Is Police Brutality a Real Issue?

 

 

The pictures above that you will find are news articles and a video from YouTube of Police Brutality. I want to show how the frequency of these news articles and YouTube videos correlate to Agenda Setting.

Agenda setting is the media telling us what to think about, and what not to think about. For example, if we see crime on television we automatic see crime to be violent crime. When in reality, crime can also be as non-violent as white collar crime or fraud. Agenda Setting focuses more on demographics like your race, age and socio-economic status (SES). 

Agenda Setting is the media expressing what we should pay attention to/ what we should be thinking about.  It is showing the frequency in how much we see in the media. This is because they want to get the most attention and reactions of people. They are aiming to have people focus on something specific and not the broader picture because people who present media feel like it is something we all find important. Police Brutality falls under this because just recently we have seen an increase in how much Police Brutality has been around the internet due to everyone having access to internet as well as having cell phones because these actions can not only be recorded by individuals unlike the past but also because of the amount of shares it gets once it gets posted. The frequency has changed because over 20 years ago we did not have access to this technology or the ability to record things that go on around the world and now we have that access. Since we are starting to see it all over the news, YouTube, Facebook and other social media websites it causes us to believe that it has some importance.

I typed in “Police” and the first thing that followed police was “Mistreatment” and “Brutality”. When I typed in Police Brutality and over 11, 700, 00 and when you type it in on YouTube over 651,000 videos popped up that involved Police Brutality. Back in the day, we did not have Google, YouTube or even the use of internet which means we did not see Police Brutality as a big problem because we simply did not see it at that time. Now that we have the technology and video, people have the ability to record and post to their own personal Social Medias and other can share and give their opinion which says “this is something that is important and I am sharing this because this is something that we should be paying attention to because it seems to be a problem within our society.

Overall, people may have a difference of opinion of the issues presented but Agenda Setting just expresses something that we all might find important. This matter because I feel like it makes us not thing about other things. They have us so focused on one issue, it distracts us from the other issues that also need attention.