influence anyone because the goal is independently good and attracts follower by its sheer truth. Further, someone who pursues objectively true goals, does not gain anything from convincing others as he can pursue this much more valuable goal equally effectively and efficiently independently from the existence of others.
Coming back to the Proactive Options Approach, there are two elements to uncover: 1. The ignored agenda of the counterpart of the agenda-setter, 2. The agendas ignored by both agenda-setter and its counterpart. Since agenda-setters think and act in binary terms, it is sufficient to only look at the agendas of those two oppositions to understand the variety of options and pieces of information that are being left out of the agendas. To illustrate this with a simplistic example, think of a leftist politician is constantly pointing towards the nepotism of its rival political party. On the other hand, politicians of the rival party point towards nepotism in the leftist camp. Both sides try to influence citizens by only highlighting the other side’s weaknesses to achieve a perception that the other side is bad. However, when we apply the Proactive Options Approach we would need to think outside of the binary approach of good and bad actors and think about what would benefit the nation in collective terms: no nepotism. With that answer, we can build a logical chain afar from agenda-setting discourse. What common motives drive nepotism in those two camps? What structures allow for nepotism? What has been done against nepotism, and what not? What do the involved parties wanted me to think, feel or do so they can uphold their detrimental practises? By answering the last question, we know what to do – in this case, against nepotism: the exact opposite.
Summarising, the Proactive Options Approach contains the following steps:
- What does the agenda-setter not tell you that his counterpart would?
- What do both sides ignore?
- Build a logical chain to uncover why they ignore it and what allows them to ignore it.
- Ask: “What does the agenda-setter want me to think, feel or do?”
- Do the exact opposite
Final Remarks
Agenda-setting power is a commonly and subtly used method to limit the perception of people with the intention to influence them. Functioning on the basis of cognitive biases of the human mind, agenda-setting is a very effective way to steer discourse and influence opinions. Sometimes, agenda-setting is unavoidable. We need to make choices about what to show as full availability of all information is given rarely. As long as we are transparent about our biases, choices and the subconscious reasons that led us to include some examples, while excluding others, this cannot be viewed as the exercise of agenda-setting power as we are simply transparent with our own weaknesses. However, to uncover and overcome malevolently used agenda-setting, there are two helpful approaches: 1. Three-Question/Reverse-Answer Approach, 2. Proactive Options Approach. While the first approach aims at uncovering whether agenda-setting is applied, the second approach helps us to overcome the limits of the options presented to us.
