1. What is meant by media agenda?

Agenda setting theory (Maxwell McCombs and Donald L. Shaw)

Media influence affects the order of presentation in news reports about news events, issues in the
public mind. More importance to a news-more importance attributed by audience. Media
Priorities It says what people should think about and how people should think about.
These are the levels of agenda setting theory:
First Level:
Mostly studied by researchers, media uses objects or issues to influence the people what people
should think about.
Second level:
Media focuses on the characters of issues how people should think about.
Agenda setting theory used in political ad, campaigns, business news, PR (public relation) etc.
The main concept associated with the agenda setting theory is gate keeping. Gate keeping
controls over the selection of content discussed in the media; Public cares mostly about the
product of a media gate keeping. It is especially editors media itself is a gatekeeper. News media
decides what events to admit through media gates on ground of newsworthiness.
For e.g.: News Comes from various sources, editors choose what should appear and what should
not thats why they are called as gatekeepers.
Priming
Activity of the media in proposing the values and standards by which objects of the media
attention can be judged. Medias content will provide a lot of time and space to certain issues,
making it more vivid.
To say in simple words, Media is giving utmost importance to a news so that it gives people the
impression that is the most important information. This is done everyday the particular news is
carried as a heading or covered everyday for months.
Headlines, Special news features, discussions, expert opinions are used.
Media primes a news by repeating the news and giving it more importance E.g. Nuclear deal.
Framing
Framing is a process of selective control

Two Meanings
Way in which news content is typically shaped and contextualized within same frame of
reference.
Audience adopts the frames of reference and to see the world in a similar way. It is how people
attach importance to a news and perceive it context within which an issue is viewed.
Framing talks about how people attach importance to certain news for e.g. in case of attack,
defeat, win and loss, how the media frames the news such that people perceive it in a different
way.
We can take India and Pakistan war; same happening is framed in different ways in both the
countries. So depending on which media you view your perception will differ.
Criticisms of Agenda setting theory is
Media users not ideal, people may not pay attention to details.
Effect is weakened for people who have made up their mind.
Media cant create problems. They can only alter the awareness, Priority etc.

2. Write a note on current trends in media policy.

3. Write a short note on public policy:
Introduction
In a country like India, which is a land of diversity, where almost all religions of the
world are dwelling within the territory of India, with diverse climatic differences and resources,
issues like inequality, imbalance in growth, conflicts, etc would be the picture of Indian society.
Indian State through its Public aims to bring change in society. Public policy aims to address
issues of public concern at large. Public policy is the most effective mechanism to bring change
at all levels in the society.
The paper focuses on the conceptual and application part of the public policy in India
with certain examples. The paper is divided in four parts:
i)
Public Policy a theoretical framework
ii)
Path followed by Public Policy
iii)
Discussion on Impact of Public Policy making in India.
iv)
Issues addressed by public policy in India
With a concluding remark on policy making in India.

Public Policy a theoretical framework

A Public Policy is a goal oriented course of action adopted and implemented by the
government bodies and officials in pursuit of certain objectives or goals of public interest.
Basically, Public Policies are: Goal oriented, Decision making process, Governments collective
action, Addresses public concerns, Interaction of peoples demands with power structures.
As described by Larry Gerston, Public policy theory is the study or discussion of
public policy. Public policy itself includes any policies that are concerned with the public, at the
federal, state, or local government level. Public policy theory involves observing, analyzing, and
oftentimes comparing public policy to theory, as opposed to actually participating in the creation
of public policy. Because theory is not equal to knowledge, or factual information, it is an
imperfect study often involving debate and sometimes controversy. (Reference : Gerston N.
Larry, 2009, Public Policy Making In a Democratic Society )
One way of describing a good policy-making process is one that is committed to
producing a high quality decisionnot any particular decision and that invests any decision
made with a high degree of legitimacy, power and accuracy [Moore, 1998]. What features or
characteristics should a policymaking process have which, if present, would lead to high quality
decisions?

Path followed by Public Policy

Policy making is an art. A The path followed by public policy gives a clear picture about the
theoretical and application aspect of the policy. Also helps to understand the basis of public
Policy.

Fig. 1 The path of Policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. (Reference :

http://www.athenainfonomics.in/public-policy.html )

And to understand the basis of public policy one need to answer few questions and they
are : i) What is public policy? ii) Who makes policy? iii) Who is affected by public policy? iv)
Who influences public policy? Answers to these questions would help us know the ingredients
and the path that is followed by public policy.
What is public policy? A public policy is basically a law or rule that is enforced by any level of
government, whether central, state, or local. Various tiers of government also formulate a variety
of schemes and programs. Public policy includes: schemes, programs, sectoral policies, rules,
regulations, laws, as well as judicial policy-decisions.
Who makes policy? Its very much clear from the above discussion that public policy is made
by different tiers of government. Institutions that play a crucial role in policy making are:
Legislature, Executive, Cabinet and Cabinet secretariat,
Prime Minister and Prime Ministers Office, NDC and Planning Commission, IAS, IPS and IFS
officers, Judiciary. All the above mentioned institutions has a unique role to play in the
formulation of policy.
Who is affected by public policy? By penalizing some forms of behavior and rewarding others,
policies change the costs and benefits of different directions of action. Policies can be thought of
as rules of the game of everyday life. These rules affect the way people choose to pursue their
goals and thus influence the combined, overall, and unintended results of everyones actions.
Policies mainly affect the individuals under the jurisdiction of the government that makes and
enforces the rules. However, as we shall see in a moment, who exactly is effected by policies and
how is not as clear and straightforward as you might expect

Discussion on Impact of Public Policy making in India.

There can certainly be incongruity as to what is the "right" policy in a given sector, in a
given situation. Because there are errors, changes or postponements in policies, one cannot
conclude that policy-making suffers from weakness. Success is often the result of trial and error.
Disagreements in a democratic society, are both inevitable and healthy. Vigorous debate prior to
policy-making and adaptation in response to debate is good, not bad. Flexibility in policymaking
to respond to evolving exogenous factors is good, not bad. And the phenomenon of political
considerations intervening in decisions otherwise well taken, is inevitable in a fractious but
genuinely democratic polity like India. (Reference : Public policy making in india: issues and
remedies ,O.P. Agarwal & T.V. Somanathan)
As the example given about of the power of public policy in Social Change &Public
Policy by Parth J Shah is as follows: The Indian Forest Act classifies bamboo as a tree. All

the rules that apply to trees apply to bamboo and the Forest Department controls its use. As a
result, only some connected contractors have access to forest bamboo. If it were classified as a
grass, however, as it scientifically is, then the bamboo would be out of the Forest Departments
control. Tribals would be able to access it as a resource to earn their livelihood. A large scale use
of bamboo would also save trees and timber, a tremendous environmental benefit. To bring about
this policy change, CCS ran a campaign: Bamboo is Not a Tree. What would be the impact of
this small change in policy? It would help millions of tribals all over the country whom we dont
even know. It might save millions of trees too. Thats the power of public policy .
This example clearly marks a significant remark on the tool or mechanism of public
policy and its impact. Hence for a country like India which is large, populous and diverse as is
intrinsically a more complex task than in a smaller political unit. This makes us a study of the
institutions which make policy all the more important. Measured by economic growth or
attainment of human development objectives, India remains not only an underdeveloped country
but one which is usually regarded as an under-performer, which could do better.If it is taken as
given that India is an under-performer, the question then arises as to why is this the case. This
may be due to adopting the wrong public policies and poorly implementing the right public
policies.

Issues addressed by public policy in India

Poverty , Education, Health, Infrastructure, Energy, Rights, Gender, etc. are being by framing
schemes and programmes formulated by government of India. Based on these issues there are
certain types of public policy framework in India, they are as follows :

Welfare & Development Public policies ( MGNREGA, Mid day Meal Scheme, etc )
Regulatory Public policies (National Drug Policy, National Water Policy, etc )
Distributive & Re-distributive policies (National Mineral Policy, National Electricity
Policy, etc )

Amartya Sen, one of the chief proponents of the basic idea of human development, argued
that the state needed to roll back in areas where its presence was uneconomical and unnecessary
and increase policy attention and money in areas pertaining to human development that needed a
thrust. Prof Sen took the interesting example of China where the success of economic reforms
and record levels of economic growth were made possible, because of and not in spite of, the
efforts of the 3 interventionist state prior to 1978 policy shifts under Deng Xiao Ping.
According to this argument, the pro-active public policy intervention in human development
enables the state to create a social and economic base to take advantage of economic reforms and
the opening up of markets. Investment in human development and promotion of elementary
education and health, improving the status of women as well as improving the basic
demographic indicators would actually help in the long and medium term to reap the benefits of
opening up of markets and globalisation.

There was no contradiction between the rollback of the state in some areas and increasing its
policy intervention in others. These ideas come from one of the chief proponents of human
development and we are as yet unsure of their effectiveness on the public policies of the Indian
state. Surely, the arguments have drawn the attention of the social-science community.
(Reference : Politics and Public Policies: Politics of Human Development in Uttar Pradesh, India
by Shyam Singh and V Anil Kumar)

A way forward
The public policies for human development and welfare were already authorised by the
Indian constitution. In India it is of utmost important that our constitution should be the most
basic guideline while formulating, implementing and evaluating any public policies. As
described in the preamble, Fundamental Rights and Directive principles of state Policies which
constitute the philosophy of the constitution.
The social bases of the politic parties clearly read out the nature of public policy making.
Uncertainty of the social bases of political parties has stimulated such trends in India. For
example, positive discrimination is already present in the Indian Constitution but the spirit and
the aim of adopting the public policies to benefit specific social sections to garner electoral
support, and the politics of public policies, pre-eminently public policies meant for better human
development.
4. What are cultural influence faced by political media?