Summary of the presentation by Danique, Elsa & Anouk
Agendabuilding is how the press interacts with other institutions in society to create issues of public concern and refers to the political process of corporations trying to influence the public policy agenda with their private issues, behind the scenes as well as in public. The case we discussed with regard to agenda building is the information leak of the ‘Troonrede’ meant to be made public knowledge on ‘Prinsjesdag’. This is a Dutch national day on the third Tuesday of September on which the future plans of the goverment are outread by the Dutch King. It is written in the law that these plans should be made public every year, but a lot of information already leaks before this day. Especially this year, practically the whole plan was already public before Prinsjesdag. This leak gets a lot of media attention every year. But why is the ‘information leak’ of Prinsjesdag every year so successful in influencing the news agenda?
In their article, Schafraad et al. (2015) analysed why some sources are more successful in influencing the news agenda than others. In conclusion we can say that the news factors in that influence the chance on succession in news media are ‘controversy’, ‘negative consequences’, ‘surprise’ and ‘elite organizations’. This could explain why the information leak is so succesfull in influencing the media agenda every year. The government can be seen as an institution where the media interacts with. The plans which are told on Prinsjesdag are of national relevance and are part of politics. Usually the media interacts with the politics to build an agenda. Except, in this case the media didn’t even have to interact with the politics because they already had the information they needed and they brought the information straight to the public. If we take a look at the newsfactors, then we can explain why the information would be interesting for the media to publish. The consequences of the information for the public are mostly negative, for example higher taxes, which makes it more interesting for the journalists to talk about, thus more interesting to publish. Second, the information isn’t supposed to come out until the actual Prinsjesdag. This aspect too makes it more valuable for the media who presented the information first, since they can come up with information other media haven’t been able to put their hands on yet. Eliteness of the corporation is defined as the potential economic influence in a given society. In this case, the plans which are elaborated on Prinsjesdag have a crucial influence on the Dutch society, which makes the topic even more publishable for the press. Besides the newsfactors, there are also some message subjects which are important for the degree of valueness for the media. The subject is also relevant for the whole society and the information usually has economic consequences for the public.
The other article we discussed in relation to our case, is Berkowitz & Adams (1990). This article is about information subsidies; “the effort of news sources to intentionally shape the news agenda by reducing journalists’ costs of gathering information.” Besides the appealing news factors in this case which were quite clear, we discussed the role of information subsidies and we concluded that in this case there must have been a actor that talked to the press about the plans of Prinsjesdag.
Moreover we discussed the article itself and stated that the outcomes are a bit outdated. In an active class discussion, we came to the conclusion that information subsidies nowadays play an important role in online media as well. Examples are sending sample products to bloggers and inviting them for PR events.
Taking into account the theories and concepts presented in these articles, they provide important insights on the interplay between the PR field and the Journalism/media field. The article of Schafraad et al.(2015) provide many insights on the "news discovering phase" of this negotiation process between the two fields. Indeed, they show that the presence of certain characteristics of the message, such as news factors, on a press release can influence its agenda building chances. In other words, they found out that the presence of these news factors have an impact on journalists' news selection criteria (especially for news about business). Moreover, they discovered that journalists, according to their field, can consider a general topic presented in a press release as news factor, so also some topics could influence the succession of the press release on another medium. In addition, Berkowitz & Adams (1990) contribute to PR literature by pointing out that the presence of a local angle and concreteness of news event can also influence the succession of a press release on news television. In conclusion, press releases are one of the most important tools for organizations that seek to gather media attention and different forms of information subsidies are emerging in online media as well.
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