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Agenda Setting Theory Artifacts for News and Social Media

Michelle Maraffio

Southern Utah University

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Website: QAnon

QAnon is a conspiracy theorist news movement, based on the allegations by an

anonymous entity called “Q”. The premise of the allegations revolves around the idea that there

is a secret “deep state” organization made up of Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites,

who allegedly run a massive satanic pedophile ring. They also make claims that Bill Gates and

other elites are attempting to control populations using vaccines and 5G technology. QAnon

purports that Donald Trump is the only one who is fighting against these insurmountable odds.

They describe their movement as “The Great Awakening” and it has strong religious undertones.

This artifact relates to Agenda Setting Theory by demonstrating how a “news” source is

setting the agenda in American politics. While this anonymous source has very little credibility,

they have millions of followers. This source of bizarre “news” is changing American politics as

we know it. The New York Times did a piece called “The QAnon Candidates Are Here. Trump

Has Paved Their Way,” (Rosenberg, M., & Steinhauer, J. 2020), explaining how conspiracy

theorists are making their way into the political realm. The movement has primarily used

“twitter”, “Facebook”, and “YouTube” to spread their Agenda Setting messages.

While the messages that QAnon shares is based entirely on unsubstantiated claims, they

do attempt to raise public awareness about what the audience should be concerned about. The

accessibility happens across multiple platforms and has gained enough momentum that it is now

being covered by mainstream media as well.

Facebook: Heather Cox Richardson

Heather Cox Richardson is a Political Historian and Professor at Boston College. She

uses her Facebook page to deliver what she describes as “observations about contemporary
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American Politics.” (Richardson, 2020) Her platform is primarily Facebook posts explaining her

interpretations about current politics. Because of her expertise, she is considered by her followers

to be a credible source of information and helps them to understand the implications of political

events.

This relates to Agenda Setting in a different way than a traditional news source. She is

not a journalist, but instead gathers much of her evidence from other mainstream news sources,

checking and double checking for reliability and truth. So, the way that she uses agenda setting is

by framing the issues in a way that she wants her readers to think about them. She compares

historical events, constitutional law, and current events to establish a credible way to view

politics.

Twitter: Donald Trump

Twitter is a mega platform of public agenda. In less than 280 characters users can share,

discuss, or argue their stance on just about anything. While not a traditional media platform for

agenda setting, this social networking site allows users to set the agenda.

A good example of how a public figure uses twitter to set agenda, is in the instance of

President Donald Trump. On any given day, the president shares dozens of tweets about what he

believes people should agree with him about. He sets the agenda by determining what is

important, framing it in a way that his followers will interpret similarly to him and makes

headlines in the traditional news. He does not have to hold a news conference; he can simply

type out his thoughts or ideas onto twitter and let the users of twitter and the mainstream media

do the rest of the work for him.

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References:

 Q. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved from https://www.qanonanonymous.com/

 Richardson, H. C. (n.d.). Heather Cox Richardson. Retrieved from

https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/

 Rosenberg, M., & Steinhauer, J. (2020, July 14). The QAnon Candidates Are Here.

Trump Has Paved Their Way. Retrieved from

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/qanon-politicians-

candidates.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/qanon-politicians-

candidates.html

 Trump, D. J. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/POTUS