BY: FERDINAND N. NOTARTE

SETTING THE AGENDA:

Mass communication plays a very vital role in our society today. It becomes a great medium to feed and fulfill the society’s interest, desires, wants and needs in life via telephone, radio, televisions, newspapers, computer and internet.

We explore something by having these tools. but it has also dangers because it can also destroys the minds of others in an paricular issues. agenda-setting theory main suggest is what we called the salience. when we say salience, it is the transfer or the ability of the mass media to transfer issues that is very important from their mass media agendas to public agendas. for example, the death of former president corazon c. aquino, today, abs-cbn, gma, and other pioneering networks were given tita cory a special tribute for her death as part of the setting-agenda concept or the predisposition. apart from it, feeelings/emotions of other people towards her death were expounded. a never-ending expressing their grieveness to the late former president. through mass media-agenda, people were given the chance to broadcast over the media what they really feel, theor opinions, about it.
the other things in agenda- setting concept is the cognition or what we know. in this, you really have to experience something just to be able to share. for example, in the case of wowowee host willie revillame, regarding the issue while having the show wowowee as we all knew that this show is very much energized and happy. And suddenly, there were appeared of split screen showing the procession of the wake of former president Corazon Aquino.
In that case, the MTRCB and other journalists organizations in the Philippines wrote a letter to ABS-CBN saying that, they should have teach willie revillame a proper manner and give sanctions. In the part of other people who watched the incident, willie has a point of view here but he shouldn’t do that in front of the whole nation that you know in the case of those organizations, has accumulated that its has attrack on the side of the Aquino family.
Somehow, someway, you have connection on it as a viewer/audience of the show. But some other people don’t have any interest on it unless they watched the show. In this matter again, you will see how powerful media is in our social environment.




DEFINING SOCIAL SUPPORT:

As an individual, we kept on being silent on certain issue which we are not familiar or simply don't have any idea on it. Due to this, our point of view or opinion on an issue is often disregarded because we do not have the courage or self- esteem to pursue what we wanted to say. that's why silent can lead into an erroneous conclusion that not all people support a particular point of view.

For example, how can we help the overseas filipino workers ( OFWs) to speak up for being harassed by their employers on different side of the world? This has become the reason on why some politicians come up with political advertisement to support their hindrances. just like the campaign of manny villar regarding the OFWs people. he and his campaign helping the people who were violently harassed. they tried to give at least some financial matters,etc. for the victims.so that, knowing the sides of those victims from being silent can now be heard. that's why mass communication plays a versy significant role or key in redifining socially accepted behavior.

Therefore social support is an important key factor to the well being of a person through the emotional, instrumental and sometimes informational support he/she gets from the society.





DIFFUSING INFORMATION AND INNOVATION:

In our situation today, we really need something to feed our minds and seek informations pertaining to an issue. once we have it, we try to transfer it to another person/s or diffuse it for them to be able to share the information that we got. Of course, in order for us to start with a simple conversation, somebody will tell us about something or perhaps by trying to research or maybe through observing, plus with the new advent of technology, we could easily look for the things, issues, and other matters we wanted.

Just like in the case of "katrina-hayden sex scandal" wherein the intrusion of privacy was done here. Someone or one of the closest friends of hayden scattered the information regarding the matter of their private sexual act which in the first place shouldn’t have been uploaded or made accessible for public viewing. But through easy access of internet this very private matter has been publicized. It started with one person to another and with the advanced technology; it was easily transffered to other materials, sources that made it very controversial. It has evoked many emotions which you can see, view, read on various blogs that has been created due to the sex scandal.

Therefore with unpleasant events such as the “Katrina-Hayden sex scandal” we could say that the new technology and innovations we have now has become a tool to spread information that could either be pertinent or not to the society. It is an awful reality that instead of using these great innovations for the betterment of our world; other people utilize it in a destructive way that diminishes its very essence.