In
the globalization world, things are accelerating, and many things are
interacted together. Media play significant roles in every country. Without
media, freedom of expression and information circulation will surely vanish,
and people will not be able to know what are truly taking place in the milieu
they are dwelling. On the other hand, election is undeniably deemed to be a
core element of democracy in one specific country. Without free and fair
election, citizens in one specific country will not be able to vote to choose
their leader satisfactorily. European election had not progressed primarily as a result of the resistance of
President De Gaulle, and his successor in 1969, Georges Pompidou, relaxed the
French position, allowing the European Communities to open a new chapter on
integration which led to the first European election in 1979[1]. Media in Europe are also very advancing
and contributing in a remarkable way into European election. Thus, this
research is to depict “Media Power in European Parliamentary Election” which I mainly focus
only on the political agenda setting.
To elaborate on this topic, two research questions
have been developed: Why do media play crucial role in political agenda setting
in European Parliamentary election? And how do media influence it? European election
also plays very crucial role in the international stage because it must produce
some indirect effects towards some countries, especially Cambodia who
considers, more or less, European election as a model for her own country
election. Comparing media power between in European Parliamentary election and
in Cambodian National Assembly election is one of the discussion points in this
research paper, and a case of study of European Parliamentary election is also
raised.
According to McCombs and Shaw, agenda setting
refers to the idea which has a strong correlation between the emphasis that
mass media place on certain issues (for example, based on relative placement or
amount of coverage) and the importance attributed to these issues by mass
audience. From this perspective, political agenda setting must be based on the
interaction between media and citizens. Each media institution has their own
agenda setting on what contents to be reported and published, and those
published materials serve as information providing to citizens who soon will
develop their own reaction or agenda towards those received information. The
citizen’s agenda or reaction is what political party is really curious to know
because each political party will set its own agenda to fulfill what citizens
are demanding. What Mccombs and Shaws had mentioned is very similar to what
McQuai and Windahl discovered as well. This diagram shows that there are
circles and interaction among media agenda, public agenda and policy agenda,
which was influenced by personal experience and interpersonal communication,
and real-world indicators of the importance of an agenda issue or event.
 |
| Source: McQuail & Windahl (1993) |
In
this passage I would like to compare slightly about the roles of media between
European Parliamentary Election and Cambodian National Assembly Election to
seek out what the differences and sameness are because Cambodia considers EU as
one of her role model in terms of democracy, especially election. As mentioned
above, media are very pivotal in EPE, and it’s very important to the Cambodian
Nation Assembly Election in 2013 as well. In the EPE, all kinds of media played
very significant roles. However, in the CNAE in 2013, only social media served
as a vital tool towards the election. Television, radio and most printed media
are somehow considered to be affiliated to the government, so many citizens,
especially youth turned to social media to share information related to the
election. Seeing this trend, the opposition party prioritized social media,
especially facebook, for its political campaign. As a result, it has been very
surprising towards the election result. The opposition in the previous mandate,
2008, won only 29 out of 123 parliamentary seats. However, according to the
official result released by National Election Committee on 8 September 2013,
the opposition party surprisingly won 55 out of 123 parliamentary seats, which
has doubled. This depicts the trend that social media is an effective and puissant
tool in Cambodia election.The 2004 European Parliamentary election
were an unprecedented exercise in democracy with more than 350 million people
in 25 countries having the opportunity to vote. The elections took place only
weeks after the accession of 10 new member states to the European Union – the
largest enlargement ever. Most voters in both the old EU-15 and another 10 new
member states experience politics primarily through media[2].
Thus, it’s evident that people in the EPE used media in forms of television and
newspaper as an inevitable tool to learn and understand about politics,
candidates, political party and so on. Without media it’s very hard for EU
people to have access to EPE information. Political agenda setting by the media
is contingent upon a number of conditions. The input variables of the model are
the kind of issues covered, the specific media outlet, and the sort of coverage[3].
When mass media emphasize a topic, the audience receiving the message will
consider this topic to be important (Cohen, 1963; McCombs & Shaw, 1972). According
to some authors’ perspective and my observation in the reality, it’s convinced
that media do serve as a core actor in shaping political agenda setting because
media are the first thing which people approach whenever they need information.
Besides, agenda setting is considerably more than the classical assertion that
the news tells us what to think. The new also tells us how to think about it.
Both the selection of objectives for attention and the selection of frames for
thinking about these objects are powerful agenda-setting roles[4].
Based
on some perspectives above, media do contribute a plethora of effects towards
political agenda setting of the election, and people’s decision-making, more or
less, are based on what they see, hear and read through media. The political
party, people and media institution have various sorts of agenda setting for
themselves, but through media, those agendas would, to some extent, intertwine
together. As a result, each political party, both ruling party and opposition
party, always tries one’s best to control the media because they know that by
ruling the media they can control political agenda setting. Controlling agenda
setting means one is the decision-maker of what kinds of information to be
published. Thus, one will become the dominant of information leading to the
holder of data. Nowadays, there is one quote that “Who controls data controls
the world”.
Supporting
this research paper with only existing research journals and documents is not
very scientific although it’s based on some empirical findings of some authors
and me. However, this research paper can portray some knowledge relevant to
media and political agenda setting to other, but it’s not enough. Thus, I think
more research about media effects on political agenda setting in the context of
European Parliamentary Election should be done to broaden and provide more
understanding for the people.
Bibliography
McCombs,
Maxell E., University of Texas at Austin, and Shaw, Donald L., University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research:
Twenty-Five Years in the Marketplace of Ideas. In: Symposium
McCombs, Maxwell (2005): A look at
Agenda-Setting: Past, Present and Future. In: Journalism Studies, 6:4, 543-557,
Dol: 10.1080/14616700500250438. UK: Routledge
Vreese, Claese
H., University of Amsterdam, The Netherland; Banducci, Susan A., University of
Exeter, UK; Semetko, Holli A., Empory University, USA; and Boomgaarden, Hajo
G., University of Amsterdam, The Netherland (2006): The News Coverage of the
2004 European Parliamentary Election Campaign in 25 Countries. In: European
Union Politics, Vol. 7, No. 4. pp 477-504. London, Thousand Oasks CA, New Delhi
: SAGE Publications
Walgrave,
Stefaan and Aelstz, Peter.V (2006): Mass Media’s Political Agenda-Setting
Power. The Contingency of the Mass Media’s Political Agenda Setting Power:
Toward a Preliminary Theory. In: Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9915
[2] Vreese; Banducci; Semetko;
and Boomgaarden(2006) : European Union Politics. The News Coverage of the 2004
European Parliamentary Election Campaign in 25 Countries. Volume 7(4): 477-504.
SAGE Publications.
[3] Walgrave, Stefaan and
Aelst, Peter Van: Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916. The Contingency of
the Mass Media’sPolitical Agenda Setting Power: Toward a Preliminary Theory.
[4] McCombs, Maxwell E.,
University of Texas at Austin, and Shaw, Donald L., University of North
Carolina at Capel Hill : The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research : Twenty-Five
Years in the Marketplace of Ideas
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